Jon Taffer heads to Meridian, Idaho, where he finds an oversized bar with a perpetually drunk owner and a staff unwilling to admit it.
Episode Tropes:
- Awesome, but Impractical: Hideaway Bar & Grill is huge and contains features that make it resemble a lounge area. Mathematically, though, this requires annual sales of $1,000,000 a year in Idaho.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: The owner has experience as a construction worker, but the paint chipping and design impracticalities leave little to be desired.
- Call-Forward: When Jon Taffer is praising the sense of community and support of small businesses in Idaho, scenes from future rescues in the same season are shown, most notable by the fact he is shown in Horseshoe Bends and using the balloon dartboard stress test.
- Continuity Snarl: When considering his options and confronting the Hideaway staff, Jon claims he only walked out twice, those being O-Face and Second Base. However, he walked out a third time (Black Light District) and arguably a fourth time (Dugout), where he remodeled but bailed on the reopening.
- Downer Ending: Once Jon catches the staff lying to him about the owner being a drunk in a previous interview and having the gall to lie to him to his face, he decides to pack up and leave without rescuing it.
- Epic Fail: You want to know how fast Jon decided to give up on the bar? He did it the morning after the recon due to the manager and the staff lying about the owner's alcohol dependency, meaning no stress test, no post-mortem, nothing. Even O-Face, widely considered the worst bar in the show's history, managed to make it to the stress test note
- Foregone Conclusion: Once the recon alone takes up half the episode, there is no doubt Jon is not going to rescue the bar.
- How We Got Here: The Cold Opening of the episode has a crew member announcing that Jon is leaving the bar and the Bar Rescue Staff dismantling their gear. We see how this event happened as the episode progresses.
- It's All My Fault: Lindsay regrets her actions at the end, saying that she feels at fault for the failed rescue for calling the owner the town drunk in the first place.
- Minor Insult Meltdown: Camri quits just because the guests criticize her drinks, and she is upset it's on camera. She ends up being fired seconds later.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jon refuses to rescue the bar after realizing both the owners and the employees have no interest in telling the truth to him.
- Skewed Priorities: The manager decides to put her heart surgery on hold to try to salvage the bar despite it being clear at the end that there's no hope.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Before leaving Hideaway, Jon gives a scathing one to the manager and the staff for lying to his face about the owner's alcoholism and for enabling him in the process.
