Superstore

2021: The Year of TV

For many, many years I’ve been saying I’m terrible at watching TV shows and generally speaking I am but that did change in 2021. I still haven’t watched many of the “big” shows like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Succession, The Boys, Outlander – you name it, I probably haven’t seen it.

But in 2021 I watched more TV shows in their entirety than I have ever before in one year. In fact, I watched 31 different shows. Only two of them were continuations of shows I’d starter before 2021; Cobra Kai and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and one was a rewatch; W.I.T.C.H.

Here’s a list of all the shows I watched last year. they’re sort of in order of when I watched them though if there’s been a gap between when I watched various seasons of the same show, I’ve included it on the original listing. Like Cobra Kai I watched on 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021 – started and ended the year with my new favourite disaster man Johnny Lawrence.

– Cobra Kai season 3 and 4
– Derry Girls series 1 and 2
– Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 6 and 7
– Superstore season 1-6
– WandaVision
– The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
– Loki
– 9-1-1 season 1-4
– 9-1-1: Lone Star season 1-2
– Shadow and Bone S1
– Batwoman season 1-2 and first half of S3
– The Gifted S1-2
– Ted Lasso S1-2
– Mare of Easttown
– W.I.T.C.H. S1-2
– Chernobyl
– Turner & Hooch
– Big Shot
– What If…?
– Only Murders in the Building
– Doctor Who: Flux
– The Equalizer S1
– Jessica Jones S2-3
– Luke Cage S2
– Iron Fist S2
– Daredevil S3
– The Punisher S2
– Hawkeye
– Superman & Lois S1
– The Wheel of Time
– Alex Rider S1-2

My favourites that I watched this year were Chernobyl, Superstore, 9-1-1, Ted Lasso, Superman & Lois and, of course, Hawkeye (which I reviewed over on JumpCut Online). But really, I enjoyed pretty much everything I watched this year. I will say I found the first series of Alex Rider a bit of a slog but the second series was great and more than made up for the first.

I also finally caught up with and watched all the seasons of the various Marvel Netflix shows I’d just left by the wayside. That was something I’d definitely been talking about catching up on for years and I’m pleased I’ve finally done it. It was nice to revisit those characters and stories again after so long.

I think in 2021 the pandemic sort of caught up with and it was in 2021 when I found it difficult to concentrate on things like a two+ hour film or a 400-page book. So that’s why I turned to TV. A lot of the stuff I watched is around the 45-minute mark per episode if not shorter and I just found it easier to watch a few episodes in an evening than have to focus on a film. Plus, as I was working from home for the vast majority of the year, I would also watch an episode (or two depending when I got up) before work or during my lunch hour. So that definitely helped me watch more TV than normal.

As for what my TV-watching will be like in 2022? Well, I do want to make reading more of a priority this year so naturally films and TV may take a bit of a backseat which I’m fine with. I want to carry on with the shows that I’ve started, when the next series starts here in the UK so that’s Batwoman, Ted Lasso, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star, Derry Girls, The Equalizer and whatever else might have a new series air at some point in 2022. I’m still kind of annoyed that the final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine still hasn’t been aired here yet but at least that’s something to look forward to.

I’m not sure how many new-to-me shows I’ll end up watching in 2022. The thing is with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and the bog-standard TV channels, there’s so many shows out there that it is overwhelming. One new show I do have my eye on (and will maybe renew my subscription to Apple TV+ for it) is The Afterparty, that looks like fun and it has a lot of people I like in it.

Looking at what I’ve watched and enjoyed this year, if there’s any shows you’d recommend whether they’re new for 2022 or not, please do let me know. I won’t make any promises that I’ll watch them – especially if they’re in their fifth season with 20ish episodes a season (that’s super intimidating) – but as there’s so much out there it’s hard to know what’s good or not or where to begin. And who knows, I might like a show to fill my lunchbreaks again.

G is for Garrett McNeill

Superstore is a show that I only started watching this year after five seasons were added to Netflix. I’ve only just started season five and hope to get through it soon as the sixth and final season is coming to UK TV later this month, so I want to be all caught up.

There are a lot of great characters on this show that I really like, and a lot of them grew on me as I made my way through the seasons, but one that I liked very quickly was Garrett.

Garrett is sarcastic and brutally honest and sometimes it’s a little hard to tell if he actually likes his co-workers because of how often he plays pranks on them but when there’s that moment where he does admit he considers someone his friend, it’s all the more impactful because of what came before it.

I think Garrett is one of the most truthful representations of a shop worker out of the whole cast of characters. He does the bare minimum of what needs to be done in order to not be fired. He doesn’t love his job, it is just a job, something to pay the bills and while he mostly likes his co-workers, he’s not overkeen on spending a load of time with them outside of the store. All of which is very relatable in my opinion – I worked in a shop when I was a teenager and dealing with customers is often a thankless task.

One of my favourite things about Superstore is how a lot of the characters do develop but still keep their core personality. Garrett can be a horrible person who lies and puts blame on other people for his mistakes, but then he can also do things for others when he sees something truly matters to them. He’s funny and honest and will tell people what they need to hear, even when they don’t like it. Garrett’s quite charismatic though so it doesn’t always sound as awful as it could.