Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lesson Nine: You Can't Bulk-Sell Bullshit
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 9 | Aired on 04.23.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Creepiness is tied to the Y-chromosome, immigration through Ellis Island was sometimes a hassle, and just because people say they are experts at a thing doesn't mean they are experts at the thing. That's just a little bit of the info in store with tonight's episode, which -- for confusion's sake -- comes hot off the trail of an episode two weeks ago that was in a weird timeslot and which nobody saw. The task: design a souvenir program about Ellis Island to benefit the Ellis Island Statue of Liberty National Park. Or whatever the name of the park actually is, since you basically get those words shot at you in random order throughout the episode. Gold Rush PM Lee talks a big hubristic game again, but does everything right, again, leading his team to an irritating victory. Only Charmaine seems upset about this at all, even though I don't know how you can be in a room with his smug ass for more than five minutes without tossing him out a window. Their strategy: create a better brochure, and sell it to the tourists boarding the Ellis Island ferry, effectively hitting their very specific demographic and cutting them off from Synergy altogether. A last-second bulk sale by Charmaine helps, but the margin's so wide (they win by double) that it's not the huge deal it could have been. Synergy, meanwhile, goes into a most magnificent meltdown as self-proclaimed graphic design expert Andrea fucks up the brochure, then becomes a self-proclaimed bulk sales expert one useless hour before the task ends, then in the BR becomes a logistics/implementation expert -- albeit the kind who set up skeet-shooting over the heads of young children on the GM task. The greatest thing about all this expertise is that she's not the PM -- that's the increasingly hilarious Allie, who at one point utters the immortal words, about the final Boardroom: "There's going to be blood on the walls. There's going to be blood on the walls. There's going to be fucking blood everywhere." Andrea tries to brainwash Sean, and succeeds just like the entire team knew she would. The brainwashing is not strong enough to fool Trump and his children-Viceroys this week, and they send Andrea home summarily based on the fact that everyone hates her in the world. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Remember last episode, when Leslie...oh, back up. Remember Leslie? No? Okay, she was blonde and looked like Mariah Carey and she didn't last very long once she started talking, which was about five minutes before she got fired. She let Lee run all over the place trying to be Gordon Gekko and showing his ass, and then took him, solely, into the Boardroom after she failed to sell as many "pizza sandwiches" as Andrea, who had some lovely hats. Carolyn was not happy about the whole "Lee only" thing, because she knew what it would get Leslie -- a fat load of "Who?" Everybody left so Lee and Leslie could get down to the business of acting like giant stupid assholes, especially Lee, except for Charmaine, who took a moment to let Trump know that she is a big tattletale crybaby. Duly noted.
Once upstairs, the weird caged-rat scenario heats up for the eighth and craziest time yet. Roxanne and Tammy are like, "What is going on?" Charmaine floats the suggestion that Leslie will prevail, qualifying this opinion with the possible caveats that she could be (a) just dumb, or (b) wishfully thinking. She's not a dumb lady, but in this case, it's more of a Chinese-takeout column-combo deal. Downstairs in the Boardroom, Trump tries to explain to Leslie that, while Lee is a disgusting, immature, puling chump, he was right about the fact that $8 is too much for a pizza sandwich you're just going to puke later anyhow; Leslie in turn tries to explain to Trump that, while she was ineffective, math-challenged, and did nothing to manage the disgusting Lee, he's still so awful that he should be fed to dogs. And that his conversational etiquette is lacking and leaves much to be desired. (Much what? Much fucking silence.) And while all of this is true, Trump's point is truer. Upstairs, we get a looooong fucking look at Leslie's depressing, lovely birthday cake, waiting quietly for its mistress to dispatch the little pisher and hotfoot it back up there for some Chardonnay and cumpleaños. Tammy overstates the drama somewhat here, noting that if she were fired from a retarded game show on her birthday, she "would never want another birthday" again, forevermore. "Where's Charmaine?" someone asks, as they continue to worry about Leslie's chances, and continue to attempt to remember what she looks like. And where's Charmaine? Typing very angrily in the corner. Very. Angrily. Lee comes back in, Leslie-free, and Charmaine exclaims loudly, "Oh, shit!" Nice. She comes in looking like death and shooting glares everywhere and just completely lacking in perspective, and they all sit down to a group dinner in which Lee: tells everybody he likes Leslie a lot, claims she "fought the hardest" of "all the people [he's] fired," steps right over the inordinately stupid and creepy delusional sentiment inherent in that statement, ignores Charmaine's pointed correction ("All the people you've been with in the Boardroom, you mean?") and repeats that Leslie "probably fought the hardest." That's just...gross.