Four years ago, a Blockbuster video rental store in the town of Bend, Oregon, became the last one still in business. That’s the surface-level inspiration for the new Netflix sitcom called, simply enough, “Blockbuster,” starring Randall Park and Melissa Fumero.
The show is created by Vanessa Ramos and the location has been changed to a strip mall somewhere in Michigan. Ramos’ credits also include “Superstore,” but whereas that show had a distinct point of view about retail work, “Blockbuster” is a lesser cousin, treating the video store as a backdrop — a setting — rather than a premise.
What a missed opportunity! Video stores are such a specific world. Blockbuster helped wipe out mom and pop video stores and now this lone remaining franchise is essentially becoming an indie store itself, with corporate no longer in existence thanks to (checks notes) the streaming platform on which you are watching this very show. A line in the first episode acknowledges the irony of it all, but the show itself is mostly uninterested in the narrative possibilities of what it means to be an operation with such a niche customer base.
How will the store get its hands on new inventory now that corporate is out of the picture? And what is even available these days, with physical copies of movies and TV series increasingly more difficult to come by?
Should the store rebrand as the place that has hard-to-find titles — classic films and others that still aren’t available on streaming? How does an operation like this even stay in business? And why is everyone still wearing the corporate-mandated khaki pants and navy blue polo shirts with the Blockbuster logo stitched on them? Or what about completely leaning into nostalgia and selling Blockbuster merch? (That’s what the real-life store in Bend has been doing.) If you’re over the age of 30, you likely remember the small thrill of renting videos — of finding a big title you somehow missed and can finally see or rewatching old favorites or discovering something brand new to you. So what does that look like now, in the age of streaming, when it can at least seem like everything is available at your fingertips (even if that’s not exactly true)? This last Blockbuster, it’s not just another place. It holds a unique place in pop culture, for good or for ill.
These are the kinds of questions I wished Ramos and her team had played around with or explored in any kind of depth, rather than the kinds of generic high-jinks-focused comedy that fuels much of the 10-episode season.
The show is stacked with talent, but the writing just isn’t there. Even Park and Fumero, who are seasoned hands at this (starring on “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine″ respectively), can’t do much with what they’re given. Park is the store’s endearingly nerdy owner and Fumero is one of his employees, an old friend from high school whose life didn’t pan out the way she hoped, and they share a will they/won’t they dynamic that lacks tension or chemistry.
A handful of others are employed at the store as well — it’s a large staff for such a struggling operation that can’t possibly need more than one or two workers per shift — and they are an assemblage of quirky types that feel like ideas for characters that have yet to become fleshed-out people.
It’s inoffensive and borderline dull, and, again, it’s not for a lack of talent on screen. But I’m not sure the show even works in an “I’m distracted and only half watching but want something on in the background” kind of way, because there’s never a moment so sharply funny that it snaps your attention back to the screen. Visually it’s bland, and it’s interesting the way a different show like “The Office,” also stuck playing things out in a drab setting, was able to subvert that limitation while “Blockbuster” feels creatively trapped by it.
One of the big TV hits of the summer was FX’s “The Bear” on Hulu, and though it has a darker and far, far grittier approach to comedy than “Blockbuster’s” bouncy energy, one of the show’s defining elements is its fascination with the work of work — how people with incompatible personalities figure out ways to problem solve and exist side-by-side and maybe, just maybe, not be miserable while doing it. There is real comedy and drama in that, and yet too often “Blockbuster” struggles to land on either.
Workplace sitcoms run the gamut, but they’re best when they have as much interest in the “work” part of the equation as the “sitcom.”
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'BLOCKBUSTER'
2 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-14
How to watch: Netflix
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