Last Stop – The Series chronicles adventures of life in retail

The customer is always right. And sometimes quirky. Occasionally demanding. Infuriating at times. Perhaps funny.

Ask anyone who has been in retail, and they’ll have a story or two or 10 about the people they have encountered through work.

Now, some of those stories have surfaced in a seven-episode workplace comedy set in a Sioux Falls retail store, the Last Stop CD Shop on East 10th Street. A sold-out showing of “Last Stop: The Series” on Jan. 30 at the State Theater led to the addition of a second event on Feb. 3. It, tool, sold out, and a third show is in the process of being added, said creator Dominic Wienecke.

If, as a customer, you have sometimes been a little quirky, demanding, infuriating or funny, don’t worry. Even though Last Stop employees contributed stories during the writing process, you won’t see yourself on screen at the State Theatre.

“We did enlist the employees — and everyone who’s done customer service retail has stories — we did ask if they’d had any weird interactions,” Wienecke said. “What seems more of the untrue ones are actually more true than untrue. I worked retail for years at Barnes & Noble, and I drew on that experience of customer interactions. We’re not making fun of people; we’re having fun with people.”

Matt Gribble confirms that. Assistant manager at Last Stop CD Shop, he originally agreed to unlock the door for the cast and crew of “Last Stop: The Series” when they arrived at 6 a.m. on Sundays to begin filming. Before long, however, Gribble took on the dual roles of “Wolfman” and Wolfman’s brother, an employee at the other Last Stop CD Shop on 41st Street.

“It’s really tasteful humor, taking the fun parts out of retail and just not offending anybody,” said Gribble, a 20-year Last Stop employee. “We’re not laughing at anybody; we’re laughing with anybody.”

This is Wienecke’s first foray into comedy. His previous experience as a writer, director and/or producer has been in the horror genre. Wienecke had made short and feature-length films before tackling this series. A native of Lismore, Minnesota, Wienecke’s path was set when he was 10 and wrote his first story and saw the movie “Gremlins.”

“Ever since, it’s been film all the time,” said Wienecke, who graduated from Adrian High School, Worthington Community College and, finally, St. Cloud State University with a degree in TV production and film studies. “Mostly, I’m very much into the horror genre. I really love Wes Craven, David Lynch, the horror genre favorites.”

Then, why comedy?

“It kind of goes back to 2018 when I was helping out with ‘The White Wall Sessions,’” a live-music show that taped at Last Stop and aired on KELO-TV for 10 years, ending in 2023, Wienecke said.

He helped with camera work for the show. Wienecke, who moved to Sioux Falls in 2000, also was intimately familiar with Last Stop. As a self-described physical-media collector, he would stop there several times a week. The store sells various used media and some new. Ninety percent of its inventory comes from the public and is resold, Gribble said. Last Stop opened about 30 years ago and has been at its 10th Street location since 2009.

“I decided that I would love to tell the story of the store,” Wienecke said. “There are so many stories we can tell through the lens of the store.”

The first season’s seven episodes each have a theme. Episode 3, for example, centers on an author making a visit. Episode 4 is “Star Wars” related.

Wienecke’s favorite episode? “I love Episode 6; it’s our Halloween episode,” he said. “They let me explore a bit of the horror genre I love so much through the lens of a comedy. We decided in post-production to make it black-and-white, with a ’50s vibe.”

Co-producers for the series are Zeke Richter, co-founder of Johnson & Richter Creative in Brookings, and Wienecke’s wife of 15 years, Ari Show. She is a frequent collaborator, producing much of Wienecke’s work, acting as a sounding board and “talking me off the ledge when things are not going right.”

Richter wrote three of the episodes; Wienecke, four. Writing comedy relies on the same pacing as horror, Wienecke discovered. For comedy, it’s “set up, set up, punchline.” For horror, it’s “set up, set up, big scare.”

Another impetus for making the series was the number of outstanding local actors with whom Wienecke wanted to work. In his shorter films, Wienecke works with only two or three actors at a time. With “Last Stop: The Series,” he could increase that cast, incorporating all the people he wanted to work with such as Nathan Hults and Debbi Jones.

“We handpicked local actors that we knew would be committed to this project,” he said. “The whole project showcases the local talent that we have. We definitely want to show the good acting pool here and the good filmmaking behind-the-scenes people.”

For Gribble, it was a chance to stretch himself and to interact with a new cohort.

“It’s been really fun. I’ve never really acted before; I was just opening the doors for them really and being an extra in the background,” he said. “When they asked if they could write lines for me, I didn’t say no. It’s been fun watching the trailers and meeting new people, funny talented people.”

The series looks realistic, Gribble said: “It could be another day (at work). But instead of working, we actually were just playing around.”

Filming took place from 6 to 11 a.m. Sundays. The first 22-minute episode took four Sundays to complete shooting; later episodes needed only three. A complication surfaced early on, after the reading of the first script. That was in February 2020.

“We were setting up the film base when the world got shut down” during the COVID pandemic, Wienecke said. “Literally the next weekend, everything went quiet. A year and a half later, we did the first episode, what we call the pilot.”

Life also got in the way — Wienecke and Show are the parents of twins, now 3 1/2 years old, and they also moved into a different house when their children were young.

Shooting resumed in late 2023 and wrapped up in March 2024. Post-production work followed, fit in around Richter’s work at his marketing agency and Wienecke’s job at Citibank.

While scripts are being written for Season 2, Wienecke is pleased with the first seven episodes and is awaiting audience reaction.

“It’s probably the best representation of anything I’ve written so far. Editing in post-production, there are still parts that make me laugh, and I’ve seen 40 or 50 times,” he said. “We brought our A game.”