It’s been a long time since a comedy web series made its leap to TV. The 2010s had Broad City and Insecure make the jump from the internet to cable. But these days, more live-action indie creators are twiddling their thumbs before getting to see their series get the big call. In our current streaming monolith era, it’s not as frequent.
So it’s surprising and refreshing that the workplace series Minimum Wage—about a bunch of wacky, dimwitted [mostly] high schooler employees at a fledgling pizza restaurant, doing everything but a good job—made its delivery from teen-young-adult-oriented production company American High to Netflix. Following a series of shorts and sketches from TikTok and YouTube that amassed millions of viewers, the series retains a lively energy, even if its character packaging got a lot of cheese smears on the box.
Welcome to Slice Club: A Recipe for Disaster
The Jeremy Garelick and Will Phelps showrun series stars Aidan Micho, Hyde Healy, Julia Dicesare, Luke Burke, Ryan Micho, Tommy Armstrong, and most notably SNL’s latest feature addition, Grace Reiter, as a bunch of same-named characters working at Slice Club, the worst store in a rather successful upstate New York pizza chain line. The first few minutes exemplify why customer quality is poor. Aidan refrigerates himself, hoping his dingaling increases; Hyde, who would rather spend time being a little sexist, reports the wrong time; Ryan stresses about his table-setting skills; Grace, the manager, is not mentally there; homeschooled Julia got the wrong type of teacher that makes her a little stunted for her age; Tommy blow-dries the pizzas; and delivery driver Luke, the oldest at 20, is busy womanizing and getting it on with Julia’s mom (whom we never see). To the series’ benefit and detriment, they’re all one-seventh of one full dumbass.
Slice Club’s franchise founder, Terry Sylvester (Randall Park), arrives downtrodden, saying that he lost most of his stores as a result of his divorce, left with theirs, the most unprofitable one. Giving them the ultimatum to get better at their jobs, or he’s shutting it down, he moves into their basement, sometimes enforcing new monetary practices or just slumming it to comedic effect.
Much of Minimum Wage aims to be its own blend of The Office for the younger Gen-Z/Alpha set with its workplace mockumentary format, yet there’s so much Party Down in its episodic, single-set food service nature and Welcome to Flatch in its small-town idiosyncrasy. On arrival, it works for teens more akin to having seen the shorts it stemmed from, as long as they haven’t discovered the ancient texts it emulates. A lot of the series walks like a baby deer trying to stand upright, looking to its elders and stumbling, for it doesn’t know how to walk on its own yet. The show needs a mockumentary veteran to help its newcomers improve its characters and ideas. Minimum Wage‘s episodic ideas tend to be more entertaining than the characters themselves going through them.
Picture Credit: Netflix
Half-Baked Characters and Sloppy Mockumentary Execution
The ensemble consists of five white guys and two white women—I guess geographically accurate to upstate New York—and I couldn’t tell you the defining traits of most if a gun were put to my head. Each cast member takes a hand in directing and writing an episode in pairs, specifically character-oriented ones. They do a good job together, but they display their inexperience with character writing by pushing their ridiculous boundaries for the sake of the joke rather than the balance of joke and character development. Yet many characters blend to the point I forgot a few, specifically Aidan, were part of the cast. Much of the character traits are like the wind, and only so slightly are some of them consistent. Ryan, being the perfectionist needing validation, and Julia’s stuntedness yet heart-of-gold demeanor are the only concrete examples. Even Reiter doesn’t have much to her Grace despite her having some of the funniest gags and line deliveries. Luke gets to be the one with the most definitive personality just by proxy of being the eldest and often the punching bag for pretty funny too-old jokes.
If not, some of them are also unlikable—Hyde’s misogyny gets grating really fast, even the clapbacks don’t suffice—and are aggressively straight. The ensemble’s most fluid-looking character in Tommy shares a “will they, won’t they” dynamic with Julia and his partner named John (Kalissa Persaud), a girl. At a certain point, it became the same kind of lineup you’d see in a Brooklyn alt-comedy show (spoiler: it’s all white with occasionally the token POC).
The mockumentary style is also sloppy in execution, as there are too many cuts with, for example, a feat of slapstick or a pratfall, or the camerawork fails to coincide with the comedic timing. There’s no real fake cameraman addressed like The Office or What We Do in the Shadows discussing a production of an in-universe doc. Because it’s just the homogenous norm of the modern workplace comedy, it’s there without explanation.
Picture Credit: Netflix
Genuine Charm, But Still Needs Time in the Oven
For its 14 episodes, each around 16 minutes long, the team shows potential for there being some genuine charm from the ensemble’s chemistry. The cast all banter well off each other, with some scenes lending to funny gags—Ryan’s incessant need to hug Luke gets a great string of laughs.
Every so often, the series is pretty funny and occasionally has jokes that range from amusing to laugh-out-loud hilarious, perfectly attuned for its young teen audience who don’t have proper entertainment tailored for them these days.
In a landscape that is limiting opportunities to younger creators, Minimum Wage struggles to make its own mark. Adults Season 1 shared a similar set of issues yet was refined in its second season to great effect. While I hope the second batch of episodes releasing finally delves into its ensemble and makes its overstuffed team flourish, the amateurish execution and overwhelming straight-whiteness energy limit its potential of personality and substance. Tastes better than a Little Caesars pizza but is far from baked to full deliciousness.