Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT "You Are Chaos And Disorganization!"
By Jacob Clifton | Season 5 | Episode 2 | Aired on 03.05.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The hell that is Brent -- though he does his best to ruin the focus of the entire group throughout the task -- is somehow lionized for being a freak, while the other members of the team are edited into Mean Girls without souls. The back flips and yoga twists that the show puts itself through to justify keeping him, while firing not one but two of the more promising candidates, is mind-boggling.
The task: to harass passersby and get them to text-message Gillette so that they can get those crappy "updates" about how amazing their new "razor system" is. While Gold Rush stakes out the bored, captive audience in the TKTS line in Times Square, Synergy deals with fifteen different kinds of Brent bullshit and then takes the morning off. Synergy eventually shows up -- after Gold Rush has already pulled a hundred messages -- wearing bathrobes, and then Brent makes like an insane clown, robot-dancing with an open robe and his fucked-up hair, scaring most of the natives and all of the tourists into thinking the old Times Square is back.
After Gold Rush wins the task by over 50%, winning the award of dressing the homeless, Synergy goes after Brent with a quickness, using a dust-up between Brent and his chosen marginalizing monster of the week, criminal defender Stacy, as their Stacy J "he's simply insane" reasoning. This, rather than the fact that he's actually a priori a huge freak with no chance in this competition. When Stacy tries to throw them off that track, because it's bullshit, the witch hunt continues without her, but she earns additional resentment from the team for "waffling." Project Manager Pepi brings Michael (who came up with the stupid bathrobes), Stacy (whose choice of location didn't really work out), and Brent back into the BR.
Against Stacy's wishes, Michael brings up the confrontation with Brent, putting Stacy on the spot and enraging Guest Viceroy Bill. Really Incredible Guest Viceroy Ivanka Trump, who frankly deserves her own television show, thinks they're all idiots. Ultimately, thanks to the mistaken assumption that anyone is tuning in to see Brent, Trump sends two others home: Pepi, who did nothing to stanch the fifteen kinds of hemorrhage the team sprung within the first ten seconds; and Stacy, for reasons unknown but Michael-approved. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Tarek heads into the suite sighing and grateful for the reprieve, as the entire group collectively gets weird and culty and relieved. They've got palm fronds waving and he's riding the ass of his own specialness and they're singing hosannas and throwing down rose petals on the berber and Bryce grabs him and holds him up to the sun, like Simba or a pre-rhino Jennifer Grey. Brent runs around in shorts looking gross, looking for someone to hug, and Tarek is just trying to keep it together in the face of this madness. Tarek tries to explain that he was "this close" and that the only think that saved him was Summer's idiocy, but they're like, "What? Can't hear you. Blinded by the greatness." It's telling that this display somehow makes Tarek the most sympathetic person in the suite: "I'm not going to tell Trump he was wrong for calling me out. Second place is first in a long line of losers, right?" Well, he's still kind of a dick, because I really hate it when they're like, "I'm not gonna tell Trump how to do his job, but..." and also because: What a winning attitude, my friend! I think you get further by trying to win, not by trying not to lose. If you take my meaning. Which is basically what he's saying, but I think he's standing on the wrong side of it. Credits, which Stacy seems to think are hilarious. "I think I like her a lot," say my notes. This should be interesting.
Hanging out on some street corner, as they do, the group welcomes Trump, Bill, and Trump's daughter Ivanka. Bill's hair: What color is it? It's so mysterious. Trump calls Ivanka "a true apprentice," and Tarek smiles, because what better way to prove how classy and smart and successful you are than by hitting on Donald Trump's daughter? As long as somebody sees you do it, it means something. Ivanka went to Wharton, so insert the usual Trumping about Wharton, and then...Ivanka's a funny little thing. She doesn't look smart, or all that pretty, at rest. She has the Paris Hilton face where it's just this tiny mouth on a dumb-looking mask of nothing. But then when she speaks, everything changes, and she becomes beautiful and sexy and smart and cool. Well, that sounds mean, and I don't mean to be rude, because I think she's really cool. Like Miu Von Furstenburg levels of cool. I just mean -- you know Trump's face when he's not talking? How it shuts off and he looks like a cadaver, or a stuffed toad on a bookshelf? She has that problem too, only when he talks, he turns into Trump, and when Ivanka talks, she turns into awesome.