In an eleven-episode first run, Superstore performed honorably as part of NBC’s mid-season slate. Produced by Ruben Fleischer’s shingle The District, Superstore, the one-camera half-hour is set in a fictional St. Louis Big Box retailer called Cloud 9 and is headlined by America Ferrera. The Golden Globe-winner (Ugly Betty, 2007) plays assistant manager Amy, who has to deal with a colorful and motley assortment of entry-level sales associates. The show brings a new twist to the tradition of blue-collar sitcoms and posits the large-scale retail store as a plausible crossroads of the contemporary American experience – both poking fun at its corporate conceit and turning a sympathetic lens on the workers and consumers that populate its aisles. As such, Superstore deals with issues and small indignities of the Walmart age and plot lines that prove both appropriately inane and surprisingly topical. We spoke to socially conscious and politically active Ferrera, who also produced the show, about the role of comedies and their ability to sometimes raise issues beyond the laugh line.