Superstore on NBC: Not a Family Shopping Experience

Both of my part time and summer jobs all through high school and university were working in a department store. This covered a period of more than seven years. Later, my wife and I opened a retail store of our own, which later became a chain of three stores.

Retail is something I get.

So since it premiered, I’ve been watching the TV show Superstore on NBC.

I think the show is, overall, well-written. A few times, it has raised issues worth discussing.

I also accept — no doubt with reluctance — that television scriptwriters are always pushing the envelope; always seeing how much they can get away with. I harbor no illusions of returning to the days of Make Room for Daddy and Leave it to Beaver and Andy of Mayberry. I’m not the type of person to get into Moral Majority-styled rants about the filth on TV and calling for networks to cancel shows and everyone else to boycott sponsors.

Thursday night’s show included two scenes which had parts censored. The first was an audio ‘bleeping’ of a word completely ascertainable in context. The second was a visual ‘pixelation’ of a woman raising her t-shirt to show her bare breasts to a man. This second one actually occurred twice.

To repeat, this is the state of broadcast television in 2018.

However…

This program airs at 8:00 PM.

I don’t get why NBC schedules this at 8:00 PM.

I don’t understand how NBC continues to get away with showing this at 8:00 PM.

U.S. network prime time begins when locally produced or locally acquired programming ends at 7:59 and runs to 10:59 before local news. The first hour, from 8:00 to 9:00 was once called “the family hour.” And yes, I know that kids today see far worse on the internet.

However…

I don’t get why NBC schedules this at 8:00 PM.

I don’t understand how NBC continues to get away with showing this at 8:00 PM.

And if a family with young kids is sitting around watching television together, and scenes such as the one I described — and these are not the first instances of this I’ve noticed — come on the screen, I would think the situation in the family room or living room is just plain awkward.