I started getting back in Bar Rescue again. Pluto TV basically has a dedicated channel now for it. This is easily my favorite go-to “kill time” show.

One thing obscure I’ve noticed. It might just be me but it makes me laugh. Have you ever noticed a good amount episodes where he is talking with the chef or mixologist. He brings out a map of the area. It’s always just this HUGE map of the area to chat about demographics. But then when he draws a circle on then huge map. It’s just this tiny circle or two. Just makes me chuckle because of the dramatic size of the map and the build up of customer strategy. Only for him to circle 2 tiny spots on it.

Is it just me that noticed that? If it is please call me out.

Let me get two things out of the way immediately:

1. Kevin absolutely deserved to be fired. I am not disputing that whatsoever.
2. I am not Kevin.

I’m saying that second part because whenever somebody on a reality show is particularly egregious and someone on Reddit defends anything about how they were treated, inevitably somebody goes, “Nice try, Kevin.”

No. Kevin was an incompetent cook who deserved to lose his job. My issue is with the spectacle they made out of firing him and the victory lap they continued taking after he was already gone.

Richard promoted Michelle to manager, and then Michelle was the one who fired Kevin. Fine. But the whole thing was presented almost like a celebratory moment where everybody finally got to stick it to him.

Someone just lost his job.

Maybe he deserved to lose it. Maybe it was entirely his own fault that he lost it. That still fucking sucks. You can terminate somebody because they’re incompetent without turning it into a public humiliation ritual.

And I especially don’t buy the narrative that Kevin was somehow responsible for everything wrong with Fairways.

They found 14 health-code violations. Kevin absolutely bears responsibility for sanitation problems inside his kitchen.

But mushrooms growing in the walls of the walk-in?

That is not just a “bad cook” problem. Mold growing inside the structure of the building is a building-maintenance problem. Richard owns the place. That ultimately falls on ownership.

And despite the way the episode kept piling everything onto Kevin, Kevin did not cause Phil Wills to vomit.

Michelle served Phil beer from a keg that had apparently been connected for a fucking year. That’s disgusting, but unless Kevin was moonlighting as the person responsible for maintaining the beer system, that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Yet they kept saying things like Kevin had “hurt every one of you,” as though this one shitty cook had single-handedly destroyed the entire business.

Then they fired him.

Okay. Good. He deserved it. Case closed. Move on.

Except they didn’t.

Jon then tells James that he’s “twice the man Kevin will ever be.”

Dude.

Kevin is already fucking gone.

Praise James because James deserves praise. Promote him. Give him responsibility. Tell him he stepped up.

Why does complimenting James require taking another personal shot at somebody who has already been fired and isn’t even there anymore?

And what pissed me off the most was Richard later bragging about how Kevin kept calling and texting him and how proud he was that he was ignoring the calls.

Answer his fucking calls. Stop being a pussy punk bitch.

You’re the owner. You just fired someone who worked for you. Maybe Kevin wants an explanation. Maybe he wants to argue about what happened. Maybe he needs to arrange getting his belongings. Maybe he just wants to bitch you out.

Whatever.

Answer the phone, tell him the decision is final, and have the uncomfortable conversation.

Ignoring his calls and then bragging about it on television doesn’t make Richard look tough. It makes him look like he was perfectly willing to confront Kevin when Jon Taffer, Michelle, security, and an entire television crew were standing behind him, but suddenly didn’t want to deal with Kevin once they were gone.

And before the inevitable comments:

Yes, I saw the final scene where Kevin drives away on his moped/liquor-cycle thing and you hear one last little “meep meep” as he disappears into the distance.

Please shut up.

Yes, it was edited to be funny. Yes, the visual is ridiculous. Yes, I laughed.

That has absolutely nothing to do with my point.

And again, no, I am not Kevin writing this.

Kevin deserved to get fired.

What he didn’t deserve was to become the convenient scapegoat for every problem at Fairways and then have everyone continue dancing on his grave after he’d already lost his job.

Consequences were warranted. The humiliation victory lap wasn’t.

EDIT / P.S. — There’s another elephant in the room: the concept itself sucked.

Fairways was a golf-themed bar in Murfreesboro, with a younger demographic, and somehow Kevin gets treated like he was the fundamental reason the place wasn’t drawing people.

Maybe the bigger problem was that golf fucking sucks as a bar concept for that market.

Golf is deliberately slow, quiet, low-energy and methodical. Bars, especially bars trying to attract a younger crowd, generally thrive on energy, social interaction, music, movement and atmosphere. Those things are almost complete opposites.

That doesn’t mean nobody likes golf or that a golf bar can never work. But if your entire concept isn’t resonating with the demographic around you, the cook cannot fix that by making a better burger.

Kevin could have suddenly transformed into Gordon fucking Ramsay and it still wouldn’t answer the question:

Why would a bunch of young people in Murfreesboro choose a low-energy golf-themed bar over every other place they could drink and hang out?

So yes, Kevin sucked at his job and deserved to be fired.

But Kevin didn’t put mushrooms in the walls, Kevin didn’t leave a keg tapped for a year, and Kevin sure as shit didn’t invent the golf concept.

At some point, maybe the failing bar was also the result of a shitty concept and shitty ownership decisions.

If you had only time to recommend 5 episodes of Bar Rescue which ones would they be and why?

Mine are. (All entirely season 3 for some reason so I had to erase a few and add ones not from season 3 to be fair so I am thinking s3 is prime Bar Rescue for me).

1. Don’t Judge A Booze by its Bottle - All In guy is both hilarious and pathetic in equal measure.

2. Punch Drunk and Trailer Trashed. You can’t be a fan of the show and not watch the OFace episode.

3. Scoreboard to Death- Features my favorite recon team. Maria Menounos’s reactions to the filth are hilarious.

4. Ice,Mice, Baby……Ashley Clark. (Season 5)

5. Sticky situations….Porn Couch (Season4)

“Grow Some Meatballs.”

Let me start by saying Robert was clearly not a great cook. The kitchen was filthy, he made serious food-safety mistakes, and if Mike and Diane decided he wasn’t capable of running their kitchen, firing him was completely defensible.

What rubbed me the wrong way was how quickly “Robert is a bad cook” became “Robert fucked up this entire business.”

Mike and Diane owned The Tailgate for years. They hired a bunch of relatives who weren’t qualified for their positions and then repeatedly failed to hold them accountable. Robert didn’t appoint himself cook. They hired him and allowed that kitchen to get into that condition.

Then the stress test happens. Robert is struggling, food is coming back, and a grease fire breaks out. Jon keeps framing it like “look what Robert did to you.” Brendan Collins recommends getting rid of him, and suddenly Diane finally discovers the ability to fire somebody.

Then she tells Robert to forget about coming back and “fucking up my business.”

Your business? You fucked up your business.

Robert may have contributed to the problems, but he did not spend years hiring inappropriate family members, failing to supervise them, allowing the kitchen to deteriorate, or apparently failing to ensure there was a functioning fire extinguisher when an actual kitchen fire occurred.

And if Robert’s skills and sanitation were really that bad, why did it take Jon Taffer and Brendan Collins showing up with a television crew before his own employers finally said:

>Clean your kitchen or you're fired.

That’s management.

Also, why was Robert treated like the cancer that needed to be cut out while Connie got reassigned? The show’s own test demonstrated that she was ineffective as security.

Again: Robert may very well have deserved to lose his job.

But there’s a difference between firing an employee because he isn’t capable of doing the job and acting like that employee personally destroyed a business that you owned and mismanaged for years before Jon Taffer ever walked through the door.

Robert wasn’t the problem.

I feel like the older episodes from before 2020 are better. I don’t mind the new episodes but I prefer the older ones. Anyone feel the same.

What were the scummiest dirtiest bars that Jon turned into the nicest bars. I don’t care if the bar latest 7 days or 7 years. I am just looking for “yeah that’s a shit show” to “wow I might actually go there.”