As anyone who has watched the documentary “The Last Blockbuster” by Taylor Morden and Zeke Kamm can tell you, Netflix isn’t technically the reason why almost all of the Blockbusters across the world rapidly went out of business. Apparently, it had more to do with the mega corporation getting rid of late fees and the slow passing of physical media out of the land of relevance.
Even if Netflix wasn’t solely responsible, it certainly didn’t soften the death of video stores, whether it was a Blockbuster or your neighborhood ma and pa shop. So, the outright savagery of Netflix producing a sitcom about the last Blockbuster in the world is pretty astounding, but then to not set it at the real Last Blockbuster at 211 NE Revere in Bend, Oregon, and instead setting it in Grandville, Michigan, and filming it in Vancouver, B.C., is downright brutal.
Wait, I know I said all that was savage, but then Netflix went even stabbier as I sat down to write this and announced it has canceled “Blockbuster” after one brief and poorly reviewed season. But what was the show like? What worked and what didn’t? How could it have been fixed if Netflix didn’t jettison the series after 10 episodes? Let’s figure this out.
Part the First: In which we talk about the show
Just to get this out of the way up front: “Blockbuster” the series is pretty bad. It wasn’t completely broken, just dented and with no windows and maybe a dead battery. Creator, showrunner and executive producer Vanessa Ramos (who didn’t set foot in the Bend store before making the show) has written for a few of the great workplace sitcoms over the last few years, including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the criminally underrated “Superstore.” With her as head writer and a cast featuring the great Randall Park (“Fresh Off the Boat), Melissa Fumero (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), JB Smoove (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and Madeleine Arthur (“Color Out of Space”), there’s a deep bench of talent in front of and behind the camera.
But so much went wrong. Let’s number this out:
1: Obviously, first, building a fake Blockbuster in Canada that is lit and built like a set should be an issue for everyone who has ever been inside a Blockbuster before.
2: The first episode sets up a will they/won’t they romance between the two leads that we have no investment in because we JUST met the characters. Build up to that.
3: The way the Blockbuster operates in the show is like the writers never worked in a video store before…or ever went to one. Everyone is always working together instead of working different shifts on different days, you know, like every customer service job ever. Does everyone at this store work open to close, seven days a week?
4: Every character is an archetype, which in a workplace sitcom is sorta normal at first, but in “Blockbuster” it feels lazy. There’s the nice guy, the film geek, the out of touch Boomer, the overqualified woman rolling her eyes at everything, the disaffected teen, the goofy neighbor and, of course, The Phoebe (every sitcom since “Friends” has had one). Beginning a sitcom with archetypal characters makes sense, but they need to grow and change for the show to remain interesting.
5: Most of the jokes are full blown groaners, aside from a few. I wrote them down after watching all 10 episodes and will share them with you now, free of any context:
“Do I smell hot yogurt?”
“You got any movies about Simon Birch?”
“This makes me feel like I’m in an unproduced Charlie Kaufman movie.”
“James Corden is a bully and a menace.”
And, my favorite:
“The saddest thing I’ve ever said is, ‘one ticket to ‘Space Jam 2.'”
6: But then some lines are so bad that it kills all goodwill. The one that really bothered me was when Randall Park is talking about how well his store does on Halloween. He says, “Halloween is our biggest time of the year with people looking for vintage horror movies they can’t get on streamers.” Sorry, but even during the heyday of Blockbuster, you could never, ever, find vintage horror movies. Fifty copies of “True Lies,” for sure, but you’re never finding Ken Russell’s “The Lair of the White Worm.”
7: The store is filled with real movie posters and fake video box covers with real movie titles. It’s confusing and off-putting.
8: Park keeps talking about the employees as a family, but most of them are just co-workers at best. They never hang outside of work and, if they do, they do it begrudgingly.
And the most frustrating thing of all:
9: By blatantly using/stealing the idea of The Last Blockbuster in Bend, but fictionalizing it, every time they do tie it to Bend, it feels sketchy and disingenuous. Sandi Harding (GM of the real store) has been called “The Blockbuster Mom” for ages. Randall Park starts calling himself “The Blockbuster Daddy” in the second episode. The real Blockbuster threw a block party after it became the last store on the planet. The fictional store throws a block party when they became the last store on the planet. And, once, they actually mention Hydro Flasks. Are these supposed to be Easter Eggs? Do they know these aren’t how Easter Eggs work?
Some of this is probably nitpicking, but when adding up one-dimensional characters, shamelessly terrible jokes and no internal logic to the setting of your workplace sitcom, you have a show that plays like the rough draft of a rough draft. All the awful might be forgiven if it was funny, but…nope.
Part the Second: In Which I Force My Friends to Watch the Show
But hey, maybe I’m overcritical of a show that’s just trying to be entertaining. So, I asked a few of my friends to watch as many episodes as they could handle and send me their thoughts. Here are a few of them, edited for length:
“A covert masterpiece channeling JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher In The Rye.’ The store manager is the proverbial Holden Caulfield, angry at all the realities of life, corporate mergers, buyouts and technological advances that has left him, and his staff, in the VHS childhood fantasy, trying hard to cling to popcorn dreams and Milk-Dud magic OR is it a failed attempt to capture true movie aficionados’ passion for films/motion pictures. It belittles the deep passion for the medium by attempting to misalign characteristics of impassioned Blockbuster staff as outcasts.” Stewart Fritchman, owner of Bellatazza.
“The show’s nostalgic intentions didn’t quite land for me; they felt more hollow and tired than warm and fuzzy. The most interesting part of the show was its existence on Netflix, the platform most responsible for Blockbuster’s downfall. It would have been interesting to see a little darker humor and complex commentary on how streaming has changed the entertainment industry, instead of the few throwaway jokes we got about it. Overall, it’s just a harmless comedy that doesn’t seem to have anything original to say.” Chloe Green, freelance writer.
“I don’t know why I’ve come to this Blockbuster, and, now that I’m here, I think I’d like to leave. With that said, there is a joke about Nicolas Cage movies worth watching the entire second episode for. Also, since you’re here, I invite you to ponder why the whole show is trapped in a terrible open air concrete prison as seen in the outdoor scenes, and if that is an anti-capitalist commentary or just a budgetary issue.” Keith Shayon, co-owner of Dump City Dumplings.
“As a former Blockbuster employee, this show feels more like an insult than entertainment. The writing is forced and lacks any flow. There are no moments of originality, and their half-assed attempt at ‘social commentary’ comes across as stale with a capital S! I’m confused on what tone they’re trying to hit and who the audience is? One night while I was working at Blockbuster I recommended ‘American Psycho’ to an unsuspecting patron looking for ‘something like ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ only to have him come in the next day and literally throw the film, case and all at me, screaming how horrible that film was! I suggest you do the same with this garbage show. Metaphorically speaking.” Jesse Locke, filmmaker “A Reflection of Self.”
“I will admit the one thing I did find charming and relatable was the idea of a small-town business trying to survive and in that way, I DO think we can compare the events of the show to the perhaps against-all-odds survival of ‘our’ Blockbuster. I believe our local Blockbuster has said that their success hinges a lot on loyal customers and their commitment to keeping this last bastion afloat. I admit, I find some of the nostalgia for Blockbuster puzzling, but I also went and purchased a bunch of their ‘merch’ to add to our museum collection because I do feel like it represents a moment in time, a genuine phenomena, and basically something that we might pull out and put on display 50 years from now because it represents something quirky and special about our local history. Because let’s be honest, every little town wants an identity and things we can cling to with pride. Also, I made it through two episodes.” Rebekah Averette, Deschutes County Museum collections manager.
“I was able to only watch five minutes of it because I couldn’t stand watching it. It feels like it’s written and performed with an impatient and anxious need to be funny fast. The writing and editing feel stunted and clumsy somehow. It reminded me of one of those student commercials that precede films at Regal, minus the youthful optimism.” Selin Sevinc, head of festival programming for BendFilm Festival.
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“Can my quote be ‘No comment?’” Zeke Kamm, Writer/Producer of “The Last Blockbuster.”
“Like, it’s definitely in the top three things on Netflix with the word ‘Blockbuster’ in the title.” Taylor Morden, director of “The Last Blockbuster.”
Part the Third: In Which I Try to Fix the Show and Become a Famous Hollywood Writer
Since Netflix has chopped “Blockbuster” for good, we won’t ever see this iteration of the idea with this cast and these writers again unless another streaming service picks it up (which they won’t because it was critically lambasted and didn’t break into Netflix’s Top 10), but the premise of the show is a great one. However, the Netflix series was hobbled from the very beginning with bad choices. In my ever-so-humble opinion, here’s how a series like this could thrive. NUMBERS!
1: If you want the show to be set in a Blockbuster, set it in the ’90s so we can mainline that genuine nostalgia. But what would work even better is to set it in modern days at an actual mom-and-pop video store struggling to stay open (of which the Bend store actually is). There are no stakes in the series as it stands because the fictional last Blockbuster can’t actually go out of business because then the show is over.
2: “Blockbuster” plays it very safe when it comes to talking about how much of their business was destroyed by streaming. They could have had genuinely funny meta moments where they threw shade at Netflix and Amazon and the viewers would have loved them for it. If a show about a video store can’t criticize the entertainment model putting them out of business, then what are we even doing here?
3: They could actually research what working in a Blockbuster (or any video store) is like so it feels like a real workplace sitcom. “The Office” felt like an office. “Superstore” felt like people working in a Target. The great “Abbott Elementary” actually feels like it cares about public schools and teachers. “Blockbuster” feels like people on a soundstage trying to be funny for dollar bills.
4: Make it weird. I’ve had customers so bizarre in my years of video store work that I remember them decades later. Take chances on being quirky and dark and having a point of view that’s different than the average multicam comedy.
5: Have genuine film geeks write the scripts so the show feels like it’s FOR the people who cherished video stores. When you just throw out a movie reference once or twice an episode, it feels performative and false.
6: Jokes. Make ’em better.
I don’t know if setting the fictional series at the real last Blockbuster would have made it more palatable, but it at least would have had a soul. And with the Netflix series put out of its misery after a mere 10 episodes, we’ll never really know if the cast would have grown some chemistry and the writers would have…become funnier. I think going into the last Blockbuster here in Bend and just watching the employees for a few hours would be more entertaining, although much creepier. Do better, Netflix. Or don’t. You would have by now if you gave a shit.
This article appears in Source Weekly December 22, 2022.
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Great piece, J! I felt the same way. It was hard to get over the feeling of disingenuity while watching the series; I managed to only get through two episodes. I’ll always remember West Side, Prime, and Hollywood better than I do Blockbuster, if only because I really only visited BBV when picking up Ami after work and after I moved to Portland.