"Superstore" taking a stand

 Something that I really enjoy, and I feel like should gain more appreciation, is the show "Superstore". Superstore is an NBC tv show that ran from 2015 to 2021, that focused on a group of employees who worked at a large big box store called "Cloud 9". Though the show was very humorous and light hearted, it also did a very good job at targeting and highlighting real world issues such as ICE and immigration, worker's rights, LGBTQ visibility and representation, sexism, and more. The main example that I would like to highlight is their representation of immigration. In one of the episodes, one of the employees named Mateo discovers that he is undocumented. This later becomes an issue when corporate catches wind of talk of a union, so they send in ICE to show the employees the amount of control that they have over them. With many of his coworkers being aware of his illegal status, they all jump into action to do what they can to attempt to protect him from ICE. From stalling the ICE agents, to sneaking him around the store, to the manager trying to lead him out by watching all of the security cameras, his coworkers jumped into immediate action to do everything they could to protect their friend. Within these moments, these people did not care about getting in trouble, all they cared about was protecting their friend, because in their minds, he was no different than any one of them. They did not see Mateo as just an immigrant, they saw him as a hard working coworker, and friend, who had just as much of a right to be there as any other one of them. This episode is really meaningful to me, especially with everything that is happening in our country at the moment, and I think it is really important that we continue to have representation like this. People can try to avoid acknowledging critical issues all that they want, but when they are shown in tv shows like this, it forces people to face the reality of what is really happening in our country, and they can't just pretend that it isn't.