Oh, the clip show. The bane of the Burnett watcher, the baby's breath in the bouquet, the filler in the dog food...it's inevitable, I guess. Clips away, people. There's no getting around it.
"Nyeeeeeeeh, nyeeh nyeeh nyeeh," a muted saxophone laments as we approach New York City by plane. Trump voices over, as we observe the Statue of Liberty ("Hey, lady, we're putting in a big fountain -- you're fired!"), that ten weeks ago, he brought sixteen candidates to the Big Snapple (as it will be called in the new era of naming rights) to compete for the opportunity to be his very own apple-polisher. Er, "apprentice." We see candidates telling Robin that they're there to see Trump, including Sam. Hi, Sam! Taken any good Zoloft lately? They move into the suite. Boyfriend Bill moves in on my cold, otherwise dead heart. There is a montage. Lemonade! Rickshaws! Prostitution! Oh, no, wait, sorry -- Planet Hollywood! Only six candidates remain. The Kwame! The Amy! The Nick! The Katrina! The Swoonmeister! The Troy! For whatever reason, at this point, we see Trump do a Nixon right into the camera, complete with jowls and V-sign. Pretty funny, assuming he was doing Nixon on purpose. If not? Well, suffice it to say the Inadvertent Nixon is a bad development in the aging process of any man. He promises that he will be sharing highlights with us, as well as a small sprinkling of things that we haven't seen before, added just to make sure I have to write this recap in order to cover the season properly.
Money-money-money mooo-ney! Sometimes I think the only people who really got how cool and fun this show was going to be were the people who worked on the credits.
We return to Trump Tower and the Boardroom, where we see new footage of the contestants introducing themselves to Trump. Trump also reminds us of who George and Carolyn are, in case you've forgotten. And shame on you if you have. The introductions the candidates offer for themselves don't really tell you anything you don't already know, except that they do it in such a boring fashion that it's not surprising that the editors left this part on the cutting-room floor and replaced it with a stupid montage. There are a couple of interesting moments, though. You know, Katrina said in another of her intros that she was ranked in the top three percent of realtors nationwide, but in this intro, she claims to be ranked third. Just third. She's the third-ranked realtor in the entire country. Why did she cite that statistic differently the two times it was offered? Assorama also comes across completely staged and unconvincing, overemphasizing that she grew up in the rough projects of...Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown, Ohio has projects? I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm...just saying. She also, interestingly, says she's "completed [her] masters degree and [her] PhD studies," which is quite the gloss, considering we now know she doesn't have the PhD yet, and she's ABD at best. It's not technically a lie, but it's a stretcher, for sure. None of my friends referred to their PhDs as "completed" anything until they were done, and when they were ABD, they said so. She also throws in her "I worked for the president" line, which again, is technically true, but it's pretty well-established at this point that the president couldn't have picked her out of a lineup, so as she has been known to do, she's giving a technically true statement that gives a very false impression.
In other introductory news, I still love the part where Amy says she used to be "worth millions." Paper, dear. When it's all paper, you're not worth millions. The biggest asshole of the intros is Jason, who proudly says, "If they're one day late on rent, I start the eviction process, because that affects my cash flow." It's not just the fact that he jumps on the eviction process quickly that grates -- it's the fact that he does it with such glee. He's awfully young to have determined that the most fun you can have with your clothes on is screwing the less fortunate. Trump gruffly tells Jason that "you also have to have heart." Jason looks stumped. Nick reminds us that he's from "Los Angeles, California, via Bayonne, New Jersey." What the hell is with Bayonne, anyway? It's a veritable reality show contestant factory. Heidi introduces herself as "Heidi from Philadelphia," which explains why I thought she was from Philadelphia. Jessie reminds us that at seventeen, she started a marketing company. She reveals that she does, in fact, own a farm, and is not living off of football. Tammy says she's thirty-six, which makes her older than Carolyn. Interesting, huh? Sam, of course, tells Trump that he's crazy. Well, that Sam is crazy, that is, not that Trump is crazy. Although either would work, and Sam admittedly doesn't say it in quite those words.
The teams are divided boy-girl, and they're told about selecting PMs. Remember how they went to the suite, and the women named themselves Protégé, and the men named themselves VersaCorp? Then it was off to the New York Stock Exchange, where they learned they would sell lemonade. Trump insists that the men had a "terrible location," and David's methods were unconventional, if by "unconventional," you mean "criminal, according to many definitions." Sam tried to sell lemonade for a thousand dollars a cup, because...well, did I mention "crazy"? The women, meanwhile, were "smarter," according to Trump, because they just found themselves a good location and sold lemonade the old-fashioned way -- by offering kisses to go with it. The women won the task. Yay, free love! (Not "free," technically, but hey, at least it comes with lemonade.) The men went to the Boardroom, where Troy took David and Sam to the Boardroom, and Sam made a really weird speech and thanked Trump for telling him to shut up. David said he wasn't so good at sales. Sam sucked up so hard that he turned himself inside out. David, on the other hand, had done nothing and admitted he knew of nothing he could have done. Not the most inspiring moment of self-defense in reality show history. So he was gone. Bye, David!
In the one consistent bonus we're really getting, which is the post-exit-interview interview, David says that "the only real prize is first prize," so if he was going to lose, he's glad he didn't stay around any longer. It's an understandable theory, particularly if you're a big quitter.
For the second task, Trump and his Hair introduced the teams to the completely skeevy Donnie Deutsch, whose nipples wanted them to do an ad campaign for Marquis Jet. Protégé PM Amy met with the client company, while Jason chose not to. Tammy became the big mover behind the women's big idea, which was to market planes as giant sex toys. Oh, and Katrina happily posed on the wing with her legs practically wrapped around a happy-looking businessman, so you can add her to your steaming pile of hypocrites with her later crapola about how offended she was that Bill tried to use her "pretty girl" qualities (and...seriously? Cute legs, but face-wise? NOT THAT BEAUTIFUL) to sell rickshaw rides. Assorama thought Tammy's "testicle ad" was tacky. VersaCorp, meanwhile, was struggling to just to stay awake. Literally. Sam passed out on the floor. The women won the task, and it had nothing to do with how often they flashed their chests at Deutsch. The women took a private jet ride, and on the way back, it turned ugly.
Okay, I'm going to get this all off my chest about "pot" and "kettle" and "n-word" and all that rot, and then I am never talking about it again. In the clip that was shown on TV, Assorama insults Ereka, and Ereka says, "That is like calling the kettle black." And Assorama says, in the exact calm tone of voice people use when they're trying to condescend to you just to get under your skin, "See, there you go with your racist terms. What was that you said about black people? Try to contain your prejudice, okay?" Now, when this aired, the reaction of most people I talked to was that Assorama was either (1) totally overreacting, because even if you think "pot/kettle" has the tinge of unfortunate etymology, you can hardly ring up anyone who uses it as a racist; or (2) an obnoxious ass who was just trying to start something and one-up whomever she was arguing with, which I personally feel is more likely. I don't think she ever thought it was genuinely racist. I think she was trying to upset and irritate Ereka, because Ereka is a fun (and not very bright) target who lacks the sense to just ignore people who are trying to upset and irritate her.
Anyway, as you probably know, no sooner was Assorama off the show than she started telling everyone who would listen that "the person" with whom she had the pot/kettle discussion had previously called her a nasty racial slur, which she later revealed was the famous "n-word." After NBC and Mark Burnett and Trump all came out and said they had absolutely no evidence that this had ever occurred (not to mention Ereka vehemently denying that she ever did or ever would say such a thing), Assorama implied repeatedly that it had happened off-camera, and this was why they were unaware of it. However, when confronted with the fact that this still didn't really explain her reaction to the pot/kettle remark, Assorama revealed -- several times, but most recently in the People magazine I was reading at the doctor's office the other day -- that in fact she had never reacted to pot/kettle at all. She stated that she's an educated woman, knows what that expression (pot/kettle) means, and never would have reacted to it the way it appears that she did. She claimed that her reaction that you saw on TV -- her "there you go with your racist terms, try to contain your prejudice" thing, apparently -- was a response to the "n-word" being tossed at her, not to pot/kettle, which she is smart enough to know is not a slur.
Now, there are about a hundred reasons why I think that has to be crap, but here are the top two: First, she's now claiming that the slur occurred while the cameras were running (if they were running when she reacted to it, they were running when Ereka said it), so she's claiming that the show intentionally edited out a racial slur and replaced it with an innocuous remark in order to intentionally portray her as overreacting, and that furthermore, the people from the show are now lying to cover it up. There is no reason for them to do that. If they're going to show the fight anyway, they'd just show the damn slur! Among other things, I don't think the entire staff of a show -- editors, producers, and so forth -- is likely to be collectively morally corrupt to the point where they would intentionally protect a known racist and defame her victim for being victimized. Who does she think makes these shows, anyway? A bunch of cyborgs? It's people, and they're not going to do something that wretched, in my opinion, and suggesting they would? Also not cool. I mean, are these shows bent by sloppy casting that's uncomfortably bound to certain stereotypes? Sure. But this? This is the suggestion of something completely different. Because honestly, where would that get the people working on the show? If they were trying to help Ereka, why did she come off like just as much of a bitch as Assorama did during all of that nonsense?
Anyway, second of all, Assorama's actual filmed reaction that she now claims was made in response to the slur and not to pot/kettle is completely inconsistent with the use of such a shocking piece of terminology. There is no freakin' way she would have reacted to that word with that smirky "there you go, with your racist terms" remark. You can actually see her face for several seconds before she says it, and there is absolutely no registering of particular surprise at what Ereka says, only that very calm, irritating, know-it-all manner. You think Ereka hauled out the most inflammatory racial slur we have, and that's Assorama's only reaction? She pauses, and she says, "See, there you go with your racist terms. What was that you said about black people?" It's absolutely absurd. It doesn't fit with that remark at all (especially the "what was that you said about black people?"), but it fits perfectly well with a person trying to irritate someone she dislikes by implying that pot/kettle is secretly racist. The entire "n-word" story is, I am firmly convinced, a one hundred percent absolute lie, concocted to make Assorama look less stupid for trying to twist pot/kettle into some kind of racial incident. And if it is a lie? If she invented that particular story -- one of the most damaging things you can probably say about another person in terms of long-term damage to her reputation -- in order to shield herself from totally deserved criticism for overreacting? That is vile. It is far beyond the self-justifying, post hoc rationalizations that are routine for reality show contestants. It is utterly unconscionable in its power to simultaneously smear another person's reputation and trivialize a serious problem that a lot of people really do deal with every day. If I am right and it's a lie, then it just...as a lawyer would tell you, it shocks the conscience.
Sigh. I'm done. Forever.
After the footage of The Incident I Am Never Addressing Again, we get some new stuff featuring Amy back at the suite trying to give Assorama the heads-up that she's bugging the shit out of everyone. Amy tries to do this in a fairly dispassionate way by saying that Assorama's approach isn't productive for the team, and Assorama's response is to laugh condescendingly and tell Amy that all the other girls talk about her (Amy) behind her back. Assorama explains in an interview that Amy tried to "put [Assorama] down because she was truly threatened by [Assorama]." Which is another of those times that I just start to wonder about the woman's grip on reality. She claims that she played a "fun mind game with Amy in return." She cackles, or giggles, or something, and it's just so soulless and joyless and disconnected from humanity that it's utterly creepy. Amy wasn't putting her down, Amy was trying to address the issues on the team in a way that was actually very diplomatic. But I don't know why I would expect Assorama to get it.
Anyway, the men went to the Boardroom, and Jason fingered Sam for sleeping. George pushed for the firing of Sam, but Trump insisted that Jason was responsible for the downfall of the team in this particular task, and Jason was fired. In his bonus interview, Jason still insists that he did nothing wrong, but he reaches this conclusion by insisting that Sam was worse. Which really isn't the same thing as Jason himself being right, but...whatever, I suppose. It's all relative -- and not just in West Virginia.
As it turns out, the men went to a salon for some kind of day of beauty in between the second and third tasks. Incidentally, if the sign shown isn't misleading, this is the same spa where the men later overpaid for a leg wax, so that might explain why this was the first place they went -- it was the place they knew of where you could get a leg wax. Bowie explains that they went to the spa to try the "feminine route," on the theory that by acting like women, maybe they could win like the women were winning. Troy asks Sam whether he's supposed to get "butt-naked" for his massage, and Sam seems to tell him to leave his boxers on. In a quick interview, a robed Troy says that he feels like "an adult film star getting ready to get prepped, I mean, almost like I'm goin' in for a rub and a tug, and it's kinda makin' me a little nervous." Hee. Oh, Troy. Troy receives his massage from a large man, and tells us that he was more nervous about that than he's ever been in the Boardroom. Well, sure. Because -- boys touching! Each other! Ew! They should make a constitutional amendment against that. Or at least one that says if you do that, you can't file your taxes jointly. Because -- boys, filing jointly! Ew! Troy tells us that he went into the massage a child, and emerged a new man. Well, all right, then.
In the third task, the teams were told that they had to negotiate for a series of items. Amy feared that the men would be masters at negotiating, but Sam was in charge of the task, which meant that they were actually masters of pretty much nothing. Sam filled Boyfriend Bill's head with all manner of ridiculous football metaphors, which Boyfriend Bill did his best to ignore. Because what else can you do with a pantload of football metaphors? When the task was over, the women had saved twice as much as the men, giving them three wins in a row. Trump thought he might never hire another man. In one of the rare tastes of new material in the episode, Sam calls his dad for help before the Boardroom. Apparently, he asks his dad to tell him what his strength is. He thanks Dad and hangs up, and then he tells Bowie and Nick that he asked Dad what the most important part of a team was, and Dad said "a strong leader." Hee. Dad, I think, failed to pick up on exactly what kind of a pep talk Sam was looking for. Bowie and Nick laugh.
In the Boardroom, Sam's father had a point, because Trump was all about leadership. Bowie said Sam was no leader. Kwame said Sam was no leader also, though they don't show that. Trump asked Sam several times whether it was just "over" for him, and while Sam tried to act like he had no idea what Trump was talking about...he did. And he understood it even more after Trump, you know, fired him. Sam glared at Trump in a way that made kittens in faraway lands hide under sofas. In his voice-over, Trump actually praises Sam for having been "passionate." Sure, easy to say now that Sam isn't dangling outside his window from a rope, demanding an autograph. In his bonus interview, Sam says that he learned that he has great talents and ideas, and needs to improve his communication skills. That's almost sort of true, in that it's partly his need to business-speak people to death that makes them not like him. "And I learned that a lot of people think I'm certifiably insane," he says happily into the camera. Hey, whatever your destiny? Be at peace with it, I say.
up was the task of managing a shift at Planet Hollywood, where...well, no one cares what happens there. The women, as Trump says, resorted to "their usual tactics." We see the hooker boots, the teeny skirts, and the generally bottom-rung approach taken by the women. They don't show the part where Katrina told some guys who said they would rather come the night (the men's night) that Planet Hollywood was closed that night. It's a good thing Katrina never made an enormous, puritanical stink about someone else's business ethics, or she might be looking like a bit of a hypocritical horse's ass right about now. ["HATE!" -- Sars] Anyway, the night, Troy and Kwame launched the Autograph Scheme, in which Kwame -- never, apparently, giving anyone any false information about who he was -- sat in as a celebrity and learned that a lot of idiots will pay money for your autograph on the sheer expectation that it might be worth something. Troy felt that this was a "creative spark of genius," but it ticked off Bill and (even more) Nick. Bowie, on the other hand, had no luck pushing the Planet Hollywood merchandise, because the people he was trying to sell to weren't idiots and it isn't ten years ago. I kind of felt for Bowie in this task, I now remember, because...Planet Hollywood stuff? Who buys Planet Hollywood stuff anymore? I think even Schwarzenegger sold all of his on eBay a few years ago, didn't he?
But anyway, in the Boardroom, it was Kwame, Bowie, and Nick. Trump wasn't happy with anyone, but was more taken with the promise of Kwame and Nick than with Bowie, so the Hogg went home. In his bonus interview, Bowie tells us that his biggest tactical error was not stepping forward as more of a leader. Wait a minute, you're not supposed to actually learn anything! Who let this guy in? He also says, though, that had he been the PM at Planet Hollywood, they wouldn't have lost. Hmm. I don't know about that one.
So then we had the shuffle. Eight women, four men...yes, indeed, time for a shuffle, or soon it's going to be a bunch of women against an empty pair of Dockers. The PMs picked new teams, and Amy, Ereka, Katrina, Tammy, Bill, and Nick went up against Omarosa, Heidi, Jessie, Kristi, Troy, and Kwame in a task to resell things at a flea market. Kristi had a bad day as leader, and Heidi and Assorama bitched to each other (what cooperation...we will never see it again) about how bad Kristi's leadership was. Even Kwame admitted that Kristi was "helter-skelter." As a matter of fact, they managed to lose some money. Two hundred dollars, actually. The reconstituted VersaCorp was successful over the reconstituted Protégé, and Kristi talked to her close personal friend Jessie about the fact that she was going to take Heidi to the Boardroom. Heidi was her usual classy self, bitching about how unfair it was until half of the women in the suite wanted to put a pen in her eyeball. And oh, the skirt with the white stitching on the ass...Heidi, Heidi, Heidi. As you enjoy your remaining twelve seconds of fame, I certainly hope you're not wearing that. Would you really want to be remembered that way?
Trump interrogated Protégé about the missing money, and came up with the great line, "The money somewhere disappeared between the hand and the ass." Assorama accused Kristi of having failed during "leadership time," a twee little piece of phraseology that still bugs me so much I can barely sit still. Trump had loved Kristi up until that point, but he dumped her after her leadership failure. In her bonus interview, Kristi reveals that Assorama bailed out of taking care of the money in the middle of the task, telling Kristi she couldn't do it. That, if true, is very interesting indeed. She also claims that she thought Assorama was being "so obnoxious" that there should have been no need to defend herself. There might be an argument for that, but Kristi just looked so whipped and miserable that "I don't want to dignify that with a response" is just not the vibe she was giving off.
The task focused on Trump's strongly held belief that "charity is important." It's almost as important as raking in enormous amounts of money for your own personal gain, and you know how important he thinks that is. He sent the candidates, therefore, to work on a charity auction that involved convincing celebrities to donate some kind of an "experience" with them that could be auctioned off. Oh, and no one knows how to pronounce "Elizabeth Glaser," which I suppose isn't that big a deal, since it's only the name of the charity. Jerks. Jessie struggled with her negotiation with Isaac Mizrahi. Not the "I can't pronounce your name" kind of trouble, like Assorama had, but trouble nevertheless. The auction was "a yooge success" for VersaCorp, and a defeat for Protégé. In the Boardroom, Assorama bitched at Heidi and Jessie like the snippy brat she is, and because Jessie sat there and took it, Trump lost all respect for her and dumped her, even though she introduced a new approach, which was that of begging not to be fired right before being fired. Who would have thought it would take several weeks for someone to hit upon groveling as a tactic? I mean...it's Trump! That should have been the first thing they thought of! In other news, somewhere around the part where her behavior was described as "rude" and "repulsive," Assorama should have caught the snap that she wasn't exactly impressing the big boss, but that didn't happen. In her bonus interview, Jessie of course has to tell us that she was "true to [her] morals," because that's the goal, after all. She doesn't feel that she "compromised." Well...yes, but did you win? No. Learn anything about that? Sigh...I guess not. You can't expect too much.
In the task, the shrinking Protégé was given the opportunity to poach somebody from VersaCorp to even the teams. Amy was taken. Trump handed out a task to the teams that involved renovating and selling apartments. As the teams prepared to take off, a little piece of drywall plunked Assorama on the head. She became convinced that she was wounded for life. She went home to the suite, put a cooling eye pillow on her face (I have one of those, but I don't use it to treat concussions, interestingly enough), and called for a doctor. In new footage, we see the doctor come for a visit. The doctor looks at Assorama's head and says, "You've got a little bump there. I don't think you did any damage." The doctor asks her if she has anything strenuous on the agenda, and Assorama says she does -- apartment renovations. The doctor says that in that case, she might want to take an Advil. Oh, Doctor Whoever-You-Are, how I do love you. Seriously, that's all she recommends. "Just take some Advil." And Assorama laughs, because she's fine. She really is. She's fine. Of course, as Trump voices over, Assorama was not satisfied by the doctor's opinion that nothing was wrong, because how is she going to make any money from that? So she took herself to the emergency room, where Trump confirms that "the doctors didn't find anything terribly wrong." But the cameras were not allowed inside. Oh, Assorama. You great big goldbricker, you. That's two doctors who found nothing of any significance wrong. Where's the part about how you almost died? Where's the part where it was so serious that a week later, you couldn't walk around all day without a sit-down lunch?
And then, Heidi's mom got cancer. Which is really sad, because Heidi's behavior isn't her mother's fault, and even if it were, anybody getting cancer is sad. Heidi cried, she assured everyone that her family wanted her to stay, and she snifflingly asked that Trump not hold her mother's cancer against her. You know, the way people sometimes do. Hold your mother's cancer against you.
Katrina and Troy faced off over the apartments available for renovation in Brooklyn. When they couldn't agree on who would get which apartment, Katrina thought that passing notes was a great idea. Troy, knowing they weren't going to decide it that way and it was coming down to a coin toss, foiled her by writing on his note, "I want what you want." Which was really funny, but annoyed her. Well, scratch that -- it was funny because it annoyed her. Katrina proceeded to go into an enormous, self-righteous fit over the fact that Troy had been "unethical" by not playing the note-passing game exactly the way Katrina told him to. Troy referred to her as "madder than a wet hen" in a way that sounded more like "wet ham," but the show doesn't know how funny that really was, so they don't show that part again. "Wet ham," hee hee. Katrina the Wet Ham said that she was so "fueled" that there was no way Troy's team would win now.
Tammy drove VersaCorp crazy, just kind of...being Tammy. Which is a hard thing for her to stop doing. Katrina the Wet Ham felt that Tammy wasn't "adding value" to the team. The Wet Ham was determined to get rid of Tammy. In the Boardroom, especially after Tammy admitted that her team was "duped" by Troy, something the rest of them denied, Trump fired Tammy, although he started down a row of Wet Ham-tagonism that continues to this day. Tammy argues in her bonus interview that all she was doing was pointing out her team's shortcomings honestly, and that's a hard thing for people to hear. I agree with her, but she was still crazy. She certainly wasn't going to win. Go away, Tammy.
For the task, the teams were sent off to try to move "Trump Ice," Trump's new bottled water. Troy came up with a plan to sell water in installments, increasing the amount of water they could sell in a particular day. Ultimately, Troy's idea defeated VersaCorp's disorganized scrambling under the direction of Ereka. In new footage, we watch Nick and Bill have dinner together prior to the Boardroom. They are obviously well aware that Ereka is not going to take her friend Katrina into the Boardroom -- she's going to take the two of them, and if they're smart, they're going to support each other. Nick says that the focus should be on eliminating Ereka, while Boyfriend Bill says that he isn't looking to perform any sort of "character assassination," and that he won't fire until fired upon, as he puts it. Nick says that he's planning to fight hard. "I don't want to get fired," he says. As they toast, Nick makes reference to wanting to "get what's-her-face eliminated." Hee. "What's-her-face." The guy smile at each other, sharing the eeeevil.
In the Boardroom, Bill and Nick argued against keeping Ereka. Nick, in particular, argued that he was more capable of effectively running some kind of Trumpany than Katrina was. Carolyn pointed out that Nick and Katrina worked together on the task, so if Ereka wanted to throw water balloons at Nick for poor performance, she should at least do the same with Katrina. Ereka then proceeded to come up with the worst argument of all time, quite possibly, which is that (get this) she didn't bring Katrina to the final table to be up for firing because Katrina didn't really try to take any leadership, so there was nothing to blame on her. Trump found this insane, and fired Ereka. Even though, again, she tried begging for her life -- "Please don't say it, Mr. Trump" -- before being fired. Mercifully for Ereka, they don't replay the part where she was such a foul and poor sport that she wouldn't shake hands with Nick and Bill on her way out. Fortunately, I am here to remind you that there are a few things that you can do that mean that whether you are right or wrong, you are wrong. One of them is complaining about the officiating, and another of them is refusal to shake hands. She needs to learn some competitive etiquette.
In her bonus interview, however, Ereka almost makes up for how much I despise her by being genuinely hilarious, going on and on about how the men aren't "being true to themselves" and they're "screwed up." By which she means, "Boy, they kicked my shrimpy ass, huh?" She calls Nick a "dud" and makes some big deal about being able to tell that Boyfriend Bill was nervous in the Boardroom. Like, who cares, crazy lady? If your hands shake, it really doesn't matter as long as you can cover effectively. Trust me, I know. Ereka loves Amy, Katrina, Heidi, and Kwame, and will miss them. Oh, and Assorama, who she totally loves. Just kidding.
The task involved the art world. Once again, though, it had to start with VersaCorp taking somebody to even the teams, and the selectee was -- again -- Amy. Trump thought the teams were getting maybe a little excessive in their love of Amy. I think Amy sometimes has the same problem. The task was to pick an artist whose artwork they could sell in a gallery. VersaCorp selected a "safe" painter, meaning "one with no visible mental illnesses." Protégé? Did not. They chose Meghan, the kind of painter who makes you never want to share an apartment with anyone who claims to be artistic, because who wants to try to nuke a Lean Cuisine to a picture of a world ruled by frogs and their concubines? Heidi and Assorama argued about stopping for lunch while they were planning the art show. There was much swearing on Heidi's part, and much sneering condescension from Assorama. Kwame sat on the Space Communicator, listening to the women argue. Troy hypothesized that if Assorama didn't get the chance to eat soon, she might call the president. Hee. As I so often find myself saying...oh, Troy. If I didn't already have an imaginary boyfriend who has no idea and shall never have any idea that I exist, I might have a space available for you. (Okay, yes, I have several. NOT THE POINT. ["You'd also have to get in line behind me, but I suppose that's not the point either. Heh. Hi, Troy! Call me!" -- Sars]) At the gallery shows, VersaCorp did very well and sold eight pieces for about $13,600. Protégé, however, stalled under the leadership of Kwame and the artistic bafflement of Troy -- who, to his credit, did his best to act like he had some clue as to why the skull of Henry VIII was important. They sold only one piece, for $869. It was sold by Assorama, but this fact turned out not to be determinative. Heidi tells us that the team just chose the wrong artist. In the Boardroom, Assorama and Heidi argued some more about lunch, the delay over lunch, and Assorama's horror at the fact that Heidi swears, like...well, not really like a sailor, just kind of like a pissed-off lady who spends too much time in meetings. Which, I think, is kind of what she is. Not happy about the lunch argument and not at all happy about excuses, Trump sent Assorama home, and the universe heaved a sigh of relief, because had her behavior been rewarded, it was going to be forced to implode, which is a huge pain in the ass. For, you know, the universe to do. In her bonus interview, Assorama says that she "played the game well" and has "no regrets." Well, sure. Given the opportunity to choose losing again, she would gladly do so. She points out that she "can do whatever [she sets] her mind to." Well, except...you know, winning.
That night, the remaining folks went out (this is new footage) to drink. Boyfriend Bill talks about the toast in his honor that he'd like the rest of the candidates to have after he's gone, and how he hopes that they will choose not to sit around and talk shit about him instead. Katrina confirms in an interview that it's not about friendship anymore, the way it was when -- you know -- Ereka was around and everything. Now, it's just cutthroat business. Boyfriend Bill turns to Kwame and says, "I'm watching you, baby!" Somehow, that moment felt like it had the heavy hand of foreshadowing from the minute I saw it, but I couldn't tell you why.
Last task! The candidates were sent to manage a pedicab fleet and its drivers. Kwame started out for Protégé by offering incentives to the drivers. Troy followed up with an idea for selling prepaid punch cards so that people could buy pedicab rides in bulk. Which...I guess...a lot of people want to do? Elsewhere, Amy allegedly came up with the idea of advertising on the rickshaws to bring in money beyond fares. Heidi tried to sell cards and failed miserably, and she complained loudly about everyone in a way that Carolyn observed with growing disapproval. As soon as Protégé spotted one of the VersaCorp advertising rickshaws, Troy sensed that his team was doomed, and it was. Project manager Troy had a choice between making Heidi safe and making Kwame safe. He chose to send Kwame to safety, and faced off against Heidi. Although Troy's ideas didn't work out brilliantly on the task, Carolyn took the opportunity to raise what I suspect are longstanding issues with Heidi's failure to serve hardly any function on her team. Heidi took a novel approach to a person in a position of power by basically saying, "We'll agree to disagree." Heidi was forced to admit that, at the very least, Troy was a good leader, and to acknowledge that nobody has said the same about her. In her bonus interview, she tells us that losing was great, because it reminded her that she really doesn't want to be in sales. Yeah, totally. She didn't want that Trump job anyway. She also assures us that her mother is well. Again, good news. Among news I don't find terrifically interesting, like everything else about Heidi's life.
So now, only six candidates remain. Upcoming tasks will include casinos, "high-priced real estate," and...Jessica Simpson. No, really. Jessica Simpson. One of the remaining six is going to win. Who will it be? Hard to say. The Trumpicopter takes Trump away from us, and the clip show is over at last. Damn. Aside from a couple of interesting clips that lasted about thirty seconds each, that was seriously boring. It's a good thing they included Doctor Advil, because otherwise, I'm not sure I would have made it.