In my most favorite episode of Bar Rescue ever, Jon meets his match, and everyone, including the audience, is highly confused. Julio is the kitchen manager and head cook at Skip and Jan’s Sports Bar, owned by Natalie Phyllis and located in Gilbert, Arizona. I can’t think of any other way to put it except that Julio outplays Jon and his expert chef Jason Santos, although the caveat here—and it is a huge one—is that Julio is not an owner but an employee so it is difficult to understand what he has to gain from his actions, which also contributes to the confusion. Julio’s tactic is so effective, it confuses the storyline I have come to expect from Bar Rescue, and it left me puzzled and ruminating about two specific things: Why is this episode titled “Deadliest Kitchen”? and What’s the best way to make sense of Julio’s behavior? Here are my insights and conclusions.

I’ve heard Jon mention that one of the things that makes Bar Rescue special is that it’s not scripted; therefore, he doesn’t know what is going to happen and that forces the whole show to follow the story as it unfolds, leaving the producers and the audience guessing what will happen and how Jon will interact with the bar owners and staff. Even with the spontaneity, though, there is an overarching storyline to the show, one that Jon has called Shakespearian: Person is in trouble. Person resists change. Person transforms. Person redeems themself. Person lives happily ever after.

Depending on the owner’s excuses and the situation the producers foreshadow in the introduction, I have an unarticulated understanding of the types of conflicts on the show that define the person in trouble, how they’ll resist change, and the approach Jon will take to hurry them along in their transformation.

After almost 250 episodes, I have a sense of how things are going to play out and can get lulled into paying half attention because of it. Not having seen a new episode in a long time, though, I eagerly anticipated the new season’s premiere and sought out information about it. The episode title and the trailer indicated that this one was going to present the “Deadliest Kitchen,” which, if you are any kind of fan of the show, you know is going to blow your mind because it is competing with all the previous episodes that contained, among other horrible things, some mixture of the following: serving raw chicken and other meats; being so insect and vermin infected that seeing a grasshopper eating a cockroach in a lightbulb is normal; serving and storing visibly rotting, spoiled, and moldy food; black mold, mold in the dishwasher, and mold spores the size of Jon’s head on the walk-in wall; sewer water backing out the drain and onto the kitchen floor; contaminated, freezer burned food stored in a dilapidated freezer or at 70 degrees Fahrenheit; sludge and animal carcasses on the floors; grease dripping down the rafters and onto a charred and filthy grill; food and filth caked onto kitchen equipment, walls, and containers; a bona fide kitchen fire, and Dirty Red taking a shower in the dish sink. For it to be the “Deadliest Kitchen,” Natalie’s and Julio’s kitchen was going to need something extra special, like a toilet spouting a fountain of fecal matter into the middle of it.

My curiosity was piqued, and I couldn’t wait to find out what made Skip and Jan’s kitchen the “Deadliest Kitchen.” I also couldn’t wait to see Jon lay the hammer down on someone in Skip and Jan’s because, in his words and voice, “You are gonna KILL SOMEBODY!”

Sometimes at the end of Bar Rescue, an owner will say something along the lines of, “This is beyond anything I could have ever imagined,” and, for some reason, that amazes me. I always wonder why and try to muster up a feeling of awe that must come along with being so surprised and delighted. That’s what I was expecting to have happen to me with this premiere episode of Bar Rescue because I just could not fathom what was going to be in that kitchen, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t beyond anything I could have ever imagined—and I imagined an exploding toilet!

It was Julio. Julio is the man who messed up my easy-breezy Bar Rescue watching days and changed my perception of what actually makes the “Deadliest Kitchen”—a kitchen manager who seems to care so little about food preparation and sanitation that he could literally kill somebody and shrug…maybe shrug? I don’t know if he would, honestly. That’s how little he seems to care.

I’d love to tell you what Julio did that has me in awe, but it’s actually what Julio didn’t do that is ingenious. Julio never said a word, except “adios” when he walked out the door in the middle of the stress test. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not really. I mean, maybe he said 10 words during all of recon and through the entire stress test. It was astonishing, and something I had never seen before, and it took me almost the entire episode to process it and realize Julio’s lack of concern about killing someone with food from that kitchen, food that he prepared, is what made this the “Deadliest Kitchen.”

During recon, Jon and Chef Santos are noticing problems and focus on the kitchen with it’s general filth, carbon build up, dirty grease, food in the drain, and bacteria-laden cutting boards. Jon says there was food mishandling, but I don’t remember seeing it. Not to disagree with Jon; just to show that there isn’t anything special, by Bar Rescue standards, about the filth in this kitchen at the time Jon sends Chef Santos into it. I decide the big reveal must be coming when he and Jon get in there and see it first-hand because I am still expecting the deadliest part of the “Deadliest Kitchen” to be some thing not some one.

Chef Santos enters the kitchen and starts with his typical hard-question interrogation, “Look at this shit. Are you really cooking in this dirty grease?” Julio doesn’t respond. Chef Santos continues pointing to health code violation after health code violation, “Do you care? Or you just don’t care? Oh, well, just cook in filth then?” He’s flying around the kitchen, but Julio just stands there and doesn’t say a word.  Getting no response from Julio, Chef Santos turns to Natalie for an explanation, which, of course, is the totally defeated owner response of “I don’t know. It’s Julio’s job to clean the kitchen.” Jon, still in the recon vehicle, has had enough, so he trots into the bar and heads to the kitchen.

Chef Santos continues to grill Julio until Jon takes over, pointing out all the filth in the kitchen and amping up. “You are giving this to your CUSTOMERS!” he shouts, then asks Natalie if she would give it to her children. He finally turns to Julio, and implores, “Julio, say something,” but Julio doesn’t have anything to say.

Jon tries a different approach to make headway, inquiring Natalie about the extent of her debt. Her response reveals a staggering figure of nearly $200,000. Jon expresses his outrage to Julio, “You have the most disgusting kitchen I’ve ever seen. Everything is disgusting.” Then he screams at Julio about Natalie’s dire financial straits, emphasizing her debt and accusing Julio of indifference while Natalie “loses everything.” Julio remains silent.

Jon asks Natalie if they should train Julio or find someone else. Natalie asks Julio, “Can we fix it?” He is silent. Then she yells at him. “We have Jon Taffer here! Can we fix it?” Julio shakes his head “no” a little and finally speaks a very quiet, “Yes.”

Jon verifies, “So, I’m going to ask you again. Do you care?” Julio mutters, “I care,” but Jon doesn’t buy it. Neither do I.

Jon then walks Julio through the situation to elicit Julio’s commitment to repairing it. He asks Julio, “Do you want to come through for her?” Julio agrees. Jon continues, “Because she is counting on you now. You cannot let her down.” Julio concurs with a half-hearted, “Sure.” Then Jon seals Julio’s commitment, “Look her in the eyes and promise her.” Julio looks at Natalie and mumbles, “I promise.”

Jon remains rightfully skeptical because it seems that Julio is barely going along with the program and his commitment is weak at best. Natalie stands up for Julio, but her son, Jaycie, who works there, too, does not. Jaycie says that Julio has been slacking, which is easy to believe because of the state of the kitchen and because Julio just stands there smirking.

In typical Jon fashion, he wants Julio’s actions, not his words, to show he cares, so he orders Julio to clean the kitchen to prove himself. Then Jon heads out to the bar area where we get to see him crawl on the floor to remove a “hillbilly engineered” (IYKYK), but not up-to-code, mold-covered gutter used as a drain pipe and display it like a trophy for the patrons to jeer.

The whole interaction is confusing and has me off balance because Julio’s lack of engagement is extremely problematic, like a pole in the middle of a volleyball court. Where is the self-defense? The yelling? The excuses? The fighting? The drama? The candid camera conversations that tell us what Julio is thinking? And while we’re at it, where’s the exploding toilet Jon was supposed to find? It’s like the Bar Rescue I’ve come to know and love has disappeared and I am left confused and bewildered. I stay that way for a while.

The next day, Jon has a meeting with the bar staff. He explains how the success of the bar rests on the staff’s shoulders and that is why he was so mad about the kitchen. He’s looking for everyone’s buy in to his plan, especially Julio’s. Julio says he understands. Everyone is upset about the situation Natalie is in because they love her, so Jon provides them with his perspective, “If you love her, then fight for her.”  

Jon asks someone off camera to hand him the Partender results, and for the first time ever that I’ve noticed, the owner’s expression shows she knows what’s coming and is not emotionally ready to hear it. While I think Partender results are over-inflated because of some of the assumptions behind the calculations, they are still a good guide to problems at the bar, and Natalie’s got big problems with a $312,000 yearly loss. Jon chastises the staff but he doesn’t berate and call them out like usual. Later on, when he gives Natalie her life-time Partender subscription, he mentions that if the numbers show there’s a problem to just tell the staff and they’ll correct their pours. His responses are uncharacteristic, so I’m guessing he’s either being more judicial doling out his rage this season or he didn’t believe the staff was intentionally stealing. Either way, the whole episode is going in ways I am not used to.

During training in the kitchen with Chef Santos, Jaycie, Natalie, and Julio learn about the new dishes the bar will be offering and taste them. Jaycie and Natalie love them. Julio is less enthusiastic. Natalie doesn’t see it and pushes her own enthusiasm onto Julio, but Chef Santos can see it and shakes his head in disbelief. Julio still hasn’t talked in anything but two-word sentences where his nonverbal messages usually contradict his affirmative verbal ones, and he has not provided any insight via a candid interview with the camera.

As the stress test begins, Jaycie asks Julio if he has provolone for the new dish, and Julio tells him it’s frozen. Neither Jaycie nor Chef Santos can believe the poor level of preparation and engagement Julio is demonstrating. Not surprisingly, the kitchen falls apart during the stress test. Chef Santos tells Jon that it’s the quietest kitchen he’s ever heard. He tells Jon that Julio just stands there and watches Jaycie work. He seems flabbergasted and confused by the way Julio is acting and advocates for Julio’s firing.

Jon shuts down the stress test and tells Natalie and Jaycie that he is not going to allow Chef Santos to put his time into training Julio, but he wants him to train Jaycie instead. Thus, Julio has to go, and Natalie has to be the one to cut the tie. Natalie breaks the news to Julio. In typical Julio fashion, he barely responds, says, “No problem,” and leaves. Natalie tells the camera she doesn’t understand what is happening because Julio has been there for years—seven, in fact—and she expected Julio to have her back. Then she says that Julio hasn’t said a word for the last couple of days.

Everyone, including me, is perplexed by Julio’s behavior. His disengaged and unhelpful, but not hostile, attitude is bizarre and difficult to explain since he hasn’t said anything to indicate what he is thinking. It’s Natalie’s comment about how Julio hasn’t said anything in days that has me delving deeper into his motives and here’s my hypothesis: Julio didn’t want to be on Bar Rescue but had to be to keep his job. So, to prevent being the brunt of Jon’s wrath, he just shut up and shut down until it was over. It worked. I actually think Julio’s behavior was ingenious if surviving Bar Rescue without changing or flipping out or being brow beaten was his goal. Not so ingenious if he wanted to keep his job, which is another reason it’s perplexing. However, in the end that’s not even true since the six-week follow up told us that Natalie hired Julio back. I believe Julio knew that would happen and just played possum to survive Jon’s assault on him and his workplace. If that’s the case, I have to concede: Julio 1, Jon 0.

The rest of the episode is as expected. They have a specialized cocktail menu, a signature “ranchburger,” and Jon remodels the bar perfectly. He renames it Natalie’s, which is both a touching gesture and a strategic marketing move, since Natalie has been there for 28 years and her goodwill with 28 years’ worth of patrons is a valuable asset Jon wants to exploit. Everyone is happy, and Jon gets several truly heartfelt hugs from Natalie. Welcome to Season Nine.

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I invite you to consider and share your answer in the Comments: Why do you think Julio acted like he did?