Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The angry young man
By Miss Alli | Season 3 | Episode 12 | Aired on 04.13.2005
Magna arrives at Kaplan Thaler, which apparently paid for the placement and is thus being named as the advertising agency in play here. And having its sign shown! Good God, people, it's the biggest day in Kaplan Thaler history! Inside, the team oohs and aahs over pictures of the Solstice, and at its remarkable MSRP of only $20,000! It's so affordable and attractive! It's the car you've been waiting for! You are getting very sleepy! Carolyn comes in and sits down, and Kendra explains that she wants to appeal to the emotions of the buyer, because ultimately, a car like this is an emotional purchase -- as opposed, presumably, to a practical one, which I think is fair to say. I would love to hear someone ask, "Now, how would you fit, say, your kid's soccer team in this car?" Kendra interviews that her plan for the brochure is "a love affair with a car," in which every page will show a different emotion. Craig says that they need their "theme," and then he interviews that Kendra shouldn't be just planning to use great pictures accompanied by large-print words. Yeah, pictures accompanied by text? That will never work! "She just doesn't get it, much of the time," he says.
The Trump motto this week is "Pulling All-Nighters," and of course, he knows all about this, because he works so hard. He tells us that he's seen people "go days and days without any sleep" to finish a deal. Days and days? I really don't know about that, although I'm sure if his people do pull all-nighters, they're the biggest all-nighters in the country, so it makes a certain amount of sense. We watch as he makes a generic speech to a crowd about loving what you do (objection: irrelevant!), and then he tells us that if you don't have the physical or mental ability to do all-nighters, "you better be doing something else."
Magna enters the studios where the interior shooting is going to be done, and we get our first good look at the Solstice. It really is very pretty, but to me, more than "sexy car," it says "cartoon car." Like, I kind of expect it to have googly eyes on the front and a grill that turns into a mouth that opens wide and says, "How's it goin', fellas?" I mean, it's pretty and everything, but I don't exactly think it says, "Stud." Kendra asks Craig to stay here and supervise the shooting of the car. She interviews that she wanted to leave him there so that she and Tana could go off and do the exterior shots. As Kendra talks generally to the photographer (I think) about wanting shots of the "curves" and "lines" of the car, Craig complains that she "began micromanaging" the shoot. Which...I mean, that's just not what micromanaging is. Micromanaging would have been leaving a list of what shots to take and what order to take them in...that's micromanaging. "Get shots of the curves and the lines of the car" isn't micromanaging, to me. That's just managing. But of course, Craig doesn't feel like she delegated enough and so forth, because he's sort of primed to feel offended in the situation. I think Craig doesn't like management at all. I think he likes to be left entirely in charge of an entire area of a project, which really isn't necessarily what happens when you aren't your own boss. Kendra leaves; Craig pouts.