TVgasm Recaps

It took a few weeks, but NBC finally brought back Mark Burnett's ugly reality child, The Restaurant, this weekend. Airing two episodes in the television graveyard known commonly as Saturday night, NBC reaquainted us with the ongoing feud between celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito and non-celebrity manager Jeffrey Chodorow. For those who are still in the dark - and that includes, you know, everyone - Rocco has gone off to be a giant celebrity (and by giant celebrity, I mean a teacher at the Learning Annex) while his restaurant has languished from barstool ennui and server discontent (Janine quit in a banana fritter flurry of emotion when she proved to be useless on the floor; a sadsack deputy crumpled under the fierce rule of the head hostess). With the investment losing lots of cashola, Jeffrey has increased his role from silent partner to loud meddler. The Chodorow Corporate Task Force, which briefly featured our favorite character, Intern Drew, swooped into Rocco's 21 to cut costs in all facets of the business, including that one tricky area: Rocco's ego. Easier said than done.

1 part Rocco's 22nd financial status lingering in the red, 2 parts DiSpirito's ever expanding waistline, a dash of generic New York Broll and overly dramatic killer track abuse, and top it all off with a little seemingly sublimenal Mitsibishi product placement that has become utterly oblivious and I think we have the perfect recipe for disaster.
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"It's not coming to New York without going to Rocco's" says the annoying diner at the beginning of every episode of The Restaurant. I guess that's true if your trip to New York is a study in poor service, mediocre food, and dining with other tourists from Nebraska and Staten Island. Either way, in its somber-voiced recaps, The Restaurant always shows a little love to the nasal endorser at table 3, which is good because now that this show has wrapped, Rocco's 22nd is going to need a lot of TLC from the star-struck tourists that keep it afloat. As for the actual television show, well, it's not doing so well either. Saturday night's season finale might just as well have been the series finale. The only thing that could possibly keep it alive at this point is NBC wanting to stay on Mark Burnett's good side, lest he pull the plug on that other little show, The Apprentice.

While The Restaurant's Jeffrey Chodorow and Rocco DiSpirito sue the bejesus out of each other, now might be a pleasant moment to stroll down memory lane, which, in Jeffrey's case, leads to jail.

"Ladies and gentlemen: I suck."

If there's anything narcisists don't like, it's failure - because then people stop paying attention to them. So I can only imagine the asshole Rocco DiSpirito has become to his thankless staff now that both of his restaurants are shutting down. Yes, hapless tourists. You heard correctly. Both Rocco's 21 and Union Pacific will be no more by the end of the year. Actually, Rocco's 21 (the subject of The Restaurant) has already thrown out its new barstools, pushed the yenta waitress to the curb, and closed down shop - so if you're flying in from Wisconsin to eat Mama's meatballs and get a kiss from Rocco, you might want to go see Cats instead. Oh, actually, that's closed too. Well, there's always Hard Rock.

In the case of Union Pacific, Rocco's more prestigious effort, apparently the stink of DiSpirito brought that establishment to a halt also. This means that by the end of December, celebrity chef Rocco will have no restaurants to cook in. Does this mean he'll just flitter away into oblivion (or the next Surreal Life season), or is he going to attack the talk show circuit with the annoying tenacity of Steven Cojocuru? Let's hope he just goes away.

For more information, check out the article in New York Times Online. Registration required. Thanks to TVgasm reader Jash for giving us the heads up.