Jonah From Superstore — |top|

In the fluorescent purgatory of Cloud 9, where the Muzak is endless and the customers are feral, one man walked in wearing a tie that cost more than a month’s worth of shift drinks. His name is Jonah Simms, and for six seasons, he posed a single, uncomfortable question to the world of sitcoms: What if the privileged, pretentious, painfully earnest white guy was actually right?

But that is the point. Superstore is a show about the dignity of labor, and Jonah learns that dignity is earned, not borrowed. He starts the series asking, "What am I doing with my life?" He ends the series, standing in the wreckage of a closing store, finally knowing the answer: This. This is what I’m doing. In the series finale, as the original Cloud 9 is shuttered, Jonah gets a job at a hardware store. It is not a glamorous ending. He does not become a senator or a professor. He remains a retail worker. But he is happy. He has Amy. He has his friends. He has finally stopped running. jonah from superstore

We laugh at Jonah because he is exhausting. We root for Jonah because he is us—or at least, the version of us that hasn’t given up yet. In the harsh glow of the big-box store, Jonah Simms turned out to be the best thing on the shelf. In the fluorescent purgatory of Cloud 9, where

On paper, he should have been unbearable. And often, he was. But Superstore pulled off a sleight of hand: it used Jonah as a Trojan horse for genuine working-class rage. Jonah’s defining characteristic is his inability to shut up. He is the guy who brings a copy of Das Kapital to a holiday party and tries to explain gentrification to a woman who just got evicted. He name-drops NPR and uses words like "problematic" unironically. The show’s true genius, however, was making us realize that Jonah’s cringe-worthy allyship eventually curdles into actual courage. Superstore is a show about the dignity of