Workplaces comedies sit at the intersection of an after-school special and a late-night comedy show. They are innovative, creative, and often poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of ordinary life in a wide range of job fields. They showcase unusual settings for situational, sketch, and character comedy, mixing the humor and style of primetime comedies with real-life inspiration and ties to everyday workplaces.

The writing of many workplace comedies has historically been award-winning, with The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Veep taking home Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series during the run of their show. And it’s not just the writing – these shows share a commonality: they are all comprised of ensemble casts of comedians and emerging stars.

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However, an on-screen Saturday Night Live cast member reunion is not what cinches a workplace comedy’s success. A core reason for the widespread achievement of any workplace comedy is its “relatability.” Every office has a “Dwight,” every city has a “Ron Swanson,” and every retail franchise has customers from Superstore. This comedy sub-genre dominated award shows and primetime ratings throughout the 2000s and into the early 2010s, but one by one, these shows came to a close with nothing to replace them.

The genre of workplace comedies has steadily ebbed until the announcement of Blockbuster, an upcoming Netflix show.

The Good Fight to Save the Last Blockbuster

     Netflix

The show’s official synopsis is as follows:

Like other shows in this genre, Blockbuster has a gimmick. The workplace will be the last remaining Blockbuster retail store, and the ongoing conflict will be its struggle to remain in business and avoid seemingly inevitable obsolescence. Their endeavor will parallel the real-life fight to keep Blockbuster afloat in the shift from rentals to streaming services.

Timmy Yoon (Randall Park) Is an analog dreamer living in a 5G world. And after learning he is operating the last Blockbuster Video in America, Timmy and his staff employees (including his long-time crush, Eliza (Melissa Fumero) fight to stay relevant. The only way to succeed is to remind their community that they provide something big corporations can’t: human connection.

Blockbuster is created by Vanessa Ramos (Superstore, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Crashing, Kenan) alongside David Caspe (Kenan, Happy Endings, Black Monday) and Jackie Clarke (Superstore, Happy Endings).

The series stars Randall Park (Always Be My Maybe, Wandavision, Fresh Off The Boat), Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Tyler Alvarez (Never Have I Ever), Madeleine Arthur (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before), Olga Merediz (In The Heights), J.B. Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm), and Kamaia Fairburn (Overload and The Underwoods).

Losing (and Missing) Blockbuster Is a Shared Experience

While the show takes place inside the famed video rental store, the show’s plot places the last remaining Blockbuster within a larger setting. The local community, workers and patrons alike, rally to save the store – a store located within a bleak shopping mall built in a bleak town. This is similar to when the Pawnee Parks Department rallied to save their municipal government from a shutdown in Parks and Recreation.

The difference? Pawnee was a fictional town that audience members were compelled to care about. Throughout the show’s first few seasons, ample character development was given to Pawnee locals, as well as an endearing level of charm to Pawnee, Indiana’s, quirks. Therefore, when it came time to try and save the city government, audience members had every reason to root for both the parks department and the town.

The show Blockbuster is fictional, as is the town and accompanying community in which it is set. Blockbuster the franchise, however, represents a shared experience for millions of people. As reported by Vice, Dr. Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology at LeMoyne College with an emphasis on nostalgia, presented a theory over why millions of people were remiss upon the closure of the international rental giant.

In her theory, it’s not the franchise that everyone is mourning. It’s the cultural developments and shared memories that came hand in hand with Blockbuster.

That is what this show will provide: references and representation of an era of shared movies and television, in addition to the on-the-job humor that is key to a workplace comedy television show. Where Blockbuster might not be entirely relatable in its workplace-specific quips, the retail franchise was very culturally significant and has now become emblematic of a bygone era of media, cementing itself as part of American pop culture.

“People can be nostalgic for an old way of doing things. In a store, people encountered other customers could strike up a conversation, [or] ask for experiences and recommendations. The Nostalgia for trips to a video store is likely based, in part, on the enjoyment shared with others-[on the pastime of] selecting videos with family or friends after shopping or dining out. Renting videos was often a social experience.”

The ten-episode first season of Blockbuster will premiere on Netflix on November 3rd, 2022.