Will we like Binion’s as much as Canadians do?
Just like Alan Thicke, the metric system and poutine, the staff of Binion’s is a much bigger deal in Canada.
But that could change now that TLC has acquired the 10-episode reality show “Casino Confidential” (8 p.m. today).
Filmed over the summer of 2011 for the Canadian cable channel TVtropolis, the series follows the bosses, dining staff, security and Cowgirls — the young, booty-shorts-and-fishnets-wearing dealers — at the famed Fremont Street casino.
“When it aired in Canada, there’s a lot of Canadian tourists that come here, and my employees kept coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, somebody else came and mentioned the show. They love the show,’ ” says Tim Lager, Binion’s general manager. “They’d come in and actually generate a lot of business, especially for our steakhouse, with large parties.”
One of tonight’s back-to-back episodes includes rooftop nuptials — presided over, naturally, by an Elvis impersonator — that Lager says inspired several destination weddings at the casino.
“It definitely was a positive,” he says, “because they kind of wanted to come and touch it, you know, which I thought was really neat.”
Canadian visitors were particularly thrilled, Lager says, to see so many of the cast members on the casino floor. Even now, two years later, he estimates 60 to 70 percent of the employees featured on the show still work there.
Odds are, though, those tourists would have been somewhat less excited to interact with some of “Casino Confidential’s” hardest-working stars: the security staff.
In tonight’s episodes, they detain a reveler who drops his drawers on the casino floor and roust two “ladies of the evening” from the property.
But the bad behavior doesn’t stop there. Two blurry-faced young women flash their blurry breasts for the wedding’s best man, who later drunkenly crashes the steakhouse kitchen demanding a faster-cooked meal.
Lager, though, isn’t worried about any potential fallout.
“Actually, I think the positive is, we’ve already had it air in Canada, so we’ve seen how people reacted to it,” he says. “The reality is, that kind of stuff happens in bar, restaurant, nightclub, casino (settings).”
It even happens among the Binion’s staff. Take Jana, a Cowgirl specializing in blackjack and dice, who’s being groomed to deal the next day at the Binion’s Poker Classic. An hour after her training, she’s shown drinking at one of the casino’s bars and getting into an altercation with an aging “Jersey Shore” type in a showgirl costume. Jana calls her a whore; the showgirl threatens, “I’ll whoop your ass!” Jana is later shown stumbling and eventually falling down on her way out of the casino.
“Well, I wasn’t very thrilled with that, I’ll be honest with you,” Lager admits, before adding that Jana still works at Binion’s and “she’s mellowed her lifestyle a lot.”
She’s also the reason Lager appears in the series.
“I’m surrounded by a bunch of people that are hams. They’re very outgoing, and they were just dying to be on it,” he says of “Casino Confidential’s” early stages. “I was like, ‘That’s fine. I can just be in the background. No big deal.’ ”
But he found his way in front of the cameras when they followed Jana to Las Vegas Motor Speedway to watch Lager’s then 16-year-old daughter, Hayley, race her Binion’s-sponsored car. (The series was filmed so long ago, Hayley’s already given up the sport.)
“I had fun with it, though,” Lager says of his accidental brush with fame. “It was a kick.”
That’s the same feeling he hopes “Casino Confidential” creates in American viewers. Assuming they get to see very much of it.
When it comes to Vegas-related reality shows, TLC has displayed a trigger finger so itchy, you’d swear it had been coated with poison ivy and wrapped in a wool sweater.
After four Sunday night episodes, “Sin City Rules” turned up on a Tuesday before the remaining three episodes were banished to the Internet. A few weeks later, “Pete Rose: Hits & Mrs.,” which followed the banned baseballer’s life in Las Vegas and his long-distance relationship with his fiancee, was dumped after four episodes, with the final two installments burned off, unannounced, on another channel.
Still, Lager is thrilled “Casino Confidential” finally has the chance to be seen outside Canada.
“We’re real happy about it,” he concludes. “We’re just hoping it does as well as it did in Canada and we can have some guests come down and meet our people.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
