Basic Trope: Capitalist characters are portrayed both positively and negatively.
- Straight: Bob is an honest restaurateur who pays high wages, makes delicious food at a reasonable price, provides a useful social space and approves a trade union for his community. Conversely, Charlie is a corrupt fast food CEO who stiffs his workers, skirts around food safety standards, busts unions through Nazi-like means, and drives local businesses to bankruptcy.
- Exaggerated: Every business owner is either a pure evil Corrupt Corporate Executive or an Honest Corporate Executive, with nothing in between.
- Downplayed:
- Overall, most capitalist characters are just good, but it is shown that many top-level CEOs have to make uncomfortable moral compromises.
- In general, it is shown that Capitalism Is Bad, but some business owners, like Bob, do have standards.
- Justified: Both good and bad people will make use of any social system, and capitalist economies are no different.
- Inverted: Bob is a heroic, peaceful leader of Chummy Commies who wants to free everyone from oppression, while Charlie is an evil Dirty Communist and wannabe dictator who happily commits war crimes in the name of the revolution.
- Subverted:
- It turns out Charlie has been framed for his misdeeds by government regulators.
- It turns out Bob is a Bad Boss who uses the Peace & Love Incorporated to evade suspicion.
- It turns out that Bob is good because he's a secret socialist, or Charlie is evil because he's a secret socialist.
- Double Subverted:
- But Dave, another fast food CEO, is genuinely A Nazi by Any Other Name.
- Charlie lied about being framed. In fact, the government doesn't know half of the harm he's inflicted on the people who work or eat in his restaurants and the communities where they operate.
- Bob has a bit of a temper but is a pretty good boss and most employees still like him.
- Bob or Charlie is said to be a socialist, but whoever said that was wrong.
- Parodied: Alice, the one businessperson in the story who makes money by both moral and immoral means, is mistrusted by the pure-good and pure-evil capitalists alike because both sides know she's "not on our side."
- Zig-Zagged: The capitalists alternate between all being good, all being bad, all being neutral, all being conflicted, and varying proportions being in each group.
- Averted:
- Capitalism Is Bad, full stop.
- Capitalism is good, full stop.
- There are no villainous capitalist characters.
- There are no capitalist characters, period.
- There is no serious exploration of any economic philosophy, or if there is, the writers try not to make normative statements about any of them.
- Enforced:
- The show has been under fire for having socialist messages, so the writers create a more positive capitalist character.
- The show has been under fire for being too simplemindedly pro-capitalist, so the writers decide to examine the downsides too.
- Bob and Charlie were written as a Right Way/Wrong Way Pair from the beginning, and making them into avatars of Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism was a natural outcome when the creators decided the show would be a Work Com.
- The creators of the show are sick of the tendency for other media to vilify all businesses as being bad, so they establish a rivalry between a good corporation and a bad corporation to demonstrate that how bad a business is depends on the morals of whoever is running it and that it is possible for businesses to be run by good people.
- Lampshaded: Charlie disparages Bob as an obnoxious goody-goody while Bob disparages Charlie as a greedy jerk. Both make No True Scotsman-like references to the other with respect to how he runs his business.
- Invoked: Bob learned how to operate a business from mentors who espoused the importance of collaboration and mutual respect, while Charlie learned from mentors who urged him to be as selfish as possible.
- Exploited: Both Bob and Charlie are successful in their own way, and they urge kids to take up interests in business using their respective Rags to Riches stories.
- Defied:
- Bob decides to cut costs and otherwise cheat on occasion, while Charlie decides to show his Hidden Depths every so often.
- A new government, probably one calling itself revolutionary and socialist, bans capitalism.
- Discussed:Alice: Do you want to go out to eat?Betty: Sure. Far as I know, Bob's and Charlie's are the only places still open. Which do you want to go to?Alice: I'm leaning towards Bob's because I hear Bob is a good guy and Charlie isn't.
- Conversed:
- "I like Bob, the Benevolent Boss on Two Restaurants. He's what I wish capitalism would be. I can't stand Charlie the Bad Boss, though. He's what capitalism is too often for my liking."
- "It's a most welcome change of pace that this show addresses the downsides of capitalism while also making it clear that not everyone who runs a business is a greedy and unethical bastard."
- Played for Laughs: It's a comedy of errors where both are The Ditz; Charlie the villainous capitalist is so dim he becomes an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, while Bob the heroic capitalist has a way of showing that Good Is Dumb.
- Played for Drama:
- The Bad Guy Wins because he doesn't have the scruples of the good guy. As Charlie takes over Bob's business, Bob's former employees angst about what will happen to them under the new regime.
- The story focuses on Bob as he grapples with the reality of being a capitalist with morals in the face of an increasingly amoral business world, using Charlie as The Rival to show the kind of person Bob might have been — or could yet become — if Bob decided to abandon his morals.
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