Ho-Ming Vader: Day Shift Manager

Ho-Ming Vader: Day Shift Manager (Cantonese: 浩明·維達：白班經理 Jyutping: hou6 ming4 wai4 daat6 baak6 baan1 ging1 lei5) is a Hong Kong sitcom created by Richard Lo and Alvin Ko, who wrote, directed, and appeared in the series, which parodies. The show's central character is Ho-Ming Vader (浩明·維達), the day-shift manager at the fictional supermarket Empire Market, who clashes with his customers and employees.

Series overview
The first season follows Chad and his interactions with his co-workers. He admires his boss Randy, acquires Jeremy as an apprentice, hazes Lloyd, and dates Clarissa. After troubles with Clint, Chad is moved to the night shift, where he meets Weird Jimmy, before quitting his job at Empire Market. After unsuccessfully working briefly at a number of jobs, he returns to Empire Market to re-ally with his coworkers and battle Clint to reclaim the day shift manager position.

In the second season, Empire Market is bought out by Red Leader Foods, a large corporation. Maggie McCall arrives as the corporate liaison for the new owners. After failure on the new laser checkout system, Randy is demoted to night shift manager, where he becomes mentally unstable, and Maggie becomes the acting general manager. The series also introduces another love interest for Chad, Maggie's assistant Libby, and a minor antagonist, Sean Banditson. The season focuses on Chad's misuse of Jeremy and Maggie's attempts to ally with Jeremy. Afterward, Jeremy and Chad duel, leading to the accidental death of Weird Jimmy. After the battle, Chad and Jeremy reconcile.

The third season begins with the trial promotion of employees to general manager for a day. After the employees' failures, Maggie trials Clint as manager-for-a-day, where he attempts to turn the store into a "bozo circus" as Chad describes it. New employee Damien Nightshayde joins Chad and Jeremy, whilst Weird Jimmy's ghost tells Jeremy a prophecy. Finally, during the day of Chad's management, Randy attempts to blow up the store, though only Damien is killed. As a result, previous store owner Champion J. Pepper (Clint's father) buys Empire Market back, promoting Chad the general manager, and demoting Maggie to night shift manager. Champion congratulates Chad for his bravery. Jeremy, still depressed over Damien's death, chooses to take a leave of absence to go on a spiritual journey of discovery. Chad wishes Jeremy good luck in his quest.

The fourth season opens up with Chad as the general manager of Empire Market. Weird Jimmy's brother Johnny enters the store to pick up his brother's belongings. When he reminisces about Jimmy, the latter possesses him, and ultimately becomes the janitor for the store again. Chad manipulates Jeremy to return with the hope of making the store "fully operational". Disturbed over the lack of faith his employees have in him, Chad becomes convinced that he must locate his "dark soul half" to become the manager that they deserve. He descends into madness and forces a tyrannical martial law on the store. Soon, a generator malfunction threatens its very existence. Chad sacrifices himself to neutralize the generator and save Empire Market. The generator shorts out his life support suit, sending him into a near-death experience, until the suit is unexpectedly rebooted by Hal Thompson. Chad then apologizes to everyone, and gives them promotions before demoting himself back to day shift manager, and Jeremy assumes the general manager position in his stead.

Ho-Ming Vader (浩明·維達)

 * Ho-Ming Vader (Richard Lo/voiced by Alvin Ko) is the show's central character. He is the day shift manager of Empire Market. Sometimes using lines lifted from the Star Wars films (the main source of humor being Ho-Ming going about day-to-day life while retaining a behavior befitting of a Sith lord), Ho-Ming's main goal is to crush Empire Market's competition and help make the store dominate the food retailing industry. However, as Season 2 progresses along, Ho-Ming follows Randy's orders to "ditch" the Star Wars attitude and become more normal. The new leader announces that everyone has a chance to be General Manager. His main goal morphs into a great ambition to become General Manager (which he succeeds in doing the end of Season 3). While he has inappropriate and rocky relationships with most of his co-workers, he has better ones with others, such as Jeremy, whom he adopts as his apprentice. Ho-Ming implies in the second episode that he is Darth Vader's younger, less successful brother, and that Vader gave Ho-Ming a life support suit and helmet similar to his own after Ho-Ming accidentally rode his bicycle into a volcano.

Jeremy Ng Chi-Hang (吳致恆)

 * Jeremy Ng Chi-Hang (Daryl Lee) is an Empire Market employee who idolizes Chad and wears the headpiece of an Imperial Ground Officer (which is the back piece of the Darth Vader Voice Changer mask).