The Restaurant
By guest reviewer Rachel
Grade: C
Okay, let me start off by saying that Rocco is pretty. I mean, pretty. Like, if he asked me to kiss and then name each of his toes I just might do it. He's that kind of pretty. This explains why all manner of women come to see him at his restaurant. [Editor's note: Rachel, are you sure you don't mean pretty fat?]
It's this kind of romantic desperation that makes the show appealing. We all might sit at home and laugh at the pathetic Blind Daters and the hopeless women from Starting Over but can you imagine making reservations months and months in advance for an overpriced, gimmicky New York restaurant JUST to catch a glimpse of the hot chef/owner and possibly be a blip on the reality show that revolves around him? Now that's pathetic.
I feel qualified to rate this new season since I saw almost every episode of the first one. It was a magical time for me... I was embarking on a short-lived venture into the service industry and I felt that the show spoke volumes. If I had really been paying attention I could have skipped the whole painful journey. Well.
Last season the gimmick was that none of the wait staff had serving experience. Not the best idea. It turns out the restaurant business is crazy enough without throwing the mentally challenged into the mix! The servers made all sorts of ridiculous mistakes for our amusement. The best example was when this Goomba-ish waiter/aspiring comedian went walking around Soho with a customer's credit card looking for the right bottle of red wine for him. He was wearing his whole uniform and hadn't told anyone where he was going. Ex-waiters are probably the only ones chuckling right now.
This season finds Rocco aspiring to C- list celebrity while one of the major investors, Jeffrey, an Elliott Gould look- and sound-alike, tries to bring order to the restaurant (which is losing money) with his team of consultants. And everyone seems to hate Rocco. Except the ladies!
A quick breakdown of what you can expect to see during an average episode of
the restaurant:
-Rocco kissing his old, skeletal Mama while she shouts, Rocco! Rocco! I think she sleeps there.
- Guys shouting "Where's Rocco?!" because their girlfriends begged to
come see him.
- Young women shouting, "Where's Rocco?" after begging their boyfriends to come see him.
-Rocco kissing middle-aged ladies and posing for pictures while calling them gorgeous and beautiful. They eat it up. Waiter, get them a mirror with their entrees!
-Middle aged ladies begging Rocco to sit at their table.
-Rocco letting middle aged ladies sit on his lap and then making jokes
about "That's just my cell phone! Har har!"
-The wait staff complaining about Rocco.
- The wait staff being snippy to each other.
- Rocco getting upset and driving away on his scooter. He doesn't like to cry on camera.
The show is pretty good filler, especially if you've ever worked at a restaurant. You can empathize with them but then laugh when they make stupid mistakes you've made a hundred times.
But the drama the producers (yes, Mark Burnett is all up in there) try to create over the control of the restaurant isn't really all that interesting. Oh my God, Rocco might be replaced? Who the hell cares (unless you're a lonely middle-aged woman in New Jersey, Long Island, or Queens)? All he does now is pop in once a night and eat spaghetti off of plates in the kitchen and then say things like, "Needs more garlic, don't you think?" If the restaurant didn't happen to have his name, not much would change. All in all, don't set TiVo for The Restaurant, but feel free to tune in when CSI is a rerun.
[Editor's note: Rachel is an illustrator in Washington, DC.]