“We party a lot in here, who knows what happens to the carpets, right?” – Pa Butt
The Applegate River Lodge, owned by Joanna and Richard Davis, is located in “beautiful Applegate, Oregon,” which makes sense. I’ve passed through the general area several times while driving back and forth from LA to Seattle and it is indeed a gorgeous area of the country.
Gordon Ramsay tells us at the outset that the Davises designed and built the Applegate River Lodge some 22 years earlier.
While at one time Richard Davis may have been an industrious sort, he’s classified as lazy and shiftless these days. At some point, Joanna and Richard got divorced, and now Richard “lives in a hut next to the main lodge,” and basically does nothing but hang out and enjoy copious amounts of ganja.
For reasons that remain unclear, the goateed and salt-and-pepper haired Richard tells us that he goes by the monicker Pa Butt these days.
Our guy is a major pot head.
Meanwhile, Joanna relays that the lodge is losing between $5,000-$15,000 per month. For some reason, learning about how dire the financial situation is on businesses featured on Hotel Hell (and Kitchen Nightmares too, for that matter) is one of the more interesting aspects of the show. It must be a hellacious strain to know you’re working – except in the case of Richard Davis – incredibly hard only to steadily lose ground and fall further into a financial hole month after month.
Joanna Davis runs everything but has hopes that her sons, Duke and Dusty, will take over the hotel one day. However, the sons don’t get along very well – we see them cursing at each other briefly — and Dusty currently runs the restaurant and bar with girlfriend Tammy while Duke and his wife Melissa set up “music nights” at the hotel.
You get a read on Duke’s whole vibe when he says that while his brother is into “numbers and business,” he’s “a lot more into feelings and ideas and concepts.”
On top of all that, Pa Butt holds late night “jam sessions” that go on at all hours and disturb the paying guests who are actually trying to get to sleep.
When Ramsay arrives at the Applegate River Lodge, he observes how beautiful it is, but then quickly pivots to asking, “What’s that dump? What’s that smell?” The answer, it turns out, is Richard Davis a.k.a. Pa Butt’s hut.
Inside the hotel lodge, Ramsay notes that it’s both enormous and empty. Eventually, Pa Butt rolls out (after finishing off the joint he was enjoying) and introduces himself. Pa Butt then talks about the band that’s going to play at the lodge that night.
“And then we’ll probably jam out later in the Butt Hutt,” Pa Butt says.
Yes, this is actually what happened and what was said, if you’re wondering.
The Butt Hutt turns out to be Pa Butt’s hangout area, where the incense is intense and Troopy the dog hangs out. Ramsay soon “discovers” that Pa Butt is a huge pot head: “I smoke the medicinal herb,” he says.
Ramsay is then shown to The Cattlemen Room where he’s going to stay the night, and he quickly notes that “it smells like cattlemen in here.”
Pa Butt also laughs off the massive stains on the carpet, saying that “We party a lot in here, who knows what happens to the carpets, right?”
Pa Butt freely admits that while his ex-wife sees the lodge as a “business,” he doesn’t: it’s all chill vibes and magic herb times for our dude.
“Kids, don’t do drugs,” Ramsay tells the camera before a commercial break. “You’ll end up like that.”
But it’s even funnier somehow when Ramsay refers to Pa Butt as a “carefree hippie” in his British accent.
When Gordon meets Joanna, she tells him that she’s the only one in the family who takes care of the finances and looks after many aspects of running the lodge. We then learn that she owes about $1 million on the lodge property in addition to losing $5,000 to $15,000 per month.
On top of that, the kids’ businesses on the Applegate River Lodge – the restaurant, bar, and music – cut their mother in on none of the profits.
Duke soon tells Ramsay that entrance to the music shows are $15 a head, but the conversation soon transitions into Duke awkwardly admitting that he too is a massive pothead.
“It definitely smells of a business that is run by stoners,” Gordon quips.
Meanwhile, Dusty then tells Ramsay makes about $120,000 a year through the restaurant business. “I’d give you a kick in the ass if that was my son,” Ramsay tells him with regard to his failure to help contribute to his mother’s financial burden.
Ramsay informs us that there are many guests at the lodge and restaurant that night because they heard he was in town. This quickly cuts to people getting irked out by the stains in the rooms while others complain about the food and service at Dusty’s restaurant.
“I’m embarrassed, I’m amazed you’re still open,” the Kitchen Nightmares star tells him.
“My food is not s—,” Dusty replies in a taciturn tone.
At 10 pm, the band starts playing in the cavernous lobby, and they’re not bad… if an eclectic hippie-ish funk/jam band is your thing. There are also some people dressed up as massive magic mushrooms in the crowd (or something), which is pretty hilarious, along with some classic Pacific Northwest super hippies.
Oh, and when we learn the name of the band, it’s perfect: The Polyrhythmics.
When Ramsay gets to his room after midnight, he makes the huge mistake of using a CSI-like blue light to check out the gross stains that are all over the mattress and other parts of the bedroom.
“It’s like a mosaic of semen,” Gordon Ramsay actually says on a reality television show.
Also: “How can they charge money to sleep in this filth,” he says, before rolling out his sleeping bag… but sleep doesn’t come as the “jam out” continues back in Pa Butt’s Butt Hutt.
Ramsay eventually comes down to break up the party, and it’s great when we refers to it as “dreadful noise.” This leads to Ramsay gathering the family for an emergency meeting.
And what comes out of this is that we learn that while the restaurant made $1,500 and the concert “a few hundred,” Joanna had to comp some of hotel rooms for guests who complained about the very same “dreadful noise.”
“You two make a profit,” Ramsay says to the sons, “while your mother makes nothing.”
“No one says that we’re sensible people,” Pa Butt says while smiling. “We’re just blessed people.”
Ramsay counters with real sense: “I wouldn’t call a million dollars in debt sensible.”
The next day, a sleepy, cranky Ramsay has Joanna meet with a group of hotel guests so she can hear about how dirty the rooms are and how disruptive the noise is at night. One guy even recalls how Pa Butt invited him to smoke marijuana with him back in the Butt Hutt.
It’s around this time that I wonder why Joanna, who seems like a decent, hard working woman let’s her ex-husband hang around and essentially live on the premises – with his partying, pot smoke-clouded lifestyle – rent free.
Soon enough, the brothers get into another argument, and I must admit I chuckled a bit when one called the other “a white trash tweaker.” But it gets really dark when Dusty tells Duke, “I’m ashamed you’re my brother.”
Eventually the brothers apologize to each other and agree that they want to help save the lodge and be there for their mother.
When Ramsay sits the entire family down again later for yet another meeting, it’s a great and satisfying moment when Ramsay kindly but firmly kicks Pa Butt out as they are discussing the business… which he has no business being a part of.
Ramsay tells them that they must put their personal issues aside so that they can support their mother. And by “support,” it’s implied and later confirmed that they’ll actually share the profits with their mother for once.
“I am just like stoked,” a crying Joanna says.
We then cut to the reveal of the renovation of the Applegate River Lodge, and a big piece is that there’s furniture in the main lodge space for the first time. More importantly, the rooms have been upgraded and fully cleaned. And the restaurant menu has gotten the classic Ramsay overhaul: a smaller menu, with vibrant, fresh ingredients.
Music is still to be a part of the hotel experience, but it’s reconceptualized as an outdoor space – with high end kind of glamping-style tent rooms surrounding it – that can accommodate music festivals.
What of the Butt Hutt though, you ask? It is left alone for Pa Butt to do what Pa Butt does.
Some stats and info about Hotel Hell, “Applegate River Lodge”
TV SHOW – Hotel Hell
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 2, Episode 3
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Gordon visits Applegate, Oregon, to try to rescue the failing Applegate River Lodge. Despite being over a million dollars in debt, the owner, Richard Davis, is more interested in smoking cannabis than he is in fixing the problems of this family-built inn.
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Reality TV
CAST – Gordon Ramsay