Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Olive Garden Ramps up the Stupid
It's bad enough that the people in this commercial appear to be INSANELY happy to be eating at The Olive Garden- I mean, good lord. They look like they are five years old and are being treated to a day at Disney World. But the ridiculously blissful grins are only the beginning of this reality-bending slice of garbage, which is over the top even for OG ads.
This guy tells us that he "goes to The Olive Garden all the time.." Seriously? You know, there ARE other restaurants out there. They're called GOOD restaurants. And if you skip the Olive Garden two or three times, you could afford to go to one.
This guy continues "...and I knew about the endless bread sticks and salad, but now there's endless PASTA as well?" Yep, you can now get "endless" (I don't know why "unlimited" or "all you can eat" doesn't work fine here. Not as classy-sounding? How classy can you be, you are at the OLIVE GARDEN!) pasta too!
Wow, super-amazing deal here. All the pasta you can eat, plus all the salad and bread sticks, for "only" $8.95. Look, I know you pay a premium when you eat out- the food gets served to you, you don't have to do the dishes, etc- but think about this for a minute. Even if anyone would really WANT to mix spaghetti and tomato sauce in one course, followed by linguini and clam sauce the next, followed by angel hair pasta and pesto the next- how many bowls of pasta can a person eat at one sitting, especially while dampening the appetite with salad and bread? Nine dollars worth? If you think so, you haven't checked the prices of pasta lately. A box of spaghetti costs about fifty cents.
"How's your pasta, sir?" I'd prefer that his guy be rude and respond "it's pasta, and I've noticed that no matter how much of this wine I drink, I really don't want to eat that much of it," rather than the Not Funny Yet Hysterical-Laugh Inducing "Endless." Why does every Olive Garden ad end with people laughing? It sure isn't because anything even remotely amusing has been said.
Maybe it's the cheap wine. I suppose if they made that endless, these idiots would never leave.
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As I said once before, we in Canada have to go to a chain called 'East Side Mario's' to eat pastas stuck together in a lump while enjoying a pseudo-ethnic environment.
ReplyDeleteAs a part-Italian American, I shudder to think that there are people out there who think that what The Olive Garden serves is "Italian" food.
ReplyDeleteI live in Memphis, and there are enough people of Italian descent here to have good Italian restaurants. Why would anyone go to OG?
ReplyDeleteMy guess is it's because people who don't know any better are taken in by ads like this. I'm sure that when they want Mexican food they pack up the whole gang and head off to Taco Bell, too.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKZS4Jn6gRM
ReplyDeleteOlive Garden ad parody. One of my favorite bits from Mad TV.