stakes

This has to be, quite easily, the most unfunny and offensive TV show I have ever seen. The comedy is explicit filth, and relies on gross-out gags more than anything else. Watch any given episode, and you're likely to hear as many of the mock gross-out or offended groans from the student audience as you are to hear laughs.

However, I'm not getting on my high horse to put down this show. It is possible to scrape the bottom of the barrel, and still get laughs. I have seen comedies that appeal to the lowest common dominator and still be funny. This, however, is not one of them. Just because you do something completely offensive, or gross, or trashy, it's not funny. Mad TV has not figured this out. And how this trash is still on the air is beyond me.

I just saw this for the first time, and I think I might be hooked. I, for the most part, absolutely hate the mess of reality television that is being shoveled down our throats these days, but this is different. "The Restaurant" isn't about people trying to win a million dollars, people sleeping with complete strangers, or people trying to marry off their parents. This is reality TV that is actually "real". Just about everyone has worked, at some point in their lives, in a restaurant or something else involving public service. Just about everyone has had to deal with the everyday hassles of rude customers, bossy managers, and fellow employees who don't do their part. That is real, as opposed to the degenerative wackiness that takes place in other reality programming, which 99.9999% of the population has not experienced, nor will ever experience. Everybody's flipped a burger, but not everybody has had America cast a vote deciding their spouse.

And that's what makes "The Restaurant" special. Add to that the fact that is a highly engrossing and entertaining program, and you've got something here. When I first heard that a new reality show was going to focus on the daily operations of a restaurant, I thought NBC must be insane. But this show succeeds, and if reality television has to stick around, this is the form it should be in.