Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lesson Nine: Pain Is Temporary
By Jacob Clifton | Season 6 | Episode 9 | Aired on 03.17.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Scrubbing Bubbles means creating webisodes that lead to advertising, or advertisements that lead to webisodes, or marketing that leads to brand assurance, something. It doesn't really matter, and you know Trump has no idea, but the skinny is this: The teams have to film soap opera shorts in McMansions to advertise the brand. PM Kristine creates an adultery storyline, and puts Muna's anal-retentive ass on the details. She balks, and begs to be on camera, so Kristine -- who has no time for Muna, of course, and knows Muna's going to pick-pick-pick the entire time if she doesn't get her way -- puts her in front of the camera. Meanwhile on Arrow, Nicole's come up with the most wonderfully coincidental storyline ever: a horse-faced girl with a creepy-ass voice comes home to her slick and good-looking boyfriend, who's been busily cleaning the house while waiting for her. They both have news! The girl just got this AMAZING JOB (on a show called The Apprentice, basically) and the boy wants to PROPOSE! On a bed of roses! But, you're asking, who on Earth will they ever find on Arrow, to play this loving boy and girl? Barf. Nicole actually has the balls to pretend that this is all wildly out of her control; Tim has the class to admit it's actually really fucked up; PM James ignores them completely. Kristine and Angela run off for hours to buy makeup, leaving Heidi and Muna, the actors in the sketch, to play director. And to run around babbling like cokeheads in front of the camera, nervously speaking as quickly and loudly as possible and making zero sense whatsoever. Add that to Muna's sometimes difficult accent, and you end up with pure poetry. Kristine and Angela come back to the shoot and eventually have to scrap almost all of the product-placement footage, because that's where Heidi and Muna were acting the most insane. Their resulting incomprehensible Chipmunk/Pussycat massacre of an ad leaves the execs cold, while Arrow's boring dumb ad at least manages to squeeze the product in a few times, between Nicole's Ken & Barbie games, Tim's sudden OCD, and James's sneaky, weird management. Ivanka rules the boardroom with an iron fist, Heidi and Donald Trump almost get into a fist fight, and Muna curls into a little hypocritical fist of a zealot when she's fired for making Kristine's PM suckiness even suckier. And next week? James sends Nicole to Kinetic! And probably gets fired for being the only non-white person left on the show! It's ALL SO FUCKING AWFUL! Why couldn't this season have been this awesome all along? Now nobody's watching, and it's become the best show on TV! And the nastiest! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Surya whined and bitched and was willing to say anything to fuck with James, and Trump called Tim "Jim," and Surya had no defense but that James should be fired instead. Down at the fire as James is returning, Nicole tells people to "visualize" success. Which is nice if you're not, you know, planning on just going ahead and winning. Stef asks about whether Tim and James are okay, and Tim lies that he has no problem with James, and then Frank gives a speech that makes no sense about how James got called out in the BR and that means he should become PM this week. James tells us how this informs his personal drama and how it's his moment to step up, or whatever whatever. The Amazing Saga Of James, like Sean and Lee before him, is something I think we're going to have to learn to deal with. I don't really even mind anymore. At least not yet. I'm just glad Surya's gone because he was driving me bats.
Phone rings, and Stefani and Kristine answer. Andie's wearing an ill-fitting bra, and they're meeting Trump suddenly at the set of Passions. Awesome! I hate soaps, but I love that show. Speaking of drama, Nicole screams her way through an entire shower, in her most disgusting display yet. Nobody wants to hear that shit in the morning. Then they get in the van and she starts screaming about how much she loves Passions. And I can't say anything. Trump talks to Whitney about how apparently she's a "big star" and she says she likes it, and he promises to watch her on the show, but you know his ass lies. She skedaddles before the cast even shows up, weirdly. Like why was she there? Nicole screams about how she loves the show, and Heidi looks at her like the cutest, saddest little thing.
So the task is to create a webisode about this new kind of foaming cleanser, and it'll be related to soap operas in some way, and one team will get a "fabulous reward" and the other one, somebody will be "fired," Trump says, "like a dog." Angle on Frankie Suits and Muna. No! Not Frankie! He thanks them and they leave, just about as disinterested in this entire process as we've yet seen them. I love how the show is unable to hide the disdain we all -- including the candidates, of course -- have for it, while simultaneously having to pretend that it still believes in itself: the score becomes suspenseful and brazen while Kristine is particular is like, "Whatever. Just give me my Rice-A-Roni or whatever and let me take a damn shower." It's like something you just can't clean up in editing, even when it's in your best interest to do so. This show teaches us lessons through its own mistakes, which is the definition of humility, which is itself another unintended factor of its shitty editing. Sometimes you're so bad you don't know how to be good anymore. That's I think the deal with Frank: he's humble because he has no idea, and he teaches us a lot of things about how to behave, or not. The Zen of Frankie Suits is being complete in oneself, like a block of tofu with no idea what's going on, ever.
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