Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sam's Enchanted Leaving
By Miss Alli | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 01.20.2004
Back at VersaCorp, Bill explains that the big plan was to have the boys back in the apartment -- Troy, Sam, and Nick -- be the "advance team" so that the boys in the field would just receive instructions on where to go. Already, that sounds more complicated to me than squid-purchasing deserves, but I suppose we'll see how it plays out. The "field team" jumps into a taxi and gets on its way.
Team Assorama is in Chinatown, and Assorama herself explains that they're trying to buy the squid. "If I can keep the ladies on time," she says, "then we'll be doing great." Because she's completely in charge, of course. Does "Ladies, ladies!" ring any bells? Seriously, she may be put upon by Ereka, but it's no wonder the women find her a pain in the ass as well. Who died and made her the Princess of Punctuality, anyway? Amy tries to buy the squid for ten bucks, and brings Kristi in to the salesman to "show him [her] tummy" so that he can see how hungry she is. Siiiiiigh. He turns them down flat. No sale. Yeah. I'm not buying either.
The men's field team, meanwhile, is on Canal Street, also having chosen to go to Chinatown. Apparently, there's a duck on the list, because that's one of the things they're in Chinatown to get. They also plan to pick up the squid and a "cheap leg wax." This, Bill explains, was to be "one-stop shopping." Seems like a pretty sound plan, actually. A duck, a squid, and a leg wax -- just a normal Saturday afternoon for me, too. Back at the home office of VersaCorp, the Home Team is doing some phone calling about purchasing the gold. Troy is told on the phone never to try to buy gold late in the day. Sam and Nick both remark that they need to send the guys to go buy the gold right now.
The Field Team is in the middle of getting directions from locals on where to find the squid and the duck (who, by the way, will soon be starring in the heartwarming Disney cartoon Eight Legs And Quackers) when they receive a call from Sam. He orders them to vacate Chinatown -- basically, to sacrifice all the work they've done so far -- and run uptown to get the gold. ["Which is dumb. I think that the gold bar was a trick of sorts: it's the one thing on the list that has a price you can't really negotiate, and which is going to cost the same wherever you go, so that concentrating really hard on getting a break on it is a poor use of the team's time -- whereas things like golf clubs and leg waxes can be dickered down more easily. So with the gold bar, they should have just bought it at market cost -- because they had no other choice -- and moved on." -- Wing Chun] Nick gives Bill the address of the place they're going on the phone, and then he starts to give Bill the phone number. In a truly bizarre turn of events, Sam orders Nick not to give Bill the phone number. Nick protests, at first not even understanding that Sam is serious, but Sam is both serious and insistent. It appears that Sam's strategy is to choke the information that the Field Team has, so that they don't try to improvise or do anything except follow orders. Kwame repeats in an interview that the idea of making Sam the leader was for Sam to "put up or shut up," and that this is right where the putting up or shutting up began, I guess. Kwame says he finds Sam's leadership style "downright unproductive." I am inclined to agree, because this is a patently, demonstrably awful decision.
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