Ty Watches Bar Rescue: Baseline Bar and Grill Edition.
/I figure, as long as my readers want to read about my feelings on episodes of "Bar Rescue", I will continue to watch and review the new episodes.
On Sunday there was anew episode of "Bar Rescue". This one took place at a bar in Arizona called Baseline Bar and Grill. The owner did her whole thing at the beginning, talking about all the problems the bar was having. It was your typical "Bar Rescue" stuff. The bar started out great, raking the dough. The Success did not last. Baseline Bar and Grill fell on hard times and now the owner was in some serious debt. I believe this lady was on the verge of losing her house. Instead of trying to make the business profitable again, she just let her employees, two of whom are her children, continue to run the bar straight into the ground. This isn't the first time that Jon Taffer has had to not only rescue a bar, but a family as well.
Game on.
When Taffer showed up to the bar, well, his first stop wasn't at the exact right spot. He and his two "experts" showed up at a place called Baseline Pub. Taffer and crew show up, claim that this place looks okay, but quickly realize that they are in the wrong spot.
Strike one for Baseline Bar and Grill.
Taffer is livid that there are two bars, within a 5 mile radius, that names are that close to each other. Taffer usually gets angry pretty quick, but he was real mad right off the bat. This was a great start to the episode.
When they finally get to the right spot, Taffer and crew get very angry once again. They have their decoy or secret shopper go into the bar. This decoy is a female, and the owner previously said that the bar is not nice to females. The whole bar tending crew is female, and they do not like to interact with female patrons, they flat out say this on the show. To make matters worse, one of the owners daughters finally serves the lady, but she is incredibly rude and off putting. She even swears at her when she orders a "fancy" drink. It was very weird.
Strike two.
This wasn't the thing that put Taffer over the top though. A few seconds later, after ordering some awful food and the whole bartender-patron fiasco, the owner of the bar inflates a kiddie pool and fills it with cold spaghetti. No one in Taffer's car, including Taffer, can figure out why they are doing this. Then, 2 of the bartenders step into the kiddie pool filled with spaghetti and begin to spaghetti wrestle. It was bizarre and looked pretty violent and kind of gross. I'm not a big fan of any wrestling that involves food, and cold spaghetti did not change my mind. I know that one of the workers either broke or had a badly injured nose form the wrestling, and this was when Taffer stepped in.
The patrons all saw Taffer coming, and so did some of the employees, but the owner had no idea. Even with one of her other employees very clearly yelling, "Taffer is coming!" three times. This is what makes "Bar Rescue" great. When the owner gets blindsided by Taffer, it is a thing of beauty. He immediately lays into everyone at the bar. He takes no prisoners when it comes to his wrath. He really lets them have it. The owner asks Taffer to not be so hard on her.
Strike three.
Oh boy does this set Taffer off. The owner is the person who is usually most to blame for the demise, so when they ask for a little relief, he yells at them even more and louder. And, I have to say, he is right most of the time.
After all this, the rest of the episode is your typical "Bar Rescue". The bar cannot handle the stress test, but there is always a silver lining. The whole crew gets re trained in the bar industry. Taffer has a conversation that makes the mom and the daughters close again. Taffer changes the name of the bar, this one from Baseline Bar and Grill to Brick and Barley, one of his better efforts. And the check up shows that the bar has turned things around.
Like I said last week, there is some odd comfort in the consistency of this show. A few weird things did happen though. First, during the reveal of the new restaurant, one of the employees said, and I quote, "this place is classy as f%^k now!", with no ironic tone to her voice at all. That one quote encompasses the type of people that Taffer and Spike TV deals with weekly. Second, during a commercial break, Taffer came on and gave a bar tip. His tip was to "eat up, before you meet up". What made this odd, he has never done this before. I have never seen an ad featuring Taffer during the show. It was weird, odd, bizarre, but brilliant. I actually watched a commercial for the first time in ages.
"Bar Rescue" is back and better than ever. The first two episodes of this season have been great and I will continue to watch and do write ups, not only because you guys are reading it, but because it is so much fun for me. Come back next Tuesday for the review of this coming Sunday's episode.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Since he doesn't drink, Ty is always looking for a bar with high quality entertainment. Food wrestling is not high quality. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.