Originally appeared on Reality Blurred
Authored by: Andy Dehnart on September 30, 2015
Hotel Impossible‘s biggest challenge on Tuesday’s episode, “Hershey Addiction,” was not bed bugs, mold, or a decaying property. Instead, it was alcoholism. A general manager’s addiction found its way into online reviews and was clearly affecting both his 91-year-old mother, who founded The Simmons Motel in Hershey, Penn., and his son.
The star of the episode, however, was a man identified on camera only as a social worker named Joe.
During a Periscope broadcast after the show, host Anthony Melchiorri said as much: “this was Joe’s Hotel Impossible” because “the guy was absolutely phenomenal” and “didn’t take shit from anybody.” Anthony said that he almost walked away because “I didn’t feel equipped to do the show,” so it isn’t an exaggeration when he said, “without Joe, there is no show.”
Bravo to Anthony and Hotel Impossible‘s producers for not doing what so many other television makeover shows have done, which is ignore, exploit, and/or have their stars act like the trained professionals they are not.
Anthony had never met Joe until the on-camera meeting because Joe was brought in during the actual filming. “A producer called a friend who called a friend,” Anthony said on Periscope, though apparently there was already a connection: “my production company was trying to get him a show.”
Joe conducted what seemed like a mini-intervention, but was remarkable in both his approach and insight. He was so direct and got right to the center of the problem, and repeated Whitney’s bullshit back to him in ways that revealed it to be, well, bullshit. He eventually convinced Whitney, the son of the owner, to get on a plane and go to rehab, and even monitored Whitney while he packed, drunk.