After seeing this a few days ago I watched the vid from Kitchen Nightmares which is even more interesting. Amy seems to have the interior life of a middle schooler

I'm loving it. Anyone who steals their servers' tips deserves the wrath of the entire intarwebs (and the IRS) descending on them.

I love internet trainwrecks in general, although I'm finding this one a little too crazy for my tastes. Give me a good, run-of-the-mill blog temper tantrum, though, and I am there.

For those of us coming into this cold, the Kitchen Nightmares video.

Today's best laugh came from my reading that Amy and Samy had hired a PR firm to help them deal with the situation, but that business relationship is already at an end.

These two are a textbook example of how not to run a business and deal with bad press. I've already seen articles in business magazines written about them, such as one by Forbes that cited their mistakes in a list of things not to do on social media.

Now that I'm running and promoting my own blog, I think at least once every day on how valuable all my experience on Metafilter has been. I learned so much on there about how to present information and deal with conflict and set a good tone, etc. But then it isn't that hard to learn how to use social media if you're reasonably mature and grounded. If you're delusional and too childish to accept any criticism, things will get out of hand very quickly.

Hmm, that episode of KN has some rather glaring staging. The scene showing Ramsey locked out is entirely fake since the cameraman is obviously inside the restaurant. The angle is wrong for it to be a fixed camera shot. I would have to rewatch it, but a lot of other details nagged at me as I watched it.

I suspect that the entire affair is a huge charade. The restaurant's reopens in twenty minutes. The results should speak volumes.

The producers paid for all the meals served the night before Ramsey arrived. The more I read about this, the more suspicious I become. No wonder Fox threatened to sue them if they talked at a press conference; the only thing they could say that would harm the show is exposing it as a sham.

nah, man, I got more important shit going on in my real life

It's been fairly obvious that the producers pay for the diners' meals the entire time they're filming througout the series, as far as I've seen. I only catch episodes here and there, but I figured that so many of the restaurants are struggling so badly that there'd be nothing to film if there wasn't some sort of compensation for the diners. I've never felt that made anything fake or sham, but that it was more like a focus group.

That was just one detail of many, but even so, such collusion raises its own questions. For instance, if Samy knew that the meal was prepaid, why did he start that argument?

Many things were obviously real, as well, no doubt. The frozen ravioli was a telling flaw in Amy's menu, and did she really bake those pastries herself? Every day? Where? And more important, when?

The owners seemed to believe it was the show's job to provide positive reviews to counter "the haters," so it may be that he didn't think anyone complaining should have gotten free food. Or else it was all staged. Or some combination of the two, like producers egging him on in a confrontation he would have started but not escalated like that.

I do figure a lot of the conflict on these shows is, at the very least, strongly encouraged by the production staff, but I also figure that people who let themselves get provoked to that level of sustained nuttiness are fairly likely to be nutty even when not provoked by those with an interest in seeing them fly off the handle.

"fairly likely to be nutty even when not provoked"

Most likely. From the KN website: "Now casting! Does your restaurant need help? Kitchen Nightmares is now casting." That's right. They explicitly state 'casting'; they don't even veil it as auditioning.

I like too that Ramsey says that the best thing he can do for ABC is to just walk away. Yeah! Talk about a PR coup. An amped-hype season finale with fireworks galore. The restaurant closes the week after airing for a grand re-opening, and they already have well over a thousand reservations for the next week. All that's missing is Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan.

Samy has been fighting deportation these past two years.

Ardiril, although Amy told Ramsay that she made the patisserie herself (and it looked top-class stuff which he said was delicious), she later admitted that it was bought in.

Also, the camera shot inside the restaurant wasn't staged - it was an internal fixed camera. You could see at the end of the show all the cameras being taken down.

I agree there's an element of staging and drama in the whole KN show, with the familiar scenario of bad food, family conflict/drama and the ultimate redemption due to Gordon Ramsay, but this couple really had the wrong end of the stick completely - their whole idea was that Ramsay would agree with them that everything was perfect.

As I understand it, the producers decided to pay for the diners' meals after Samy and Amy closed the kitchen. The interviews with the servers and with the guy who got into it with Samy seem to confirm that the conflict was real, even though the diners that evening were invitees for the purpose of the show.

I think Samy and Amy have a whole world of pain waiting for them arising from this - not least the IRS. There's been a lot of talk about where the money came from for the restaurant, as well as the undeclared/unearned income from stealing servers' tips.

There's been a great thread going on this on the Television Without Pity forums which I've been keeping a close eye on too. I can't wait to see how the grand re-opening turns out.

This ABC fiasco got me interested in Ramsay so I watched some more episodes on Netflix. The UK-version of Kitchen Nightmares is much more interesting. It seems way less "stagey" and the problems less dramatic.

The concept reminds of the Harvard Business Review case studies we used in business school. But kitchens are inherently more interesting than most businesses and Ramsay is much more entertaining than the typical executive or consultant, obviously.

"Tabatha's Salon Takeover" or the newer "Tabatha Takes Over" is also interesting, I think, from the business consultant standpoint. And it tends to be less yell-y and more icily bitchy.

I do think there's a culture of macho screaminess in restaurant kitchens, so while some of the "Kitchen Nightmares" conflict is certainly manufactured, I think at least some of it is manufactured because chefs expect it, rather than just for the viewers. There was a rerun of one of the English episodes on BBC America the other day, and Ramsay spent a good portion of the show making the (very meek) chef get up in Ramsay's face and yell at him at full volume, in order to encourage him to be properly chef-like.

I have a hard time suspending my disbelief with shows like this because producers must pander first and foremost to ratings. While the words may not be directly scripted, the situations certainly can be.

I have gathered that the customers from the night before Ramsey arrived were there for the most part at the direct invitation of the producers. That leads me to wonder how many were actually actors, how many were customers who had written bad Yelp reviews. Who would suspect if stage directions were relayed via cell phones? The owners could be let in on some things, just enough to produce a comfort zone, but thereafter, the deck can be stacked totally against them to produce spontaneous reactions. I liken it to entrapment.

After all, if I were a producer of this show, the first thing I would do off-camera is interview former employees and anyone else who holds a grudge. I would know before going in that Samy keeps the tips and not only that Amy uses frozen ravioli but who her wholesaler is. The kitchen's problems are real enough, but how those problems are presented in the show can be easily manipulated.

Consider this, how hard would it be as a producer to delay Amy's cooking Ramsey's order? "Wait, we need to adjust the lighting." Or, to get her to sabotage her own dishes. "Add a bit more oil so it looks good on camera." "Can you make that salmon cake a bit darker so it contrasts with the bun?" "I don't care if the crust is raw, we need that pizza NOW!"

Finally, have you read that contract? If that doesn't set off warning bells, especially the confidentiality clauses, then any restaurant that agrees to appear on the show deserves getting punk'd.

As for the camera angle, yeah, that could certainly be a fixed camera. However, think about this. Most restaurants keep their front doors locked until opening. Were the owners told when Ramsey would show up? Or, did he intentionally show up well before the owners arrived? With a camera in place, the producers could have got that shot virtually at their leisure.

You have to pay actors, though, and the popularity of reality shows from the producers' perspective is that they're cheap, because you don't have to pay actors.

And as far as I know, all reality shows have a confidentiality clause; there were one or two "Biggest Loser" contestants who specifically came out a few years (?) ago to talk about how abusively awful the show was, and mentioned that they were at risk of getting sued for talking about it.

I don't know, Ardiril, I think you're just reaching for conspiracy where there's just incompetence. Especially with something like "Kitchen Nightmares," where the restaurant owners apply to be on it specifically because they're losing major money and don't know why -- which would indicate that the restaurant has major problems, either with the food or the management or both. (That is, it's one thing to lose money; it's another thing to have no idea why it's happening.)

I think it's just way easier to find clueless self-important owners who are arrogant enough to want to be on tv, and let them do their thing, rather than create all the situations you're describing in a totally artificial/manufactured way.

I'm thinking Ardiril could host a new reality show called Reality Show Nightmares. He'd go show to show and see how the participants' actual lives turn out to be drama-free or their businesses run fairly well and ratings are terrible. Then he'd take the producer aside and yell things like "Why do you even want to produce a reality show!? Do you even know how to sabotage a simple dinner service?!"

The irony is not lost on me that people who disbelieve Fox News are defending the legitimacy of a Fox entertainment series.

I'm not claiming the restaurants are blameless, but that the producers take a bad situation and make it worse. Sure, actors get paid, but unknown actors work cheap, even at union scale.

With ABC, I will bet good money that the producers also knew about Samy's deportation issues and Amy's imprisonment. Who better to punk than a couple of punks. Also, just think what a producer learns when he asks, "Have you seen our show before? No? Oh, of course, your restaurant would be open at that time. We'll still work with you if you haven't seen it." We'll pull out all of our nastiest tricks.

This reminds me of this pic I made some time back.

≡ Click to see image ≡

Reality Show Nightmares

I would so watch that.

One of the waitresses from the restaurant (I think it was Katy, who got fired during the episode) has said that there were more people sending back food than usual that night, and that she thought they were doing it to be on TV. So yes, the taping of this show probably did exacerbate the problems with this restaurant. And I bet the show's producers did know quite a bit about this restaurant's issues going in. After all, Amy had made the local news for freaking out over a bad review on Yelp (she posted another YELP review telling him he was wrong and a moron and ugly).

So yes, I'm willing to believe there was some deck stacking going on here and eating in Amy's Bakery wouldn't be nearly as bad on average as the show makes it look, but it's clear that Amy and Samy and their restaurant have very real and very serious issues.

Ah here we go. According to [Waitress Katy] Cipriano, “None of amy or samy's actions were staged. people may have purposely sent back their food or falsely complained for a chance to be on tv, but that's about it. everything else was 100% real.”

That was so awesome, in a tragic way.

Something similar happened here locally. A guy from Italy opened a brewpub-restaurant in the local liberal enclave of our city. Due to immigration factors (he had to show income or his status was going to change and he might be forced to leave the U.S.), he opened before he was really ready, and without adequate funding. Things were getting tight, and he was feeling the pressure. Then one night, after having several drinks, he started posting on Facebook under the restaurant's account. He famously declared his hate for "Obama babies" (which constituted the majority of his clientele) and pretty much melted down for a few hours until a friend got him to sign off.

The story in his case ended well. A neighboring business does internet image marketing. He agreed to let them run the restaurant's Facebook account for a while and they worked miracles to first control to the damage, then build the brand. Things didn't turn around business-wise, but a couple of guys who happened to be in the restaurant because they were considering starting a similar place overheard him saying how dangerously close he was to closing. They offered to buy into the business. Between the infusion of cash and the good name and business sense of the guys who became his partners they turned things around and the place is doing quite well now.