When I was growing up there was a Hardee's in my
neighborhood that was roughly about as clean as a
Tijuana whorehouse. Local addicts would blithely smoke
crack in the men's room while the night manager would
occasionally take his dick out in front of female
employees and gruesomely twist it around as if it were
a flesh colored balloon animal. The place was a greasy
chamber of horrors yet this terrifying plunge into
fast food anarchy could have been avoided. If Hardee's
management had taken a cue from Wendy's and crafted an
instructional video similar to Grill Skill then the
employees would be too busy learning the subtleties of
the "four corner press" to turn their respective
penises into makeshift Stretch Armstrong dolls.

As Grill Skill opens, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas
pathetically welcomes us from the filthy storage area
of an abandoned gas station. Seriously, this place is
so thoroughly scummy that if it isn't used solely for
the purposes of cockfights then it's being wasted.
Thomas gamely attempts to overcome these dreary
surroundings by espousing the strict yet delicious
party line of the Wendy's Corp. Unfortunately, this
only makes Grill Skill resemble the type of video
where phrases like, "If they see any cops they'll
shoot me on site" are regularly heard.

To complicate matters, Thomas listlessly spews this
deep fried propaganda in a way that suggests he just
ran the 10K while a 400lb guy rode on his back and
repeatedly beat his forehead in with a hammer. He's
dazed, out of breath and insists on pronouncing the
word fashioned as "fayshunned". It's vaguely upsetting
and is roughly the equivalent to watching Mayor
McCheese do a line of coke off the ass of Colonel
Sanders. Thankfully, Grill Skill isn't about the
iconic Thomas but rather a bright young man and his
wacky misadventures at the bottom of the employment
food chain.

Meet Bill, a white bread Wendy's employee who, one
day, is taken off the lowly task of fries and promoted
to the comparatively glamorous grill by his
condescending manager. Because Bill is the type of
moron who needs to be told what a bun warmer does,
he's forced to watch an instructional video on proper
grill procedure but the moment he places the video
into the VCR, a disembodied head flies out of the
monitor and drags Bill into an apocalyptic culinary
war zone.

The disembodied head belongs to the golden spatula
toting, spangly Wendy's uniform wearing, Duke of the
Grill and through the power of rap, The Duke guides an
increasingly horrified Bill through the complex
process of grilling a hamburger. The Duke offers many
helpful tips for making the perfect burger such as,
turning the oven on, using your "toooool" (ie a
spatula and by 'using' he clearly means, 'frantically
strum it as if you were Yngie Malmsteen's retarded
cousin') and the importance of the four corner press.
How important? Well, without it raw hamburger patties
would spontaneously sprout cartoony eyes and lips and
sing about shrinkage. So for the love of god, flip
your burgers over and make sure you press the sides.

From there the precedings get significantly stranger
as Bill slowly but sassily repeats the previous rap to
the beaming Duke and the raw hamburger patties
reappear to sing about their stages of readiness. As a
side note I had no idea Alejandro Jodorowsky made
instructional videos.

Eventually, Bill's skill at the grill (Heh, Heh kill
me) proves to be impeccable so he's graduated back
into the real world where we're treated to a tender
romantic montage in which Bill and his manager work on
the grill together. The video then cuts back to a
disheveled Thomas who tells us that, "Cooking and
pressing hamburgers isn't easy and requires a special
talent which takes some practice to develop". He's
right of course, because this "special talent" only
shows up in an exclusive bunch of high school
drop-outs or in every other guy who got fired from
their landscaping jobs for repeatedly showing up
tweaked out on meth. If you lack these certain
requirements then I'm afraid you're just going to live
with the fact that you'll never experience the
glittery, jet-set lifestyle of a Wendy's fry cook.