Ty Watches Bar Rescue: Gallopin' Goose Edition
/This past Sunday, Jon Taffer and his crew visited another bar that they felt the responsibility to "rescue". The crew went to a bar in Arizona called the Gallopin' Goose. This is an actual historical landmark bar because it is the first place that country music legend, one of the few good country musicians in my opinion, Waylon Jennings, first performed live. This was a for real bar. I was kind of shocked that they did a rescue of a place that a lot of people know about.
As the episode wore on, we come to find out that it wasn't so much a "bar" rescue as it was a relationship rescue. Sure, Taffer's team had to replace the bar top, there was grime everywhere, the kitchen needed to be cleaned and the owner was losing a ton of money, but that was all standard stuff for any episode of "Bar Rescue". What Taffer quickly realized was that he was, not only going to have to rescue the bar, but rescue a broken relationship as well.
These are some of my favorite episodes. I love that Taffer thinks he is some kind of marriage counselor. He spouts off cliché line after cliché line to try and repair these marriages. This one was particularly tough because the guy that owned the bar, he very quickly married his first wife, they had a baby, she got pregnant with their second child, but while she was pregnant, this scumbag cheated on her with a bar patron and got that lady pregnant as well. This did not sit well with the people in this small town. This was when the bar started to lose it's customer base and money. This was when this guy, who I assume was already pretty trashy, became complete trash.
The owner of Gallopin' Goose is, as I stated earlier, a real scumbag. His ex wife moved away from him because of this, taking their 2 children with her. This also really tore the guy apart. He started drinking more heavily and stopped taking care of himself and the bar. His ex wife eventually moved back, but she then found herself raising this other child of his. They never said what happened to this kids real mom, but the owner's ex wife now had three kids she had to raise. When they got back to the original timeline, Taffer had the ex wife as his spy in the car, and while watching the bar being poorly run, we also saw the owner talking shit about his ex wife to the other employees. He was complaining that she was never there and that he had to do all the work. Never mind the fact that she was taking care of three kids, one of which was not biologically hers, but she also came to the bar whenever she could to help out. This lady was being very poorly treated by the owner. He was a real big dickhead.
When Taffer comes in to confront him, he immediately rips into to him. He calls him a failure and a lowlife, classic Taffer. He talks to him as if he is a child. He threatened to kick this dude's ass, and this guy was way, way bigger than Taffer. It was all classic Taffer, and it was all hilarious. The two of them eventually cooled off, and the owner started to take Taffer's advice. He was very willing to listen to all of his suggestions. He was even willing to take Taffer's "expert" advice in relationship counseling. It was all very calm and quiet after their first encounter.
The Gallopin' Goose switched over to a whiskey bar. This worked very well in their favor. They also became an all day breakfast food place. Apparently, they had a successful breakfast buffet on Sunday's, so they decided to do this 7 days a week. Then, in classic "Bar Rescue" fashion, Taffer had a sit down with the ex wife and the owner, explained to them why they needed to reconcile, full of clichés again, and of course, at the end, they seemed to be back together again. Taffer was thrilled by this.
There was a very weird moment late in the episode as well. Taffer turned the bar back into a live country music venue as well, he did not change the name because of the history, and he invited one of his favorite country bands to play at the reopening. I didn't catch the name of the band, but they sounded terrible. The best part was that at one point, the band was playing and the camera turned towards Taffer, and he was bobbing his head and very creepily smiling at the lead singer. It was all very weird, but also exactly what I would expect from "Bar Rescue".
This episode has been the highlight of the season so far. It was very good and everyone was very polite and kind, for the most part. Seek this episode out of you haven't seen it yet. Come back next week for my review of the next episode.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. Sometimes when he needs a pick up, Ty blasts Waylon Jennings for all the neighbors to hear. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.