Full Throttle Saloon

Okay, that title isn't totally misleading but I'm not completely "inside". At one point in my life I lived in the full throttle area. I have worked the rally and have seen the kind of things presented on the show. Also, I have known one of the primary stars for many years. The comment earlier that trashed the "players" was disgustingly out of line, inappropriate and wrong. Allow me to shed some light.

Operating a business of this magnitude that requires months of planning is tough. The logistics alone are mind boggling. A typical bar owner would have no idea how to pull it off. We are talking two truckloads of beer per night. Plus booking bands and staffing an event with quality personnel, souvenir shops and vendors. Pulling this all off requires more than most can handle. Throw in the need for some drama for a TV show, and you have a recipe for disaster for most bar owners.

Michael Ballard has always been a character But one thing he will not do is display himself in any different light than how he normally is. When he is upset, it's real. When he is happy, it is genuine. He gives what he can when he can and only asks for hard work In return.

Angie is much more than what is shown on the show. She is a savvy business woman, college educated woman, and has always worked hard to get to where she is now. She is giving and charitable, often donating time and money to animal shelters and causes she believes in. Most of her giving flies under the radar, but trust me, I see it and it's real.

I've never met Jesse, but my kids have and know him well, and they love him. He treats people well and is a loving and devoted family man by all accounts.

Understand this is a television show. It depicts what life is like running a successful business while balancing friendship, loyalty, and family time. The drama is real in that the situations depicted have actually happened. And some are ongoing struggles. Do they happen in exact linear timeliness like on the show? Not always, but they are situations they find themselves in.

All in all I love it, as does my wife and friends. But before rushing to judgement, get to know the people involved or don't comment.

The lesson here seems to be don't hire your friends, unless maybe if they are the only ones that will take the job.

I guess his friends could do more work behind the scenes that actually makes having them there worth while but what we see doesn't show that.

Jesse seems mostly interested in building his alcohol brand, trying to keep Michael single as long as he can and trying to piss of Angie as often as possible, showing just how jealous he is of her.

Goat spends most of his time drunk and stumbling around or drunk driving around in a golf cart or quitting. I guess he is MC for his sober hours of the evening.

There seems to be so much free time for Jesse and Goat to drink, wander around and cause drama and yet they talk continuously about how busy they always are.

No one seems to ever know what is going on with the employees. There is no bartender manager continually walking the place and checking on them? His girlfriend/wife seems to be the only manager they have because someone always runs to her and then she has to run out there to stop what is going on.

No matter how urgent something is said to be nobody moves faster at it.

Maybe sane, sober, hard working people wouldn't survive in that environment but it really seems like the goal isn't overall profit or franchising, but just partying with their friends and making enough to live the rest of the year off of it. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Just stop pretending the big dream is the goal.

It is difficult to tell how much is 'real' and how much is edited and built up for drama. It is hard to imagine a business that size is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy on everything they do. But maybe it grew so big, with so many employees, that the only way to survive is with massive sales.

Maybe chaos likes chaos so if the place worked smoothly the customers would sense it and leave? Otherwise it seems like he could be so much more successful if he had sober, hardworking people that were focused on the business around him. Rather than a guy trying to build an alcohol brand, a dance group leader trying to build them into a national brand, and a guy that quits every season and drinks all night as his top people.

It also feels like I've seen every episode before, because they are nearly all the same thing: Jesse pissing off Angie, Michael saying they may not make it this year, Goat drunk and screwing off, Bartenders focusing on tips rather than sales.

If you're looking for a salacious, shocking reality show, look elsewhere. If you're looking for hours and hours of outrageous biker behavior, look elsewhere. This isn't a PR piece for the Sturgis motorcycle rally either. What you get out of watching this series is that you see how a business should - and should not - be run. The bar exists for only 10 days, and the pressure to turn a profit is present in every show. Season 1 is the better of the two, as you see the realities of the country's economic situation hitting the bar hard, and coupled with some poor business choices, you're left wondering if there will be a 2011 season for both the show AND the bar. The tension and drama in Season 1 feels quite real. Season 2, on the other hand, feels a bit more forced in terms of creating drama for TV. I think Season 1 would be excellent to show in an MBA program - it would be excellent to discuss the realities of human resources management, accounting, logistics, marketing and customer service. It's not the greatest reality series ever, but if you are interested in how businesses do and don't succeed, have a watch.

We live in a world where Music Television doesn't play any music, Video Hits 1 doesn't play any videos, Arts & Entertainment has no art and is not entertaining and watching The Learning Channel will actually make you dumber.So why not make a channel called Tru TV and make it as fake as possible?The sheep will watch anything and this channel proves it.This show pushes the fake boundaries by actually using the same plot for every episode.The overused plot is that an employee is stealing from them, Jesse is always sneaking around angering the owner's wife(who is always threatening to not perform her lame burlesque act with her troll face) and the band isn't going to play.While all this is happening, the frantic owner is running around acting like they are going out of business.Every episode ends with everything working out for them.IMDb really needs to start allowing negative ratings.Being required to give 1 star makes for a distorted overall rating.I would have given this a minus 6.