Hailing from “The Office,” “Superstore” showrunner Justin Spitzer knows a thing or two about a classic will they-won’t they plot line, but he swears Jonah and Amy are no Jim and Pam — or Ross and Rachel for that matter.
Spitzer told TheWrap that those examples — his — never really had a true “Won’t They” option, referring to them as more like a when-will-they device. Whereas on “Superstore,” there’s a really good chance that Jonah (Ben Feldman) and Amy (America Ferrara) will never get together — Spitzer swears he hasn’t decided yet.
The big obstacle is that Amy is married, and not to a terrible guy either. The second biggest obstacle is that we still have no word on whether or not NBC will renew its solid Monday night self-starter.
“In this landscape, shows get canceled quickly,” Spitzer said — but he doesn’t think that will be the fate of his “Superstore.” At least not this offseason. “I’ve heard that they really like the show,” he said of NBC execs.
Should there be a Season 2, Spitzer would love to see it get around 13-16 episodes — enough to keep bait out there for new audiences, but not so many that the sitcom creatively suffers. Its freshman year, he was originally granted 13 — but NBC pulled back two of those before the show even made it to air.
Despite that seemingly ominous sign, it seems reasonable that NBC would bring back the show.
So far in its first season, “Superstore” is averaging a 1.9 rating in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic, per “most current” Nielsen ratings — which include seven-day delayed viewing numbers where available — and 6.4 million total viewers. That places it one-tenth of a ratings point ahead of ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat.”
The murkiness of “Superstore’s” future partially lies within the gray areas of NBC’s own comedy destiny. Right now, the broadcast network that has such a rich comedy history only airs two sitcoms: This one, and the weaker-performing “Telenovela.” (“Undateable” may return for the summer, but there is no chance “Truth Be Told” will come back.) And NBCUniversal recently launched digital comedy platform SeeSo, relegating some of its potential linear humor series online.
So Spitzer’s wisely not getting ahead of himself.
While the writer-executive producer said that doesn’t have much of a Season 2 arc outlined in his mind at the moment, Spitzer’s got one idea: “I might want to start bringing in a little more of a sense of the corporation of Cloud 9,” the store where Amy and Jonah work.
Plus, Spitzer teased as “a very big plot move” happening at the end of tonight’s episode, one which would impact the beginning of Season 2.
One thing that you won’t see tonight was the originally planned finale subplot about unions, which was dropped. When Spitzer’s order was cut, he elected to scrap what was to be a multi-episode arc about the controversial labor power.
That doesn’t mean the episode itself suffers, however, in the realistic Spitzer’s estimation.
“I thought, ‘If this is my series finale, I want to get it all out there,” he told us.
Spitzer then asked himself the following question: “‘What is the episode that I will regret for the rest of my life that I didn’t do, if this is the last episode of the show we ever shoot?’”
“Superstore” airs tonight at 8/7c on NBC.