Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

Casual dining chain O'Charley's may have casually ripped off Ron Swanson

Much as O’Charley’s offers an affordable take on the classic American steakhouse, new ads for the restaurant chain you go to when you don’t need all the opulence of Applebee’s appear to offer an affordable take on classic American TV character Ron Swanson. Ad Week points out the suspicious resemblance between O’Charley’s “spokes-patron,” Brock Roland, and Nick Offerman’s similarly meat-loving Parks And Recreation character: Both men sport neatly maintained mustaches, a burly, stoic demeanor, and a tendency toward hypermasculine pithiness, with Roland saying he’ll “gamble on some things: seahorses, push-up contests, love,” but never on steak. In another spot, Roland complements his order of a Cowboy Sirloin with an extra side of fried chicken tenders—a veritable “meat tornado,” if you will, were that not someone else’s intellectual property. Ad Week generously calls the character an “homage.” So long as he doesn’t order all the bacon and eggs, we suppose it will stay that way.