The Breastaurant Industrial Complex is a Handful: A Retrospective Review of Support The Girls

 Boobs! Brews! Big screens! What could be more American than that? Why, worker exploitation, of course! Something which Andrew Bujalski’s Americana dramedy Support The Girls addresses head-on. 

Support The Girls centers on a restaurant manager named Lisa, played by the incredible Regina Hall, on a particularly trying day in her life running Double Whammies—a restaurant chain that mirrors Hooters and Twin Peaks as a “breastaurant” featuring scantily clad waitresses and unruly customers. We first see Lisa crying in her car in the Double Whammies parking lot, only to be cheerily greeted by her employee Maci, played by sunshine-in-human-form herself Haley Lu Richardson. Lisa takes on multiple responsibilities throughout the film, dealing with a failed robbery attempt of the restaurant’s safe, managing the restaurant while looking out for her employees and their well-being, and placating her hot-headed boss. While she struggles with her own icy marriage, she takes it upon herself to fix a coworker’s domestic issue and raise money for her with an unsanctioned Double Whammies car wash. The laundry list of items she has to deal with is enough to drive anyone over the edge; but Lisa puts out every fire, somehow maintaining a positive attitude. Each interaction tests her resolve and the brave face she puts on. The plot structure is both simple and anxiety-inducing as it showcases a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” for its protagonist. Bujalski is not in a hurry to take us anywhere, though, and the film’s pacing allows room to showcase the camaraderie and solidarity among the employees. 

Aside from Hall and Richardsion, the film features a vibrant cast, including Shayna McHayle (aka Junglepussy), Dylan Gelula (Dream Scenario), AJ Michalka (you might also know her sister, Aly), and Lea DeLaria (Orange Is The New Black). The women of Double Whammies are not under any illusions about the industry they are in and the establishment they work for. They know the clientele they face, and throughout it all you see them show up for each other in the face of unruly customers, abusive boyfriends, and one ill-advised Stephen Curry tattoo (no comment…). It paints an intimate and realistic portrait of female and worker solidarity in a brutalist, late-stage capitalism landscape.

The forged bonds of solidarity are best exemplified between Lisa (Hall), Maci (Richardson), and Danyelle (McHayle). Their characters feel real because most of us have either been or worked with each of them before. In Lisa, we have the glass-half-full leader who does her best to shield her employees from the wrath of the store owner with no expectations in return. In Maci, we have an overly positive employee who does what she can to put smiles on her coworkers’ faces no matter what. In Danyelle, we have the realist of the group who shows up, does her job, and knows Lisa needs a helping hand herself. They bring humanity to one another working in this inhospitable industry. These bonds are the only thing keeping them from quitting, but let’s observe the locale these women formed their kinship in.

There are only a handful of things more American than “breastaurants,” such as multi-lane highways and terrible urban planning. While not explicitly identified as Austin, Bujalski confirmed they used the shuttered Logan’s Roadhouse near the Twin Peaks off I-35 and Stassney as the restaurant. In an Austin Statesman interview he says:

I think I didn’t call it Austin in part because that has its own set of associations and baggage. And for me, that highway world of Austin is pretty much the same as the highway world of Houston, the highway world of Dallas… I’m from Massachusetts, it’s not that different than the highways up there. You’re kind of nowhere when you’re off the highway, and that’s what it’s about, the ability to go somewhere else but not be there yet.

There are multiple highway shots throughout the film. When you see the restaurant in its entirety, it is juxtaposed with the concrete hellscape that is I-35. As Bujalski puts it, the “ability to go somewhere else but not be there yet” is perhaps the best way to encapsulate present-day America. We all have a destination in mind, and while we think we are there, in reality we have so many more miles to go. 

In a time where the everyday American is burdened with rising inflation costs, stagnating wages and crushing student debt, many Americans are disillusioned with the idea of the “American Dream” being something that is truly attainable. As we see with Lisa throughout the film, she becomes increasingly weary, irritable, and tired of putting up with the bullshit. In the end, not even the camaraderie she has forged with her employees is enough to stop her from intentionally getting herself fired as she begins asking herself the questions that many Americans face: 

1. Does having a strong work ethic and a positive attitude really help achieve what you want, or is it just another form of worker exploitation where your time and energy is drained in the name of profits that you will not see? 

2. Do you even have a fucking choice? 

Danyelle is ultimately pulled into the same fate as Lisa after she leaves Double Whammies. It is Fight Night, so they have drawn in a sizable crowd for the event. Having struggled with the cable all day, Maci and the other servers began vamping in an effort to keep the crowd around for when the cable finally comes back on. In a chaotic and ever-so-satisfying show of worker solidarity, though, Danyelle has other ideas. After the cable finally turns back on, Danyelle decides to shut the cable off again. This causes an uproar among the customers and ends in everyone being kicked out by the onsite cop for the evening. A day that began with the promise of profit has now ended in chaos and disarray at the hands of these scantily clad comrades, all spurred on by their fearless leader’s defiance.

Though we may cheer Lisa on for standing against the tides, she once again falls into the same patterns. Lisa applies for a manager role at another “breastaurant” chain establishment, Mancave, which promises the same schtick as every other company. They talk about their “well thought out culture” and yada yada. Lisa is talked at more than talked with—a sentiment shared across all American job interviews. It feels bleak for her to return to the same industry that left her so battered and exploited, and yet here she is. Luckily, though, she is not alone. She runs into her former coworkers, Maci and Danyelle, and they share a moment on the building rooftop after their interviews. As they drink tequila and pontificate on their past decisions, they begin to scream, releasing their frustrations into the vacuum of noise from the highways criss-crossing ahead of them. 

It is an ending that perfectly ties together the themes of the film, recontextualizing the American Dream for the modern day. With a script written as tightly as the crop tops adorned by the Double Whammies servers, Bujalski showcases the bonds that keep us sane in a increasingly bleak landscape and how there are two types of a workplace family: the real kind forged by human connection and common struggle, and the idea of family that is peddled to the masses by Corporate America as a way of exploiting the working class.