Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Box of tricks
By Miss Alli | Season 3 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.23.2005
Back at the Love Palace, Angie and Erin have a chat out on the balcony in which Angie tells Erin that she's being brought into the Boardroom for totally failing to contribute anything to the task. Well, that's honest, at least. When Angie recalls, for instance, not being too fond of Erin's outright declaration that she didn't know anything, Erin presses that if you don't know what you're doing, it's better to just say you don't. "I can't be the quarterback and the running back," Erin says. Wow, football terminology! You know I love me some sports metaphors. Erin asks Angie whether she doesn't agree that what went wrong happened up onstage, both because they didn't involve customers and presumably because Chris...sucked, and did the task wrong, and probably caused psychological scarring to many of the children who were present. Erin explains to us that the presentation was bad, and that was the problem, and that was Angie's fault. When Erin acts a little indignant about being brought in, Angie points out that her only other option is Stephanie and Chris; is Erin advocating that? "No," Erin says, feigning offense. Angie, choking on a fake smile, asks why, then, Erin is acting shocked. Trapped by her own maneuvering, Erin does what a lot of lawyers do, which is best described in legal lingo as, "Try to act casual." "Shocked?" she says "breezily." "I'm having a ball. I mean, this is fine by me." In that green poncho interview in which she's almost impossibly hateful, Erin says that she has a great time in the Boardroom. "Every time I speak, it's poignant, and it's accurate. As my teammates talk themselves into their graves." Wait..."poignant"? In the Boardroom? Did she tell the touching story of how her miniature golf pencil died of a burst appendix? I can't believe I ever liked her, even a tiny bit. Oh, how the mighty have gotten stupid.
Night. Ding! The candidates get off the elevator and stroll into the Boardroom. Erin's pink rolly-case reminds me once again of all the reasons I really don't like her. Trump enters and joins the Viceroys. He asks Angie why the team lost. Angie says that she thinks they lost because they started out shorthanded, and having Erin "sign off from the beginning," meaning she just decided not to participate, was their doom. "I heard she was terrible," Trump says of Erin. He then turns to her and says, in that way that can almost make me like Trump sometimes, "Why were you so bad?" It's the kind of thing I really sometimes wish Probst could say, not that he doesn't come close. Erin says that she was "unfamiliar with Home Depot" (!), and that she "tried to contribute as much as [she] could." Lie! When Trump asks Erin whether she knows anything about Home Depot, Erin says, "I know about the corporate structure of Home Depot." Lie! She adds, "I don't know how to use a power drill." "You sound like Paris Hilton," Trump says dismissively. "Paris Hilton would be better," Angie puts in. Not a lie! Angie adds that it's not like she makes her career designing home improvement clinics either, but sometimes that's the job, so you do your best. Erin, on the other hand, just up and quit. Erin is asked whether she did give up, and makes her first mistake by refusing to answer the question. Instead, she says, "I'm not the reason why we failed this task." It's unsurprising that Erin has a strategy, and as it turns out, that strategy is to point out that Angie "failed for four fatal reasons." Not a great use of "fatal," all things considered. As Erin tries to launch into her list of reasons, Angie keeps insisting that Erin was indeed the reason that they failed, so now they're snapping at each other and Erin wants to be allowed to finish and so forth. But then Trump turns to Angie and says, "Go ahead." Hee. I so wanted to hear about the four fatal reasons. Perhaps Erin can tell them to her poncho.