Superstore

The NBC series Superstore starts its fifth season this week, and you should be watching it. This good-hearted workplace comedy about a big-box store in St. Louis is the only contemporary sitcom about American workers that threads class consciousness—the persistent low-level conflict between management and staff, the human impact of low pay and bad health insurance, the befuddling effect of managerial tactics that thwart workers’ solidarity—through every episode, without being too didactic about it. More than once, while watching an episode, I’ve had to pinch myself, shocked that we have a network show that talks about inequality so openly. Superstore’s radicalism, it seems, has been hiding in plain sight.