Down to the Wire, Part 2

Credits. Money-money-money moooo-ney! Wiggle your hips! Dance with your cat! Sing really loudly until your neighbors plead with you to please, please stop it! But don't tell them you got the idea from me!

Atlantic City, the Taj Mahal. We watch some people gambling their life savings at the craps tables, and then at the slot machines, and then at the blackjack tables and whatnot. So this week's theme, apparently, is "personal responsibility." Elsewhere in the hotel, we find that Assorama is still in the purple-carpeted office where we left her last week. I love that, because one of the great things about a casino is that you can have bright purple carpet in the part of the office devoted to doing business, and nobody bats an eye. Elsewhere, purple carpeting pretty much means that you're in the "brothel" section of whatever business you're currently patronizing. Anyway, Assorama is holding the phone and asking some presumably very bored individual, "How do you lose a rock star?" Obviously, there are a lot of ways to lose Jessica Simpson, starting with failure to leave an adequate trail of bread crumbs when you take her from her bedroom to the kitchen, so I won't even bother with those jokes for the remainder of the recap. You'll thank me later. Assorama interviews, in any event, that Jessica Simpson was "missing." She was "nowhere to be found." We are actually picking things up a bit behind where we left off last week, because we just now see Troy and Kwame entering the room to check in with Assorama, who claims that she called Diane about Jessica's transportation, but Diane never got back to her. Liar, liar, ugly outfit on fire.

Despite this incredibly clever ruse that is only sullied by the fact that it is exactly the same as the incredibly clever ruse she used yesterday, Assorama is not successful in deflecting attention away from herself. Kwame, in fact, voices over that "[Assorama] just totally dropped the ball." He goes on. "I would have fired [Assorama], because she's not competent," he says. "But I didn't have the luxury of doing that." We watch Assorama back in the office making another phone call. As it turns out, she is now chirping to the original chirpmeister -- Jessica herself. This phone call, I suspect, causes cracks in the earth's crust from the collision of utter amorality and unmitigated stupidity. Assorama asks Jessica where exactly she is, and surprisingly, Jessica seems to know where she is, and seems to be able to state where she is. She probably asked someone. Kwame explains in a voice-over that it turned out that Jessica's people booked their own transportation; nobody told the team (and the team never checked, of course), so it turned out Jessica had two transport options lined up. So when Jessica was "lost," she was actually already being taken to the hotel.

Assorama and Kwame go to Jessica's suite to greet her. The great and mightily put-upon Nick Lachey answers the door, and Kwame and Assorama both introduce themselves to him. Kwame asks Nick how he likes the hotel, and Nick says that the suite is fabulous. I have to think, however, that a guy like Nick has probably seen about all the enormously fancy hotel rooms that one can really absorb, and probably just doesn't get all twittery over the gold-plated fruit baskets anymore. Jessica herself emerges at this point, and Kwame introduces himself and Assorama, whom he calls his "colleague," like he's trying to find some way to explain her presence without implying either that he has any control over her professionally or that he would ever associate with her socially. Assorama makes nice with Jessica, giving her the whole "oh, when I couldn't find you, I was like, 'I have lost the biggest rock star in the country.'" Is Jessica Simpson what passes for "rock" in Assoramaland? Does Pat Boone know about this? Because I think even he would be offended. "Jessica Simpson is not rock," he would say. "Now I, on the other hand, am rock." Jessica tells us that at the airport, she was "confused." You can't see anyone else in the room at this point, but I'm sure they're all trying to look surprised. Assorama assures Jessica that from here on out, it's all going to be smooth sailing, logistically speaking. I'm sure Jessica is filled with confidence. Or, you know, would be filled with confidence if she were capable of processing words other than "good girl" and "autograph" and "personal shopper." Kwame interviews that although there have been a few snags, everything is basically going well with the preparations for the concert. I guess that by "everything," he means "everything except successfully transporting either the band or the singer to the hotel."

The thing you know, it is 5:30 AM at Briarcliff Manor. Outside the clubhouse, Nick is greeting Bill, commenting that it's early, and it's cold. As it turns out, Bill roused the team at about 4:30 in the morning on the Saturday of the golf tournament so that they could get an early start. Bill interviews that he "would rather have more time than not enough time." Seriously. The team is probably lucky he let them go to sleep at all rather than pouring Red Bull down their throats at 3:00 AM while he hollered at them to keep polishing the golf balls. He comments that he was impressed that when he went to fetch the team at 5:15, Katrina was ready to go. "It's the first time in thirteen weeks that she's been ready to go on time," he smiles, "so I've got to give her credit. I owe her one, that's for sure." Indeed, in the clubhouse, Katrina and Amy exchange a "Jesus, it's early, and we should really kill him" look as they wait to leave. It's positively bizarre watching how buddy-buddy Amy and Katrina are throughout this task, by the way, considering that not only was Katrina extraordinarily bitchy about Amy when she was fired, but in the post-show press, she has done everything short of calling Amy a tramp. But for now? They're practically sisters, eeeee! Let's do each other's nails! At any rate, we watch Bill stride purposefully across the parking lot of the club as the sun is just beginning to peek out, and he re-explains his task as tournament director for this particular event. Incidentally, anytime there is a description of Bill walking anywhere while the golf tournament is going on, you should envision something at least as intense as "strides purposefully." Because today, Bill doesn't know from the carefree mosey.

Bill makes his way into one of the offices, where he explains to a guy (who I'm thinking is on the ground crew or something) that the team has managed to lose a Marquis Jet sign somewhere along the way. Apparently, the sign was among the stuff that was errantly stored in the model home and then had to be moved when Lesley made it clear that Model Home Garage Storage Requisition Form 5834 had not been properly completed in triplicate, and thus everything had to be moved into the office. Bill describes the sign to the guy, and the guy promises to keep an eye out for it. This is also where Boyfriend Bill receives the bad news that the tournament is going to suffer a "frost delay." Apparently, you can't walk on the golf course while there's frost, lest you "crack the grass" or "allow an invasion by actual native plants" or something. Therefore, their tournament, scheduled to tee off at 9:00 AM, won't be starting until at least 10:30. Bill is immediately aware that this is going to screw up the agenda for the whole day, and he makes his very first constipated face of the day. It will not be his last. Bill asks the guy, very seriously, how the club would normally handle an onset of frost, and the guy is like, "Well, we drink coffee until it's warmer." Heh. Take that, you type-A tobacco-pusher.

Bill goes to talk to the team, and as he voices over that he wants to "stay calm," we see him say tightly to Amy that he's still very concerned about the missing Marquis Jet sign. Doing great on the calm-staying so far, obviously. He and Amy do some more poking around in the office, looking for it. As Bill calls someone to double-check on whether they've turned it up, Amy keeps looking. Bill tells whoever it is on the phone that Marquis Jet is a fairly significant sponsor, and it's not going to be good at all if they lose the sign. Amy interviews that they actually had several signs missing initially, and that this was "stressful" because they actually had contractual obligations to display those signs for the sponsors who had given money, and it wasn't going to go over well if they didn't have the signs available. We gaze at a guy mowing the course while it's still cold enough to see his breath, and Bill interviews that it was crucial to maintain good relationships with the sponsors. We're back, by the way, to the no-socks interview that I was hating on last week. I may not like Boyfriend Bill's naked ankles, but obviously, somebody does. We then see Bill (but not the naked ankles) in yet another guy's office, looking for the sign and telling the guy to let him know if he sees it. The guy looks like it's not outside the realm of possibility that he will take a swing at Bill if Bill doesn't shut up about the damn sign.

The first big event this morning is a 10:00 breakfast with Operation Smile. Unfortunately, when all the parties -- including Jessica, the Operation Smile folks, and Secondary NotGeorge -- file in for breakfast, there is nothing to eat, which does have a tendency to detract from the "breakfast" aspect. Without the food, it's really just "meeting before anyone's had coffee." Kwame interviews that Assorama was originally going to be in charge of the breakfast, but she begged off on the theory that she already had entirely too many things she was in charge of mishandling and she could not possibly mishandle anything else, so he put Troy in charge. Unfortunately, in the shuffle, nobody actually told the food preparation people that the breakfast was at 10:00, so they have nothing ready. Secondary NotGeorge is extremely unhappy about this turn of events, and tells Kwame that it's frankly embarrassing to be without pancakes for Jessica. (Or celery sticks, or Louis Vuitton cereal, or whatever she has for breakfast.) Assorama smugly interviews that Troy failed to "follow up" on the catering as he should have. She also complains, as we see her pull Kwame away from an agitated NotGeorge for a chat, that Kwame is being too laid-back and needs to be "more intense." Meanwhile, the head of catering tells Secondary NotGeorge that he in fact had no contact with Troy whatsoever. Secondary NotGeorge complains in an interview that apparently, the team believed that the food would all be sitting there at 10:00, even though they hadn't told anyone it was at 10:00. Hmm. I doubt it was quite that idiotic, but obviously, there was a breakdown in communications somewhere. Otherwise, Jessica would currently be eating French toast, which she would think had just arrived via airmail.

Secondary NotGeorge pulls Kwame aside and gives him a stern talking-to about how embarrassing it is when an extremely dumb celebrity's breakfast isn't ready. He also tells Kwame that no matter whether you've passed a responsibility to another person on the team or not -- when it comes down to it, it's your team and you're on the hook for making sure everything gets done. "Kwame's team killed him," Secondary NotGeorge interviews bluntly. He also says that Kwame appears to be "cracking" under the pressure. We walk with Kwame as he goes to meet with Troy and Heidi in the suite. They ask how breakfast went, and he breaks the news that it went not so well, actually. Troy insists that he did tell people the time for the breakfast, and Kwame interviews that once Troy told him that the work had indeed been done to prepare and make sure the breakfast was ready, there wasn't much else he could do in the situation. He says that he can't go back and double-check with catering guy that they did it, which I think isn't the case. He can exactly do that, and in this case, he should have done that. Kwame calls this "micromanaging," and repeats that it just isn't his thing. I'm not sure I know where Kwame draws the line between "micromanaging" and "managing."

Briarcliff. Bill chats with Lesley, telling her that he understands the delay to still be putting them off until about 10:30. She interviews with a slightly unseemly level of satisfaction that indeed, the delay will throw a wrench into Bill's carefully laid plans. She asks Bill whether he knows anything about Trump's arrival, and Bill assures her that they've got everything all ready for him, even though they don't know precisely when he's expected. "Be aware of his arrival," Lesley lectures, talking to Bill in exactly the patronizing, obnoxious way I suspect she was last week when Bill complained that she was treating him like an idiot. "Absolutely," he says pleasantly. We rise up to the sound of a swelling choir as Trump's car ceremoniously pulls up in the driveway. Because on this show, when you hear the angels singing, you know that a tacky billionaire approaches.

Donald emerges, wearing khakis, a yellow sweater, and a black baseball cap. Not very appealing, that ensemble. Indeed, his bag and all his stuff are immediately pulled up beside him, just as Bill said they would be, and Trump takes them. Bill, meanwhile, is tearing into the office, telling Amy and Katrina that there's nobody at the gift table, and there needs to be, because it looks horrible. They mostly ignore him, because he's freaking out, and they've obviously started to tune out the most freak-out-like moments. Outside, Trump makes his strange, lumbering way across the golf course toward the hospitality tent. He shakes some hands and so forth. Elsewhere, Bill walkie-talkies Katrina and asks her where she is, because he's right by the gift table, and has noticed that she isn't so much right by the gift table, which is where he asked her to be. Then he calls Nick and asks for an update on the frost delay. I suspect Nick's answer is, "Yeah, still all frosty," or something equally helpful.

As Bill continues to tear around the grounds, Trump slowly walks into the tent, greeting people as he goes, sometimes anonymously. Nick is now talking to Bill in person, and Bill still wants that frost update. Apparently, Bill believes that the hot air generated by fussing about the frost delay will cause the frost to dissipate more quickly. Trump is in the tent, making all har-har with his buddies about "no cheating" and all that rot. They probably have little side bets going on this tournament, Trump and his pals -- you know, loser has to lay off 1500 employees or something of that nature. Bill makes his way into the tent to greet Trump. Trump makes a great display of asking everyone whether Bill is doing a good job, assuring them all that he'll be quickly fired if he's not. "He'll be fired like a dog," Trump says. And you just know that if anyone had ever fired his dog, it would undoubtedly be Trump. ("Sure, I'm only giving you 48 hours' notice -- but that's like two weeks to you.") Bill asks whether Trump's stuff was all okay when he arrived, and Trump assures him it's all great. Bill voices over that while Trump made the "fired like a dog" remark somewhat in jest, he also made it completely not in jest, if you see what he's saying. He interviews that he wants to win, because the money is great, but the opportunity is also great. As he sits to a woman in a pink fuzzy hat, Trump says he wants to get going, and Bill tells him that they've got a delay. "No later than 10:30," Trump insists, explaining that he's going to Atlantic City afterwards. Bill says that he'll do his best. "No later than 10:30!" Trump repeats. Bill's got this look on his face like, "Okay, no problem, no problem, just need a way to transmit thermal energy to the earth's crust, no problem..."

Taj Mahal. Team meeting. Assorama is, remarkably enough, bitching to Heidi about the way that Troy "dropped the ball so bad on this breakfast." She goes on to say that they'll have to "rebound" with a great "meet and greet" with Jessica this afternoon. Heidi now goes into her bitchfest of the day, which is about how Kwame originally put her in charge of the meet and greet, but now Troy is supposed to be helping, and boo hoo hoo she's not the boss of it anymore and blah dee blah she feels like Kwame doesn't trust her and wah wah wah she feels undervalued. Because it's totally all about that right now. When Kwame and Troy return to the office where she and Assorama are hanging out, Heidi gives Kwame the same speech about how she feels like Kwame now has two people assigned to it. Her complaint is that she thinks that now, if anything goes wrong, she'll be the one who gets blamed. Where does she get this? From her paranoid brain. "I feel like it's, 'if something happens bad, it's all on you, Heidi.'" "If something happens bad, Heidi, it's all on me, actually," Kwame says with a smile. That was a great line, sadly wasted on her. Kwame clarifies for Heidi that indeed, she is in charge of the meet and greet, and she can wear the big party hat, and blah blah blah. Troy is just there to help her out in case she, you know, totally has no idea how to manage or do anything other than sales. He wants Heidi to make the decisions that need to get made. Of course, this isn't really what Heidi wants. Heidi, as usual, is afraid to run anything by herself. Therefore, what she is attempting to do here is set up her excuse for later if something goes wrong. She was certainly not trying to actually regain control of the meet and greet, which is what she got. Sucks to have your manager call your bluff, huh? Bereft of other options, she finally gets around to owning up to her lack of clue, complaining that she's never done a meet and greet before. Kwame patiently points out to her that nobody else has, either. They're all doing new things. She needs to be willing to do new things, too.

Kwame interviews that in case you didn't get it from that little moment, Heidi makes a much bigger deal out of things than she needs to. He points out that "she creates stressful situations" even where stress is not required or called for. He reassures her back in the meeting that indeed, she is in control and Troy is the "co-pilot." She sulks bitchily anyway, but he leaves, because honestly, what else is he going to do? He doesn't need an executive vice president in charge of bitchy sulking, but that's what he's got.

The first job is working on the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower now being built in Chicago. There will be 2,500 people working on it, and it will cost $700 million. Trump promises that this job will be "mind-boggling." I have a feeling Bill likes nothing better than having his mind boggled, so that would suit him very well. On the other hand, the other job is in California, working in management at Trump's new ginormous golf course. Trump bought this particular golf course after the eighteenth hole fell into the ocean. But he moved in a couple of million cubic yards of dirt, and now everything is fine, because it's "the most expensive golf course ever built." Of course, it's easy to make it expensive when you have to start by rebuilding a collapsed mountain. But this particular golf course will have expensive estates and so forth. In other words, it's just a different playground of the rich -- one that's built horizontally rather than vertically. It actually occurs to me that if there were real estate Transformers, you could make one where the Trump International Hotel and Tower folded out to become the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles. The perfect toy for your budding tycoon, you know.

Trump tells Bill that he'll have a couple of minutes to think about it during the commercials. And after the commercials, we'll find out which job Bill is taking, and we'll also find out (again) about Nick, Amy, Sam, Assorama, and so forth. This brings out the rest of the candidates, all of whom are angling to suck up to Bill -- even Assorama, yuck. There is much sucking up as we go to commercial.

After the break, Trump recaps the options Bill has just been given for the big job. There is the skyscraper, and there is the golf course. Which will it be, Boyfriend Bill? Bill says that while California has great weather and the golf course would be great, Chicago is home and it's his favorite place to be, so he's taking the tower. "Don't worry," Trump says, "You're going to have plenty of supervision on that building. I don't care if you're president or not." Heh. It's so hard on a reality show when the truth oozes out. Trump tells Bill, however, that it's a great choice. He then looks at his new chosen guy, sitting with the rest of the contestants, and says, "What are you doing over there? I fired all those people. Get over here." Bill picks up his chair and goes to sit at the faux Boardroom table with Trump, Carolyn, and George. He is warmly applauded, including by Kwame, who has more class than anyone, ever, as far as I'm concerned. Job or no job, he's the bomb. Trump asks Bill how he feels, and Bill says it's a great place to be sitting right now, no question. Trump tells him it wasn't an easy decision, and takes the opportunity to go on about how much he digs Kwame. "That man right there is some man," he says. Everyone applauds, because everyone knows this is true. Trump congratulates Kwame, and seems to come as close as he can to saying it was practically a coin flip without actually saying so. Not surprising.

Trump now moves to the group of candidates to talk to them. He goes directly to Assorama, and calls her out for lying, and having gotten "caught on tape this time." Hee, "this time." How does she explain that? She has a cute line all planned, though, and she is determined to use it before she starts instead of answering the question. So she says something about all this firing her and rehiring her, and she laughs, and nobody else laughs, and Trump is already bored with her and thinks that if she doesn't want to answer the question he asked her, she can fuck right off, so he moves on to the person, which I found utterly hilarious and which catches her completely unprepared. She totally thinks she's going to go back now and explain the lying, and there is just no opportunity. HA! Also, the audience openly cheers when he tells her, basically, to shut up because her turn is over.

Trump asks Heidi what she thinks about all this, and she says she and Assorama should take a two-hour lunch and talk about it. And then she winks, which is how you can tell she thinks she's funny. It's certainly the only way you can tell anyone would think she's funny. Not that you can discern the wink all that easily underneath the forty pounds of eye shadow. Goodness.

Trump moves on to Ereka, and in case you're wondering whether he thinks Assorama is utterly full of shit, he tells Ereka that he thinks that she has "suffered" because of Assorama and the charges she's leveled. "Mr. Trump, I would have fired her," Ereka says. Ereka's face is unbelievably, blindingly shiny. I know it's not really about that right now, but still. STILL. "She's a liar, and I've known that for a long time," Ereka burbles simply. Trump makes a comment about hoping that everything turns out all right for her. He also tells Assorama she needs to "straighten out the truth," and Assorama is all, "Oh, we will," as if she has a leg to stand on, which? She doesn't.

Trump moves to Nick and Amy, whom he calls a "pathetic" romance. Certainly is getting blunt as we go on, isn't he? The pathetic lovebirds themselves confirm, as they have elsewhere, that they dated for a short time after the show, but it didn't last, wonder of wonders. Trump complains that it wasn't "hot" -- all we ever saw was a kiss. Amy says that's all there ever was, which I certainly think is a pile of crapola, but then, I'm just the recapper. What do I know? Trump tells Amy that this is "good virtue" on her part. Ew! Shut up, Trump. I mean, pardon me for snorting at the word "virtue," but seriously. Anyway, are the two of them together now? No, they confirm. Trump asks who broke it off, and Nick specifically passes it off to Amy, who says that they decided to remain "very close friends." "Yeah, I've had some very close friends," Trump says ruefully, and Nick laughs and says, "Yeah, me too." Trump continues, "It's cost me a lot of money." Everyone laughs. Because dirty old men, even when they're young, are just inherently funny, apparently.

"You know, there's a guy in the room named Troy," Trump says, "who everybody loves." He asks Troy what he has to say, and Troy just repeats how happy he was to have the chance to make his dream of meeting Trump come true. "It was an honor to meet you," he says, "and I'm coming back." Trump tells him that he can come back anytime. We see Troy's wife applauding in the audience. She looks nice, but kind of too old and too tall for Troy. I expected someone more wee and perky. And generally, this clip show is stupid, in case you haven't noticed. Don't worry; it's almost over.

Now, Trump calls out a salute to Carolyn and George. Trump calls Carolyn "Lady Di," which obviously embarrasses her, but she has no idea what to say, and she works for Donald Trump, so fortunately, she's used to her boss saying weird things to her. Trump tells us that both Carolyn and George are tough and smart, but "have big hearts." Aw. He thanks them some more. Thanks, Carolyn and George!

Trump says that they've got other business to deal with, and first up is Bill getting his new car -- a Chrysler Crossfire, which is parked outside. Nice little car, if you like your cars cute enough to smear their front bumpers with Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. Trump stares at the cue card as he tells us how awesome Chrysler was for being a sponsor. He thanks everyone like Steinbrenner who got involved before they knew the show would be so hot. Warm applause for the sponsors. ["Except there was totally this long pause while the audience was like, 'We have to applaud forSteinbrenner? Yuck. Oh, all right.'" -- Sars] Trump promises a preview of the Apprentice. Yeah, right. I'm sure it will be quite a preview, considering casting isn't even finished.

After the commercial, we enter the obligatory Sam sequence, in which we see his weird handshake moment and such. We return to the live show, where Trump comments that Sam was "a piece of work." Trump asks Sam how he's doing, and Sam says that he has a proposition for Trump. He says that Trump is paying Bill $250,000 to work for him -- well, Sam has a suitcase full of money, and he's willing to pay Trump $250,000 to work for him. Trump doesn't blow him off at all, but instead demands that Sam come over and hand over the cash. Which he does. Trump promises to consider it, provided it turns out to be real money. Heh. It's funny, because I wouldn't put it past Sam to offer Trump $250,000 for a job, but I also wouldn't put it past Sam to have a thriving counterfeit operation in his basement, powered by hamsters on wheels. And the hamsters would survive on a new kind of protein pellet that Sam invented himself.

Trump goes to Heidi to ask about her mom. Happily, her mom is fine, and is there in the audience. And happily for Mom, Mom didn't apparently teach Heidi about eye shadow. Or perhaps that particular bit of bad luck skipped a generation.

Trump points out that Tammy is going to have a baby, but once the applause is over, when she tries to say, "My husband and I --" Trump cuts her off by going to Jason. Golly. Ten seconds to a customer, I guess. No talking, chumps! You're still fired! Jason confirms that he's doing fine in Detroit real estate. "He's able to collect his rent, finally," David snots, and he obviously thinks that's funny, although I honestly couldn't tell you why. Trump comments that he hears all the candidates have gotten job offers, and they all confirm that they have.

Trump goes back to Bill. He will start with the Trump organization "soon, like maybe tomorrow," but for now, it's time to go claim his car. Bill shakes Trump's hand, then he turns to Carolyn and shakes her hand. Then he gets up and walks off, and he first neglects to stop for George, and when he realizes it, he bolts back and apologizes, shaking George's hand as well. Bill does his victory arm-raise one more time as the audience cheers him. Trump looks smug. And why not, really?

There's a tease for the all-new Apprentice in the fall, but honestly? There is nothing to it. It says people will come and kinda do the same thing, only more so. You didn't miss anything.

Trump congratulates Bill again. He says that it's been "incredible" for everyone. Good luck to all, and to all a good night!

Bill gets into his car and scampers off. Aw. Congratulations, Boyfriend Bill. I never doubted you for a minute.