S03.E05: Lakeview Hotel

[OnceSane]

Gordon visits an ice cream parlor in Washington that struggles with a lack of support from the local town.

[MelissaMinion]

Oh, boy. This is shaping up to be another Amy's, isn't it?

[MelissaMinion]

I don't have the heart to snark at this guy. And I won't even complain that Ramsey's show is more psychological intervention than hotel fix....

I started feeling bad for him about halfway through, and I'm so glad he got it. 

....and my sympathy just died as he decided to continue to ban children....

[Albino]

Aaaaannnnd...yes!  He's back to his old ways. Good luck, asshole. 

I'm amazed why his wife didn't get called out by Gordon, considering her behavior with customers and employees in the beginning of the episode.  To say nothing of digging food out of the garbage for a customer's doggie bag.    

OT, but speaking of "psychological intervention"...Robert Irvine just signed to do a daily, hour long talk show on CW that has nothing to do with  food.  It's a "daytime conflict resolution" show. The more you know...

Edited June 22, 2016 by Albino

[Pdxblonde]

They are losing approximately $30k a month (!!) but still go to Mexico for 2 weeks? Priorities, I see 

[St. Claire]

I don't normally watch this program, but tuned in because I know the artist who did the re-do on the ice cream space decor. If these people were fictional characters, the writers would be criticized for making them too ridiculous for words- the insistence that thawing the meat meant he wasn't using frozen burgers, the accumulation of dust in the food areas, the gross disrespect for everyone (I don't take kindly to jokes about the pole dancing talents of young women on staff)...just horrific. Are most of the featured clients this bad?

[Surrealist]

I was extremely happy to see that Gordon brought back the UV light stick and goggles for the guests and owners to see the pillow, mattress, and duvet stains.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Surrealist

[Snarklepuss]

1 hour ago, Pdxblonde said:

They are losing approximately $30k a month (!!) but still go to Mexico for 2 weeks? Priorities, I see 

Not to mention the gold Rolex my husband noticed on the husband's arm.

17 minutes ago, Surrealist said:

I was extremely happy to see that Gordon brought back the UV light stick and goggles for the guests and owners to see the pillow, mattress, and duvet stains.

Me too, only I wish he would bring back the bit with him undressing, LOL.

I think these shows are getting away from an actual makeover into psychological analysis and drama.  I almost thought this would be another 2 parter because it was already 54 minutes in before they went into the cosmetic changes and wrap-up.  I wish we could be hit a little less with some things and get more of others - Although I too would have liked to see the wife's attitude addressed too.  Where are they wasting show time anymore?  Are there more commercials?  I'm wondering because it used to seem like there was enough time to cover everything adequately.  Now, not so much.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Snarklepuss

[LittleIggy]

What is it about delusional people and small inn ownership? I read the terrible and poor reviews on TripAdviser, and their restaurant staff seemed as appalling as the owners.

[TDT]

1 hour ago, LittleIggy said:

What is it about delusional people and small inn ownership? I read the terrible and poor reviews on TripAdviser, and their restaurant staff seemed as appalling as the owners.

No wonder why most of them left(according to Gordon's update)

I'm going to just go ahead and guess that next week's episode ends the same way..

[meisje]

Quote

Not to mention the gold Rolex my husband noticed on the husband's arm.

Quote

I'm amazed why his wife didn't get called out by Gordon, considering her behavior with customers and employees in the beginning of the episode.  To say nothing of digging food out of the garbage for a customer's doggie bag.

 

Good catch, I'm sure he spares no expense when it comes to his every whim. I wonder if the "first week alone" in Mexico involves pole dancers as well. I didn't buy Afni's sad sack, "he's my husband, he's my everything" shit either. Did anyone else notice her scrunch-face every time she overheard Gordon commenting on something or during actual conversations? She looked like she'd just accidentally eaten a potato out of a garbage bin. It was nice that the town's business people came out to embrace them, but if any of them already knew only the potato story, they should have just bailed.

I'm glad Gordon called him out on his treatment of his son and talked about addiction, but I couldn't for a moment believe Brent's narcissism was about anything other than his own entitlement. After thinking very little of Karan over the past 2 episodes, I'm willing to move her up the ladder of sanity to make room for Brent & Afni.

Looks like these two nutjobs were quick to get their thoughts out about how much the show cost their business, delusional. 

[Surrealist]

2 hours ago, Snarklepuss said:

Me too, only I wish he would bring back the bit with him undressing, LOL.

I keep waiting for Gordon to pull up at a hotel fully naked. 

It appears as though these shows were filmed during winter, so I'm guessing no Speedo shots this season. 

Watch. I say that, and there will be one on the upcoming episode. 

 

Anyway, these two owners deserve to fail. I can't believe how appalling their behavior is. I, too, kept waiting for Gordon to rail into the wife. She's an idiot too.

[meisje]

They're so much worse than I thought 1/2 an hour ago (from the Yakima Herald):

Quote

Yet, Brent and Afni hope the biggest payoff is yet to come once the episode airs for the first time and creates a buzz about their business.

“I think this is the biggest thing that happened to this valley,” Brent said. “The crew was staying in all the different hotels, going to the coffee shop and restaurants. They warmed the community up to us.”

Brent said they did it for the community.

After last summer’s devastating fires, he and his wife wanted to find a way to give back and stimulate business in the area. They decided to do a reality television show and saw that “Hotel Hell” was looking for nominations from the West Coast. In a few days after submitting their application, they received a call from the producers.

I can't believe they tried to spin it as helping the area's businesses and their way of giving back for the fires. UGH. I hope the health department gives them some well-deserved buzz at some point. 

[Snarklepuss]

6 hours ago, LittleIggy said:

What is it about delusional people and small inn ownership? I read the terrible and poor reviews on TripAdviser, and their restaurant staff seemed as appalling as the owners.

I never realized that John Cleese based "Fawlty Towers" on a real inn in England until I watched the extras that came with the DVD of the series where Cleese talked about it in an interview.  It seems the owner at one time was another eccentric nut job similar to Basil Fawlty who was rude to guests, had odd rules, etc.  So I guess it's a thing!  The only thing is, most of them are just nasty and creepy, not made funny through the magic of comedy.

[Snarklepuss]

4 hours ago, meisje said:

 

Good catch, I'm sure he spares no expense when it comes to his every whim. I wonder if the "first week alone" in Mexico involves pole dancers as well. I didn't buy Afni's sad sack, "he's my husband, he's my everything" shit either. Did anyone else notice her scrunch-face every time she overheard Gordon commenting on something or during actual conversations? She looked like she'd just accidentally eaten a potato out of a garbage bin. It was nice that the town's business people came out to embrace them, but if any of them already knew only the potato story, they should have just bailed.

Hah, Mr. Snarkle said that too about the pole dancers.  What's up with the 4 and 5 star rating on Trip Advisor and Booking.com, though?

[BusyOctober]

If dust and cob webs are clearly visible & hanging over food and reception areas, I'm going to assume the guest rooms will be disgustingly dirty as well.  The UV light reveal always grosses me out.  Does that gizmo light up for all "bodily fluids" like sweat & drool in addition to fluids emitted from the nether regions? I always travel with my own pillow and I have been known to bring my own flat sheet to spread on the bed if I'm not sure about the hotel/motel chain. The dust in the AC units/filters are something I bet a lot of inn keepers forget to clean.  But how difficult is it to look up once in a while and notice dust building up on fan blades & light fixtures? 

That guy was a straight up control freak.  Passive-aggressive and more interested in being "right" than being a successful business owner or part of a community.  I can't imagine what kind of life the teenage daughter has.  Her father dislikes kids and thinks they shouldn't be seen OR heard. I wonder if she's ever allowed into the restaurant or the ice cream parlor?

The "week alone" vacation doesn't bother me in theory.  My husband goes off on a camping trip with his buddies & I go off for a 2-4 day girls' trip once a year.  However, this guy makes me suspicious of his private time.  I don't think he has any friends for a guys' trip, and he doesn't seem like the meditative type looking for a week of reflective deep thoughts. 

[dstranger99]

Another stupid episode that resembles more of a "Dr Phil" show than a hotel make-over......

[spiderpig]

Nonviolent viewer here, but I wanted to smack Brent and Afni upside the head.  Take a property in a (sorry, have to use The Word) stunning location and make me not want to stay there.  Good work, you two.

ETA:  Just rewatched.  Was there ever a bigger downer in Gordon's closing comments?  They've reverted to their old habits and alienated the town again.

Edited June 22, 2016 by spiderpig
Gordon's followup

[break21]

This episode was kind of a snooze for me.   The morning after, all I remember is it was dusty and they don't use fresh hamburger meat.

[Uncle Benzene]

Yeah, this show just isn't fun anymore. This new super-duper-serious Therapist Ramsay version is a slog. The improvements to the facilities and menus are treated as afterthoughts, and it doesn't help that apparently Gordo is pretty shitty at getting through to all these people. Has there even been a modest success so far this season? Because if memory serves, they've all failed spectacularly. Stick to your day job, Gordo. (And by "day job" I mean being a dick on tee vee, because that's a hell of a lot more entertaining than this overly-serious self-aggrandizing drivel.)

It's almost as if once Amy's Baking Company went viral/nuclear, the producers said "Holy shit, we should do ABC every week!" But that's the thing, the Electric Bouzgalos were lightning in a bottle. Magical unicorns made completely of batshit. You can't just conjure that up every week, or worse yet, try to manufacture a parade of reasonable facsimiles. The more you try, the more forced it comes across, and the more tiresome the pale-by-comparison result.

It also doesn't help that the producers don't seem to have any understanding of why ABC went viral. It wasn't because Gordo "fixed" them, or even tried and failed to fix them. It's because they were a special kind of batshit, and asshole enough that we the viewers didn't have to feel bad about ourselves for pointing and laughing our asses off at the whole spectacle. We weren't rooting for Amy and Sami, we weren't even tempted to empathize. We were free to just cheer Ramsay on and be baffled right along with him about the special kind of crazy he and we were witnessing. They were cartoon villains, except that they were actually real, and it was fun seeing them reap what they'd sown. To drown in their own bile.

Contrast that to this, where a couple had lost a young child, a woman was pretty clearly (IMHO) suffering from some sort of very real mental illness and was likely being manipulated by "friends" and largely ignored by family, and now a guy who apparently is just an asshole but not even an entertaining asshole, just humorless and dull, with no fucks to give about pretty much anything. That's not entertaining, it's just sad. And boring.

There either has to be genuine redemption, or heaping helpings of schadenfreude. One or the other. But when you have neither, then what do you have? Not a whole hell of a lot here lately, One Potato Two Potato. The shift to worshiping at the altar of Ramsay as some kind of self-styled spiritual guru to sad sacks has sapped all the fun out of the show.

[Julia]

Besides and too, what expertise does Ramsay have in hotel management? Maybe a course in technical college twenty five years ago? I want to see him work in the kitchen, where he's pretty commonly recognized to be brilliant. I already know that most people prefer not to sleep on stranger semen or eat frozen food when they're paying a premium price to stay at a hotel.

[hatchetgirl]

This was such an odd episode.  Very disjointed, repetitive, oddly edited. Just so uncomfortable and not just because of the owners.  

[Snarklepuss]

11 hours ago, Uncle Benzene said:

Yeah, this show just isn't fun anymore. This new super-duper-serious Therapist Ramsay version is a slog. The improvements to the facilities and menus are treated as afterthoughts, and it doesn't help that apparently Gordo is pretty shitty at getting through to all these people. Has there even been a modest success so far this season? Because if memory serves, they've all failed spectacularly. Stick to your day job, Gordo. (And by "day job" I mean being a dick on tee vee, because that's a hell of a lot more entertaining than this overly-serious self-aggrandizing drivel.)

ITA, I actually felt like he was having fun with this series for the last couple of seasons and it was almost like he was mocking some of the owners to the audience, which made it more like a farce so it was at least worth a good laugh.  I don't know, this season there's a downer element in his attitude that I can't explain, plus the people are not "funny ha ha" but more "funny sad", to quote an old song.  Maybe the show wanted to go the route of actually appearing to want to help people.  But these people are too far gone to help, and then just tacking on a few seconds of new menu and renovations at the end of a marathon therapy hour is not going to convince me that helping them is either the goal or is going to work.

[Evil Queen]

21 hours ago, meisje said:

They're so much worse than I thought 1/2 an hour ago (from the Yakima Herald):

I can't believe they tried to spin it as helping the area's businesses and their way of giving back for the fires. UGH. I hope the health department gives them some well-deserved buzz at some point. 

Wow on that one! Someone has delusions going on. If they had wanted to help they should have like everyone else did at the time of it. 

16 hours ago, Snarklepuss said:

Hah, Mr. Snarkle said that too about the pole dancers.  What's up with the 4 and 5 star rating on Trip Advisor and Booking.com, though?

LMAO And I would bet they are made up and paid for reviews. 

[Gilmel]

The hotel's home page says that they charge you as soon as you make your reservation, and they don't offer any refunds or cancellations. I wouldn't be booking there even if I hadn't seen this episode, given that policy. Well, that and I also have a kid. Reasons upon reasons they have no customers.

Edited June 23, 2016 by Gilmel

[Julia]

I'm just trying to imagine going to a hotel on my honeymoon and having some creepy old man making comments to my husband about taking advantage of our room to tear off a piece.

Am I correct that it was actually his wife's son he drove away? That woman has issues.

[Major Bigtime]

I've often wondered if Gordon's crew scours Yelp or TripAdvisor, looking for the worst hotels and inns listed. Then they make the initial contact, knowing they'll have a shitstorm show.  I rarely hear anyone begging Gordon for help anymore.

[MelissaMinion]

On June 21, 2016 at 11:20 PM, Snarklepuss said:

Me too, only I wish he would bring back the bit with him undressing, LOL.

Didn't he used to shower, too? Why has he stopped that? I LIKED that.

[Canada]

This couple, especially the husband, just grossed me out.  I want to know where he met his wife, because big red flags were raised for me there.  Brent is just creepy and disgusting.  What a pig.  I would imagine that he gets up to disgusting things when he's on vacation by himself.  His wife is a moron for staying with him. 

[Major Bigtime]

19 hours ago, MelissaMinion said:

Didn't he used to shower, too? Why has he stopped that? I LIKED that.

Yes. I miss it also. It was what I looked forward to in each episode. 

[Madding crowd]

Now it seems like Gordon must run around and start cleaning or fussing the second he walks in the door. How about introducing yourself and asking about what the problems are before demanding dust mops? Of course the ceiling needed dusty, but that's probably not the main problem. In previous seasons there was at least a smidgen of an idea that he was trying to figure out what was causing them to lose money and there was more working with the kitchen staff on the menu, and showing more modern decorations. Now it's all about the interpersonal problems the owners have, which is probably the one thing Gordon is not qualified to solve.

There is more crazy antics, but the show is less interesting to me now. I also think Gordon is really rude and repetitive to the owners. Yes, they are jerks, but does he have to be a jerk too? Then we had to hear about a million times that fresh hamburgers are better than frozen. How about hearing it one time and then showing him training the staff how to buy and store the proper amount of burger meat? 

[Scout Finch]

After hearing a kid throw a prolonged tantrum in the hallway outside my room at a budget chain hotel last week, I welcome the idea of adults only hotels. Not every place needs to be kid-friendly, Gordon.

[aliya]

On 6/21/2016 at 11:05 PM, Surrealist said:

I was extremely happy to see that Gordon brought back the UV light stick and goggles for the guests and owners to see the pillow, mattress, and duvet stains.

How gross is all that?  I'd like to see the UV light used in a higher class hotel. I wonder if we'd find the same thing? I know for sure they don't wash those duvets after every guest.

[satrunrose]

I think my biggest problem with all of these Save My Business shows going in a 10 minutes of amateur therapy direction is that we don't get enough of the behind the scenes working of the business, the makeover OR the therapy. I mean, the ex-wife got married the day the divorce was finalized which implies that she was the one who initiated the split, but the kids all sided with Mom. Given owner's behaviour in the rest of the episode, I'm guessing the douchyness extended to his first family but it would have been nice to learn more about that (if we weren't going into the other, more interesting, business stuff). Also, his tears over his estranged grandchildren seemed at-odds with his "no kids" policy. Is he one of those people who doesn't like small children as a group but is fine with his own? Is it too painful to be around children when he can't see this own family.  Was he always a "children should neither be seen nor heard" type (which might explain the post-divorce estrangement if his kids always knew their father didn't particularly like them)? Inquiring minds sort of want to know. 

[hatchetgirl]

Quote

I'm guessing the douchyness extended to his first family but it would have been nice to learn more about that

When he said she married the day the divorce was final, I instantly thought "what type of monster blames his kids for that?"  I bet he's got bodies buried all over his land...

[BogoGog24]

I was amused by the fact he seemed to think if you don't serve a frozen burger to the customer frozen (as in, they've thawed it first), then it doesn't count as being a frozen burger. SMH

For the hotel part I can sort of understand the no kids thing, but what is wrong with letting kids into the restaurant and especially the ice cream parlor? It would make them so much more money.

I wonder if Gordon will do a revisited episode like he does on KN and return to some of these places that just reverted back to their old ways after he left. 

[backformore]

The 30 grand a month they are "losing"?   I think it's just that they are MAKING 30 grand less than they WANT to make. I liked it better when Ramsey helped nice people who deserved help.   Not idiots and assholes.   And this guy has some sort of sexual obsession, he creeped me out. 

I really dislike when Ramsey talks to the staff about the owners.   It's one thing for him to ask the staff questions, but he seems to take some joy in gossiping about the owners to the staff.  This contributes to the bad feelings between staff and owners.   Even though the hotel owners were assholes, Ramsey was also being an asshole, talking to the waitress about the owners' vacation, and calling him crazy.  (not that I disagree)

Edited June 27, 2016 by backformore

[Jersey Guy 87]

22 hours ago, BogoGog24 said:

I was amused by the fact he seemed to think if you don't serve a frozen burger to the customer frozen (as in, they've thawed it first), then it doesn't count as being a frozen burger. SMH

 

That cracked me up.  Gordon would say they serve frozen burgers and he'd say "no, we thaw them first."  Like there was some other option for serving the burger.

9 hours ago, backformore said:

The 30 grand a month they are "losing"?   I think it's just that they are MAKING 30 grand less than they WANT to make. I liked it better when Ramsey helped nice people who deserved help.   Not idiots and assholes.   And this guy has some sort of sexual obsession, he creeped me out. 

 

I don't doubt he's losing money, the question is how much.  This may be some sort of tax dodge for him.