Taking a page from the Gordon Ramsey School of Reality TV, Bravo’s Tabatha Takes Over feature continuous snips, jabs, and on-camera embarrassment meant to reform wayward beauticians and their sad salons. The show has turned out to be a success for Ms. Coffey and the channel — who toast to the premiere of season four tonight — though it fails to generate the kind of heat and sparks that the aforementioned Mr. Ramsey elicits on the endless array of cooking-related shows he hosts.
The majority of the blame for that falls to Coffey, an Australian hair stylist who first made her name by appearing on Bravo’s competitive hair design show Shear Genius. Though she was eliminated midway through, her prickly personality and elfin look caught the attention of network executives enough to warrant her own show. And over the course of three seasons, Coffee has followed the trail blazed by other reality TV boss-types by overhauling dozens of struggling businesses through professional savvy and force of personality. She’s even pushed her own catchphrase pretty hard, though “I’m taking over” hasn’t quite tapped the zeitgeist like “auf Wiedersehen” or “you’re fired.”
For her fourth season, Coffey is expanding beyond salons and venturing into taking over other small businesses, including bars and clubs. Tabatha sticks to what she does best for the premiere, though: wearing nothing but black and emanating an icy, woodland creature-vibe until salon employees agree to do her bidding. There are several obvious steps to be followed, too, which all involve Tabitha being horrified, stern, snippy, and then strangely kind at the very end. Any regular viewer also knows there will most certainly be fingers wiped along dusty surfaces and disgusting, giant hairballs pulled from corners of the salon.
The hair salon Jungle Red in Minneapolis serves as the season’s starting line, necessitating all kinds of help from Tabatha. The owner is a forty something woman named Suzanne who has driven herself into massive debt trying to manage the salon, even necessitating she sell her home and sleep on the extra futon in the back of her business. Meanwhile, her cute-as-a-button daughter, Kari, has had to put career aspirations of being a yoga instructor on hold to help run the business with her mom. But the biggest problem of all? These salon girls like to p-a-r-t-y! Yet, the entire party girl “dilemma” of the episode is one of the most manufactured-seeming that Bravo has tried as they feature clunky shots of the girls pounding shots midday in the middle of the salon like it’s 1 a.m. in the club.