Terrible TV: Tabatha Takes Over

You know how sometimes you watch something on TV and your jaw just drops? And not in a good way. Well this week I had one of those moments.

The cause? Tabatha Takes Over, the long running Bravo series featuring former hair stylist and Shear Genius contestant Tabatha Coffey as she attempts to turn around a range of struggling businesses.

Earlier this week I caught one of the show’s recent episodes, featuring Tabatha trying to save a rundown gay bar in Long Beach, California. And all I can say is – what the fuckety fuck was that I just watched?

Now let me get a couple of things straight from the start. I actually rather like Tabatha herself. I wasn’t a Shear Genius fan but I think Tabatha is funny, sharp and a good TV character with a strong presence on screen. I’ve also watched a couple of previous episodes of Tabatha Takes Over, back in the days when Tabatha just concentrated on hair salons, and enjoyed them.

But Coffy is sadly woefully out of her element in this new series. Spinning Tabatha Takes Over so that it now includes all manner of different businesses probably sounded solid on paper but in execution is a truly terrible idea. Because based on the episode I saw, Tabatha has absolutely NO idea what she was talking about. In fact this was one of the most embarrassing hours of TV I’ve watched in a long time. Bland, padded, manipulative and just horribly, horribly produced.

As I mentioned this particular Take Over involved a rundown gay bar in Long Beach. The bar in question was called Club Ripples, and the owners Larry and John had totally checked out of the business and were hopelessly behind when it came to the modern gay scene. The bar’s heyday was in the 1970’s and since then it had become a horribly rundown joint that no self-respecting gay man or woman would ever set foot in. In theory this should have been a home run for Tabatha, an out and proud lesbian herself.  But boy was this show sloppily produced.

This was your typical by the numbers business makeover, with Tabatha going through all the usual genre clichés. Honestly there wasn’t a single original idea in the whole show. Turns out Larry and John had some pretty petty policies in their bar – drinks were served in plastic glasses, customers couldn’t leave bags or coats on the bar, and staff weren’t allowed to give out free tap water. All of these rules were revealed by clearly staged hidden camera footage and of course Tabatha seized on them as key elements in the bar’s demise. But that was it. Trust me, the reason Club Ripples was bombing wasn’t because they charge for tap water! The whole club looked and felt desperate, like a small town gay bar transplanted to a big city. To turn the business around Tabatha – and the show’s producers – needed a big vision. But there was nothing. Seriously, I could have gone in there with better advice.

Later in the show, Tabatha took Larry, John and their staff to a nearby bar where business was booming. We then had one of the head barmen ‘test’ the Ripples staff on their cocktail making skills. Unfortunately the staff pretty much all passed with flying colors, making the entire exercises pointless. You could just see Tabatha itching for the barman to say something negative about the team’s drinks. Oh well, why not follow it up with an equally pointless cocktail making competition – cause of course that’s what Ripples desperately needs to turn it around – a signature cocktail!

Oh but there was more banality to come. Tabatha decided that Larry and John didn’t have enough fun with their staff so set up a scene where the group raced around in bumper cars. I would say the sequence was excruciating, but my partner yelled at me to fast forward through it since the scene was so embarrassing. My partner’s not a TV producer but even he knows a pointless TV scene when he sees it! One of the first rules of TV – watching people ‘enjoy’ themselves gives you 2 minutes of colorful B-roll and pretty much nothing else.

Towards the end of the show Tabatha unveiled her big makeover. Unfortunately neither myself or my partner could tell the difference between the ‘before’ and ‘after’. Repainting the walls, adding a sign and buying some actual glasses doesn’t really constitute a makeover in my book. Instead it screams ‘we’re on a budget and can’t afford a Home Makeover style revamp’. I’ve been there – I once oversaw a truly terrible makeover pilot back in the UK – but a show like Tabatha lives of dies on the strength of its makeover. It’s the one part of the show you can’t scrimp on.

Post-makeover, Tabatha resorted to the next business makeover show cliché, the re-launch party. You could literally feel the desperate production team shoving people of the street through the doors in order to make the club feel busy. Except it didn’t. In almost every shot you could see vast empty spaces in the background with just a handful of people at the bar. Plus almost all the ‘re-launch’ customers seemed old. These aren’t the people who are going to resurrect Ripples. Tabatha still had no clear vision or plans for turning the business around.

Of course no one was going to say that on camera. Tabatha Takes Over ended with the usual false pronouncements, as though Tabatha had done a miraculous job and everything was going to be okay from now on. But you could tell Larry and John were deep down thinking ‘is that it?’ By this point my partner had left the room, declaring the show a complete waste of time.

Bravo is such a glossy and polished network and normally does a top notch job on producing their shows – but this episode of Tabatha Takes Over just screamed of desperation and compromise. Funnily enough a couple of nights later I watched the latest episode of Face Off, Syfy’s terrifically well produced makeup competition show. It was full of ideas, slickly staged and great fun, everything Tabatha wasn’t.

I have a feeling if Tabatha Takes Over continues in this same style it’s the show itself that’s going to need a makeover – not the businesses Coffey visits…

But what do you think? Have you see Tabatha Takes Over recently? And what other shows do you think qualify as truly terrible TV?