After Amy is unsuccessful at getting some time off for her pregnancy, she becomes excited by Glenn's announcement that the winner of their Halloween costume contest will get a paid day off from work and changes into a Mario costume. Unfortunately, so does everyone else as Cheyenne becomes a sexy hula girl and Mateo changes his costume to Melanie from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (the clear winner of the contest, really. He gets robbed). Mateo and Amy then team up to make everyone offended by other workers' costumes due to the stereotypes/caricatures they further, even though Amy is parading around as an Italian plumber, which she defends with a stereotypical Italian accent after Mateo complains about her costume. This leads to a debate about what you can or cannot dress up as, which sees Jonah deferring to Janet about Marcus dressing as Bob Marley or blackface in general. They land on any costume being ok, so long as it is meant to honor the race/group/person, etc. and not to mock. This ends up turning the costume contest into a platform for everyone to explain the history of who they are representing. Most people nail that, including Elias listing Smurfs, but others fail, such as Cheyenne simply making a volcano for her Hawaiian conversation, or Jonah having his gerrymandering costume being mistaken as Spider-Man and getting asked to shoot his web. His costume gets an extra joke when he reveals to Amy that he suppressed some of the votes so that Amy could win her day off. Hilarious and heartwarming at the same time.
In addition to the contest, we had a couple of fun side plots this week. Garrett became annoyed after Jonah points out how often the song Halloween Surfboard comes up on the playlist. Garrett becomes hyper-aware of the song and tries to fix the madness by calling HQ, making unnecessary announcements for the duration of the song, and searching for sweaters he can use to cover all the speakers in the store to prevent the song from being heard. Glenn is also having a rough time as he is chased around by an automated cart return after confiscating the fob for it without understanding what it was. The carts immediately begin to follow the fob in his mail carrier and he soon tries to show Jonah what is happening to him, but he sets the bag down before attempting so Jonah is just treated to Glenn running back and forth for no reason. The carts end up stalking him through the store like Carrie from the Stephen King classic, which was very fun to watch. After interrupting Garrett's sweater shirts to see if he believed in a mechanical uprising, he makes a break for it in his van with the carts in tow. The last we see of him, he's on the phone with Jerusha telling her that he's coming to pick her up and that she'll have to jump into the car as he slows down because he can't stop.The previous two Halloween episodes of Superstore were tons of fun, and I'm happy to see that this year's episode was no exception. Jonah's costumes have always been topical and noteworthy, but it was fun to see this year's partially tied into the result of the main plot in the episode. The laughs started early with Glenn loudly stapling to tune out Amy speaking with HQ about her headquarters. Glenn squirming while anything about lady problems is discussed is always fun to watch, especially because it's a reaction too many people have. For some reason, one of my favorite lines this week was uttered by Glenn and was treated as a sort of throwaway line. He told Jonah and Sandra to stop flirting during his morning announcements after they were talking about Sandra being the back half of the horse alone because Jerry and Carol are in Ft. Lauderdale. I'm not sure why, but that was so funny to me. I giggled throughout this entire episode, so this week was easily another win in my book.
Shopper of the Week
Salsa Lady provided some quality laughs with her in-depth description of what she was looking for, Trash Guy came from behind and disrespected the title right out of her hands. As he finishes up his meal, he throws his plate and empty drink into a cauldron decoration as if it were a trash can. He is shopper of the week strictly so I can remind you all how rude this is and to not do this. I'm sure you think this doesn't happen, but I once found a tub of ice cream buried in a DVD bin at a store one time, so I can confirm that sometimes people are just awful.
Who do you think had the best costume? Have you ever seen something as appalling as Trash Guy? Is anyone hopping on the Jonah/Sandra train if things don't work out with Amy? Sound off in the comments below!
