S05.E19: Carol's Back

[Aulty]

Quote

When Carol returns to the store post-suspension, Amy struggles with employees who refuse to work with her. Garrett and Mateo take advantage of the gig economy, and Jonah tries to convince Raise The Wage protesters that he's one of them.

Original Air Date:  03/26/2020

[Harvey]

I already know the Jonah storyline will be super cringe-worthy with Jonah making references to his childhood that just show how much better he had it growing up than everyone else.

[gaucho91]

Cringe worthy is a good way to describe 90% of this show for the last couple seasons.  It is painful to watch.  It used to be so funny!

[Harvey]

What a mixed bag this episode was.

I liked the parts with Carol, and the way she manipulated Amy at the start of the episode was pretty cool 😄 It was nice that she also genuinely tried to fix the robot.

The way the rumour about Sandra crapping her wedding dress got started was great as well.  However, the Mateo plotline was nonsensical. He is Amy's assistant. Why is he off working the warehouse? The way the show writers wrote Mateo's immigration related storyline is just a disgrace. He would never be back to normal like that. Of course they only did this so Amy had the opportunity to be one on one with Carol so she can be scared. But it felt very forced. The security guy was low key funny at least.

As I expected, the Jona plotline sucked and watching him try to prove himself was not entertaining. At all. Cheyenne was the only saving grace of those scenes and she didn't even do that much.

[BuckeyeLou]

I thought there were some funny bits with the employees trying to avoid working with 'crazy" Carol, and Sandra's facial expressions were funny.  Amy used to be smart but now as a Manager, she seems to be clueless about what is going on in the store.  The whole storyline with Jonah & Cheyenne were at the protest seemed like it was on a different show & didn't relate to the main storyline at all...Jonah & Amy don't seem like a Couple anymore. 

[EtheltoTillie]

That was Bud Bergstein from Grace and Frankie playing the security guy!  I knew I had seen him but I had to look it up to realize who it was. 

[Jacks-Son]

Damn, I binged all of the previous seasons for this blown wad.  This could have been comic gold with each Cloud 9 employee gunning for Carol. Damn well,  know she deserved every minute of her just torture, but to have her come back and run the same game, is cruel to the characters and cruel to the viewers.  Carol sucks and her constant, unpunished degradation of Sandra isn't funny any longer. The writers are embarrassing themselves to attain laughter.

Also, I'm beginning to see Jonah, as the "Plastic Wannabe" that others may have thought he was. I used to think he had valid ideals, but was too hung up in his Glory Days to be a true person

Edited March 27, 2020 by Jacks-Son
"Jonah & Amy don't seem like a Couple anymore". Nailed it <said with Mateo's disgusting falsetto voice> Ugh! Painful

[joanne3482]

4 hours ago, Jacks-Son said:

 Carol sucks and her constant, unpunished degradation of Sandra isn't funny any longer. The writers are embarrassing themselves to attain laughter.

I definitely agree with that, and I wished Amy (or Dina or Glenn) would have called her out on HR person name name.  I honestly thought that Carol was just making that guy up. And even if she weren't, HR wouldn't/shouldn't have tolerated Carol's behavior. A workplace accommodation under ADA doesn't include allowing someone to bully other employees. 

[Jacks-Son]

To be honest, I was expecting Sandra to raise all sorts of Hell, especially during that ridiculous apology scene. I would have been hard pressed keeping my anger from spouting choice words.

[iMonrey]

No payoff! I kept waiting for some reveal about this HR person Carol kept referring to. Nobody seemed to know who it was and yet the mere mention of the name cowed everyone into coddling Carol. I thought by the end of the episode we'd find out she'd made the person up, or that the person wasn't actually on her side. Or . . . SOMETHING. 

I've tried to defend her up until now, but Amy really is a horrible manager. To be threatened just by the mention of someone in HR she's never even heard of before is ridiculous. She should have called Carol on her bluff and let her contact HR. Amy herself can call HR and explain the situation. This was just dumb. I'd understand it better if it had been Glenn, but Amy isn't supposed to be this stupid.

Quote

That was Bud Bergstein from Grace and Frankie playing the security guy!  I knew I had seen him but I had to look it up to realize who it was. 

Yeah I pointed that out the last time he appeared. It seems strange that he has such a prominent role on a popular Netflix show and has a recurring bit part on this show. I guess his Grace & Frankie salary alone doesn't quite pay the bills.

[Jacks-Son]

4 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I've tried to defend her up until now, but Amy really is a horrible manager. To be threatened just by the mention of someone in HR she's never even heard of before is ridiculous. She should have called Carol on her bluff and let her contact HR. Amy herself can call HR and explain the situation. This was just dumb. I'd understand it better if it had been Glenn, but Amy isn't supposed to be this stupid.

This is one of the things that has degraded this show, in my eyes.  Amy is NOT that dumb, yet they have been portraying her as such for awhile or at the very least a vestige of Jonah and not her own woman.  I can understand if she's hesitant being new to the job, but she's been manager for awhile, everyone accepts her as manager (with the possible exception of the grown-assed child, Glen); yet she continually doesn't assert herself enough. There's gotta be a happy middle-ground between the wet noodle she has become, and the hard-assed Robo-Cop routine of Dina.  Amy used to be a welcome change from the idiocy of the standard work crew.  She, Jonah, & perhaps Garrett were the only sane ones.  Now Garretts in the warehouse with Mateo????? Mateo, who recently escaped being deported is back at scamming people, with Garrett???  Cheyenne, who lost her "cool" card recently, is now out organizing and marshaling Jonah and teaching him proper socializing technique???  Cheyenne??????

[EtheltoTillie]

3 minutes ago, Jacks-Son said:

This is one of the things that has degraded this show, in my eyes.  Amy is NOT that dumb, yet they have been portraying her as such for awhile or at the very least a vestige of Jonah and not her own woman.  I can understand if she's hesitant being new to the job, but she's been manager for awhile, everyone accepts her as manager (with the possible exception of the grown-assed child, Glen); yet she continually doesn't assert herself enough. There's gotta be a happy middle-ground between the wet noodle she has become, and the hard-assed Robo-Cop routine of Dina.  Amy used to be a welcome change from the idiocy of the standard work crew.  She, Jonah, & perhaps Garrett were the only sane ones.  Now Garretts in the warehouse with Mateo????? Mateo, who recently escaped being deported is back at scamming people, with Garrett???  Cheyenne, who lost her "cool" card recently, is now out organizing and marshaling Jonah and teaching him proper socializing technique???  Cheyenne??????

When Cheyenne is the normal one, you know we've jumped the shark. I still love Dina, though.

[joanne3482]

15 minutes ago, GussieK said:

I still love Dina, though.

I'd watch a show of Dina, her vet boyfriend and the birds. Marcus and some of the other background characters could make an occasional appearance. 

[JenLily]

I *really* didn't like this episode. I was so uncomfortable with the entire Carol storyline. While I understood why corporate wouldn't have fired her (the fear of being sued for discrimination against someone with a mental disorder rang true), I don't believe that they would've put her back in the same store as the person she had actually threatened. I would imagine they would've given her the option of moving to another store or, if she refused as they mentioned she did, laying her off with some sort of severance/payoff. I just can't believe they would've continued to open themselves up to the repercussions of her actually harming Sandra or causing a hostile work environment for all the employees. Amy/management not wanting to involve HR gave me some really unpleasant flashbacks, too. I worked for a company where there were some serious issues happening on my team and my manager talked us out of going to HR every time with the same rhetoric that Amy used: we don't want HR monitoring everything we do, we don't want HR looking into how we operate, HR will cause more trouble than they'll solve. It was awful feeling trapped like that, and seeing Amy do the same thing to Sandra made me a little sick.

The Jonah storyline bothered me, too. He used to be a hopeless idealist but now he's just kind of an idiot, desperate to be liked and desperate to be relevant but not in an amusing way. It was just pathetic. As someone upthread mentioned, if Cheyenne is the cool head in a situation, you know you have some serious problems.

And the way Mateo and Garrett abused that poor guy was the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae. The story initially had some promise but it took a steep downturn when it became clear that they were taking advantage of the poor guy's financial situation just to have a little free time at work. Especially when the guy was actually experiencing physical pain. I would've much preferred it if they had him running around the store doing odd jobs and having the rest of the employees look at him with the same "Who the fuck is that?" reaction that Amy had at the end.

The only parts I liked were Cheyenne's accurate assessment that Jonah has a narc vibe (indeed) and Garrett calling Celine Dion "white Whitney Houston." Otherwise, this episode was no bueno.

[iMonrey]

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 I just can't believe they would've continued to open themselves up to the repercussions of her actually harming Sandra or causing a hostile work environment for all the employees.

Me neither. That's just more lawsuits waiting to happen.

[Jacks-Son]

Real World     "Superstore"

Obviously, although it's supposed to be a take on work & life at a Big Box store, it's supposed to represent real life (although comically), otherwise Mateo would be working at the Cloud 9 in the Philippines by now and Carol would have been arrested and shunned for life, "Mental problems" or not. Not calling her crazy, doesn't mean she's sane. They SHOULD treat her as dangerous, because she IS.

[springbarb]

Agree with everyone who said that Carol is making up the guy in HR. No way would she be allowed to return to the same store.

[tennisgurl]

Sandra is not someone I would mess with. She is like a bottle of pop thats been shaken. It takes a lot, but then when it pops, it pops REAL hard! 

Amy has managed to get even dumber ever since she became manager, and its just sad to witness. Not that corporate is much better (sending Carol back to her old store?!) but Amy used to be a basically competent person, but as soon as she got promoted, its like her IQ went down several notches. 

[Sile]

3 hours ago, springbarb said:

Agree with everyone who said that Carol is making up the guy in HR. No way would she be allowed to return to the same store.

Seriously!  Nobody knows how to use google?

This used to be one of my favorite shows and I'm perilously close to hate watching at this point.

[Jacks-Son]

11 hours ago, joanne3482 said:

A workplace accommodation under ADA doesn't include allowing someone to bully other employees. 

Having been retired for a decade,  I'm unsure of the complexities of the Americans with Disability Act,  so,  I'm not sure who is the ADA protecting in this situation?  Since Carol probably had to undergo some Anger Management therapy,  or sessions with a therapist,  and Sandra is well,  Sandra.  Where does the ADA come in? 

[BusyOctober]

Maybe America Ferrer has the right idea and is bailing on this show.

 It just isn’t as good as it once was.  I think putting Amy and Jonah together was a mistake. Amy has lost IQ and humor points since getting promotion.  Jonah is now a needy whiner who also seems to have been dumbed down.  Matteo and Garrett’s misanthropic and self centered personalities were funny in earlier seasons because they weren’t purposely out to hurt or demean people (to their faces anyway) with their actions. Now they are just raging assholes.  Even Cheyenne has turned mean vs. vapid and clueless. Glen, Sandra and Sayid are my favorite characters.  Even Glenn the robot has more charisma than the supposed main characters.

[possibilities]

2 hours ago, Jacks-Son said:

Having been retired for a decade,  I'm unsure of the complexities of the Americans with Disability Act,

The ADA passed in 1990.

I agree that the abuse of the gig worker in the warehouse was not funny. I initially thought it was an interesting gag to show that low wage retail workers actually make more money than people doing those kind of contract jobs, but it undermined itself by making it not just that but also SUPER abusive and degrading, rather than giving it an ascerbic wit.

I thought Cheyenne was going to turn out to be a snitch at the protest. I thought someone at corporate had recruited her to spy on the local labor protests, so they could anticipate whether it would be trouble for Cloud 9. But of course the show just wanted to show Jonah being annoying, which also undermined the potential social commentary there.

Dina has gotten more likable, somehow. But they've really ruined Amy and Jonah, both separately and as a couple, and it's like the writers have no idea what made the show any good, and are just phoning in these idiot beats. I feel stupid for watching at this point.

I will say it was kind of smart for Amy to think of an assignment to give Carol to do alone. But then, she also shouldn't leave Carol unmonitored. AND she should have looked up who the hell the supposed HR guy was, because that was the most obvious bullshit ever. In the past, not only was Amy competent, but so was Jonah. Now they're both more socially awkward and out of their depth than GLENN for godsake, and I always wondered how the store survived as manager because he never seemed to really know what the hell was going on in any situation involving personnell.

[Irlandesa]

3 hours ago, Jacks-Son said:

Having been retired for a decade,  I'm unsure of the complexities of the Americans with Disability Act,  so,  I'm not sure who is the ADA protecting in this situation?  Since Carol probably had to undergo some Anger Management therapy,  or sessions with a therapist,  and Sandra is well,  Sandra.  Where does the ADA come in? 

I believe Carol is saying she suffered has a mental illness/psychiatric disorder which is covered under ADA.  Employers can't discriminate against those who have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder and are asked to make reasonable accommodations. Reasonable being the operative word. 

Asking people to work with Carol after what she did is not reasonable even if Carol got a diagnosis.  However, I could see corporate, removed from the situation, deciding it's more cost effective to this than risk a lawsuit.

[Jacks-Son]

@Irlandesa Thank you for the clarification. I wasn't sure what the final determination was for psychiatric breakdowns as a disability. To be frank, I wasn't sure if the ADA issue was in reference to Carol's mental state or Sandra's.  I don't think it's ever been brought up, but clearly Sandra is "Iffy" mentally. So, it could have gone either way.

[Kiddvideo]

I wonder if having an unqualified employee try to fix Glen will be the event that sparks Amy’s leaving. I’d be surprised if she gets promoted bc no one seems to leave Cloud 9 for bigger and better things — their lives get worse. Then last week I thought Amy might want to spend more time with Parker, but no way she’d walk away from $100K salary plus bonus. Firing her for Carol’s injury would be “on fleek,” as Jeff might say.

[Lois Sandborne]

8 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

Asking people to work with Carol after what she did is not reasonable even if Carol got a diagnosis.  However, I could see corporate, removed from the situation, deciding it's more cost effective to this than risk a lawsuit.

I can't. I usually take off my lawyer! goggles when I'm watching tv, especially this show, but I'm largely an employment discrimination attorney. There's no way in the world a real superstore would've done anything for Carol besides offer her a transfer. If they did that. More likely, with these facts, she'd have been out the door with the store daring her to sue them, and for reasons good.

I was disappointed by all the other storylines this ep. too. Jonah was irritating and not endearing making the protest about him, and Mateo and Garrett taking the opportunity to dump on someone not all that much lower on the socioeconomic ladder was pretty gross. I don't think I laughed at all, except at the tag when the Task Rabbit guy was walking out and Amy and Jonah had no idea who he was. No, I also laughed when Baron Vaughn jumped up from cutting out paper hearts at Amy's desk when he realized he was sitting next to Carol. So that's two.

 

[Harvey]

2 hours ago, Kiddvideo said:

I’d be surprised if she gets promoted bc no one seems to leave Cloud 9 for bigger and better things — their lives get worse.

Um, did you forget that woman who became a model and Sandra/Garret found out she was their co-worker once? 😉 It was the plot of one of the early episodes.

Spoiler

The episode summaries for the upcoming episodes let us know that Amy does indeed get promoted. That is why she will leave the store.

 

[iMonrey]

Quote

But they've really ruined Amy and Jonah, both separately and as a couple,

I don't think making Amy and Jonah a couple harmed either character. I honestly wouldn't even know they are a couple most of the time, and it's better than dragging out the "will they or won't they" trope every other TV show does. But I do think promoting Amy to manager was a mistake. I think they wanted to show her in upward mobility, and that's a positive story to tell, but ultimately it made her look incompetent. It might have been better, and more realistic if less positive, to show her getting constantly beaten down and passed over for promotions despite all her training and effort.

Likewise, they tried to do something meaningful with Mateo's deportation, but then they just threw away any impact from that by bringing him  back and now it's like it never happened.

The show shouldn't try to tackle "issues" if they don't know how to follow up.

[Irlandesa]

1 hour ago, iMonrey said:

I don't think making Amy and Jonah a couple harmed either character.

I agree with your take.  While I always like Amy and Jonah, I've never been a huge fan of them as a couple.  But ever since they've been together, one thing the show has done well is avoid some of the traps many will they/won't they stories fall into.  They're a couple but their stories don't really focus around them as a couple.  They really haven't had couple drama created for them just for the sake of couple drama. Most of their tensions have arisen from the fact that Amy is now management and Jonah is a labor activist. 

Those directions haven't been as funny.  Having a somewhat incompetent manager was part of the driving humor of the show.  They don't want Amy obviously incompetent and a source of humor so they don't write her that way.  Sometimes she's still very ineffectual but it's not really a source of humor so it's more frustrating to watch than funny. And Glenn isn't as funny in his new role either.

That has nothing to do with making them a couple unless it holds them back from turning Amy into more of a caricature.  She's the lead, though, so I doubt they'd do that.

 

 

[Grundoon59]

I still enjoy the random moments in the aisles of the store.  This time it was the Stanley Cup's custodian  putting his purchases in the Cup, picking it up and walking away - all while wearing his gloves to prevent fingerprints on the Cup.

[possibilities]

I don't think making them a couple ruined anything. I think crappy writing had made their relationship annoying to watch.

[VartanFan]

Honestly, the whole episode was made better for me by the ending of Sandra rewatching Carol get electrocuted over and over again.  

[Jacks-Son]

17 minutes ago, VartanFan said:

Honestly, the whole episode was made better for me by the ending of Sandra rewatching Carol get electrocuted over and over again.

She should make a special tribute to air on all Cloud 9 TV's simultaneously, much like the Amy/Jonah Tornado Kiss.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 3/27/2020 at 1:44 PM, JenLily said:

The story initially had some promise but it took a steep downturn when it became clear that they were taking advantage of the poor guy's financial situation just to have a little free time at work. Especially when the guy was actually experiencing physical pain. I would've much preferred it if they had him running around the store doing odd jobs and having the rest of the employees look at him with the same "Who the fuck is that?" reaction that Amy had at the end.

Was Garrett actually expected to clean up the mess?  How would he have done that? Why would he pay for half the work that wasn't even his? Doesn't he make barely above minimum wage?

Edited April 3, 2020 by ItCouldBeWorse

[nikita]

On 3/28/2020 at 9:25 AM, Harvey said:

Um, did you forget that woman who became a model and Sandra/Garret found out she was their co-worker once? 😉 It was the plot of one of the early episodes.

  Reveal spoiler

The episode summaries for the upcoming episodes let us know that Amy does indeed get promoted. That is why she will leave the store.

 

That's one of my favorite Superstore plots! Can't tell if the winking emoji means you are joking, but I interpreted that reveal to mean the woman was a model for the photos used in the frames Cloud9 sells and their store's signage. She never really worked with Amy & co. at the Ozarks store or any store. Amy didn't realize she recognized her from seeing her in pictures versus real life.

If I am overthinking this, forgive me. I hate when people do that to me when I am joking.