Ty Watches Bar Rescue: Brickhouse Bar and Grill Edition

This past Sunday, "Bar Rescue" turned in one of their worst episodes that I have seen in awhile. Taffer and crew headed to the "Brickhouse Bar and Grill" in Colorado to help save it. From the start, I was not very happy with this episode. The great thing about this season is the fact that it has been so different from the other seasons. This season has not taken itself seriously, or when they do, it is with a coy smile as if to say, we know what we are doing. There have been some home run episodes in earlier seasons, like "The Landing Strip", "Piratz Tavern" and "The O Face Bar", but most early episodes are filled with "redemption" stories and cliché after cliché. It can be pretty off putting. That was the case with "Brickhouse".

The episode opens with your typical sad, my bar is failing, can you help me Jon Taffer type story. But, we come to realize that the guy running the bar is a member of the army that gets deployed a bunch. I have no problem with the troops, they are doing the US a great service that I could never bring myself to do, but to constantly talk about the fact that you are an army guy, so you need help more than others, stop with that. The bar is not failing because you get deployed, it is failing because the owner likes to get drunk on the job, not charge anyone and hit on patrons in front of his girlfriend, who also works for him. I do not like when people use outside excuses as to why their company is failing. That is some Donald Trump type shit, and Trump is a colossal failure when it comes to pretty much everything in his miserable life. But, this owner used his army and deployment as the only reason his bar was failing. That was a terrible excuse.

Unfortunately, "Bar Rescue" and Jon Taffer didn't really tell him that he was the problem, they kind of ran with the army stuff, because it makes for "touching" TV I guess. Taffer, when talking and berating this guy, kept using military terms and telling him that he needed to run his bar like he runs his platoon. What a bunch of crap. A bar is not a war zone Jon Taffer. I hate, hate, hate when people compare everyday stuff in life to something as horrific and terrifying as war. I don't like when athletes are called "warriors" or "heroic". I don't like when a field or a company is compared to a "battlefield" or a "platoon". It is all nonsense. Athletes are not warriors or heroic, they are athletes. The same can be said for a business owner. He is only a warrior or heroic when he is on the literal battlefield, not when he is running his bar into the ground. But, that did not stop the "Bar Rescue" crew from running this comparison into the ground. Every time the owner got yelled at, or had a nice little sit down with Taffer, everything was compared to his military record. I COULD NOT CARE LESS about his military record. I wanted to know why his bar needed to be rescued. I wanted to know what he was doing wrong. I wanted Taffer to berate him for getting drunk on the job and treating his girlfriend like garbage. I wanted to know why their systems were so terrible. I wanted to see the experts get into it with the employees.

The things I love about "Bar Rescue", we only got a very, very little bit of this. The small bits of good stuff was not enough to get the bad taste of this episode out of mine, and my wife's mouth. The stress test was not nearly as gleefully terrible as it could have been because, any time they ran into a problem, Taffer would yell at the guy and tell him to run this bar like he runs his army unit. What a pile of crap. During training, they kept talking about making cocktails and food that was affordable, but also appealing to an army man. I'm sorry, does every patron at this bar have an army background? I don't think that everyone in the whole state of Colorado is in the military, but this episode tries to make it seem that way. The training was filled with army related puns and it was so, so stupid. After training and the crew fixing up the bar, Taffer renamed it "Garrison's Tavern", I have no idea what this has to do with the military or the people that work at this place, but the people at "Bar Rescue" sure tried to make it seem that way.

After re launch, they of course were firing on all cylinders, and Taffer was praising the owner for running the bar like he runs his army unit. They would not stop the army talk, hanging on to it all the way to the end. It was infuriating.

This was a very lackluster episode lumped into what has been a pretty great season of "Bar Rescue". I guess they can't all be winners, but this was a humongous step down. I loathed this episode, and I hope with the final 2 episodes this season, they stay away from this type of crap. As I said, stop comparing everyday life with scary situations like war. It comes off contrived and superficial. It is also very patronizing to people in the army who fight for their lives everyday. A rescue on "Bar Rescue" will never be as scary or hard as life in the army. This was a bad, bad episode. Do not watch it, unless you want to be frustrated by terrible writing and bad war puns.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Something else Ty really hates are the shenanigans of men's rights activists. Hear all about his anger towards these terrible people. Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

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