Lately, you might have been hearing a lot about "Minimum Wage."
No, not talking about the actual minimum wage, a buzzword in the recent Congressional midterm elections, but rather a new Netflix sitcom that popped up at the end of October (Season 1 now streaming) and has been sitting on the streamer's Top 10 TV shows list.
Starring Randall Park and a host of young whippersnapper comedians, including "Saturday Night Live" newcomer Grace Reiter, the show is a workplace sitcom set at a pizza shop. For the week of Oct. 26-Nov. 1 it ranked as the sixth-most watched English language show on Netflix, just behind "Love Is Blind." And would you believe it all started on YouTube with a bunch of young comedians making low budget sketch comedies in an abandoned
high school?
Here's what you should know about "Minimum Wage,"from its humble origins to its Netflix success to whether or not it's a trend worth checking out.
What is 'Minimum Wage' about?
"Wage" is set at a run-down pizza shop franchise run by a bunch of incompetent high school students and young adults, with some help from Park as a business owner with a serious inferiority complex. The kids staffing the pizza joint are faced with high stakes problems like serving 30+ theater kids while they sing terrible showtunes, trying to find out if their customers are in the middle of a breakup and theoretically turning a profit on the business.
The series is a "mockumentary" sitcom, in the same style as NBC's "The Office" or "Parks and Recreation," in which the characters give confessionals to the camera. And the show is clearly going for quirky workplace comedy vibes of those lauded shows, with an emphasis on physical humor and big character personalities. In the first episode, delivery driver Luke (Luke Burke) crashes the shop's van into a lake while wearing a pizza mascot uniform.
Did 'Minimum Wage' come from YouTube? What's 'American High'?
If the actors, concept and title of the show sound familiar to some, that's because it started out as a short YouTube comedy series that was originally posted to the platform in May 2024. Variety reports that the original budget was just $2,000. All the young comedians in the series have characters that share their actual first name. The YouTube cast included Reiter, Aidan Micho, Hyde Healy, Julia Dicesare, Luke Burke, Ryan Micho and Tommy Armstrong, who all returned for the Netflix version.
The show comes from a comedy production company called American High, whose schtick is that it films and sets its sketch comedy and short films all in an American high school. In fact the company's founder, filmmaker Jeremy Garelick ("Murder Mystery 2" on Netflix and "The Break-Up") purchased an actual abandoned high school for the company to use.
It's jumped into mainstream media few times before, including "Pizza Movie" starring "Stranger Things" alum Gaten Matarazzo, which premiered at SXSW in March and streamed on Hulu.
Is 'Minimum Wage' any good?
While the show may have the format and aspirations of an "Office" or "Parks," "Wage" has a long, long way to go before it can reach something resembling those comedy heights. While the setting is fun and the actors are charming, there's something distinctly unfinished and unplumbed about the episodes, which have a few laughs in their breezy 15 minute-run times, but no depth or novelty. The show can't help but feel like a cheap imitator of those other shows; it cannot establish it's own personality or identity in the comedy landscape. Each cast member certainly has their own talents and appeal, but it's too big and has too many similar white guys with very little to differentiate their ho-hum lazy dude personalities. It's also hard to believe they are high schoolers.
It's abundantly clear that Park's CEO character was an add-on to try to bring some comedy gravitas (and racial diversity) to the cast as it made the jump to a major streaming service. However, he barely shows up in some episodes, and always feels like the fifth (or eighth, since the ensemble is so huge and forgettable) wheel.
However, there is plenty of time for the show to find its footing. Fourteen episodes are now streaming, and Netflix has ordered a total of 28 for a first season.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why 'Minimum Wage' on Netflix has people talking
