In my most favorite episode of Bar Rescue ever, Jon’s ability to adjust his understanding of a situation based on the information he receives is on full display and harkens memories of the old days before Jon became executive producer and created perfectly designed and implemented systems—you know, back when it felt like no one knew what was going to happen and all hell was going to break loose at any time.

Given the 200 or more episodes where the relationship between the co-owners is typically the source of bar mismanagement, Jon has a preconceived notion that ex-spouses and current co-owners, Eric Pontius and Ann-Sofie Bylin, have a problematic relationship that is causing issues with their bar, Playoffs Sports Lounge, in Hot Desert Springs, California.

Add to the mix that Eric’s fiancée, Letty, and her son, Kevin, also work at Playoffs, Jon was expecting extensive interpersonal drama. However, he is surprised to discover that Ann-Sofie’s relationships with both Eric and Letty are amicable, as is everyone’s relationship with Letty’s son Kevin.

Eric has owned the bar for 20 years. Purchasing it was part of his grand life plan of settling down. He bought a house and a business and got married at about the same time.

Eric intended the bar to be a short-term investment. However, the recession in 2007 hit him hard. Then he got divorced and became depressed and uninspired. Now, after Covid, he is still uninspired but is also $200,000 in debt and losing $10,000 a month.

During recon, we see many of the same issues most bars present, only the issues don’t seem quite as bad to me as they have in previous seasons. Remember, though, we are talking about Bar Rescue establishments, so the curve is skewed, very skewed.

There’s no POS system, which is a bad sign. Regular viewers know Jon is going to fill Playoffs for the stress test, and without a working POS system there’s not going to be table numbers or times or even accurate and legible orders on handwritten tickets, so there’s no way they are going to succeed.

Ann-Sofie wears flip-flops in the kitchen. They cook fried fish with all the other fried foods, which makes everything taste like fish. The bartenders are inconsistent with every aspect of their jobs except for two things: How often they overpour and how poorly they stick to any cocktail recipe.

Jon mentions that everyone is working, except Eric, who is playing pool. Later, they all take shots, which is a strong indication to Jon that they are actually amicable. Jon mentions that he was told that consumption is not a problem at this bar, which is quite unusual as well. Once he sees the full picture, it doesn’t take long for Jon to tell us, “It’s a management issue here.”

After Jon’s recon spies say their drinks are too stiff, he heads into the bar because he’s seen all he needs to see to know that the issue lies with the owners. He starts off easy with a “Hello” and an introduction. Then he guides them to a more private booth so they can talk.

Jon double checks his facts with Eric. “You’re a Marine?”

Eric answers, “Yes.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” Jon continues.

Eric responds with “I appreciate that.”

Then Jon turns up the heat, “But I like a vet who helps himself, and I’m not seeing that here. This place is a shit hole.” My heart smiles because hearing Jon call a bar a shit hole is, honestly, as comforting to me as walking in the door of my childhood home.

Then Jon spouts off a litany of offenses that he’s seen in the past hour. He appreciates the amicable nature between Eric and Ann-Sofie, but he can tell their passion for the bar is as dead as their passion for each other. Ann-Sofie verifies this when she tells Jon, “I think if anybody can get him going—and me going—I think you can.”

Jon, his Bar Rescue clock ticking in his head, says, “Okay. Let’s start right now. Come with me behind the bar,” where he shows them and the customers black mold in their ice and a soda gun full of gunk made of cockroach feces and fruit fly guts or something just as putrid. Eric just stands there, bringing to mind Julio from “S9E1: Deadliest Kitchen,” (IYKYK). Eric’s lack of emotion irks Jon, who freaks out on Eric and screams at him, “When do I get ‘It’s not okay’? When do I get you angry? When do I have you say, ‘That’s not gonna work, and my LIFE is on the line?’”

Eric tells Jon, “I just didn’t know,” but Jon doesn’t buy it. Jon tells Eric that he’s either ignorant or lazy and informs him that he believes Eric is lazy. Jon continues, “So you’re screwing your customers, and, as a result, you’re screwing yourself.”

Jon then asks who he should consider “in charge” because he needs to know who is going to be accountable for the bar, and Eric and Ann-Sofie are 50/50 partners. Eric takes primary responsibility, and Ann-Sofie decides to back him up as general manager. Once Jon knows who to hold accountable moving forward, he begins his real work.

We get a bonus scene during commercial break where Jon questions Eric about what he’s been trained to do in battle when things go wrong. Eric tells him, “To adapt and overcome.”

Jon points out that Eric didn’t adapt and overcome with his own bar, and I find myself nodding in hearty agreement with Jon. I assume this scene happened before the previous scene because it aids me in understanding how frustrated Jon is with Eric’s words of accountability that have been continually contradicted by his lack of actions. I begin to wonder, “What the hell is up with Eric, and why? Why do they keep getting owners like him this season?”

On a side note, I do believe that something is different with Bar Rescue this season. In his book, Raise the Bar, Jon gives credit to Frank C. Ansel III for teaching him to not only look at the establishments he manages but to also see the details when he looks. Jon teaches this lesson to the owners and managers of the bars he’s rescued, and consequently, he’s taught it to me, too. I apply this lesson of attending to the details to important things in my life, such as writing this tribute blog to Jon. Therefore, as a person who watches the episodes very closely and repeatedly, takes notes on them, and talks about them with everyone I can, I see big and small differences in both the show and Jon that have me wondering what’s going on with the show.

Luckily, though, some things haven’t changed, and Jon ferreting out the root cause of poor bar management to give the business new life is one of them. He tells Eric, “I’m gonna ride your ass for three days to do it, you know that?”

“You know I’m capable so I’m not worried about that,” Eric almost retorts.

I have my doubts and so does Jon. He challenges Eric with, “You’re a Marine. You’ve got a spine, and I know that. I’m just worried if you have a heart.”

“I have both so you’ll find that out,” Eric conveys with the most significant amount of emotional expressiveness I’ve seen in him yet.

Then Jon takes a bit of an emotional turn himself, and his tone steadily moves toward an almost friendly, business consultant demeanor when he tells them, “Okay. I want to see you come here tomorrow with some heart. Clean this place up. Let’s get organized. Tomorrow, no laziness anymore.” Then, instead of heatedly and hastily heading for the door to slam it open, he says, in an unexpectedly friendly tone, “See you tomorrow.” I mean, he didn’t wave, but he could have and it wouldn’t have been any weirder.

Ann-Sofie is upset that Eric took the brunt of Jon’s criticisms because she feels responsible, too. Little does she know what the second round is going to bring at the staff meeting the next day.

Before the staff meeting Jon tells us in a candid interview that he thought the biggest problem was going to be the relationship between Ann-Sofie and Eric, but it’s not. Now he’s got to figure out the “something else” that’s causing failure at Playoffs Sports Lounge.

Jon casually walks into the bar, waving the heat off his face. He meets with bartenders Alisha and Karin and asks them to “give it to me straight.” He discovers that they do not have the products they need, running out of Jameson and Ultra draft when they are busy on the weekends; they downplay the food so customers don’t order it or expect anything delicious if they do; and the whole bar lacks leadership.

Jon has Eric tell him the story of his bar ownership so he can hear it directly from him and understand the situation better. Then Jon reveals his conclusion to Eric: “It’s not the staff or the relationships causing issues, so it must be you.” There’s no training. There’s no managing of standards. There’s no managing of food quality or systems. There’s no consistency in the drinks. There’s no leadership.

It’s at this point that I think about how Jon likes to fight for something or someone, but Eric just seems so pathetic. I don’t know how Jon is going to reach him.

Jon answers my curiosity by deciding to fight for Karin instead. He repeats what she mentioned earlier about how she loves the place so much that she’s stayed there 14 years. He reminds Eric that Playoffs’ staff is like family to her, and the money she makes there is essential to her financial well-being. He tells Eric that it’s as serious of an issue to Karin as it is to Eric. He informs Eric that she’s fighting for these things, and “you don’t even know it.”

But Eric tells Jon he does know it.

Say whaaaa?! I’m old enough to remember when the technology arrived to pause live TV, and I pay to have it now even though everyone I know has cut the cord. I keep it for moments just like this. I immediately hit the rewind button to make sure I heard that right, and yes, yes, I did.

I can hear in his voice that Jon is as surprised and disgusted as I am by this information. He interrupts Eric, “Oh, that’s even worse.”

Eric tries to defend himself but can probably tell it’s bullshit when he hears it leave his mouth, “Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it’s not that I DON’T KNOW, any…it’s….”

Jon interrupts again, “So you knew but you didn’t fix it? Do you CARE about them?” as he glances toward the bartenders.

“I fix what I can. I don’t always fix everything,” Eric continues in his defense. “I make mistakes like everybody but…it’s not that I don’t know. I do know.”

“Hold on!” Jon interrupts again. “These aren’t mistakes. These are CHOICES. You CHOSE not to train them. That’s a choice. You knew you should, but you didn’t. Do you know how much that bothers me, Ann-Sofie? That this guy knows–that he’s a Marine–he knows he should do it, but he didn’t? He knows how important this job is for them. He told me he knew this….” He turns toward Eric, “…but you’re letting them sink and you’re sinking with them.”

Eric is so caught up in his excuses that he actually sounds exasperated with Jon and tries to bring him over to his point of view. “Like I said, Jon, I feel like we have tried hard to create a good environment for my staff.”

“Bullshit!”

“I don’t think our staff would say they don’t work in a good environment. I don’t believe that.”

Now Jon is getting irritated, and he questions Eric hard. “How is it a good environment when an employee diminishes your food so they don’t buy it? How is that good?”

Eric gives in and says he’s not even going to defend the food.

Jon knows he’s won the battle but not the war, so, once again, he adapts and overcomes. “Then don’t tell me it’s a good environment because it isn’t. It isn’t.” After a pause, he goes for the jugular, invoking both Eric’s call of duty and also his masculinity, “So I ask you two questions. I know what kind of businessman you are. Now comes the question you’re not gonna like. What kind of fricken man are you? How do you let these people fail and not stand up to defend them and protect them and keep their jobs intact? What the hell kind of man are you?”

Eric does provide an answer. He says, “Well, you’re about to find out.” I don’t know about Jon, but I never found out, at least not to any level of satisfaction for me. I mean, Jon showed this guy the Partender numbers that indicated he is losing $688,972 a year. Albeit the numbers are inflated due to the assumptions they use in their calculations, but the figure is still astronomical! As Karin puts it, the amount of money Playoffs is losing with just one year’s alcohol loss is more money than she makes in 10 years.

Karin and the other staff earn their keep, too. They step up during the stress test, but, as predicted, no POS and no table numbers are the two biggest culprits and completely ruin any chance for the kitchen to succeed. It doesn’t help that this is also Kevin’s first minute on the job as cook.

While the bar gets remodeled, Jon meets with Eric and Ann-Sofie for their one-on-one. He tells us that he knows the employees stepped up for Eric, but Eric has not returned the favor, which to me implies he is going to do something about it. Jon’s acknowledgment of what I’ve seen in Eric gets me excited about this meeting.

During the one-on-one, Jon praises Eric and Ann-Sofie for their ability to separate amicably for the good of their children, similarly to how Jon and his first wife did for their daughter’s sake. Jon asks Eric what he’s going to do differently after his training this week, and the only thing Eric can think of to say is that he is going to implement whatever Jon gives him to implement.

It’s at this point in the episode, I start talking to Eric myself, since Jon seems to have given up. “Seriously, Eric? That answer is so lame, my grandfather could have given it to me just from listening to commercials for Bar Rescue through his broken Miracle-Ear.” Then I recall Jon’s original assessment that Eric is lazy. I referred to it as being “uninspired” earlier. Eric might call it “burnout,” but no matter the label, it’s the same outcome—he’ll do nothing above, and maybe not even including, the bare minimum. The editors do not include anything more of substance from this meeting so it has me wondering, again, “What’s going on that Jon has let Eric remain so uninspired?”

During the opening night, we hear Jon confirm with Eric and Ann-Sofie that he is leaving them in a better place. He has revitalized Playoffs by keeping the name but adding the typical elements of an Orange Door Entertainment system, Skytab POS machines, a Manitowoc ice machine, Partender, all the bar supplies they’ll ever need, a commercial kitchen panini press, heat lights for the food, and an upgraded sound and video system.

The upgrades are as fantastic as ever. However, the way Jon words the ending of this episode makes me wonder if he senses unfinished business, too. He says that Eric has earned his respect, and he “had a far better, far more aggressive attitude than I thought, and Ann-Sofie seems ready to stand behind him as the general manager. This team really stepped up.” What he described as having happened this week is a completely different scenario than what I just watched and I don’t understand why anyone at Bar Rescue, especially Jon, would allow that to happen for any reason whatsoever.

Sadly, just like earlier this season in “S9E5: Low Five Dive,” where bar owner Cathy was beyond downtrodden while Jon tried to raise her up, I just don’t see in Eric what Jon sees in Eric. I do, however, see how Jon gathered new information and updated his understanding of the issues causing the failure at Playoffs. He let go of his preconceptions about the relationships and even that Eric might not be knowledgeable about or committed to his employees to work on inspiring Eric to re-engage in his business by giving his bar a great remodel, a bright and visible sign, a fantastic equipment upgrade, and a complete plan for immediate and future success.

Then, once again, I find myself talking to Eric, “There’s no doubt about it. Jon doles out the most illustrious gifts, and if you aren’t successful with yours, then, in the words of my favorite hospitality expert, ‘Shame on you.’ Of course, getting a remodel and then selling your bar to get the hell out of the business like you wanted to do in 2005 would surely count as a success to Jon because he only wants to see you financially secure and happy. If your bar is a vibrant business in the community, well, that would be icing on the cake.” Then, I imagine a nice group hug that puts this episode to rest in the past and moves us forward onto next week’s episode.

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I invite you to consider and share your answers in the Comments: Do you think I’m right and Eric and Ann-Sofie will sell Playoffs? If not, what do you think their fate will be?