TV shows and movies often romanticize the idea of diners, 16 year olds smush into cars and drive to get blueberry pancakes and milkshakes at 12 am. Watching shows like Riverdale and movies like Waitress can curate a picture that having a set place to gather and eat with friends can make one's teenage experience movie-like and quirky. Having a town diner friends can all gather and go to seems to be a way to fulfill the American dream.

A Place of Gathering…

Often large milestones and big chunks of information are revealed in diners. Why is that? Maybe it’s because the diner setting facilitates putting all the characters in one spot. A lot of times diners are used in film and television to create a social space for the characters to interact. This dates back to old Western movie saloons that were in a way an older version of a diner and served a similar purpose. Since then diners have become a cultural phenomenon that many movies and shows use to tell a story.

“These spaces are the interacting of private and public,” says Senior Scholar-in-Residence and Graduate Program Director for Writing for Film & Television at Emerson College, James Lane. “For the storytellers it's a convenient way to introduce new characters into the movie or the show by way of this semi-public semi-private space.” A great example of this in practice is the show Twin Peaks, in which the Double R Diner is a critical space for character growth and development. Many secrets are shared over coffee and cherry pie in this diner.

Christopher McKenzie, an Instructor of film and television at Boston University and Emerson College brings up Seinfeld as another example of using a space like a diner to unpack stories and allow characters to socialize. “The entire point of having sets at all is that you get more than one person in the cast together in one place, it's just a space where people can logically get together,” says McKenzie. “A diner serves that purpose, to have a spot that is consistent and regular.”

An Opportunity for Branding…

Interestingly enough, featuring diners and cafes as central meeting spaces in TV shows and movies is an excellent way of branding and marketing. “These places, whether they be sets or real or semi-real places, are all used one way or another to market and promote the shows, whether they are currently on or on reruns,” says Lane. “It definitely enables shows to have a lot longer life in syndication and rerun than was ever initially intended.”

Sophomore Julija Garunkstis, a Visual Media Arts student at Emerson College, believes that diners are a great way to anchor the viewer's mind into correlating a set location with a show or movie. “I don't really watch Riverdale, but I know they spend a lot of time at a diner,” says Garunkstis. “And that's a perfect example, the fact that I don’t even watch the show, but I know that it’s shot in a diner, it's an easy connection to make.”

A Nod to the American Dream…

A lot of the TV shows and movies that display diners are set in small towns and provide a connection to small-town life. Although sometimes there isn’t much to do in a smaller town, teens and younger people find a place to call their own so that there is something to do on the weekends and a common place to meet up. This may allude to what diners represent in American society. “It’s a place where you go to get food, it's a place that you go to sit with people, but it’s not fussy and it's not uptight,” says McKenzie. “The food can often be good but sometimes it's just passable and that says something about American culture, we want something fast, comfortable, accessible, and relaxed and we see that as almost a treat.”

An important thing to note is that all the diners in the shows mentioned above are not chain restaurants, they are one of a kind trademark places located in the town the show or movie is set in. Lane says it best, “Americans need a semi-public space where they can get together and be free of corporate influence and meddling.” Diners showcased in TV shows and movies mean more than just a place characters meet and eat, it’s a place where people can engage, connect, and make memories, and this is true in not just media, but also in real life.

Order Up!: The Importance of Diners in Movies