... this one is ten times worse.
Gordon Ramsey clearly has a lot going for him: top chef, gastronomic guru and mostly excellent hospitality-management expertise. (You'll understand momentarily why I say "mostly.") As with most "reality TV" (or perhaps more accurately, "unscripted drama") however, he boosts basket cases so extreme they rarely if ever come down to Earth to profit from the incredible turnaround they are offered at the conclusion. But of course they can get away with that because the reversion and eventual failure of most of these establishments simply isn't shown and is far enough from most viewers' experience that they can be fooled. (We'll see how long that scam holds up as instant Googling becomes an after-watching habit.)
Look, I get it. Intense cases and dramatic (albeit artificial and superficial and therefore effervescent) breakthroughs make for great television. But these are actual people and places we're talking about. Sure, it's *usually* (but see below) their fault for the histrionic desperation of displaying their worst flaws on TV. There is something rather twisted, though, if not sadistic, in baiting the hopeless - even if they happen to be truly bad people - for the sake of lucrative entertainment.
And this is where 'Hotel Hell' really takes the cake: the owners are often live-in concierges, and so we get a close-up on their worst personal as well as professional qualities - so close up, in fact, that I feel sorry almost even for some of the worst of them. Is Ramsey despite all his talents so dense that he doesn't get the harm he's doing? Or is he a sociopath who can be a good manager... when it's lucrative for HIM, but not when the best interests of his charges (in this case his inn-keeping subjects) would require him to cover for them (even at a cost)? In one case he dealt with an elderly inn-keeper who was obviously suffering from at least early-stage dementia and didn't hesitate to include an employee's remark about the lady's bowel incontinence. So what does he do? He renovates anyway and reinstates her as manager! The proper thing to do would have been to tell her son and landlord that she needed a hospice nurse or some other form of assisted living, not a management title. And to ax the episode, instead of subjecting that poor lady to such public indignity in her twilight years.
Ethics aside, there's something uneconomical (if not unecological) about the sensationalism of reality TV. After all, one can't help shake one's head at the terrible waste of resources on these hopeless losers when there are plenty of earnest but less struggling folks who just need a bit of help and guidance could make a killing (and help many others!) with considerably less effort and resources to get a leg up.
