![]() From the mousy college students, to the mother-daughter alliances, to the countless housewives and homemakers, there’s never a sense that any of them have sought time in front of a camera in their lives. Here’s the thing about the contestants in those ‘90s throwback episodes: They’re almost painfully earnest, and that’s their saving grace. Worse still, I think the show’s producers are imagining an audience who identifies with these contestants, and if that’s true, it speaks to a deeply obnoxious U.S. Perhaps we’re meant to guffaw at the outsized egos and rampant spotlight-grubbing of these contestants in particular, so desperate are they for a brief moment with thousands of eyes fixed on them. Who knows: Perhaps it actually was designed with that very thought in mind. It’s as if it was designed with annoyance as the goal. If the ‘90s series is endearingly absurd to watch today, this new version is working much harder to be profoundly obnoxious. Rather, what I found disturbing was the way this Supermarket Sweep reboot highlights the worst evolutionary leaps of our own culture in the last 30 years-it’s like a microcosm of our slide into Idiocracy-style stagnation. Spooling through the episodes now available to stream on Hulu, I began to note that the trouble with this new version isn’t necessarily the game-ification of consumerism that has always been the central aspect of the show’s DNA. That series debuted in the fall, and just finished its first season.Īnd as it turns out … no, Supermarket Sweep doesn’t really work today, although not necessarily for the reasons I expected. I ended up watching all of those episodes, enjoying them for what I ended up dubbing their “earnest stupidity.” I wondered aloud, then, whether such a guileless, blatantly advertorial concept could possibly work on modern television, given the approaching ABC reboot of the series hosted by SNL alum Leslie Jones. Here was a series I hadn’t seen an episode of in at least 20 years, preserved like a cryogenically frozen slice of early 1990s popular culture. ![]() ![]() ![]() She hosted the BET Awards in 2017, which marked her hosting debut.Back in the summer, Netflix began hosting a small collection of vintage episodes of seminal ‘90s game show Supermarket Sweep, and I found myself caught up in a wave of nostalgia. Jones recently hosted the 2020 Emmy Award nominations. During the early stages of her acting career, Jones was cast in Chris Rock's directorial debut "Top Five." She was later cast for a role in Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's "Trainwreck." Shortly after, Jones went on to land a leading role in the 2016 "Ghostbusters" remake, alongside Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon. Jones reprised her duties during the 2018 Winter Olympics. She served as an NBC Olympic commentator during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games covering gymnastics, track and field, swimming, and beach volleyball. She voiced the villain Zeta in "Angry Birds 2" and is next slated to appear on the big screen in "Coming to America 2." Jones was a cast member and writer for "Saturday Night Live" from 2014 to 2019, in which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in both 20. Leslie Jones is a two-time Emmy®-nominated actress, comedian and host of ABC's game show revival "Supermarket Sweep." Her one-hour comedy special, "Leslie Jones: Time Machine," can currently be streamed on Netflix.
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