DoctorK

Mr. Culinary Gangster was a complete arrogant asshole and he was lucky to even get the probation. If the owners had spines. he would have been out on his sorry ass on day one.

Well, Kitchen Nightmares is back with the same old script. This week’s restaurant is hard to take seriously, too much of the scripted drama and lots of crap (probably made up for the show) like the “Culinary Gangster” nonsense (complete with a real professionally printed Culinary Gangster T-shirt probably provided by the producers) to provide the designated bad guy. The owner is the stereotyped foolish owner who sort of knows what is wrong but is too wimpy to do anything about. Maybe he is afraid of the Culinary Gangster? Even a lousy chef would know that the food coming out of the kitchen is bad, and not have the nerve to claim that it is great food. I did love the Culinary Gangster (to be called CG form now on because I am tired of typing it) defending his “sort of” homemade cheese sauce, which is bottled generic cheese (or cheese like) sauce but it is fine because he adds Cheez Whiz to it. I can’t believe any real chef would brag about Cheez Whiz. Now, at the forty minute mark, owner and CG are hugging each other and going to go forward together and make everything great. Yeah, right. This inevitable step is coming a bit early, usually Ramsey and the blowhard clown on phony baloney Bar Rescue wait until the last eight or ten minutes for everybody to hug and get all teary as they move onto the wonderful new path to success. Naturally, we had to see a last minute kitchen collapse (amazing how this happens in all of these shows) for drama, but never fear. Gordon saves the day with a pep talk with the CG and the night finishes on an up note. The follow up has the CG gone and owner wife has some free time for herself and husband owner is looking into the bright future. I am not sure I will watch any more of this show, it just reruns the same script with different faces and some minor unimportant bits to look slightly new.

Crazy, you missed a moderately interesting case. The case was about a collision between an electric bike (plaintiff) and an electric scooter. Defendant lost control for several reasons and he swerved in front of the approaching plaintiff. Defendant admits to being at fault but believes that the defendant ran into his down on the ground scooter and over his own body, and if the plaintiff was paying attention, she had enough time to avoid the collision. Plaintiff has several (conflicting) versions of what happened, some of which made no sense or sounded hard to believe, as pointed out by two of the three judges (guess who was the odd man out). Plaintiff's husband gave a dramatic performance with big histrionic gestures even though he didn't see the accident. He also insisted on calling the defendant's scooter a "motorcycle" and adding that the defendant was wearing a leather jacket (Heaven forbid!). Plaintiff claimed that the defendant ran into her from the side which threw her over her handle bars. The judges start trying to do some accident reconstruction, Tewolde making sense and Corriero showing he never took a high school physics class (shades of JJ?). Two of the judges believed that the defendant's story was consistent and made sense while the plaintiff's story seemed unlikely while Corriero thinks the plaintiff's story makes perfect sense. For me, looking at the plaintiff, I don't believe she would be thrown over the handle bars by anything less than hitting a brick wall at high speed. The plaintiff clearly had significant injuries but I think a lot of the post accident treatment and pain & suffering was either puffing or hypochondria. Plaintiff gets $5K which seems reasonable and defendant was OK with that,

Today was a collection of ridiculous plaintiffs. 1. Young woman wants to change her rather plump body into totally fit and trim with a trainer. She doesn’t know anything about fitness, exercise or training. She gets sore after a workout (poor little thing, she was all crippled up and couldn’t work) so wants her money back from the trainer, a really major amount, all of $100. She gets nothing because she defaulted on her contract. 2. Sloppy painter doing a $600 paint job left paint where it shouldn’t have been, plaintiff pays him with a check as he leaves (apparently expecting to come back next day), tries to stop payment on the check but wasn’t fast enough. Meanwhile her husband yells at her (seems like he told her at the beginning that a $600 painting job is not a good idea), and she tells the painter to not come back (I would bet this was with her husband leaning over her shoulder). For this tragedy, plaintiff wants more than $3,000 back from painter. JM looks at the cleanup required and gives the plaintiff $200. Plaintiff is disappointed that she didn’t get $3,000+. 3. Plaintiff brings in an aging Audi with leaky radiator. If it had come in for me to repair, I would have looked at the age, multiple leaks and aftermarket turbo charger and refused the job, but that’s just me. Defendant replaces the radiator. Plaintiff complains that there are still leaks (this car has a small secondary radiator (probably right behind the large coolant radiator) for the transmission fluid, and the leaks are from the transmission cooling lines, not the new radiator. Plaintiff insists that the defendant replace the new radiator and do other stuff, for coincidentally $3,000+ (see #2 above). Plaintiff tries to prove that the defendant damaged the transmission with a plain sheet of paper with no letterhead or any other info about who it is from. That fails and JM tells the plaintiff that he has not proved that anything the defendant did caused the problems he is claiming so he gets nothing. High point of the day: In the third case hallterview, Doug talks to the defendant and snugs up the defendant’s loose tie, saying that it was driving him nuts which I completely understand. The defendant explains that this was the first time in his life that he wore a tie. For some reason, the recent reruns are entertaining me, that may be just my memory failing me.

I recorded the show last night and just watched, bearing in mind all of the useful info from the posters above. The first ten minutes was pure useless fluff, promoting the show, as if GR shows don’t already have enough padding. There are too many contestants at this point for me to really get any strong feelings about any of the contestants, but I do have a few impressions that may stick in my mind. Tad: It isn’t a character fault but I hope at some point he can afford to get his teeth fixed up. I don’t like his half-assed pony tail while cooking that still leaves a lot of loose hair hanging over the food. Jonathan: He has a potty mouth and got a lot of bleeps (GR also got in a couple himself). That grates on my nerves; strong language when in pain, under stress or angry I understand but dropping it in casually in front of a general audience comes across as illiteracy (doesn’t know any actual adjectives) or lacking minimal class. Brad: Dancing around and singing in a falsetto voice while working in close quarters with others under stress is annoying. Towards the end of the show, he threatened to attack Jason who told him to shut up and cook. Honestly, I enjoyed that little exchange but I don’t think Brad should try to take on Jason in a fight. (Not that I found Jason looking good either, and he may piss people off as much as Brad). Ryan: I didn’t understand most of what he said; I will need to turn on closed captioning if I want to listen to him. I fast forwarded all the way through the winning team’s dinner with GR in some mansion. If I had listened to it, I would probably have heard a few things to annoy me, but I couldn’t stomach the great wonderful award. Nobody sent home was a disappointment, the faster they trim down the number of contestants, the more likely I am to follow the show. As always, YMMV.

(This is mostly redundant with Crazy's more detailed post above but since I typed all this, I might as well toss it in.) Today’s case was unpleasant to me. The plaintiff and defendant have been friends and fellow musicians for fifteen years. The plaintiff loaned his Cadillac to his friend, the defendant, to test drive and then purchase. Defendant signed an agreement that he would be responsible for any and all damages or problems while he had the car. (This may not have been wise. If he and the plaintiff had talked it through, maybe they would have set up insurance coverage better.) The defendant was in an accident (not his fault) that totaled the Cadillac and injured his wife. Defendant’s insurance apparently did not cover him while driving someone else’s car but the insurance of the driver who caused the accident settled with the defendant for $20,000+ for his wife’s injuries, nothing for the car. Defendant signed off on this which settled the case from the other driver’s insurance so that the plaintiff could not go after that insurance company for car damages. Plaintiff’s insurance wouldn’t cover the car damages because the defendant wasn’t a covered driver on this policy. This is bad all around. However, I hated the way the defendant did a lot of talking but it was all about weaseling out of his clearly defined responsibility, and shafted his friend without even trying to do anything about the plaintiff’s loss (market value of the car was $16,000). Plaintiff gets max, $5000, leaving him short $11,000 thanks to his friend.

Today’s scooter case was a complete mess. The plaintiff was wrong on a lot of what she claimed about being unable to register the scooter. Her witness (Charlie) was the person who was selling the scooter for the defendant; there is something wrong here because good old Charlie got about 2/3 of the money the plaintiff paid but the plaintiff wants to get all her money back from the defendant. The defendant’s defense was a complete mess, maybe because he has serious limitations? Although his lack of coherence reminded me of friends of mine in the old days who were daily heavy marijuana smokers, after ten years or so the effects really added up. Undoing the deal makes sense, neither side acted appropriately. Since the show pays the award, Charlie keeps his lion’s share of the money and the defendant gets to keep the small amount that Charlie (his friend?) passed on to him. In the hallterview, the defendant says he will let Charlie sell the scooter again, which tends to confirm my concerns about his limitations, what our grandparents would call “that boy aint right”.

Today’s case had one of the worst defendants I have seen on any court show. I didn’t find the plaintiff particularly likeable but the defendant was a complete nut case. She blatantly broke just about every element of landlord/tenant law. She has no evidence except her memory which is clearly patently defective. Sorry crazy lady, being a “Christian” (dubious claim) lady and even better, a homeopathic doctor doesn’t relieve you of legal obligations or permission to blatantly lie in testimony. I am really glad that they hit her with punitive damages; I think the plaintiff deserved them for the plaintiff’s outrageous actions. It won’t change the defendant one damn bit because she is so far off her rocker that nothing will penetrate the bullet proof bubble of idiocy she lives in. I am surprised that the plaintiff didn’t pick up a really nutty vibe from the defendant before she rented. The icing on the fruitcake defendant was the hallterview where she still believes she is a good landlord. (delayed because I forgot to hit submit)

The Cox/Fox schedule now has two new episodes of this show followed by one hour of the real PC rerun immediately after Justice on the same channel. This doesn't seem to be a good way to build viewership for Justice. I wonder if someone really doesn't like Justice and did this deliberately so people can compare the two shows.

JJ shorted the plaintiff by once again demonstrating her lack of knowledge. She saw the picture of the damaged front end and concluded that the damage was something to do with the axle and fixated on that. Then when she reviewed the plaintiff's repair bill she disregarded most of it because none of it identified the axle as the damage. Well, from the picture of the badly misaligned front wheel, it looks like the defendant hit a curb really hard and damaged some combination of ball joints (listed on the damage bill). control arms, shocks and mounting, and a whole bunch of other expensive stuff that goes into the front suspension. I don't know if he really deserved $4700 (we didn't get a good look at the whole bill) but I do believe the defendant did much more than $1500 in damage. She was also snotty and manipulative and took advantage the Marine who didn't seem to particularly smart. I am glad he is free of her and understands how she jerked him around.

JJ demonstrated again that she can’t do accident reconstructions with any accuracy. The case involved two cars in a very tight circular driveway. Car1 had pulled into the driveway making a tight right turn around the driveway curve, then stopped, most likely leaving the steering cut to hard right. Car2 pulled up close to car1 with car2’s front fender very close to the passenger side of car1. Car1 driver got back into her car and pulled forward slowly (remember the steering wheel is still hard over to the right), possibly scraping the front of car2. JJ with her infinite wisdom says that it is impossible that the passenger side of car1 moved to the right while moving forward. This is simple geometry (middle school level I would say especially considering when she would have been in school before she took the law school classes in “How to Be God”); with the steering wheel hard right, starting off slowly, the car moves forward but also pivots around the right rear tire (with a very slight offset) which moves the car not just forward but also to the right, which could easily have scraped across unmoving car2. Oh well, she is old and cranky but it grates when she makes pronouncements from on high about things she clearly doesn’t understand. I have to admit that this is not unique to JJ. I watch some actual court cases on TV and I often grit my teeth at the "authoritative" statements of "fact" given by judges, lawyers and police witnesses that are just plain wrong (and in some cases physically impossible). Oh well, time to go out front and yell at the clouds.

Due Cox scheduling, I have the opportunity to watch Peoples Court and the second episode of Justice for etc. at the same time, flipping back and forth between the real JM and the new denatured product. The contrast between the shows is crystal clear: the new show sucks enough to make the real JM reruns look good.

The correct verdict. Crazy did a better job of following all the ins and outs than I could do; I just really disliked every one of the litigants and the witnesses, and even the guy who has to sweep up when the show is over. The plaintiff didn't seem to be very honest. Good for her to try to lose weight but boxing doesn't sound like a good way to start exercising. I also looked at her before and after pictures where she claimed she lost 100 pounds, not sure if I believe that, given that the before picture was set up to be the least flattering (head on facing the camera) while the after pic was posed more nicely with her turned slightly to one side reducing her apparent profile. (Just for the record I helped to pay my way through undergraduate school taking flattering pictures of not particularly attractive girlfriends, and only got paid if the girl and the boyfriend liked the pics.) Hundred pounds off or not, it looks like she is back to the before picture. I hope she finds a better gym and keeps up the effort. Then there was the obnoxious and dishonest and clueless defendant. It really sounded like he was running a crappy gym with people gossiping and slinging mud in all directions. His description of the plaintiff's witness as some combination of part owner but really just an employee makes no sense. I absolutely believe him that his gym has lost business but the root cause looks like it is a lousy gym. Fie upon all of them!

I felt the same way when I forgot that the new site was primetimer and I was still using the old link which forwarded to the new one but eventually stopped forwarding so to me it looked like the site was dead and gone. For about a week I felt lost and missed this interaction much more than I would have expected. Then I remembered something about the new name (and URL) and life was good again. In terms of litigants exaggerating, I think my favorite was a fool who complained that the AC in his apartment was out and it was so hot that the "the water in the toilet was boiling". I wanted to ask him if "212 degrees F" sounded familiar. No I am lying, I wanted to smack the crap out of his ignorant face.

Starting off, I don’t need to hear her autobiography and history before every show. Today’s first (7:30 AM) episode was just boring with a touch of sleaze (maybe a bit more than a touch). I don’t even remember much of it now, seven hours later. Second episode, the autobiography again, then we start off with a man who loves the word “literally” the way some fools use the word “like”. First of all, his throat was not “literally” on fire, and he also used the word other times where it made no sense at all. He claims that the hospital diagnosed him with “thermal” injury from the wings; if the medical people actually said that, they need to look up “thermal”. Extreme spice ingested can cause medical problems but it is not from actual heat (i.e., thermal) but mostly chemical damage and/or reactions (e.g., spasms, impaired breathing, which can be dangerous) to the body sensing what seems to be dangerous burning heat. I am not impressed (which he apparently requires from everyone) that he competes in hot wings competitions and therefore deserves respect from his girlfriend’s brother and of course all of us. This is a stupid case, and all of the litigants lacked realism to me. In the same way that the courtroom set reminds me of the many low end third rate knock-offs of JJ, JM and even Mathis which display penny pinching budgets and litigants who often appear to be reading their lines off cue cards held up behind the person they are talking to. As always, YMMV.

I actually enjoyed today's new case, the Door Opened into Traffic fiasco. The plaintiff was a loudmouth jerk who from his own words, was sitting in a car with the door opened into a traffic lane. Meanwhile here comes the unlicensed driver (who has been driving since she was 11 years old, and tells us she is "experienced"). What a pair. I was slightly outraged by the plaintiff with his bogus claims of major injury (he repeated several times that his knee was "crushed"), which didn't keep him from jumping out of his car and running up to and confronting the defendant. Another tidbit: He also looked completely mobile in the video right after the accident. I liked the verdict, bogus plaintiff gets nothing, but the defendant gets money for her phone which the plaintiff destroyed so the phone is the only issue that the judges acted on. I hope the defendant gets a license but I doubt it, why bother when she hasn't needed one for years.

I had to search for the new show, it came on a sub prime channel (UTV44 on Cox) and premiered at 7:30 AM. I did a quick review over on the new thread. I am not impressed.

OK, I found the show on a non prime channel (UTV44 on Cox) premiering at 7:30 AM, not exactly prime viewing time. Also, UTV44 has been the home of many second (or third or fourth) tier court shows. JM seems about the same, but the set looks low budget and the litigants act like the scripted ones on low end court shows. The first case featured a plaintiff who is (or acts the part of) a crazy bitch who rented a room to a college student. She hams it up, makes wild gestures and totally disrespects the judge. She has crazy house rules (must plump up the cushions after sitting on a chair or sofa) and changes the security code for the house alarm and fails to tell the tenant the new codes, then complains when he sets off the alarms, disturbing the neighbors and resulting in city fines; naturally she thinks the tenant should pay for the fines. She babbles incoherently in explaining how changing the codes is somehow wrapped up in her trusting the tenant. Frankly I skimmed by the second case because it was really boring. Honestly, I wish Judge Milian had retired after her long and successful run with Peoples Court. This show feels low rent. The second episode is this afternoon. Maybe it will get better.

Today’s case with the damaged rental car had sort of interesting litigants. The plaintiff was pretty animated but did a decent job of presenting his case with no mudslinging. However, he really needs to pay more attention to details in the rental process. I liked the way that he didn’t treat the car damage as a major catastrophe and didn’t seem to be angry at the defendant, just a bit annoyed. He even provided another car to the defendant after the accident. The defendant intrigued me. He is either really stupid or he was playing that role to weasel out of his responsibilities. I didn’t believe him when he claimed he never got or saw the critical rental documents and conditions. I was watching to see if anyone was going to ask Mr. “I live in New York so I never drive” if he had a valid license at the time; there was a quick reference to him showing his license at one point but I wonder how closely his license was examined. I would like to have heard the defendant explain how the accident happened and why (since it is clear he ran into the back of the other car at a pretty good speed) it wasn’t his fault - that might have been entertaining.

Possibly, but I grew up in a small house with one bathroom and plumbing from 1930 and this problem is easily solved with a plunger, but I suspect that these two, even if they knew what a plunger is, would never bother to use it. They were complete pigs and slobs. You left out the rotting food left out in a pan on the kitchen counter, I felt sorry for the landlord (annoying as she was) for having to go in and clean up the overwhelming nasty mess the pigs left for someone else to clean up. And of course, their kids (apple doesn't fall far from the tree) scrawled all over all of the walls and Mr. Pig said something like "kids and walls, of course they did". I did appreciate it when the plaintiff said she had evidence snaked from the drain by the plumber (who fortunately put what he found in writing) as she held it up, it was in zip lock bags. But I was disappointed that the judges didn't take a close up look at it. "Evidence, evidence, you want evidence! Get a load (so to speak) of this and a sniff!".

JJ comes back with some ancient (2018) cases for us today. Four cases, each with one side of entertainingly annoying litigants versus fairly normal litigants on the other side. For me, these cases were old enough that I could enjoy them again almost as much as the first time around. (I resisted the temptation to look up what I had to say about the cases way back when they first aired because I might get into an argument with myself.) Case 1: Jet Ski damages: Plaintiffs had good clear before and after pics of the jet skis that they rented to the defendants. Defendants were completely in the wrong, denying the before pics and waffling on how many crashes they had with the jet skis. Their defense was based claiming prior damage (ignoring the clear plaintiff before and after pics) and simultaneously that the jet skis had lots of prior damage and the bumpers just fell off and showed that they had been previously repaired with epoxy. They also were willing to take care of the damage by having their friend order replacement parts, but with no installation or body repairs. The defendant woman was particularly annoying with wild statements and her smirking and laughing, so totally convinced that she was going to win the day. Case 2: Squatters got the short end of the stick in their ridiculous claims against the former landlord. Their arguments were stupid (JJ actually called one of the plaintiffs “STUPID!”), and they were clearly familiar with the situation and were planning to squat until the new owner gave up and paid them to finally leave (extortion oh my!). The funniest part was the hallterview in which the defendant (prior landlord) admitted that he was willing to let the back rent go as a wash to avoid the mess that the plaintiffs created by suing him; instead the landlord got one month’s rent from each plaintiff (JJ gave them credit for their security deposits which covered one month for each of them) although JJ wouldn’t consider the defendant’s claim for unpaid utilities. Case 3: Poor dog lost an eye while being boarded in what was clearly negligence by the boarder. The boarder fed his two dogs at the same time in one bowl and they got in a fight, resulting in the loss of an eye. Boarding employee claimed that the dog owner explicitly told them to feed the dogs together in one bowl (sounds unlikely already), but the dog owner brought records from his many previous boardings which showed that he always explicitly tells the boarders to feed them separately. The owner of the boarding place repeatedly talked over JJ and got JJ pretty riled up which was fun to watch, and in the hallterview was still trying to defend herself by asserting that boarding dogs is like letting your kids play soccer, you have to accept risk of injuries. I think the analogy is weak and certainly wouldn’t apply with a dog losing an eye due to clear negligence. Case 4: Trashed car with a golf club. Defendant admits that she was drunk and furious with her “friend” because the friend apparently has hooked up with a former boyfriend of the golf club monster. I don’t know for sure but I somehow doubt that anyone who could get together with the plaintiff (moderately attractive in personality and appearance) would have hooked up with the defendant who is not attractive and sounds like a complete psycho alcoholic. The defendant pretty much acknowledged all the details of golf club attack (drunk, banging on the door late at night at a house with the lights off and waking everybody up) except for actually hitting the car with a golf club. She couldn’t have done it because she doesn’t golf and doesn’t own a club – trust her on this, she really didn’t do it. Yeah, right.

I think I vaguely remembered the first case with the car loan to the two giggling irresponsible parents who stiffed the guy who loaned them money for a car. I am surprised that I didn't comment back when it ran because those two smirking deadbeats would have riled me up a bit when I first saw it. I hated the way that the two dim bulbs smiled at each other and laughed while claiming that they never knew this was always a loan in spite of the check given to them clearly stated on the memo line (right next to where the dim guy filled in his name on the check) that this was a loan. But neither one of them noticed this (giggle, laugh, smile at each other and giggle more) on the check. Maybe I shouldn't use the word "dim", maybe they both have the maturity level of ten year olds. JM was right that these two should not be raising a child. Second case was boring because it was just another case of someone who thought that her party didn’t go as well as she was entitled to and wants a big pile of money back. We have seen this many times before. Personally, I think plaintiff and her indignant witness were at least exaggerating (if not making up) the issues so they could cut their costs for the party. Third case was also lacking in excitement, a bunch of unlikable people. The female defendant was annoying, frequently talking and arguing directly with the plaintiff (and JM let her keep doing it) and came across to me as an aggressive argumentative person whose indignation outweighed her credibility. The male defendant was awfully self-righteous too. All three cases looked like people trying to avoid paying what they owed.

This was a horrible verdict in this case. I despise Corriero even more than before (if that is possible) for the way he argued this case, but the other judges weren't much better. The massive damage to the house (including but not limited to replacing and rehanging three doors, redoing the totally destroyed back yard, replacing windows) will take way over the measly $1150 (just the damage deposit) that the judges so generously allowed the plaintiff to keep, but nothing more. The defendants were lying trash people who have no respect for other people's property. I believe that they did receive the itemized damage list that the plaintiff sent to them, they just flat out lied about not getting it. I also believe that defendants either were doing donuts in front of the house or friends or relatives were doing them.

The flooring defendant was simply a completely full bag of crap. I just don't believe that in the entire four years (wow, four whole years?) he has done this type of work everybody has been happy. Five or six months? Give me break. The way that he laid the flooring without spacing the butt joints shows he has no idea what he is doing and absolutely has never read the manufacturer's instruction; even as the plaintiff is reading directly from the manufacturer's instructions that it cannot be laid over an existing floating or foam backed floor he just refused to accept that. I loved the way that he explained he could not call the plaintiff because his phone was cracked - one of the judges told him that cracked phones still work and held up her own phone. What a jerk, I hope anyone in his area considering flooring sees this show.

Actually, I don't think the plaintiff was too bad, a little histrionic but not too bad in some social environments. The defendant on the other hand was a flat out bald faced unabashed liar about almost everything. I did enjoy watching the plaintiff looking really sour and pissed and had the hand o hips posture as the judges started explaining that she had actually won, admittedly the first part of this sounded bad for her. Hey, every stylish smart woman wants a Kardashian buttr don't they? Corriero is fast and loose with the law whenever he has feelz about something. I still remember a case when he made his verdict based on a litigant not proving his claim "beyond a reasonable doubt". He doesn't recognize civil versus criminal proceedings when it gets in the way of his bleeding heart. I might be able to feel a little sorry for him as a pathetic beta person completely walked over (and I think not respected by) the alpha other judges, but he is such a jerk that no sympathy from me.