Celebrities
‘Superstore’s’ Dina and Garrett are the romance we never knew we wanted
When Dina (Lauren Ash) and Garrett (Colton Dunn) hooked up in the “Superstore” fall finale, it felt like a funny payoff to their battle of wits — and maybe something to provide a few chuckles in an awkward “morning after” situation. But what happened in the winter premiere, “Lost and Found,” was so much better than we ever anticipated.
In a surprising turn of events, Garrett seems to be having some actual feelings for Dina. He’s not being overt about it, but he definitely feels something, because he’s trying to play it super cool — which in turn has normalness expert Dina wondering why he’s being so weird. And of course, the prickly assistant (to the) store manager is seemingly cool as a cucumber. But this new possibly coupling has opened up so many great storyline possibilities.
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First, watching the normally chill Garrett struggle with being attracted to the rigid, by-the-book Dina is going to be a lot of fun. The show already laid some groundwork for this in the Halloween episode, when Dina was browbeaten into putting on a costume and then her eye-popping sexy cop uniform took everyone, but especially Garrett, by surprise. Whatever lies beneath the shapeless Cloud 9 uniform obviously has Garrett’s attention.
Secondly, if Garrett decides he’s going to pursue Dina, that’s going to be hilarious because Dina definitely doesn’t seem like someone it would be easy to court. She might think Garrett is just messing with her, or she might be wildly uncomfortable with his traditional moves — so there is tons of awkward comedy gold to mine.
Thirdly, if they do decide to give it a go, Dina is Garrett’s boss and so that will open up a whole host of problems with both her feeling of responsibility, and then possibly getting corporate involved — which will hopefully bring district manager Jeff (Michael Bunin) back around, because he’s always a welcome sight (from a viewer standpoint, not so much from a Cloud 9 employee standpoint).
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Finally, one of the main reasons we’re so excited about this is because if you’ll remember back to early seasons of “The Office” — on which “Superstore” creator Justin Spitzer worked as an editor, producer and writer — the A-romance was obviously Jim (John Krasinksi) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) and it was a great TV romance, one for the record books. But while that one was full of “awww” moments, remember how the unexpected romance between Dwight (Rainn Wilson) and Angela (Angela Kinsey) was full of awkward situations and laughs?
The B-romance became perhaps more interesting than the A-romance — and we can easily see that happening here. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to see Amy (America Ferrera) and Jonah (Ben Feldman) get together. But that has been a part of the show’s trajectory since day one: The unexpected, 100 times more awkward romance is the one we never knew we wanted: As Cheyenne says, “Some days you get the giraffe and some days you get the wig.”
Thanks for that phrase, which we’ll be working hard to start using in everyday conversation, and welcome back, “Superstore.”
“Superstore” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.