Wheeling and Dealing

Previously on Repeated Scans Of The Patient's Head Showed Nothing: VersaCorp swept Amy back into its loving arms, saving her from spending another three days tending to Assorama's massive head wound. Trump wasn't sure that continuing to give Amy all the power was such a great idea, but she's the cutest, dammit -- ask her yourself. Teams had to choose an artist whose work they could sell, and while VersaCorp chose the lovely and simple paintings of Andrei the "abstract nature-based painter," Protg chose the psychiatrically diagnosable works of Meghan the "somewhat crazy Photoshop freakazoid with a possible incest fixation and some weird-ass thing about frogs." Assorama and Heidi bickered about lunch, and Heidi did her usual "here a 'fuck,' there a 'fuck,' everywhere a 'fuck fuck'" thing as Assorama insisted that she had to sit down right this minute or she would drop dead on the spot. with parts of her brain leaking out onto the sidewalk through the hole punched in her skull by The World's Deadliest Piece of Drywall. At the gallery, VersaCorp sold several of Andrei's paintings, while Protg (in the form of Assorama) sold exactly one "Hollowed Pussy" and settled for so little money that it barely paid for the therapy it will take to recover from looking at the "art" in the first place. Heidi's mom still had cancer. In the Boardroom, PM Kwame brought Assorama and Heidi to the final table, and Trump, like the rest of America, had finally had enough of Assorama. He booted her ass and sent her back to run the country or whatever she was doing before she came on the show. There was much rejoicing. Who will be fired this week?

Credits. What if you could have it all? And by "all," I mean the opportunity to prove your business acumen by posing without your clothes on in men's magazines? Just a little hint? "My brain comes as a free bonus when you buy my boobs" is not the world's most convincing way to get people to recognize your substantive accomplishments. Oh what a world we live in, indeed.

S4. Aspiring Corporate Weasel Death Watch. Troy explains to the group that Assorama was "playing a very defensive game." Troy explains how the team had to go to the Boardroom, and how he and Kwame have been a team from the beginning. "I was so anxious for him to come back," Troy says. Boyfriend Bill asks whether Trump asked who the weakest person was, and Troy confirmed that he did. Katrina snots in an interview that she would fire Assorama. "I don't agree with the way she conducts business and the way she carries herself," Katrina says. Her dingy yellow cowl-necked sweater, combined with her unappealing slouch, makes her look like a mustard bottle. She is missing only a pointy red hat. That is not a good color for her. Back in S4, Nick and Amy lounge around, waiting for the return of whomever. The door opens. It's Heidi! And Kwame! The girls go, "Eeeeee!" and hug, and Kwame and Troy have a heartfelt handshake. No hugging for them. Heidi interviews that everyone just kind of went, "Oh. Omarosa's gone. Yaaaaay!" She jumps up and down. It's a little bit funny, except that she's so obnoxious herself that I can't really share in the celebration. Amy tells Protg that their team is stronger now that Assorama is gone. In an interview, Kwame says he's not so sure about that. Assorama may have brought drama and conflict, but she was another person and another head for the tasks, so he's not sure they're actually stronger. "Who knows how it weighs out in the end?" he says. Kwame, it's no fun for me when you're diplomatic. Plus, I don't really know how it "weighs out" for them -- I only care about myself, the viewer. Me, the Viewer! I rule! And I wanted her gone, so that's all there is to that, as far as I'm concerned.

It is night. It is morning. An acoustic guitar invites us to float free of the cold world of business and merchandising as we see the remaining candidates snoozing. Troy is actually in bed with his cowboy hat over his face. Does he really sleep that way? Because...wow. I didn't think you had to do that unless you were actually out on the range watching for coyotes. (And yes, please pronounce that "kye-otes.") Heidi, on the other hand, is awake and getting ready to go out. We watch her put on her makeup, and then she's walking up to the Hackensack University Medical Center. She says that she went to visit her mom, who is in the hospital, although we do not (mercifully) go inside the hospital. We just see Heidi meet up with her sister, who tells her that Mom is fine and takes Heidi inside. Apparently, Mom's surgery was very successful, and Mom is doing well. We wrap up the moral very quickly, as Heidi tells us that she now has been reminded that the game isn't the most important thing in life, yadda yadda yadda. "My family comes above anything," she reassures us. "You have to prioritize what's impor-ant." And one of the things that's "impor-ant" to Heidi is dropping the "t" in the middle of that word and replacing it with a full stop. Even though I grew up in the Philadelphia area, I can't really do the accent, but I do recognize that one. Makes me want a cheesesteak. Anyway, Heidi loves her family, and the acoustic guitar strums, "Word."

Back at S4, Kwame answers the phone, and after last week's big thigh promotion, we are treated this to week's arm promotion, featuring Kwame's giant shoulder. I have such a well-established shoulder fetish at this point that I would almost take that as a shout-out, but...I won't. Robin tells Kwame on the phone that they need to meet Trump at 9:30 AM, across from the Plaza Hotel, at a stand where there are rickshaws. There's even more naked Kwame upper body action as he preens in front of the mirror and voices over about how they're "geared up" and ready to go. Bill says something about "bring it on" as we watch him shaving, and while shaving is often kind of hot, I must note that Bill is doing that speed-shaving thing that Kyan is always complaining about, so that's one demerit for him. Don't cut yourself, Boyfriend Bill.

The candidates all stroll out of Trump Tower together some time later. They go and wait by a bunch of bicycle rickshaws ("pedicabs," if you prefer), and Donald drives up. He exits the limo. He throws a little half-smile at the candidates when he first sees them, and you can kind of tell as that he wants to say, "Yeah, I fired her. You all owe me a yooge debt of gratitude." What he actually tells them, though, is that "transportation in New York City is a basic disaster." Wait...it is? I don't think I've ever come back from being in New York without bubbling over with happiness about how easy it is to get everywhere, and how you can walk everywhere without being run over and you can take the subway everywhere and it is literally the easiest city to get around that I have ever been in. Now, granted, I'm usually fairly Manhattan-centric, and I don't know how much more complicated it becomes if you live there and have to deal with it more long-term and get to more places, but I still think "a basic disaster" is a little bit of an overstatement. ["If he'd said something more like 'traffic in New York City is a basic disaster,' yeah, no argument there. Above-ground/vehicular transportation is a horror show; I don't think he was counting public transit." -- Sars] Moreover, I don't really think that "transportation" has much to do with the task they're about to do, as I don't think bicycle rickshaws are really the answer to anyone's transportation problems, so much as they are a solution to boredom when it's a nice day outside. But anyway, he explains that each team will be operating a fleet of pedicabs for one eight-hour shift. The shift will be tomorrow, and for that shift, the team has to do all it can to maximize the profit from the fleet. At the end of the day, the winners will win, and the losers will lose. Carolyn, by the way, looks totally gorgeous with her super-blonde hair and her lavender sweater. For reasons I will get to later, take a moment to appreciate that Carolyn is truly, utterly gorgeous, and that without the Carol Brady hair, she would be six times as hot as any of the women on this team.

Anyway, Protg takes a walk and talks about ideas. Heidi interviews that they made Troy the PM, and it's going in perfect order -- she was the PM, and then Kwame, and then Troy. See, perfect! It's not at all relevant that this is Troy's third shot as PM, and Heidi's only done it once. She's not avoiding responsibility at all. Noooope. Troy says, "So we could have two teams, because we have one rickshaw thing that would be, like, us being the celebrity rickshaw." And I think that explains why Kwame spent time on the thing -- the dossier isn't public yet, but I think one of them was required to actually drive one of the rickshaws for a certain period of time. Same reason Amy and Katrina were doing it for the other team. I think it was a requirement that they actually pedal one themselves -- it makes for far better television, so I'd actually be shocked if that weren't the case. Kwame says that they had to try to think up an angle that went beyond just "running rickshaws around the city." They decide to brainstorm. I'm sure that will be quite the tsunami. As they sit around and talk, Troy's big idea is a prepaid punch card, so you'd buy ten rickshaw rides at a shot. He says in an interview that this was his "creative idea" -- to buy rides in bulk from the rickshaw company owner, basically, and then resell them in bunches of ten. They agree that they might be able to sell these cards at the "fancy hotels" around Central Park and the like. Troy tells the team, "We just won, you guys." He is very confident that there are a lot of people who only don't ride in bicycle rickshaws more often because it's too inconvenient to buy the rides one at a time.

VersaCorp sits around examining the rickshaw company's website and pondering how they can make extra money. Boyfriend Bill floats the idea of the drivers wearing costumes. Uh...just look pretty, okay, Boyfriend Bill? Pretty much any idea that involves "costumes," I am inherently against. Anyway, as it turns out, Boyfriend Bill is the PM, because he won (or possibly lost) a coin toss with Amy. He goes on to mention to the team that maybe they could "dress up as different Disney characters." Katrina makes a bitchface, which is slightly justified in this case, not that she would make it any less if it weren't. But yeah, I don't think I'm taking a pedicab ride from Goofy. Katrina seems to think that they should dress up like Ben Affleck and Sharon Stone. Or something. I don't even understand that suggestion, but it makes Boyfriend Bill make a face; the sound guy throws in a random drum cue just to emphasize that Bill's brain just popped a wheelie trying to get over the stupidity that idea. Amy suggests an incentive for the driver who makes the most money every hour. Bill thinks that they should "have a girl" give the rides. Learning from the women on the show, apparently. Katrina wants to "market" at the ticket center by Planet Hollywood. That being the same spot she wore her hooker boots to when she was a Shooter Girl. Bill and Nick look at her like, "Yeah, thanks, genius, we'll take it under advisement." And the sound guy throws you a loud "zoing!" just in case you don't get it. Suddenly, Amy has a thought: "We could advertise on the back of the rickshaw." Boyfriend Bill interviews that as soon as she made the suggestion, they knew it was a good one. Bill adds a piece to this idea, which is to go back to the people they already have had contact with in other tasks and ask them if they want to sell rickshaw advertising. Katrina makes another bitchface as Bill waxes rhapsodic about how it will be just like NASCAR, with the drivers and their advertising patches everywhere. "If we put this together, it'll be a bloodbath," Bill says. Hey, just like NASCAR!

Protg works on creating their ten-ride punch cards. Troy and Kwame agree that they "feel good about" the idea. Heidi seems a little grumpy and skeptical about how they're going to sell the punch cards, and as she gets up to go check on Mom, Kwame voices over that she's managing that situation as well as she can. He adds that his mom died of cancer when he was fifteen, so he knows how she feels. Aw. Kwame does think Heidi's distracted.

That night, VersaCorp pays a visit to Acqua Pazza, one of the restaurants (I believe) that they sold water to previously. Nick tells the guy at the restaurant that they have "these two beautiful women" who are going to be pedaling people around. The guy warms to the idea of advertising with them. Bill says that they actually visited three places, and lined up advertising with two of them. Then we see Amy place a call to one of the guys she knows at Marquis Jet. The Marquis guy goes along with it, provided that she and Katrina both wear Marquis shirts and hats all day. I'm not sure this kind of arrangement is entirely fair, as this is another example of an idea that works really well specifically because it's a TV show and it's only for one day. I don't know that any of these places would pay money long-term to advertise on pedicabs -- especially not at the prices being thrown around in the episode -- or that any of them would pay anything if it weren't going to be part of the show. But anyway.

Back at S4, Bill and Katrina chat a little bit about what they know of Protg's strategy, and when it turns out that Katrina knows a little bit about it, Bill wonders why she didn't tell them before. She snots that they don't ask her for her opinion about things. Bill gently says that they have in fact asked for her opinion, but she snots some more that they haven't. She then gets up on the world's shortest and wobbliest high horse, saying that Bill likes to "use her" when it's convenient for him. She's actually trying to do some kind of a hurt, put-upon thing because he treats her like some kind of a pretty trophy girl. Oh, the humanity. Just because that's the way she's won (or tried to win) practically every single damn task? Bill points out that she has a way of using her looks herself, so he's not sure why she objects to using it on behalf of the team. Because she has absolutely no answer whatsoever to this, she changes the subject, insisting that she's successful for reasons other than her looks. ["I seriously can't decide which part of that statement is more surreal -- the assumption that she's a 'success' of any kind, whichnot really, or the idea that, if she were, it could only be because she's soooooo beautiful, which, againnot really. Katrina, for real: Be quiet. Forever." -- Sars] She goes back to being upset that he didn't listen to her great ideas...like Ben Affleck and Sharon Stone, I guess...so she's just decided to check out of the task and not help, she says. Well, that's brilliant. She snits in her interview that Bill doesn't listen to her ideas. "Whenever we go to a sales pitch, he turns to us and says, 'These beautiful women will be driving,' but what about my ideas?" Yeah, what about her ideas? Like...like...yeah. She has nothing, and she knows it, and that's why she's pissed off. They don't need her ideas, she doesn't have any ideas, she's been swept from the spotlight by Amy who actually does have ideas, and it makes her frustrated, so she comes up with this. Furthermore, as I did when she first flipped out with Assorama about the "I'm a good person" business, I suspect that she has a serious case of protesting too much -- she knows that she probably would not have the successes she has if she didn't flash her legs everywhere she goes, and that's a hard reality to swallow, so rather than swallow it, she argues with people about it all the time, whether or not they brought it up. Which is her prerogative, but not Bill's fault.

Then Katrina actually progresses to the following rather unbelievable statement: "Riding a rickshaw because a woman will be riding a rickshaw, and she looks cute...and that's really offensive to me, to be honest with you." HA HA HA! Damn, that's so non-self-aware that it sort of hurts to look at it. It's almost not that funny that she's that clueless about her own behavior and how she comes across. I mean, that is...downright weird. Bill insists that he wants to run things like a democracy, and he doesn't want to "run it like Troy." Hee. Katrina says that she knows he thinks that, but his actions don't bear it out. So, you know, he should work on that. So sayeth Katrina. Bill interviews: "The bottom line is this. Katrina doesn't like the way I lead. My advice to her is, step aside, then." And look cute doin' it, dammit! (Kidding. Just kidding.)

When we return from commercials, the title card says, "Think Outside the Box." We see Trump giving a presentation, and then he interviews that although thinking outside the box is a clich at this point (yeah, just a little), the fact remains that sometimes, in business, you have to do it. Troy interviews about the task a little more, and says that Kwame came up with an incentive program for the drivers. He announces that whoever makes the most money before noon will get a hundred bucks, and whoever makes the most money at the end of the day will get a hundred bucks. If I'm not crazy, this is an incentive being offered to a staff of four drivers. Wow. I understood the incentive at Planet Hollywood, when you had a very large staff, and so if each person hustled for five extra bucks, it would pay off several times over, but here, each person will have to hustle for fifty dollars extra over the course of the day before you even pay off the incentive -- that's before it starts making money for you. I'm not sure the incentive thing works in this context at all, just because of the tiny staff. With the staff duly instructed, Heidi and Troy take off to do the marketing of the cards, while Kwame takes the shift in the rickshaw. He heads off to try to drum up business. "Rides? Any rides today?" Poor Kwame.

Boyfriend Bill and Nick meet up with some of the business guys to attach the advertising to the pedicabs. "We're converting the rickshaws into NASCARs," Boyfriend Bill explains. Bill and Nick take a spin in one of the pedicabs as well. "All right, Warnock," Bill says as he pedals passenger Nick. "Well on our way, baby." We then watch him pedaling for a while, and then he interviews about the fact that he's not exactly on a roll himself, and he needs a win. "At this stage of the game, I need to hit a home run."

We see some of the various pedicab drivers picking up passengers. Kwame, however, is striking out. He rings his bell. Nothing doing. He interviews that he "sucked as a rickshaw driver." He claims that he did everything the other drivers told him to do, and he went to all the places they told him to go, and he struck out. Sadly, he pedals down the sidewalk, saying, "Anybody need a ride?" And then he bumps over a pothole, which is accompanied by a perfect music cue. Very clever, the people who make this show. I think they have particularly mastered the snarky insertion of weird noises to connote stupidity or ineptitude on the part of the contestants, and even though said stupidity and ineptitude usually speaks for itself, I'm always in favor of piling on. As you know.

Elsewhere, one of the VersaCorp advertising-mobiles goes pedaling down the street. Back at Trump Tower, Bill and Nick meet with...well, I'm not sure who it is, actually. Owner of the rickshaw company? Don't know. Anyway, it's a guy who explains that one of the signs fell off this morning. Nick tells Bill that because the sign came down, he thinks they should go and "give him a hundred dollars back." Bill thinks that the guy is getting value for his advertising dollar, still. Bill calls and talks to Umberto at the restaurant (hee), and they agree that they'll talk about some kind of a credit. Bill sends Nick to "handle this." In an interview, Nick insists that he's "very big on business ethics," because "without your reputation, you're pretty much finished." He claims that you have to always feel like you did the right thing, so he makes that an absolute rule. Bill sends Nick off with an admonition to "think about the big picture" and the fact that they "need every penny [they] can get." Nick takes off.

Wall Street. Katrina and Amy, taking the pedicab shift for VersaCorp in their Marquis Jetwear. Amy goes up to a guy and, way too enthusiastically, says, "Sir, would ya like a ride on a rickshaw?" Amy voices over that they believed that from the wealthy executives, they would get fifty-dollar fares. Fifty dollars? To be pedaled around on the streets? Delusional. Unless, like I said, she's accounting for the "you can be on TV" factor. With the first two guys, they try to get them to go for ten dollars a person, and the guys tell them no thanks, they can walk. "We were kind of shocked," she interviews. Yeah, you know, every once in a while, you get guys who won't even buy the fifty-dollar lemonade. She tries to sell the guys on a twenty-five-dollar fare for both of them, and they're not biting either. "You're supporting a greeeat cause!" Amy says. Whoa, hey, watch it there, Amy. The guys, fortunately, aren't fooled. They're like, "What cause? Marquis Jet?" Hee. Katrina interviews, arms crossed over her chest, that Amy "will do anything to sell" and is "too pushy." She goes on, because it's not quite clear where her animosity is coming from yet: "She thinks that every man's in love with her and every woman wants to be her best friend. And she's wrong." Oh. Now I see where it comes from. It's a little bit hard not being the prettiest and the most well-liked, huh, Katrina? Especially after your best friend leaves so the two of you can't sit around and bitch about how much better you are than everyone else. It's hard to tell, in the end, whether Katrina and Amy are doing much better getting people to take rides with them than Kwame is.

Troy and Heidi, meanwhile, are trying to sell the prepaid cards. They hit a couple of hotels, both of which put them off unhelpfully. Troy decides that they need to meet up again and regroup. They get together with Kwame back at Trump Tower, and Troy says that "when you're lost in the woods, the first thing you never do [sic] is try to walk yourself out." Troy says he's not doing well being apart from Kwame. Awwww, the Harvard MBA and the Idaho potato are in lurve. Troy says that Heidi is good at selling face-to-face, but they can't actually get their meetings to go forward to sell the cards in the first place. Troy thinks that in light of all these setbacks, they should just all get together and "work on the number one thing, and that's having fun." Troy says that he's going to change his clothes upstairs, and then they can go back out. As Kwame explains, Troy went upstairs and got out of his nicer clothes and into his cowboy hat. It was "like Superman." Hee. "He became Troy the Cosmic Cowboy," Kwame says. Troy takes off pedaling Heidi and Kwame in the pedicab. They find a crowd of people who I believe are waiting outside to get into the Letterman show, actually -- right door to the Manhattan Chili Company! Wooo! Ah, memories. Anyway, they schmooze the people waiting in line, and they apparently manage to sell some cards. At least a few, I guess. "Man, it just starts clicking, we start selling these things! 'Cause we're having fun and we believe in it!" Troy explains. There is laughing, there is clowning, and there is a lot of Troy being Troy and working the crowd. Kwame and Troy mid-five each other over at least having made a little bit of money. "Yee-ha!" Troy says. Gosh, has Troy actually unleashed a "yee-ha" before? Maybe he was saving it for the moment when it was most needed.

Nick goes to visit Umberto about the credit. When he walks in, Umberto asks if he's there to negotiate the credit, and Nick says no, he's just there to give him the whole $250 back that he spent on the sign. Outside the restaurant, he gets a call from Boyfriend Bill on the Space Communicator. Bill wants to know how it's going. Nick spills that he gave the entire $250 back to Umberto. Bill is extremely bummed, and passes along the word to the women, both of whom seem to agree that a complete refund of the cost of that particular sign may have been excessive. Bill, in worrying-PM mode, interviews that Protg can be very creative, and you never know what they're going to come up with. "This is New York City," he says. "Nothing's out of the question." Well, except cheap apartments. I really don't appreciate the way that Boyfriend Bill got stuffed under this stupid Marquis Jet hat all day, by the way, because it makes him look like a dweeb. Remember, I, the Viewer, am all that matters!

Elsewhere, Protg is attempting sidewalk sales of their ride cards. Heidi is unable to get anyone to bite on what she's offering. As she gets increasingly frustrated and goofy, Carolyn -- cool as a cuke in a gorgeous black leather jacket with a fur collar -- stands there looking increasingly dismayed. At one point, Heidi loudly comments that "people need to have more sex, because everyone is just so miserable." That would certainly make me want to stop and buy something from her. As she's standing around lamenting her existence, she notices a pedicab rolling by. Protg watches the pedicab, and they notice the big poster on the back. There is much sadness and moaning as they realize that VersaCorp has sold advertising on the rickshaws. "That's a great idea," Troy says simply in an interview. "I didn't think of it." Heh. You can just tell, as Troy takes in the passing pedicab, that he is extremely irked at the mere thought that there was an offbeat idea out there that didn't occur to him. And I suspect he's especially annoyed by the fact that it isn't really that special of an idea, and it probably should have occurred to him. Heidi asks him whether he's all right, and he says that he is, but then he interviews, "We were lookin' up the ass of a dead dog with fleas if we thought we were gonna go up against 'em." I don't completely know what that means, and I'm not sure that even a Troy-to-English dictionary, if one existed, would endorse that particular use of that expression, but it beats another use of "thinking outside the box."

After the commercial, we return to VersaCorp collecting money from its drivers, who don't seem to have had a terrific day. Bill interviews that he was "disappointed" in the money that the drivers brought in. "I don't know, Bill," Katrina says happily. "This one, I think we won." Bill is always nervous, however, and this is no exception -- he's just not so sure they've got it nailed down. "If we lose this task, Bill will definitely take me to the Boardroom," Katrina interviews, "and I will be the first person to say that he was a horrible PM." Nyaaaah! I find it very interesting that she's only going to say he was a horrible PM if they lose the task. Shouldn't he be a horrible PM either way? ["And shouldn't she have a leg to stand on in the 'not being a horrible non-PM' department if she's going to shank Bill? Lord, do I dislike her." -- Sars]

Protg meets up with their drivers, and -- wow, I think they actually gave three hundred-dollar incentives, including one for the biggest single fare. Sheesh. That's almost one for each employee, for God's sake. They hand out the incentive payments and head out for the Boardroom meeting for results. In the Boardroom, they all stroll in and sit down. Donald arrives. Trump asks Bill how he thinks his team did. "We're cautiously optimistic," Bill offers. And how does Troy think his team did? Troy thinks they had "a fantastic day and a fun day." Trump asks if it could be a fun day if he didn't win, and all of Protg nods enthusiastically, so I think they really did have a fun day. "I've never liked losing, personally," Trump says with a look over at George. I must say, the hair is especially yellow-and-orange stripey today. We had that cat when I was a very little girl. His name was Meechi Slav Vaspovodian Kitty, and he was named after the atrocious mangling (by a friend of my father's) of the name Mstislav Rostropovich, who is a famous cellist. So that explains why sometimes, when I see Trump's hair, I mutter, "Oh, Meechi." And have a sudden urge to listen to cello sonatas.

George presents the results from VersaCorp. From the actual rides, they made $651.29. But on top of that, they sold advertising, which added $3,450, for a total of $3,680 in profit. George is clearly impressed with the advertising idea, and particularly with the use of their past relationships from other tasks. Well, Trump asks Carolyn, how did Protg do? She says that they concentrated solely on the transportation angle, "unfortunately." Their profit was $382.68. Now, it's interesting, because that makes it sound like VersaCorp made twice as much as Protg from rides alone, but the Protg number is profit; it's not clear how much they put into expenses generally, and we know they put $300 into that incentive program. So the prepaid cards may not have been quite as much of a flop as it seems like they were -- Protg, for instance, may have had $400 in expenses (about what Protg had) and $300 in incentives, so they may have grossed something like $1300 or $1400, as compared to the $650 that VersaCorp made from the rides. In other words, it looked to me like it did take the advertising for them to get beat, and had they known enough not to give such hefty incentive payments, I think they clearly would have made more on rides than the other team, partly as a result of selling the prepaid cards. I could be totally wrong, but that's my sense of it. It's hard to break it down perfectly. Okay, I'm actually guessing, I admit.

Troy cringes at the magnitude of the loss. He openly admits that they just never thought of advertising. Trump presents VersaCorp -- including Katrina, who is still making a bitchface, because I think seeing Bill be right actually pisses her off so much that she'd rather lose -- with a ride around Manhattan on a yacht. He turns back to Protg. "At this stage of your job interview, I am not impressed...I may just fire all of you." Wooo, mass firing! Now that would be a twist.

VersaCorp goes yachting. Boyfriend Bill gets to steer for a few minutes. Manhattan is very pretty. The Statue of Liberty makes us all proud. There is toasting. When they get to the part of the ride where there are snacks, Amy wants to feed the snack to Nick. Ew. Katrina interviews that Nick and Amy have this weird, twisted flirtation going on, and she's not sure which of them is playing the other one. It's quite brilliant how a white truck labeled "TIME" is literally barreling toward Katrina from behind as she's doing this interview. It catches up with us all eventually, sweetie. "I think Amy thinks she's playing Nick," Katrina offers. "But I think in the end, Nick'll win." Of course. Because Katrina isn't jealous of Nick. We observe a conversation with Nick in which Amy, as "smart" as she's supposed to be, hauls out perhaps one of the biggest clichs in the Flirty-Flirty Catalogue, which is "I just think that you're hard to read." He agrees. All bad flirting, I find, is premised on some version of "you're hard to read." Everyone likes to think of himself or herself as too complicated for regular people to really understand, and so it is the sincerest form of, um, flirt-ery to say something along the lines of, "I know you are complicated; I am complicated also." Whatever. I bet Jessica Simpson called Nick Lachey "hard to read" at some point, too. Although, of course, Jessica thinks stop signs are hard to read...I think I'm losing the point.

Anyway, Nick and Amy are flirting. He tells her he's a little intimidated by her. She likes the sound of this. "I think so," she says. "I am a little," he says, very earnestly. "Are you being sarcastic?" she asks. "Yeah, one hundred percent," he says, and laughs, which is really assy, but makes me laugh anyway, because it makes Amy put this really peevish expression on her face. Nick interviews that Amy's "a very, very strong player," and that it's "good to be semi-aligned with her, 'cause she's very, very sharp." Wow, "semi-aligned." Quite an outpouring of emotion, there, Nick. I hope that, someday, some wonderful guy will ask me to be "semi-aligned." Back in their little chat, Amy tells him that she's not feeling competitive; she's "still in partnership mode." Then we cut directly to an interview in which she says, "Not only have I had ten consecutive wins; my goal at this point in time is now to make it to the end without ever losing." She is so losing week. At least I hope she is.

After the commercials, we return to...well, something that's there just for me, which is Kwame doing pull-ups. As I said last week, I am not into ankle porn, but again, I am very enthusiastic about shoulders. And therefore, this segment? Is all about...me! I, the Viewer, am in charge! As he spots Kwame doing the pull-ups, Troy voices over as follows: "If we have to go into it, and it just comes down to him and I, the only promise I made to Kwame was the warriors' code, and that is that my sword is going to be sharp, I'm going to swing it hard and fast, and I'm going to cut you clean. And may the best man win." Well. All right, then. Troy does pull-ups, too. I still like shoulders. Kwame says that Troy could get fired, because he was the PM. Or Kwame himself could get fired. "I could get fired, because Donald Trump is probably tired of my shit at this point," he says with a laugh. Heidi, Kwame says, could get fired because although Trump seems to like her, she's not doing a lot that justifies keeping her around.

Out on the balcony, Heidi smokes and talks about her mother's cancer. Sigh. Apparently there's a little bit in the lymph nodes, and "they want to zap it out." Well, I certainly wish good luck with the zapping. I do! I like everyone's mom, by default. Katrina says that she wants Heidi to stay, so she really doesn't want her to quit, because Katrina will be "pissed off." If she quits to, you know, go be with her mother who has cancer, Katrina will be "pissed off," because that's not what she wants. You gotta love a girl who can keep her eye on what matters. Heidi gives a little "hello, moron" speech about how her mom's health is obviously more important than the pedicab task. And I have to say...I mean, I respect that she stayed, and I would have respected it if she left, but I'm not crazy about staying and then citing that you can't be expected to give your full effort to things because your mom is sick, you know? It's like...stay, or go, but don't stay and then talk about how much you don't care, it seems to me. Particularly when there's a team involved. Anyway, Katrina asks her whether Troy has said much about what he's going to say in the Boardroom. Heidi says that they're going to the Boardroom as a team -- there's no Assorama, so there's no backstabbing. Heidi says she has to go and get ready. Inside, Troy asks Amy how the boat trip was, and she says it was fun. "Very windy," she says. Insightful! Heidi comes to ask Troy when they're leaving. "I've got something to announce to you, Heidi. I've made my selection; I'm taking you and Kwame to the Boardroom." Hee. They laugh. Troy interviews that he's very relieved that there's no picking for him to do, and that this part of being PM is off his shoulders in this round. They take off, in fairly good spirits, it would appear.