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One of my guilty pleasures is watching reality tv shows, specifically the fix-it type shows where failing businesses are visited by a person with a lot of experience in running said business. (See: UK Kitchen Nightmares, Tabatha's Salon Takeover, Bar Rescue) They're not something I make time for or DVR or anything, but I like to put them on when I'm doing something like cleaning or cooking or whatever, so there's something interesting but not distracting while I work.
SO, there's this new Fox/Gordon Ramsay show called Hotel Hell and it's basically Kitchen Nightmares, but with hotels instead of restaurants, and I wasn't planning on watching it because the Fox-produced Ramsay shows are pretty awful to watch because they're basically 45 minutes of screaming and crying and outrageously obtrusive music/narration. (Master Chef being something of an exception.) BUT I had to clean the kitchen today, and the show was on On Demand, so I watched the two-part premiere episode.
and omg, it was, oh wow I do not know how to describe it. Like, it was actually kind of awesome, but not because of the format? (One nice touch: Ramsay handles the narration, not some annoying state-the-obvious voice-over.) Basically the owners were such bizarre and abject failures that the tropes of reality tv storytelling could not contain their weirdness. Also the business in question was a Vermont bed-and-breakfast, and having stayed at two Vermont BNBs, I could totally call bullshit on a lot of the excuses the owner came up with in regards to how BNBs are 'expected' to operate.
ANYWAY, it was a pretty hilarious/sad/rage-inducing watch. The owners were a couple but really only one guy, Robert, was running things, while his older boyfriend Ari bankrolled the operation because IDK, love I guess? And they filled their hotel with lots of ~original art pieces~ and ~antiques~ and went on and on about how they were super special snowflakes! because they weren't some soulless corporate operation and within the first five minutes I wanted to punch Robert. AWESOME.
So Ramsay does the expected 'see how the business is run' tour and predictably, things are pretty shitty, but not in the way you might think? Robert brings Ramsay to his room and it's super gorgeous, but when the bathroom faucet is turned on EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE SEWAGE. So they have to put Ramsay in another, not smelly room. Then he asks for lunch and Robert is like "okay" but when Ramsay asks for a menu Robert's like "uhhh we don't have one, we don't serve lunch, but if a guest asks for it the cook makes them something" and Ramsay's just like "oh my god this is already unbelievably stupid" and things were hilariously awkward in the best way.
They go to the restaurant and Robert leaves Ramsay to tell the cook about making lunch, but really ineffectively, like he walks into the kitchen area and goes "Ramsay will be having lunch" and then leaves and the cook is all "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT." Meanwhile Ramsay is talking to a waitress who is 70 but looks way younger, but not like, in a creepy way, and she's super-shy around Ramsay and it's cute until he finds out she hasn't been paid for like three weeks. And then he asks some more questions and finds out her last check was only $48 and her total earnings for the last year only added up to $6000 and Ramsay is just :OOOOOOOOO because seriously, WTF.
Anyway! The food comes and it's overpriced (like, $75 for a lamb shank) and bad and Robert is passive-aggressively dissing his own chef, and in between dishes the nice waitress whispers, "Do you want to know what happened to the old chef?" Apparently, the old chef quit because she was also not getting paid regularly and the owners were so incapable that she was buying produce using her own credit card and the owners weren't reimbursing her.
Ramsay gets all, uh, Ramsay-ish and calls out Robert and the chef to the dining room, and the new chef says he's sorry his food sucks, and also yeah he only gets paid like $400 a week IF he gets a check at all. Then Robert just gets really bitchy and passive aggressive and blames the chef for all kinds of shit and Ramsay is just "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT THE STAFF WHEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING THEM, ALSO WTF IS THAT RV DOING OUT IN THE BACK" and Robert's like "It's where we live, sometimes I need to take a break from this ~soul-crushing job~" and the show cuts to another talking-head segment with Robert and he says the most hilariously tone-deaf line yet:
"It's not an RV, it's a motor-coach. That's the higher-end RV."
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA oh my god, the douchebag levels: THROUGH THE ROOF. Motor-COACH.
It turns out that instead of paying their staff, Robert and Ari spend their money on shittons of antiques and original art and inviting their friends over for private parties and free rooms/food for which the staff is not tipped. And since Ramsay cannot punch the owners in the face repeatedly, he gives up for awhile, but this being reality tv (and also feeling sorry for the staff) he goes back, hoping to convince Robert to sell some of his art collection (which he repeatedly describes as 'museum quality') to pay his workers.
SO a bunch of antique shit gets piled up in the hotel's Great Hall to get appraised by an auctioneer, and the auctioneer lady walks in and makes this 'da fuq' face the SECOND she sees all the stuff. And they ask her how much she thinks everything is worth, and they're thinking like $300,000~$400,000 but the lady is like, "lol, more like $25,000." And Robert's like, "UHHHH that's just your OPINION" and she's like, "No, these are replicas and copies, and not very good ones," and just goes around pointing out how crappy/cheap all of the stuff is. It was a ~beautiful~ comeuppance.
Eventually there's something approaching a happy ending, in the sense that uh, there's a successful meal service and one (just one) of the staff members gets paid and the owners say sorry a lot and talk about a fire being lit underneath them. Buuuuut even for a reality show, the contrite owner segments are pretty insincere and passive aggressive and blame-filled, so it's pretty obvious that things will continue to be awful for the workers until the inn inevitably fails.
I'm not sure I'll watch Hotel Hell again (for serious, that soundtrack is aggressively awful) but the two-part pilot episode is worth watching for the D: factor, at least.
SO, there's this new Fox/Gordon Ramsay show called Hotel Hell and it's basically Kitchen Nightmares, but with hotels instead of restaurants, and I wasn't planning on watching it because the Fox-produced Ramsay shows are pretty awful to watch because they're basically 45 minutes of screaming and crying and outrageously obtrusive music/narration. (Master Chef being something of an exception.) BUT I had to clean the kitchen today, and the show was on On Demand, so I watched the two-part premiere episode.
and omg, it was, oh wow I do not know how to describe it. Like, it was actually kind of awesome, but not because of the format? (One nice touch: Ramsay handles the narration, not some annoying state-the-obvious voice-over.) Basically the owners were such bizarre and abject failures that the tropes of reality tv storytelling could not contain their weirdness. Also the business in question was a Vermont bed-and-breakfast, and having stayed at two Vermont BNBs, I could totally call bullshit on a lot of the excuses the owner came up with in regards to how BNBs are 'expected' to operate.
ANYWAY, it was a pretty hilarious/sad/rage-inducing watch. The owners were a couple but really only one guy, Robert, was running things, while his older boyfriend Ari bankrolled the operation because IDK, love I guess? And they filled their hotel with lots of ~original art pieces~ and ~antiques~ and went on and on about how they were super special snowflakes! because they weren't some soulless corporate operation and within the first five minutes I wanted to punch Robert. AWESOME.
So Ramsay does the expected 'see how the business is run' tour and predictably, things are pretty shitty, but not in the way you might think? Robert brings Ramsay to his room and it's super gorgeous, but when the bathroom faucet is turned on EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE SEWAGE. So they have to put Ramsay in another, not smelly room. Then he asks for lunch and Robert is like "okay" but when Ramsay asks for a menu Robert's like "uhhh we don't have one, we don't serve lunch, but if a guest asks for it the cook makes them something" and Ramsay's just like "oh my god this is already unbelievably stupid" and things were hilariously awkward in the best way.
They go to the restaurant and Robert leaves Ramsay to tell the cook about making lunch, but really ineffectively, like he walks into the kitchen area and goes "Ramsay will be having lunch" and then leaves and the cook is all "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT." Meanwhile Ramsay is talking to a waitress who is 70 but looks way younger, but not like, in a creepy way, and she's super-shy around Ramsay and it's cute until he finds out she hasn't been paid for like three weeks. And then he asks some more questions and finds out her last check was only $48 and her total earnings for the last year only added up to $6000 and Ramsay is just :OOOOOOOOO because seriously, WTF.
Anyway! The food comes and it's overpriced (like, $75 for a lamb shank) and bad and Robert is passive-aggressively dissing his own chef, and in between dishes the nice waitress whispers, "Do you want to know what happened to the old chef?" Apparently, the old chef quit because she was also not getting paid regularly and the owners were so incapable that she was buying produce using her own credit card and the owners weren't reimbursing her.
Ramsay gets all, uh, Ramsay-ish and calls out Robert and the chef to the dining room, and the new chef says he's sorry his food sucks, and also yeah he only gets paid like $400 a week IF he gets a check at all. Then Robert just gets really bitchy and passive aggressive and blames the chef for all kinds of shit and Ramsay is just "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT THE STAFF WHEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING THEM, ALSO WTF IS THAT RV DOING OUT IN THE BACK" and Robert's like "It's where we live, sometimes I need to take a break from this ~soul-crushing job~" and the show cuts to another talking-head segment with Robert and he says the most hilariously tone-deaf line yet:
"It's not an RV, it's a motor-coach. That's the higher-end RV."
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA oh my god, the douchebag levels: THROUGH THE ROOF. Motor-COACH.
It turns out that instead of paying their staff, Robert and Ari spend their money on shittons of antiques and original art and inviting their friends over for private parties and free rooms/food for which the staff is not tipped. And since Ramsay cannot punch the owners in the face repeatedly, he gives up for awhile, but this being reality tv (and also feeling sorry for the staff) he goes back, hoping to convince Robert to sell some of his art collection (which he repeatedly describes as 'museum quality') to pay his workers.
SO a bunch of antique shit gets piled up in the hotel's Great Hall to get appraised by an auctioneer, and the auctioneer lady walks in and makes this 'da fuq' face the SECOND she sees all the stuff. And they ask her how much she thinks everything is worth, and they're thinking like $300,000~$400,000 but the lady is like, "lol, more like $25,000." And Robert's like, "UHHHH that's just your OPINION" and she's like, "No, these are replicas and copies, and not very good ones," and just goes around pointing out how crappy/cheap all of the stuff is. It was a ~beautiful~ comeuppance.
Eventually there's something approaching a happy ending, in the sense that uh, there's a successful meal service and one (just one) of the staff members gets paid and the owners say sorry a lot and talk about a fire being lit underneath them. Buuuuut even for a reality show, the contrite owner segments are pretty insincere and passive aggressive and blame-filled, so it's pretty obvious that things will continue to be awful for the workers until the inn inevitably fails.
I'm not sure I'll watch Hotel Hell again (for serious, that soundtrack is aggressively awful) but the two-part pilot episode is worth watching for the D: factor, at least.
