Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All up in your grill
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.06.2004
The task itself will involve going to the headquarters of QVC, located in the rural outpost known as "Pennsylvania," where each team will select a product and then go live on QVC to sell it. The second oddball thing about this task, after the manipulative business with switching Pamela's team, is that the winner will be the team with the highest gross sales. Not profit, but gross sales. That makes the task rather odd, in that very few businesses would use that as a measure of success. Nevertheless, there you go. Trump reminds us that the losing team will be sent to the Boardroom, where someone will be fired. In case you forgot. Trump also reminds Raj that if his team should lose, he is exempt from being fired, because he was the project manager last week, when Mosaic won the restaurant task. Maria blinks repeatedly as Trump wishes the teams good luck. Of course, Maria blinks repeatedly while doing most things. Including sleeping. Maria doesn't engage in REM sleep, she engages in RREM sleep, and the first "R" is for "Really." Trump leaves with Carolyn and George. The first member of Apex to extend a hand to Pamela to welcome her is Elizabeth, so...she's initially slightly less awful than the rest of them, I think. How encouraging.
Two buses arrive that will be taking the teams to scenic, exotic, hick-like Pennsylvania, where there is no running water and the only entertainment is ham radio. Pamela sets the tone by standing aside next to the door of the bus and allowing the other women to get on ahead of her, just as a teacher would when organizing a field trip. It may or may not be the right thing to do, setting herself up as the boss lady, but she certainly knows how to do it. Maria is blinky and twitchy as she interviews that they were told it would be a two- or two-and-a-half hour drive to Pennsylvania. I'm guessing she spent the whole time looking out the windows for giraffes and asking if she had to learn how to say "Would you like to buy one of my fine products?" in some other language. On the bus, Pamela cautions the women that the way she's going to do things will probably be different from the way they've been doing them. Hopefully, this will put a stop to some of the unrelenting losing. She asks them not to bring up the fact that she's doing things differently, because whatever they've been doing, it hasn't been working. Only she says it with more uses of the word "fuck." She also freely acknowledges that she will be bossy and bitchy for the next day, but that it won't keep up after that. She should know far better than to think they're going to be able to process anything as sophisticated as the temporary suspension of politeness in the interests of winning. She hasn't been working with these women, you can tell. Pamela also tells them that she doesn't care about the personality conflicts, and she expects them to be put aside so they can get work done. HA HA HA HA HA HA...yeah. Good one.
Unsurprisingly, Maria is not happy with the way Pamela is treating them. She explains that the way Pamela acted was "condescending." I certainly hope so. Because they have lost three times in a row, and it's been because they suck, so I would certainly hope a person with three consecutive wins on her record would treat them with the appropriate level of disdain. Interestingly, Maria argues that they should not have been "lectured" by Pamela, in part because they have "been beaten down." In other words, because they've been losing, she should have been nicer. That kind of coddling is a great philosophy for a foot masseuse; not such a great one for a manager. Pamela next tells the women that she wants them to give her an idea of what they feel comfortable doing, and what they think their skills are. Maria claims that "public speaking is [her] deal," while Stacy roots around in a cooler and apparently finds some booze, which she starts yammering about while everyone else is trying to discuss the task. This irritates Pamela a great deal, and in a voice that's entirely too much like a teacher, she tells them they're not going to do that again while someone else is talking. Stacy is in fact being very rude, which isn't surprising, but Pamela would have been a lot better off saying it in a far more diplomatic and less obnoxious way.