Photo Courtesy of Tessa Bury- Wikimedia Commons
Grace Reiter is one of the main cast members of Minimum Wage (2026- ). She got her start in a YouTube series with the rest of the cast, but has made appearances on Saturday Night Live (1975- ).
On Oct. 26, the highly anticipated Netflix comedy series Minimum Wage (2026-) released to streaming, only six months after the series was announced by Netflix last April; according to Variety, the series received a 28 episode order when it was first picked up by the streaming service, and 14 of the 28 have been released to streaming.
The show was created by Jeremy Garelick and Will Phelps in collaboration with the American High Production Company. A look at IMDb confirms that the series features a cast made up of mostly newcomers to the professional acting scene, with the two exceptions of Randall Park, who is a relatively well established mainstream actor, and Grace Reiter. Prior to the release of the series, Reiter joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (1975- ) as a “featured player,” according to NBC News. However, despite not being well known in the acting industry, the rest of the leading cast—Aiden Micho, Hyde Healy, Luke Burke, Tommy Armstrong, Julia DiChesare, and Ryan Micho—are far from new to acting as a practice.
The show’s premise is derived from a 2024 Youtube mini-series with the same name, which features the same primary cast—excluding Randall Park—as well as the same creators. The Youtube series featured a very similar structure to the Netflix series, with the primary difference being the episode run times. The Youtube series’ episodes generally were shorter than five minutes, while the Netflix series’ episodes run between 12 and 18 minutes each. Some worried that the increase in length could lead to pacing issues; the original Youtube series is praised for its quick paced “slapstick comedy,” so the fear of an extremely slowed pace was a relatively significant one. However, as The New York Times explains, the series was able to increase the length of the episodes in a way which “only expanded them enough to give scenes another beat or two that they rarely need[ed]” and avoided making jokes feel overly drawn out within each episode.
The adoption of the series—and the preservation of its original energy—is seen by many as a new direction for future Netflix series. The shorter episode running times when compared to most mainstream shows streamed on Netflix allow episodes to move quickly with “bursts of talent emerg[ing] with enough frequency that Minimum Wage (2026- ) makes for an amusing, energetic, instantly disposable binge” according to The Hollywood Reporter. The format breaking does not stop at the episode lengths. Netflix is far from a stranger to adopting series from Youtube, with prime examples being Cobra Kai (2018-2025), Good Mythical Morning (2026-), and Tires (2024-), according to The Hollywood Reporter; however Minimum Wage (2026-) is the “first all-creator comedy series” to debut on the platform, with “the cast [being] responsible for pitching episode ideas, writing scripts, and directing their fellow cast members,” a very uncommon practice in mainstream series on Netflix, as Press Publish details.
The show has been met with relatively positive early reviews, currently standing at an 82 percent Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes about a week after its release. The show’s reviews on Rotten Tomatoes highlight that the show’s “fun to watch” cast and its humor will make viewers want to “clock in” for a few good laughs. The show is a fun watch; with short independent episodes that have little direct connection to the previous ones, it makes a fantastic series to sit down and watch an episode or two at a time, returning to the show later on without feeling lost. Or, if you prefer binge-watching, the relatively short run time of the series as a whole allows it to be a lighthearted and bingeable show. So if you have the free time—and a Netflix subscription—make sure you give it a watch!