Upsetting Day: Written in the Stars (Patreon)

"That man in the Carl's Jr. mascot costume has a Master's degree" would normally be a very sad sentence, and today is a normal day! Hi everyone, I'm here to tell you about the time in 2018 when a fast-food franchise called Carl's Jr. produced an off-broadway play to celebrate their first store in New York City. It now exists only in the form of an unlisted video on the Carl's Jr. YouTube page that has almost eight thousand views, to the utter relief of everyone involved.

Usually, I'm all for a huge fast-food franchise pumping money into a hilariously intricate and terrible project. So, you would think an off-broadway burger play would be the best thing ever to happen to me. I can't think of a worse idea than this. Giving a pack of monkeys knives and then trying to juggle all of the knife monkeys is only a marginally worse idea. Yet, somehow the Carl's Jr. musical isn't that fun for me!

I dug up an old AM New York interview where they talked to the guy who played the Carl's Jr. mascot, and it was so sad. He really does have an MFA, and you can tell because he uses the phrase "thumb acting." He said there was a lot of "thumb acting" involved in the role because his face isn't visible, and all of his other limbs are covered in five puffy jackets worth of stuffing. More traditional arm and leg acting options were not available, so he acted with the only appendages he could. It's a true story of the human spirit triumphing over the evils of puffy fabric.

Please let me be clear. I'm not making fun of the actor for taking this role. I think it's cruel that Carl's Jr. did this to him. They could have chosen to tell any story for their off-broadway play. When Skittles did a musical, they got a Pulitzer prize-nominated writer to do the script. I haven't figured out who wrote the Carl's Jr. play, and I'm afraid if I start asking too many questions about it, someone will threaten to credit me.

Carl's Jr. didn't need this show to be brilliant. They needed it to exist and generate media attention for their new franchise, but they could have had more fun with it. They didn't lean hard enough into the insanity of a fast food restaurant putting on a broadway play. The one thing they had that a regular off-broadway play doesn't is a budget. If they had thrown even a modest amount of their corporate overlord's money at this thing, they could have made the best off-broadway, one-night-only play about a fast food restaurant ever.

For instance, they could have paid Timothee Chalamet to come out at curtain call and take off the mascot costume. Was it Timothee Chalamet the whole time? No, but they don't tell anyone that, and no one will ever know differently. It's between them, Chalamet, and the burgers.

They could have put pyrotechnics in this play! The number one rule of live theater is if you can afford fire, there is fire. I would set an entire scene from within the oven as Carl's Jr.'s delicious burgers are charbroiled. Sure, the star of the show's mascot costume looks highly flammable, and the theater everyone is crammed into isn't that big, but we all have to make sacrifices for art, and not everyone looks good with eyebrows anyway. Besides, if he is ever in actual danger, he has made it clear he can express that with his thumbs.

Carl's Jr. is known for their weirdly sexual commercials where Kate Upton straddles a fast food bag and looks at the sandwich like it's the shirtless, flowing haired hero of a romance novel cover. Yet, the Carl's Jr. off-broadway play is completely sexless. Not one joke about fucking a cheeseburger in the entire thirty-minute play. They could have brought Kate Upton into the show as the gold-digging wife of Carl's Sr., or a burger scientist who's in love with the very burgers she sciences. Let this poor beautiful woman fill her holes with sloppy meat!

What Written In The Stars is actually about is so sad I almost don't want to bring this article down by writing about it. It's about a struggling New York city actor (played by Carl's Jr. mascot Happy Star, who is played by a struggling New York City actor). Happy Star is sick of struggling to land a role. After being turned down for a gig, he sings the play's one song with his roommates and the narrator, who make up most of the rest of the show's cast. Don't worry; they all take on at least two roles by donning different hats and using various offensive accents. Here’s a taste of some banging lyrics:

♪ Born a star, yet I'm not one

Reached for my dreams

Still ain't caught none

I thought my destiny

I'm meant to be something fine

I thought that showbiz was the place where I could shine. ♪

♪ Thought they needed a star, so I gave them some twinklage

but they don't need a white dwarf; they need Peter Dinklage

Red giant, polaris, neutron, they're bored

They want Meg Ryan, Vince Vaughn, Harrison Ford ♪

♪ My fate is written in the stars

But I can't see that far

Tell me what's in this star’s future? ♪

(Everyone but Happy Star whisper sings)

♪ Carl's Jr. ♪

All of Happy Star's roommates have a dream they are working toward in New York, but they also have a job to pay the bills, and that job is also their dream! You know how everyone has a second, more practical dream job to get them by. For instance, I dream of being a circus – no particular role, the whole thing, clowns, lion tamer, ticket taker, all of it – but to pay the bills, I'm an Instagram micro-influencer who makes knit hats for horse dancers.

You see, Happy Star's mistake is that he's taken a job to pay the bills, which he doesn't like, something everyone in real life knows to avoid. He's a waiter at a hamburger restaurant run by a French version of Gordon Ramsey who wants to be a dancer. All of the elements of this play are so mashed together I feel like I'm writing down a dream I had, except with two less Fabios than my dreams normally have.

Happy's Gordon Ramsey stand-in is played by the narrator, who also plays Happy Star's roommate. He quits in the middle of the workday to pursue his dreams of dance, leaving Happy Star to cook the burgers. He ends up making a burger for a big producer who offers him an audition because she's looking for an actual star-shaped being for a role, and you can find anything in New York.

One of my favorite moments in the play is when Happy Star hands the producer her burger. She looks at it and, without ever taking a bite of the clearly fake burger, says, "Hey kid, this is the best burger I've ever had!" This should be the one play where they would really want to see someone eat a burger on stage, and where they would absolutely have the capacity to make that happen! There should be an interactive theater element where Happy Star pulls out a burger cannon and pumps meat into the crowd like Kate Upton grabbing a quick lunch.

Happy Star goes to his big audition, where he meets All-Star and Lone Star. They have no bearing on the plot, but it's such a bold attempt at a joke I was proud of them for trying. This play was supposed to be built around star puns before they realized they couldn't think of that many and bravely gave up. The point is: not enough star co-stars. One star.

If all of these screenshots look the same, it's because they tried not to move the guy in the costume too much. Moving is complicated, and he can't see shit, so most of the cast and set kinda rotates around him unless it's absolutely necessary for him to go somewhere. That is the one kindness that Carl's Jr. provided this poor, nimbly thumbed actor.

After the big audition scene, we smash cut to six months later. Happy Star has given up on acting and opened his own restaurant, which is called Carl's Jr. for some reason. This is never explained, but I suspect it has something to do with the enormous upper back tattoo he has, which also says Carl's Jr. I can only assume this is the name of a former lover Happy Star is psychosexually obsessed with, as that seems to be the subtext of the play.

There's a long bit where the narrator says all of these famous people showed up at the opening of Happy Star's restaurant, and all five of the cast members put on different hats and do silly voices to pretend to be different people. It's supposed to be a funny meta-commentary on how off-broadway plays tend to use hats to display character changes, but since it's coming from a corporation that's putting on a show as a fun bit instead of lighting a pile of money on fire in Times Square, it kind of comes off as punching down. It's like saying I could have done a better job than this, but I chose not to LOL.

Now that Happy Star has realized his passion for "making charbroiled all-beef patties at an affordable price," his life is much better, I guess? It's a bold stance for a play to take on the motto: “Give up your dreams to make cheeseburgers!”

The moral of the story is you should start a restaurant that's in direct competition with Carl's Jr. Which is not even an attainable dream in New York. Owning a restaurant there is probably as difficult as making it as an actor. They have some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Where did Happy Star get the money to open this restaurant? Is he up to his…top points in debt? All of the issues in this play are solved during a six-month time jump we do not see.

The producer that Happy Star auditioned for pre-time jump finds him at the opening and tells him she's been looking for him for six months. It looks like the reason Happy Star wasn't getting roles was because he kept forgetting to leave his cellphone number. He got the unnamed star role he auditioned for, but he turns it down because he's so happy at Carl's Jr. Everyone loses!

Then the cast dances offstage to the song "All Star" by Smash Mouth, which Carl's Jr. paid for but didn't use until the closing! They could have done an interpretive dance showing Happy Star's birth – Happy Star metaphorically fights his way through his mother's birth canal to the tune of All-Star! But they didn’t! Unforgivable! A complete waste of at least 80% of their budget!

Congratulations to this play for both creating the fast-food musical industry, and being the worst thing about it. You know you screwed up when you make an entirely new genre and immediately tank it, hopefully forever.

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