Applebee's is Having a Moment
Applebee's is Having a Moment
Between a Survivor meltdown, Challengers product placement, and a dramatic exit on the Vanderpump Rules finale, it's been a big two weeks for the restaurant chain.
I’ve thought about Applebee’s more in the last two weeks than I have in years. Admittedly, I am more of a Chili’s girl myself, but if anything was going to get me to the iconic American fast casual restaurant, it’s the past couple weeks in pop culture.
Challengers
Kicking off the best two weeks of Applebee’s HQ’s lives, Luca Guadagnino’s latest film Challengers premiered April 26. Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis star who has to pivot to coaching after a career-ending injury. I’ll get to the Applebee’s of it all— but let me just start by saying this is a run-don’t-walk to the theaters movie in my opinion. It was sexy as hell, visually satisfying, sometimes comically erotic, and had a soundtrack and general vibe that can only be described as electric.
The movie jumps back and forth in time between 2006 and 2019, following the love triangle of Tashi, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist.) The nonlinear storytelling felt like watching a tennis match—where the audience is attempting to keep track of something fast moving volleying back and forth faster than your eyes can keep up, all the while holding onto the tension between two players. When you spectate a tennis match, there is a feeling of intrusion. You’re biting your tongue quietly watching an intense, passionate tension between two people, feeling like if you make your presence known you threaten the very balance of that tension. Observing the desire between these three characters felt similar—I felt like I was being let in on the most intimate details of a complex story that isn’t casually shared.
Here’s what I wasn’t expecting in the middle of it all—APPLEBEE’S. In a pivotal scene, Zendaya and Mike Faist’s characters have a date in a familiar booth under recognizable lamp sconces and over lava cake. Following this dinner, we find them in the parking lot making out against a car, and all the while, watching like the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleberg in Gatsy, is an Applebee’s billboard.
Of course Applebee’s social team got in on the action:
Survivor
Now I have to admit, the reason this product placement stuck out to me in Challengers is because I saw it on a Friday following a recent Wednesday episode of Survivor that had one of the most iconic meltdowns I have ever seen on television—all over an Applebee’s burger.
To set the scene, there was a reward challenge in which the reward is an Applebee’s feast. The hype-up for this feast is REAL. Before, during, and after the challenge, Jeff Probst describes the prize as “the biggest reward of the season” at least four times. Now, as the prize is being hyped up, one contestant, Liz, is so passionate about Applebee’s that at first I thought she had to have been paid extra to make up a personal anecdote about the chain restaurant. No one has ever been this emotionally invested in an Applebee’s Bourbon Street Mushroom Swiss burger. Liz sees this burger and exclaims, “MY WEDNESDAY NIGHT RITUAL!” and we soon find out every detail of how this self-proclaimed millionaire apparently takes her daughter every Wednesday night after yoga and then they watch Survivor.
In absolute poetic justice, Liz’s nemesis Q (who she campaigned a vote against just the night before) wins the challenge. In Survivor rewards challenges, what sometimes happens is that one person wins and then they are offered a chance to bring someone with them. They’ll keep being offered people to invite, but they won’t know the total people they can bring. As soon as Q is offered the chance to bring someone, this woman is BEGGING. At this point in the game, everyone is starving, but everyone also knows that Liz has allergies to many things the rest of the tribe are able to eat on the island, including coconuts. So Q goes through two people he picks to bring with him, and finally is told he has one more person he can bring. Liz is audibly sobbing. No one else is asking to be picked. He points out that Liz hasn’t eaten in basically 18 days. And then proceeds to pick someone else. What happens next you just have to see to believe:
Vanderpump Rules
Finally, like a cherry on top of the proverbial lava cake, Applebee’s got a mention in an iconic exit from Ariana Madix on the Vanderpump Rules season finale. Even if you don’t watch the show, you might be familiar with Scandoval, the cheating scandal surrounding Ariana and her ex, Tom Sandoval. Well, in the latest season, Bravo gave us what no one asked for: an attempted redemption arc for Tom Sandoval. In the final episode, Ariana and Tom are forced to be at an event together, and the episode culminates in Ariana gracefully exiting the event with her head held high (despite an obvious attempt at a villain edit!) off in the sunset with her new boyfriend and friends to late night dinner at, you guessed it, Applebee’s.
If you’re still here…
What’s your Applebee’s? The meal you’d meltdown on television for? I’d love to hear from you.