“Isn’t it ironic,” a character in the new Netflix series Blockbuster asks, “that our small business taking a stand against a big corporation … is actually a franchise of a once-huge corporation?” Indeed it is. And isn’t it ironic that the point is being made not only with the blessing of the “big corporation” in question, but to its actual real-world profit?

Paradoxes of this kind abound on Netflix’s latest, a half-hour sitcom set in the last Blockbuster Video store in America. A product of our era of isolation, Blockbuster recognizes the irreplaceability of human community. As light as microwave popcorn, it has an eye on the economics of disruption and the way such turmoil plays out in real people’s lives.