Bar Rescue

I like this show, but in looking at the " cast members / experts" listed, there are those that say they are actors ...wtf ?! I call BS

Jon is firm but usually fair, and there's plenty of great advice on running a bar. Some episodes are wild and raunchy, while others are borderline tearjerkers. My only beef is occasionally Jon goes too far with the remodel and strips the bars of their characters, making it all generic and hipster-like. They usually knock it out the park though. But overall, this is a good time waster and it'll definitely keep you hooked.

It doesn't take long with watching an episode of "Bar Rescue" that the events we are seeing are being highly manipulated - sometimes to the point of blatant fakery. "Conversations" between people are edited from multiple camera angles, showing that these sequences were shot several times and edited together. Time seems also to be compressed to a ridiculous point. For example, I may not be an expert on business, but I know you can't change the name of your business overnight! Also, there are some very nagging questions, like: Just who is paying for all these bar renovations, especially since the bar owners seem to be broke the majority of the time?

Yet despite these and other manipulation touches, the show remains interesting. For one thing, the show manages to show the many ways that a bar can fail, and why. This may sound boring, but it's actually pretty interesting. Also, we get to see what touches can make a bar successful, from menu design to interior decoration. This is interesting as well. So despite the annoying fakery here, the show does have genuine interest.

I happened to catch this episode (i am reviewing the Portland Tonic Lounge episode) because i was in portland when they shot it.

One of the most dramatic scenes is when there were bugs EVERYwhere, some flying around, but most of them were dead, lying on countertops, on dishes, on food, on cooks' utensils in the kitchen, EVERYwhere. Later, they shine a flashlight under a bottle of gin (or something) from the bar so we can see the tonic is filled with dead bugs! Eewww.

Now for what really happened. Of course they couldn't possibly be open to the public with dead bugs everywhere. Did they plant all of these bugs to set the storyline up?

Of course not! That would be just plain.. WRONG, not to mention immoral. and unethical. Instead, they left the doors to the building wide open all night long and let the bugs fly themSELVES in and die all over everything, and then shot the video the next day. That way you see, they can't be accused of engineering any sort of story they want to- they're not like that- it was the bugs who did it.

It's a ridiculous waste of time unless you're easily amused by funny editing. But i kept watching, and the rest was filled with other distortions and manipulations of half truths, not to mention the parts where the staff got pretty heated. Sure some of it happened to one degree or another. But it's not hard to notice some of the crooked editing.- hair is a different style during the "same" conversation, you can hear the cuts when they decide to reorder parts to make them seem more dramatic and pissy. They copied the owners laugh and pasted it in awkward parts to make him laugh when he wasn't for effect. Well this is all pretty obvious to most, i just don't get why people watch this kind of stuff enough to elevate the show to where they are. OK, maybe it's the same reason i watched it.

After the TV people left, portland hated the penis room, especially the name. It was changed to The Raven for awhile, now it's back to the tonic lounge. Some of the changes made inside were OK, but everyone really liked the original format and hated to see it go, replaced by more of the same with a scary name. Some of the better ideas stayed, but mostly it's back to being the Tonic Lounge that everyone loved. In the bigger picture, the show was probably good for the Tonic, but for mostly bs reasons.

At the end the host looks like the genius bar savior that came from a far off land to save ye townfolk from thyselves, or something, along with more tricky editing to make it stick. Oh, bonkers.

This is a very interesting look at the competitive bar and restaurant business. Host Taffer pulls no punches with his incredibly blunt assessments which can make viewers cringe at times, but creates a lot of interesting reactions from the owners, managers and employees being berated. He never fails to blurt out, "this is the worst I've ever seen" about something in the business he's trying to turn around.

Although a lot of the show is scripted and contrived, it still pulls you in and keeps you watching. You may have a hard time eating out after seeing the deplorable condition of some of the kitchens. The only suggestion I would make is that they provide more detailed numbers as far as revenues and profits in all of the episodes. There is some of this, but it didn't occur in all the episodes I observed.