As a huge fan of Spike TV’s Bar Rescue and its … umm … emphatic host/bar expert Jon Taffer, I find myself physically bristling at that moment in every episode where Taffer, fueled by righteous anger over whatever gross behavior he’s witnessed via hidden camera and the knowledge that conflict fuels ratings, barges into a hapless drinking establishment and loses it. I mean, he freaks the heck out. His volume increases from normal to ballistic, his eyes bulge like they’re being squeezed out of a toothpaste tube, and his face turns a shade of red best described as eggplant lava.

And it’s in this moment, where Bar Rescue combines shiny reality show amplification - as in, the bigger the freak-out, the bigger the splash - with the cold hard reality that each of these bars, including West Palm Beach’s Mystique Lounge (now Aura), star of last night’s episode, were in trouble serious enough to invite this freakery inside. There’s no way you’d subject yourself and your staff to cameras and the wrath of the Taffer if you weren’t seriously failing. In past weeks, we’ve seen a sad Silver Spring, Md. pirate bar with nearly a million dollars in losses and a sadder Irish bar in the Fells Point section of Baltimore operating happily with the carcass of a deceased rat hidden in a corner.

Mystique’s issues surround a bad reputation after a fatal shooting outside three years ago. I’ve always thought that its appeal is often hampered by its location on Narcissus Avenue, within shouting distance of Clematis Street but just far away enough not to be in the club crawl flow. The episode says that it’s the only one of the 20-odd clubs in downtown West Palm to cater to a “hip urban crowd,” which of course is code for an upscale black clientele, the kind that are catered to in Baltimore and D.C. and Philly and New York, with a specific level of class, type of music and clientele (read: no pants-on-the-ground folks.)

I noticed that Taffer’s freak-out was just a little more subdued than, say, with the pirates, or with the frat brothers with the Irish bar in Baltimore. But his observations were right on - the issues with that place appeared to not just be the lingering bad feelings from the shooting. The decor was spare and outdated, certain members of the bar staff were either inappropriately hoochie in the apparel department or, in one case, fond of sitting down at the bar, next to the customers she was supposed to be serving, and having a cocktail WHILE ON THE CLOCK. (I admit to having been an ocassionally lax amusement park employee who may have enjoyed soft pretzels and forbidden pretzel cheese on company time, but even I wasn’t lax enough to sit down with the customers on the other side of the counter with the park guests and chowing down in my apron.)

Even more egregious - the VIP bottle service area, which asks clientele to shell out $200 for a $30 bottle of alcohol and the experience of being treated, you know, like VIPs, was just sad, with scotch-taped signs, dirty glassware, ice scooped haphazardly out of a bucket with a glass instead of a scoop, clueless servers and the feeling that you just got hosed out of $200. And the guy being paid to promote the place was taking 100 percent of the door take, meaning, as Taffer said, he’d let the devil inside if he was willing to pay the cover. So the owners got none of the cover and no assurances that every knucklehead in town wasn’t being let in, scaring away the more discerning clientele and making everyone inside less likely to buy expensive cocktails. Bad all around - except for the promoter, who was making north of $60,000 a year on the door.

I will say that unlike some of the other bar owners I’ve seen on this show, Mystique/Aura’s Torres Anwar and Darren Cummings seem to actually care about not just digging out of their financial hole, but about serving their customers well. And Taffer’s changes, while yelly, seemed pretty self-explanatory, like cutting the promoter’s take (they wound up cutting him out all together), getting uniforms and a better drink menu, upgrading the VIP experience and firing the drinking bartender.

They also changed the name from Mystique to Aura, which not only suggests a positive feeling but is no longer the same name as the place where the shooting happened. And it looks like a new club. Unlike the pirate bar, which went back to its pirate ways the minute Taffer left, or the Irish bar, which closed almost immediately, Aura seems to be doing well. I hear they have good karaoke. We might have to check that out.

My major criticism of the show is more about the new season as a whole. Last season focused much more on Taffer’s expertise in bar science, specifying, say, how the color of a club translates into bar sales, or how the number of times a server checks in on a customer translates into the number of drinks sold. This season is a lot more about Hell’s Kitchen-esque yelling and freakouts, which is disappointing. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Taffer last year before Bar Rescue premiered, and he’s the real deal. I don’t think he needs to go all Gordon Ramsay on people.

Otherwise, good episode.