Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lesson Six: Don't Swing When You're Selling
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.26.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's the Great Reshuffle of 2005, as the chosen Project Managers are forced to dump their three worst team members on each other. The new Excel is PM Josh, last-week-exempt Brian, Mark, James, Marshawn, Jenthura, and Rebecca. The new Capital Edge is PM Alla, Felisha, Clay, Adam, Markus, and Randal. Their task is to create an interactive sales environment based on the sport of their choice within Dick's Sporting Goods. Alla is exactly as awesome as I was hoping, and her team -- Capital Edge -- picks golf, and creates a putting green, boosting the department's sales 74%. Excel's PM Josh picks baseball and builds a batting cage, which bring a huge crowd and lots of interest to the baseball area, but is not focused on revenue, and they end up actually lowering sales by 34%. Alla gets her exemption, and the reward is a private plane to Montauk for fishing and a clambake. I didn't know clambakes were real.
Trump -- who has been out of town for the whole episode -- comes back and immediately dismisses Brian, Marshawn, and Rebecca from the Boardroom, because they're good at their jobs. Of course, here, Marshawn is totally silent except when she's being awesome, and Rebecca is somewhat redeemed in terms of sales ability. Jenthura and Josh fight a lot, and then Jenthura and Donald fight about how she's really a great salesperson -- except how she didn't sell anything. One is left very confused about what she actually sold, and one is left with the additional feeling that she is, too. Josh tries to jump on the "silly old Jen" train, and Carolyn kicks his ass right off it, because he was terrible too.
Then comes the funniest Boardroom and the most awkward, silent, staring, hilarious taxi ride in the history of automotion as Jenthura and Josh, and James and Mark -- for no reason whatsoever -- are totally fired! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
What a fantastic episode, you guys! The end has shock value, the Boardroom has mostly competent points, the middle has some pretty funny goobering around, and the beginning has a mind-blowingly excellent reshuffle. Let's start there, shall we?
It's rainy and contemplative now that Kristi is gone, as though the skies are heaving a sigh of relief now that she's back in Georgia and not talking shit behind its back. Felisha is retelling the whole "team dynamic" conversation from last week -- where Randal narrowly avoided indicting her as a crappy PM, so it makes sense that she would remember that part particularly well -- for Alla. She then interviews that she'll be "devastated" if Kristi doesn't walk through that door, because without Kristi's nightly programming she'll just start walking into walls and repeating useless phrases about how Melissa and Toral were clearly the problem, clearly the problem, clearly the problem like Kristy Swanson in Deadly Friend, all "I'm a very lucky girl very lucky girl very lucky girl."
James has a baseball bat over his shoulder -- did you guys know anything about him? Or, more to the point, did you know anything else about him? -- and looks snarkily surprised to see...Jenthura walking in! Marshawn totally hugs her like she's never been more fakely excited in her whole entire life, and Jenthura interviews that she "has more potential than Kristi" (not true, in my opinion, although she's better at most things involving people, being super-sweet, believing in things, or all the things that make her who she is). She has a huge bedsheet-sized pink scarf around her neck, during this interview, and looks wacky. Alla interviews that she hasn't been PM yet, and that they need to be "one cohesive unit" and she's going to "make that happen," so I guess we're done with Kristi and the whole thing from last week. Again, talk is talked about how we're leaving all that behind, but A) we're not, and B) Carolyn and Bill (but mostly Carolyn) sure as hell are not down with this plan. Carolyn does not forget, nor does she suffer big-haired fools lightly.
Next morning, we learn that Clay is really, really cute when he first wakes up, before he loads his head up with six pounds of L.A. Looks Extra Super Mega Hold. Rhona calls, and says to pick a PM and go to the Boardroom, which Clay finds "interesting." So does Josh, who interviews that when this happens -- picking a new PM in advance of the task -- something "funky" is going on.