Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blockbuster’ On Netflix, A Workplace Comedy That Takes Place At The Last Blockbuster On Earth

Given how unavoidable Blockbuster was at its height, it’s amazing to think that the outlet in Bend, Oregon is the only one left in the world. A fictionalized version of that store — in Michigan instead of Oregon, for some reason — is the setting of a new workplace comedy on Netflix.

BLOCKBUSTER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An exterior shot of a Blockbuster Video store.

The Gist: Timmy Yoon (Randall Park) manages the store, in a strip mall in Michigan. It’s his hometown, and he’s worked at the Blockbuster since he was a teenager; he continues to advocate for the human connection that happens at a place like Blockbuster that just can’t be recreated with an algorithm-based streaming service.

He also feels that the people working for him at the store — Eliza Walker (Melissa Fumero), a former classmate and crush; mother figure Connie Serrano (Olga Merediz); young filmmaker Carlos Herrera (Tyler Alvarez); exceedingly nice and inept Hannah Hadman (Madeleine Arthur); and sardonic teen Kayla Scott (Kamaia Fairburn) —  are like a family, something he’s been very keen on since his parents divorced… when he was in middle school.

Then he gets a call from Blockbuster corporate: The remaining Blockbuster stores are closing, leaving his store as the last Blockbuster on the planet. Oh, and there’s no more corporation to help him out and pay half the rent. In an effort to keep his store afloat, he and Eliza, who went to Harvard for a semester before getting pregnant with her now college-age daughter, and is working back at the store after finding her husband cheating on her, try to come up with a way to drum up memberships.

Eliza’s idea is a block party, which is considered lame by Percy Scott (JB Smoove), the owner of the party store and the strip mall. He and Tommy are old school buddies, and Percy suggests a bigger, more bombastic party, with a DJ battle and a huge inflatable gorilla, among other ideas. Eliza, already touchy about things, taps out of the planning, but comes back to help out Tommy when the party gets out of control. However, a decidedly 2020s twist during the party will help the last Blockbuster stay open for a little while longer.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Blockbuster is a pure workplace comedy, along the lines of The Office, Superstore, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It’s created by Vanessa Ramos, who has written for the latter two series.

Our Take: The first episode of Blockbuster is, to be frank, pretty bad. There’s lots of forced jokes and scenes that play out like they came from sitcoms of the distant past. It was shocking to us, given the talent in front of and behind the camera. Even lines that are referring to the fact that these people work in the last vestiges of a once-behemoth corporation, providing an outmoded service that was a way of life not long ago, felt a bit inauthentic, like when Eliza monologues about the irony of Blockbuster now being a small business in one scene.

The second episode, where Tommy leans into being the “boss daddy” but then panics when he realizes he has to fire one of his work “family” to make the rent, is better. It leans a bit more into who the characters are, and the funny material comes more from their characters than from jokes. A B-story about Carlos getting unusually upset at the death of the local TV film critic is an example of this.

There’s also a few too many coincidences that may be hard to believe in real-life. For one, Smoove’s character Percy owns both the party store and the strip mall. Sure, that’s possible, but awfully convenient. And, if you didn’t realize it by their shared last name, the sardonic Kayla is Percy’s daughter. Again, entirely possible, but narratively convenient. The explanation of how Eliza found herself back at the store 20 years after working there as a teenager, and how she has a college-age kid, is convoluted, but at least it’s not all spewed forth via one expository paragraph in episode one. A lot of this stuff feels taken from another era, where things like this are just accepted as what happens in sitcoms.

Another issue is that it may take Ramos and her writing staff time to find that sweet spot where Blockbuster is a workplace comedy with a sense of its setting. The first episode leans too heavily on gags about Blockbuster being an anachronism in this digital age, but then the second episode leans away from that so much that it feels like an episode that could have taken place in just about any setting. The best workplace comedies thread this needle more often than not, and we get the feeling Blockbuster will get there before the end of its 10-episode first season. They for sure would have gotten there if they had a more traditional 22-episode broadcast network season.

Sex and Skin: None in the first two episode. A lot of will-they-won’t-they between Tommy and Eliza, which of course is another sitcom trope that feels old.

Parting Shot: After finding out that Eliza was going to try again with her husband, he watches her leave out the back, turns around and peers out the door of his sizable, glass-filled, TV-ready back office and smirks at the store that’s now unique.

Sleeper Star: Normally, this would go to JB Smoove, but his character Percy is relatively restrained. So we’ll give this to Madeleine Arthur for playing the sweet, bumbling movie-ignorant Hannah. It’s a very different role than the one she played in another recent Netflix series, Devil In Ohio.

Most Pilot-y Line: Percy thinks he can improve the party and “goose it up a notch,” to which Eliza replies that “You’re mixing your idioms.” Percy: “Are you calling me an idiom?” Eliza: “No, that would be idiotic.” That exchange, plus another one right before that, sells out Percy, a supposedly smart man who owns a store and a strip mall, for the sake of a gag.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We like the cast of Blockbuster, especially Park, Fumero and Smoove. And Ramos has done enough time on successful workplace comedies to know how to make them work. What we see so far is underwhelming, but promising.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.