Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Degradation with a crisp candy shell
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 13 | Aired on 12.01.2004
Back at S5, when Mosaic returns, Sandy, Jen, and Kelly sit around on the balcony and Sandy asks Kelly who he thinks should be fired. Kelly's answer is, "What kind of company do you want them to run?" The women aren't buying, and they push for a better answer, but he declines to tell them what he's going to say if pushed until after he's already said it. In a disturbingly shiny maroon shirt, Kelly interviews that he feels fine about this Boardroom, because absent some incredibly stupid maneuver, he's not being fired in any event. He tells us that the fact that either Kevin or Ivana will be fired is "a tragedy," because he considers them both stronger then Jen or Sandy. It's not, you know, a baby-down-a-well tragedy, but that doesn't mean you can't cry. Because they are so strong! Not that how strong they are helped the team actually beat Sandy or Jen.
Inside the suite, the show tries hard to present a vibe in which Ivana and Kevin are friends and are agonizing over going up against each other. They exchange compliments. Kevin assures her that he and Kelly really tried to get her the win. Aside from the part where he undercut the price, I guess. Kevin tells Ivana that he doesn't intend to take shots at her, and won't be provoked into a fight. He'll just say, "Evaluate me based on what I've done." And then he'll say, "Keep me, and I'll drop my pants!" Not really. Ivana says that's what she'll do, too. He repeats that he'll say, "She did a great job as project manager, flat-out, but we lost." Kevin interviews that he isn't happy about winding up against Ivana, one of the few people in the suite he felt like he was friends with. He thinks she should be in the final four, so he's not excited about this. Or so he claims. ["I just do not understand how either Kevin or Kelly 1) genuinely thinks Ivana is a good, strong candidate, or alternatively 2) thinks that lying that they do is an effective strategy. She's utterly ineffectual, at best, and part of the reason I don't really like either of these two is that they don't seem to get that." -- Sars] We watch as Ivana tells Kevin how much she likes him and his integrity and all that. And then we cut to her interview. "I will have to go after Kevin," she says coldly. "I will have no choice but to go after Kevin. I'm going to fight for my life tonight." They huuuuug, all the better to investigate possible angles at which knives can be most effectively inserted.
Ding! Ivana, Kelly, and Kevin get off the elevator and head into the Boardroom. Trump enters. He leads off by telling them that they lost to "two people who were screaming at each other last week." I'm not sure what the great importance of that one is, but, okay. He asks Kevin how the loss happened. Kevin claims that on some tasks, you lose because of something you do, and on other ones, you just get beat. He claims that this was one where they just got beat. Trump asks Ivana who set the price. She claims that she fought for a higher price, but "with this team, obviously, the guys weren't going to be able to sell a candy bar for five dollars." Her mind, I have to say, is so tiny. "Sexy" is not the only gimmick they could have used. They could have used a lot of ways to create a much more fun and individualized experience that would have allowed them to use basically stunt pricing like Sandy and Jen did. Anything that would have made it seem like a fun event rather than just schlubs in baseball caps would have helped a great deal. You've got cameras around -- don't just yell, "Who wants to buy a candy bar?" The fact that she has two guys on her team doesn't mean there was nothing to do but use a regular retail price. They could have dressed up like the Mod Squad. Or Charlie's Angels.