Angelica Babiera | Arts Editor
Featured image: The Hotel Life faces serious legal issues with a styrofoam hotel building, while smashing the record for most watched episode in American television history. | Courtesy of Pixabay
Bisney’s The Hotel Life is an American sitcom created by Jimmy Proton and Abba Alabama. The show follows a single father who is a dancer living in the Stilton Hotel with his troublesome 13-year-old twin girls, Brianna and Diana. Danny, the father, is the lead dancer of the Stilton’s line dance group, “One Line,” and his job requires him to work 15 hours a day, which is why the hotel has allowed him and his daughters to live there.
However, since Danny works all the time, the twins, who are over-the-top attention seekers, often find themselves dying of boredom and lack of attention from others.
So, they find any type of excuse to anger the hotel manager, Mr. Sosey, with their pranks and idiocratic messes in order to fulfill their desire to be noticed.
In one of the famous episodes of the show titled “8th Grade,” the heiress of the Stilton Hotel, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll Stilton, whose name is based off of the city Llanfairpwllgwyngyll in Wales (where she was conceived), begins to learn how to drive for the first time. Sosey is in the passenger seat, teaching Llanfairpwllgwyngyll the basics, like the function of the side mirrors and where the gears are.
After Sosey’s short lecture of where everything is, he tells Stilton to reverse the car slowly, so she can get a sense of how it feels. A very nervous Stilton does what she is told, but before she can stop the car, the bumper touches the hotel building slightly; this results in a big hole in the wall on the side of the hotel building, indicating the “concrete” was made out of styrofoam, rather than real cement.
The Hotel Life is set in a real hotel in Boston rather than a makeshift studio set, which means the hole in the wall is real and not a prop. As it happened, all of the actors and crew were shocked by the weak foundation of the hotel.
Proton and Alabama, along with director Steve Mann, shouts to the crew to back away from the hotel and to call 911, while the camera is still rolling.
“I forgot to yell ‘cut,’ and the cameraman only stops when I yell it. My crew doesn’t do anything unless I tell them to do it,” Mann explains.
“Now, we have this really cool shot of the building that we use for props, and it’s one of the most viewed scenes in Bisney’s television show history. I mean, we had to use it because it was just so good. I don’t really care much for what the hotel owner has to say about it.”
The hotel owner, who wants to remain anonymous, explains that when the building was being inspected before its grand opening back in 2000, it had passed all necessary criterias.
“The inspector didn’t find any problems, and now we are being accused of this very nasty rumour,” the owner says.
“I mean this character, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, is supposedly very stupid on this show, so we can see how she could have caused that hole in the wall. It’s not my building, it’s that dumb girl.”
The inspector who worked on the building back in 2000 is Sheila Davis, explaining the building was up for closure, because it was indeed made out of styrofoam.
“I’ve failed that inspection back in 2000, and I don’t know how it’s been running up until now,” Davis says.
“I’ve got nothing to do with this. I did my job and put an ‘ATTENTION’ mark on the file because it was dangerously built. Styrofoam? Seriously?”
Amidst the chaos of judicial problems with the set and hotel building, “8th Grade” has been the most popular T.V. episode not only on Bisney, but all networks in the American T.V. industry. Even York students praise the unexpected pivotal point in the sitcom.
Gary Freedman, a sixth-year Engineering student, says: “It’s all I talk about with my friends. I mean, it really grasps the whole comedic trope of the dumb, rich white girl, and the corrupt ways of famous hotels like the Stilton.
“I watch it over and over again despite having failing grades, because it really makes you think about the reality of things. It’s sad, but it is what it is.”
