Tabatha Takes Over is a Reality Show following Tabatha Coffey, alumna and Ensemble Dark Horse of Shear Genius Season 1, as she helps failing businesses turn themselves around over the course of one week. Each episode begins with Tabatha letting the owners of a business know that they've hit rock-bottom, after which she proceeds to take the business over and re-work it from the ground up.
The episodes are largely self-contained, with the formula always the same. The business is failing, the business gets taken over, the business gets reworked, Tabatha leaves... then she comes back.
While the series was originally named Tabatha's Salon Takeover due to its focus on failing salons, the fourth season brought a slight Retool of the show, rebranding itself as Tabatha Takes Over and allowing Tabatha to cover various other types of businesses, not just hair salons (though they are still the main focus).
Tabatha Takes Over lasted for five seasons, with the final season ending in 2013.
This show provides examples of:
- Brutal Honesty: If she isn't complimenting you, Tabatha is usually telling you what you did wrong—and in very blunt terms.
- The Chessmaster: Tabatha does seem to have an abnormal amount of control over people.
- Child Hater: Tabatha claimed this when going to fix a children's salon, however she was astounded that she was still better with the kids than the uncaring stylists and during the reopening got so annoyed with some of the stylists that she went to go sit in the kids play area, asking a three year old if she could hide from the adults there.
- Jerkass: Quite a few given the similar formula to Kitchen Nightmares, but the absolute worst has to be Nikki, owner of Brownes and Co.. She's incredibly nasty and insulting to both her staff and her clients(she's tries to excuse it by saying she's "European"), has cameras set up so she can watch them from home and constantly sends rude messages while watching them, completely ignores or dismisses all of Tabatha's advice about treating her staff better(and she also put the cameras back up after being told to take them down) and unsurprisingly is back to her old ways by the time Tabatha revisits her and refuses to admit she did anything wrong. Shortly after her entire staff revolted and quit the hair salon, in a couple of years Nikki would end up losing her entire business due to her utter bitchiness and stupidity. The fact that she had 19 years of experience and that her shop used to very succesful only highlights her sheer ignorance. Some staff and owners see Tabatha as this as well, though she's never harsh without good reason and often times people will change their minds about her and end up giving her a hug by the end, as she truly does care about the staff and in examples like the above one, she WILL stand up for them and demand better treatment from incompetent owners.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While she may come off as mean and arrogant, the truth is that Tabatha knows what she's talking about and her advice is genuinely helpful and well intentioned.
- Once an Episode: Subverted in the episode about the Club Ripples bar. Tabatha asked the owners to hand her the keys...and the owners admitted they left them at the bar. Tabatha was nearly speechless.
- Snap Back: The real downer endings often have this, such as the above Nikki quickly revoking the power of her manager and demoting the woman to a desk girl, putting the cameras back up, and bringing back that fugly couch Tabatha had gotten rid of.
- Too Dumb to Live: Some owners seem to have no idea what they're doing. Like Brian of H Design who was actually a broker who took over a salon in a build his dad owned. He had no idea how a salon should have been run and tried to act purely from a profit mindset which resulted in his stylists not having enough supplies to even do things like properly color clients' hair (the notion hat you might need to spend some money to make some money just did not occur). The managers had no power and were constantly having to pay for things the salon should have had but didn't. He'd already had one walkout by the time Tabatha arrived and after the six week timeskip was in the middle of another one. And despite acting like he was the boss he also spent almost all day in his brokerage office instead of the salon. And he tried charging his employees for the use of the equipment Tabatha had given them before she left, as if they wouldn't recall that the equipment had been a gift and totally free.
