Blockbuster

2 stars for effort. Dont waste your time

Im an 80's kid and when i saw the trailer i was pretty excited. The idea of an nostalgic experience being produced by the very company that destroyed Blockbuster was hilarious.

Exactly who is your target audience here?

People that know what blockbuster is. Mixing that up with present day jokes, if you call them jokes, to make it more familiar to the younger audience kind of defeats the purpose of nostalgia.

Jokes on Netflix as this was absolutely horrendous comedic writing. Zero substance. I cant imagine how executives over at Netflix green lit this after hearing crazy stories of Jo Koy and a few others being turned down. Are they deaf? The comedy is so dry its worse than Space Force.

I can only see this as adding to Netflix's downfall.

I love Melissa Fumero.

I love Brooklyn 99 I love Superstore

This looked like a winner with vibes of B99 and Superstore and other similar comedies.

It's not good. I really wish it was. It's just not funny or interesting at all. The characters are bland, the jokes try too hard. Every episode has a million pop culture references squeezed in for the sake of it and they don't work. It will age badly.

Melissa's character is a carbon copy of America Ferrera's Amy in Superstore so we've seen it before.

We made it through 5 episodes because we really wanted it to get better. Can't watch anymore.

I just don't think I like Randall Park. He and Fumero have zero chemistry, it's painful to watch. Sorry.

So...Objectively this sucks. BUT. But. It's obvious the cast also know it sucks and are totally phoning it in, which makes for quite the happy accident: Melissa Fumero is full on playing B99's Amy Santiago. She's slipped her on like a broken-in pair of shoes and she's totally unapologetic about it. That has lead me to go meta with my viewing experience and watch it as a piece of so bad it's good B99 AU fanfiction, and honestly I'm loving it. How did Amy end up in this universe? Is it a multiverse situation? Is she in a coma? She's found another cute but immature manboy to have a will-they-won't-they situation with, does that mean every Amy in the multiverse has a type or is it her subconscious trying desperately to remember Jake but unable to picture his face? What's the connection to Blockbuster? Jake still has his membership, could this be the key? Why is Rosa's mom there? The plot is predictable, the dialogue is generic, the characters are bland, but I can totally buy that as just being down to the creative limitations of Amy's subconscious which pushes me further towards the coma theory. If it is all taking part in her subconscious that raises the question of what happened to her? Did it happen on the job? Was it a perp? What's happening at the 99, how crazy is everyone going trying to catch the guy? Is Jake holding it together? It's Jake, he's totally not holding it together. And what does it say about her that she's imagining herself as a Harvard dropout working in a dying franchise video store? She was always super competitive, does she feel like she's settled with Jake and the kid? Or is it just her subconscious screaming at her to wake up before her lack of consciousness destroys her roadmap to becoming the youngest Captain in the NYPD? Seriously. So. Much. *100% headcanon* intrigue going on, get on board, you won't be disappointed.

If you can't get on board though, ok yeah it's just straight up trash, don't waste your time.

It's not a bad show, but simply they picked a wrong time. They should have set a time when Blockbuster stores were flourishing. It would tell a lot of fun stories like the time when VHS is going obsolete, and DVD is coming out for the first time. It would give a lot of fun and nostalgia for movie fans and collectors. I know it's lame but Blockbuster stores were once one of young couples' dating courses too. People would think, "It was a fun time" while watching the show. However, I'm not quite sure what to make of the show featuring a dying video store. There's nothing to gun for. I've seen a news saying Netflix is having a financial problem recently. Approving a script like this would be one of the reasons.

I'm a millennial born in the late eighties, so Blockbuster was a huge cornerstone of my childhood and teenage years. The people there knew my brother and I by name, and even gave us some free copies of things over the years because we would rent them so often. I have a huge nostalgia for the people and place as a result, so I thought I would really love this show, especially since I loved Superstore, which has some related producers/writers.

It's sadly nowhere near as good as Superstore. I don't think it's self-aware or clever enough to be airing on a place like Netflix, given that Netflix is the biggest reason why Blockbuster went out of business in the first place. The actors all do a pretty decent job, but the jokes just don't land as well as they could or should, often leaving me just smiling rather than laughing out loud.

Having said that, it's also nowhere near as bad as a 1, 2, or 3-star show, which is the majority of the ratings on here. That's shockingly low for what's actually here, so I'm not quite sure where those numbers are coming from since it's a very inoffensive comedy. The worst you could call it is mediocre.

It may be worth a watch if you're an elder millennial or Gen X and have that nostalgia, but I wouldn't expect it to be as good as Superstore.