Sean Patton Says He and Jay Larson Quit Esquire’s Best Bars Show
Sean Patton (left) and Jay Larson (right) on Best Bars in America
For two seasons, comedians Jay Larson and Sean Patton showed America around the best bars in the country on the Esquire Network as hosts of the series Best Bars in America. They traveled to the nation’s greatest cities like Milwaukee, Austin, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, San Francisco and New Orleans and drank extraordinary quantities of booze in a stunning array of beautiful upscale bars, dive bars that have stood the test of time, and even some trendy joints, and the show was great. Whether you were watching just to see how drunk they would get, or to take a tour of real America as seen through the bottom of a glass, the show was a great watch. Jay and Sean’s personalities and drinking skills of course, were a big part of the show’s success.
This week we learned some bad news for fans of Best Bars in America. There will be no season three– or at least there will be no season three with Jay and Sean, because according to Sean Patton, the duo have quit the show. Patton talked about quitting the show on SiriusXM’s Bennington show, with hosts Ron and Gail Bennington.
“A lot of people don’t realize– and I feel like Jay and I have been hesitant to tweet about it or anything– but the show. . .we walked away,” Sean said on last Wednesday’s show. “It was fun, and we did two seasons, and it still airs. You can see it on demand, or Delta,” he said referring to Delta Airlines which carries both seasons of the show. Sean said he had a great time doing the show, for a while, until the production company that created the series started pressuring them to act younger, and dumb things down a bit, presumably to appeal to a more beer-chugging crowd. “It got to a point where you wanted to say to them, you guys should have hired two 21 year old hosts,” Sean said, “not because we couldn’t handle the drinking, but cause of some of the things they were really pushing for us to do.”
For example, he said, they kept pushing having more super models at the bars, and trying to encourage Sean and Jay to react more to the girls. “They would pull us aside and be like, well guys, she’s a super model. Maybe give her a little oggle, or be like ‘wow, you’re so hot.’ And I’m like I’m in my thirties! You want me to act like— and Jay was like, ‘I have a wife and two children. You want me to oggle another woman for television? No, I’m not doing it.'”
And it wasn’t just the models, he also wanted them to be more “bro” when they hosted the show. “There was a lot of like– they wanted us to be way “bro”-ier. Which we’re not bro-y at all. But they wanted us to have a lot of like “yo dude! I bet you can’t pound eight shots of tequila bro! (imitating bro voice) cause I’ll take that challenge.” And we were like who the fuck talks like that? No one actually talks– they wanted us to be cartoons. They wanted us to be two 25 year olds skate boarding in every bar, except while wearing a cardigan and an ascot, you know, cause it’s Esquire.”
Sean said he doesn’t blame Esquire, they were really great and supportive. He says it was the production company that were trying to change the tone of the show.
You can still catch Best Bars in America on Demand (and of course on Delta), and catch Sean performing around the country (check his website seanoliverpatton.com for dates). He’s @MrSeanPatton on twitter too.
Listen to the clip from the Bennington show below. You can hear Ron and Gail Bennington every day on SiriusXM RawDog from noon to 3pm et.
