Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Box of tricks
By Miss Alli | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.23.2005
Magna pulls in to Home Depot as well, just as Alex interviews wearily that Craig thought it would help them screw on their thinking caps if they all went to Home Depot. You can kind of tell that Alex thinks that's pretty ass. In the conference room, Kendra offers up the idea of a mosaic on a table. Cutting boards are brought up, or concrete benches...and then Craig mentions the box. Which I think really does deserved to be upcapped, God-style -- it's really The Box. The Box is a wood storage bin with a hinged lid, also known as a "trunk" or a "toy box." And people can decorate it themselves. Nobody loves The Box, as Tana thinks it isn't creative enough and Alex interviews that it's "boring." Who would go to a clinic to make a box? As opposed to the stampede that would show up for concrete benches, apparently. The rest of the team acts bored, and ultimately, Craig makes the call on his own that they're going with The Box, probably just because everybody else is being so freaking pissy. Alex interviews that Craig has declared the discussion over, and they're making The Box whether they like it or not. Tana tells everyone else when Craig is gone that she suspects Angie already has an idea better than The Box. "We're inches away from 'you're fired,'" Tana says, complete with cobra-hand. Hee.
This week's Trump motto is "Sell Your Ideas." We watch him tell a couple of guys something about a location that he's trying to convince them doesn't suck. He tells us that if you have a great idea and you can't sell it, it won't work for you. Welcome to the first week ever when the Trump motto officially fakes you out regarding who's going to win. One point for the imps in post-production.
Happy Fun Music from a 1950s home ec movie plays ("boop-boop-boop-boop") as Net Worth strolls through Home Depot, and Erin bitches about how she would rather have been assigned to design a shoe or a clothing line. And then she spots a toilet seat, which she declares "gross." I wonder where she thought toilet seats came from until she saw that one. Maybe she thinks they're immaculate. (LTG: "As a former beauty queen, I don't find toilet seats 'gross' so much as 'utilitarian.'") Erin informs us that Home Depot was like "a foreign country." Maybe the one that uses her horrifying poncho for a flag. In one of my favorite moments of the episode, Erin and Chris walk by a display of doorknobs, and she says, "I know how to do this! You won't believe it. I can put a new doorknob on a door." Chris: "That's what we should do, then. Brilliant, Erin." HA! Nice one, Chris. It's a nice moment for Chris, who really isn't all that clever. Later, Net Worth is in the back room looking through catalogs, looking for something to do. Stephanie comes across something known as a "mobile kitchen island." Which strikes me immediately as suspicious phraseology, like when apartments are referred to as "cute" in order to avoid saying, "You can vacuum the entire apartment with the vacuum cleaner plugged into the same outlet, and you won't need to fully unwind the cord." Stephanie explains that this will be great and creative, and then she interviews that they decided to pick up the materials and build one, just to make sure they were qualified to...you know, teach other people how to build one. Predictably, their efforts to build the "mobile kitchen island" appear rather disastrous. And involve Chris swearing. Angie explains to us that the problem is the "bunch of morons" she's working with. Wow, harsh words. Of course, Chris is jumping up and down on the partially completed "mobile kitchen island" as we speak. Angie adds that these are no longer her "adopted children," now they are her "red-headed stepchildren," and I wonder if she can find any more family arrangements to insult while she's at it. Ultimately, they finish putting together the "mobile kitchen island," and you know what it is? It's a utility cart, and they're about $25 at Target, and you don't have to do that much assembly. And nobody tries to tell you it's a "mobile kitchen island." They marvel at how "cute" it is, apparently on the basis that it actually rolls from one place to another, just like it's supposed to. They are easily impressed. Angie interviews that the island is cute -- of course, it took them hours to make, and the team is made up of idiots. George looks on. Erin makes a great show of how silly she can be as she tries to handle the saw and cut some wood. Ha ha, girls with tools! It's really hilarious, unless you've ever had to take care of yourself, which I have. Angie and Stephanie wind up walking off, Angie bitching about Erin's bad attitude, which one has to think might backfire a little bit, given Stephanie's established friendship with Erin.
In the Magna workroom, Craig has a problem. He really would like it if everyone would stop referring to The Box as "the box." He wants them to refer to The Box as "the trunk." Alex explains this in an interview, and you can kind of tell that he's like, "Dude." The team is really not helping Craig too much, particularly when Kendra calls it a "junk trunk" and Bren suggests that they sell it as a pet coffin. Snerk. Okay, I laughed at "pet coffin," but who doesn't laugh at dead pets? Anyway, everyone else laughs, but Craig looks very unhappy. I secretly suspect that omeone-say recently lost an arakeet-pay. He interviews that he knows the team isn't happy with the choice, but they've already made it, so maybe they could suck it up and not be jerks. Kendra and Tana gripe about how nobody understands what Craig is talking about. Bren and Alex, meanwhile, take what I suspect is a smoke break and talk about their conviction that Craig's idea is indeed very, very stupid. Bren wonders if they can sabotage the other team, and they laugh as Alex proposes shutting down the power.