Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT When did "capelets" become all the rage?
By Miss Alli | Season 2 | Episode 6 | Aired on 10.13.2004
Trump now offers John his shot to bring either two or three people to the Boardroom with him. For the first time, I can see a reason for bringing three, in order to bring both Wes and Kevin if he also still wants to pursue the Andy issue, but John sticks with two. Trump doesn't understand why nobody takes him up on the offer to take three, but anyway, John just wants two -- Kevin and Andy. Kelly, Chris, Raj, and Wes are sent up, and John, Andy, and Kevin wait in the lounge.
Trump asks George and Carolyn for thoughts. George speaks favorably about Andy, saying that he thinks there's "raw material" there that might make Andy exceptional one day. Carolyn says that while she likes John and thinks he worked hard, he made a lot of mistakes. Trump brings the guys back in. And you should get ready, because it's going to move pretty fast. When they're seated, Trump says, "So, Andy, you don't think you should be here right now." "I do not, sir," Andy says straightforwardly. "You sort of don't know what you did wrong," Trump feeds him. "I really don't," Andy says, hitting the softball nicely back to the pitcher. John tries to defend the decision to bring Andy. "Andy never takes a leadership role in anything we do, and that happens week after week after week, and there is kind of an unwritten consensus on the team that he is unable to step up when things count." "That's not true," Kevin says flatly. I have to say, I admired the hell out of the way Kevin conducted himself in this meeting, because I have come to love the willingness to call people out on their bullshit almost above all else there is to admire.
Trump tells Kevin that he does understand why he's there; he worked on pricing. Kevin says he worked on it with Wes, and makes it clear that he's not sure why he's there and Wes isn't. George and Trump both ask why Wes isn't there, and John offers no particularly convincing answer, and by "no particularly convincing answer," I mean "no answer." Ultimately, John owns that he probably did make a mistake, and Wes should probably be there. And then, John goes into a really dopey thing where he says that "with Carolyn as [his] witness and with George as [his] witness," he can prove that he worked really hard. Trump's like, "Aren't I your witness?", which is stupid, because obviously, John's point is that Trump isn't there for the tasks the way the other people are. He says that he hopes that his reputation in past tasks will help carry him through. Not. He goes for a really weaselly, really phony apologetic routine where he's like, "Oh, woe is me, I suck, my team lost, I feel so guilty," and it's just such total horseshit I cannot even tell you. He's decided that falling on his sword is the way to save his ass, and it's just unseemly. If you're going to eat the blame, you eat the blame calmly and you hold your breath and hope for the best. It's how Kwame did it, the best way it's ever been done. Not like this. Begging never, never works.