The sun rises over the skyline of Manhattan, which has been dipped in Tang for the occasion. The usual "Ooh, Rock Me, Hooked On Classics" music plays as we view the enormous Times Square NASDAQ ticker, which tells us that dignity is down 1 3/8. We are taken to Trump Tower, and up into the Boardroom, where Donald Trump, like a five-year-old who wants a bowl of cereal when Mommy and Daddy are still sleeping, is venturing into places he normally does not go alone. "I'm Donald Trump," he says. If you listen closely, you can hear many previously confused viewers sigh, "Ohhhh, that's who that is." He explains that 12 weeks ago, he invited 18 candidates to pluck 40 chickens in 16 hours. How long will it take 10 candidates to pluck 60 chickens? Oh, I'm sorry. I was reading from the SATs. What Trump actually says is that he invited the candidates to compete for "the dream job of a lifetime," particularly if they have always dreamed of being featured in the New York Post rubbing elbows with Dennis Rodman. He reminds us that the candidates have to live together in a yooge Trump Tower set. Er, "suite." And they compete! Against each other! In tasks! That test their business acumen and, occasionally, their asses! He shows us several different candidates aggressively annoying consumers on the street, pushing everything from toothpaste to ice cream with varying levels of enthusiasm, expressed, like everything worthwhile, in terms of volume.
Now, after 12 tasks, only five candidates are left. Representing guys who have big shoulders and enjoy haranguing others is Kevin, famous for supporting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (good!) and telling his PM to "shut up" (bad!). Representing icy blondes is Jennifer. She doesn't do any work, but boy, can she flap that lawyer's yap of hers. Representing the military is Kelly, who could easily kill you in eight seconds. Representing the bridal industry is Sandy, who seemed early on like she had about as much chance of being in the Final Four as the basketball team from the University of Generica at Bumblefuck, but who has proved herself by being far less objectionable than Jen and actually playing a role in the winning of tasks. Imagine that! And finally, representing the Peter Principle, we have Ivana. Would you like to see her ass? We may be able to arrange it someday, not that we can make any promises.
Trump explains that one of these five will be put in charge of one of his companies. And tonight, we will be reviewing "highlights," the "low points" (I never even noticed before that when yelling at Wes, Maria was wearing a shirt that said "EDGY," and indeed, that is a low point, at least for Maria), and "never-before-seen moments." Wow, one is going to involve Andy and Wes confiding in each other in bed? This might be a better clip show than I thought. Trump promises that he'll be giving "some insight" about the firings, so apparently, he is bringing in an insight consultant for the hour. As he tells us that we will get a "sneak peek" at what's still to come, we see polo, chocolate bars, and basketball. I didn't know polo existed outside the world of irony, where it is useful for mocking the rich. Of course, a year ago, I could have said the same thing about Donald Trump.
Credits. In case you want to steal the identity of the hundred-dollar bill that's used in the credit sequence, its serial number is AL B L12. I hate it when the media doesn't guard sensitive information. That bill will never have any peace.
Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and made of Jell-O...or something. We see Trump welcome the candidates, who look really happy about all this, because they haven't really met each other yet, and they can't see Maria blinking, and they haven't noticed Stacy is even there. In his Pink Tie of Truth, he certainly did make an impression on that day, and the impression was, "No, seriously, do you think it's his real hair, or do you think it's a rug?" He reminds us that the teams were divided into men versus women, because it's easier to pick out the hottest chicks when you keep the women in one place. And he gave exemptions, because you have to constantly change the rules of a game, even if it worked really well the last time. Hockey wouldn't be in so much trouble right now if it had gotten rid of goalies and introduced my greatest idea: puck cannons.
The teams got up to the suite and looked around, and they drank and stuff. Pamela volunteered to go play with the boys, and Bradford volunteered to go play with the girls. The women named themselves Apex -- or, actually, "Appex," but the show did them the favor of not putting them in a position where they would have to see "[sic]" after their team name in the captions every week. The men named their team Mosaic, which you will recall made Raj feel like he was wearing pink panties under his suit.
It was off to Toys 'R' Us for the very first task, which was to design a Mattel toy for little boys. In our first dose of NBSF (Never-Before-Seen Footage), the members of Mosaic try to learn what kids want by quizzing unsuspecting and obviously frightened children who are just trying to play with stuff and would rather be left alone. Rob hops down onto his haunches and says, "Heeey, bud!" The little boy walks away. Now Raj, with cane, asks a kid what kind of toys he likes. "Like, macho toys, with guns?" Raj asks. The kid refrains from saying, "Isn't your name...Mosaic?" Instead, he says, "I don't really care." Yeah. Doesn't really care about toys. Somehow, I'm not sure they have found a foolproof way to extract the truth from this child. "What do you think of tanks?" Raj asks. "You like tanks?" Rob looks up at Raj, like, "Shall we offer any nonmilitary options, or is the peace dividend not to be enjoyed in the entertainment market?" "No?" Raj continues. "Or...battleships?" In a really engaging interview that hints that Rob might have been kind of fun had he stuck around, he imitates Raj being all, "What do you think about battleships?" And it's a pretty good Raj impression, as well. We watch Raj try to entice the kid into holding his cane (I wish there were a better way of saying that, but there isn't, as Raj is saying, "Hold the cane! Hold the cane!"), as Rob explains that you don't talk to kids by towering over them with a cane. You get down low, like Rob is doing. They still don't talk to you, but at least they're not looking you square in the crotch, which is uncomfortable for everyone. Rob asks Raj to buzz off of kid-chatting duty. "I didn't throw the kids off that bad," Raj protests. "No?" Rob asks, and then as Raj turns away, Rob makes a very funny "if you say so" face. Aw. He might have been cute.
And now we get to the part where the show tries again, I guess, to justify the firing of Stacie in light of the puzzled head-scratching that followed. See, it turns out that Stacie not only played with the Magic 8-Ball as intended, but she "started acting irrationally," as Trump puts it. And really, who better to judge other people's rationality than Maria? Anyway, they replay Stacie's falling-flat efforts to pump up the team with her "Did we win? I think we won! Let's go get the prize!" playfulness. "Did someone put something in your drink?" Jennifer C. laughs, not exactly looking terrified as she munches on her salad. In an interview, Sandy calls Stacie's behavior "psychotic," but she has her hair done like a Pekingese at the time, so her credibility is strained. Trump tells us that "Ivana exposed an accounting error," which turns out to be 85 missing cents. And what did Stacie do? She was waving at a guy across the street and blowing kisses, and she suggested that he would give them 85 cents! She is keeee-razy! You can see how the women would be terrified. Oh, and according to Trump, "she even tried to take the sign from the conference room." The sign, incidentally, looks like it's made of foamboard and probably worth about 85 cents its own self at Kinko's, but Maria says tightly, "I have an ethical issue taking that sign." Stacie explains that she just wants it as a souvenir of the task, which seems like the most natural and understandable thing in the world, whether it's ultimately something you should do or not. Now, if you can explain why anything Stacie was seen doing either in that extra footage or in the original show could potentially make anyone fear for her safety or be frightened of Stacie, you are more observant than I am.
At any rate, Apex made a remote-control car, and Mosaic made a crime-fighting lobster or something like that, so Apex won the first task. In the Boardroom, everyone said Rob didn't do any work, and Trump had no reason not to believe them and no real basis for firing anyone yet, so he got rid of Rob. In Rob's reflective interview, he says he was hanging back and trying to "take some notes" about everyone before he got aggressive, and he now realizes he should have been more assertive. Trump says insightfully that he fired Rob because no one would listen to him, but he thinks Rob will be "a successful guy" later. I'm sure Rob really appreciates that as he sits at home, waving his middle finger at the screen every week.
In the second task, Trump had the teams develop and ice cream flavor and sell it. It turns out that Mosaic mashed up their own donuts by hand. Who knew? Meanwhile, at Tasti D-Lite, Apex tried to make a distribution deal. But they fell on hard times when Tasti management believed there were supposed to be three women there to help sell, and Maria insisted they had agreed on two. Would you like to make a guess at who I predict is telling the truth, considering that one of them is Maria, who later lied about the flyer she didn't negotiate properly? Among other things, Maria is horribly rude to the Tasti guys for a situation in which she's trying to get something from them. She insists in an interview that even though these guys are calling her a liar, "the absolute last thing [she] would do is lie to anyone." Well, the second-to-last thing. Maybe third-to-last. It appears that Ivana of all people sort of smoothed it over, and Maria wound up out on the sidewalk trying to convince passersby to come in and try it. What's weird to me is that I was at a different location of theirs recently with Couch Baron, and they sell a low-calorie ice cream alternative, basically, so it seems like a strange place to try to move premium ice cream. I'm also interested in the fact that Maria is claiming that the ice cream is "carried exclusively at this store," despite the fact that it's being sold elsewhere the entire time. Of course, the last thing she would do is lie to anyone. I love it where one guy she's talking at just walks right on by her, and she calls after him, "Red Velvet Cake, keep that in mind!" For what, for later? For ten minutes from now? What kind of a sales pitch is "keep that in mind"? It does not appear that Maria is hustling up a lot of Tasti and D-Liteful business.
But the guys sold really well, making lots of friends, hugging people whether they wanted to be hugged or not, and not relying on the old favorite, "Keep that in mind!" They beat Apex, and Bradford decided to be a good "general" by throwing in with the troops, giving up his exemption. Or, as Trump puts it, he "flaunted careless bravado." Oh, "Careless Bravado." That was my favorite Wham! song. Anyway, Trump certainly didn't want to hang with anyone, you know, weird, so he got rid of Bradford. Ivana coolly said, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." She's got skills, that one! Bradford's reflecterview indicates that he knew he was sticking his neck out. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you see. But in retrospect, he does recognize that it was probably not the smartest thing he could have done. Trump says insightfully that he fired Bradford for stupidity, pretty much. Well, that was an easy one to explain. ["Not when Ivana is sitting RIGHT TO Bradford, it ain't. I still think Trump should have inaugurated the tandem punt with those two." -- Sars]
As it turns out, Stacie then told Elizabeth that Jennifer C. was hassling Ivana for bringing her to the Boardroom instead of Elizabeth. We watch as Elizabeth incorrectly confronts Ivana, apparently having misunderstood what Stacie told her, which was that Jennifer told Ivana that Ivana should have brought Elizabeth, not that Ivana said it. If Ivana thought Elizabeth should have been in the Boardroom, you'd think she would have just brought her, since it was her decision. Much fighting ensues, and from the living room, Pamela is sad that she and the guys are missing out on the yelling. As Trump explains, this was only the beginning of the endless bickering that went on among the women, much of which I had mercifully forgotten.
Week three brought the task of buzz creation, when the teams had to promote Vanilla Mint Crest. Apex hired Mike Pi-yowza, and it looked like everything was going well. But when Maria overspent on the flyers by a bazillion dollars and didn't tell anyone, the team was well over budget and lost in spite of their superior result. In the Boardroom, to cover for this total burst of incompetence and save several members of the team who underperformed, Apex lied to Trump about the way Stacie behaved during the first task, misrepresenting her behavior as threatening and scary. Trump bought the whole thing hook, line, and sinker, and he fired Stacie. I'm starting to understand how he goes bankrupt so frequently. Stacie reflects that a lot of the women have "negative qualities," but overall, she still had a good time. I hope someone paid her well to be so understanding, because she got the shaft but good. Not just because she was fired, but because she was railroaded, and Trump got suckered, and the show has continued to basically slander her in order for him to save face, which is pretty shitty. Trump says insightfully that he fired Stacie because "the whole team was afraid of her." He insists that you have no choice but to listen to people, not apparently drawing a distinction between listening to people and assuming that all of their self-serving comments are reliable, which is a pretty basic flaw of logic. It's just so stupid and asinine, how that happened.
Fortunately, back in the suite, Kevin gave it to Apex with both barrels about declaring Stacie to be unstable. Elizabeth got all upset over being criticized, and she and Jennifer M. had an argument that looks very different in retrospect, knowing what we now know of Jen. In this argument, Jen snots at Elizabeth to "grow up." And then Jen interviews that the women "largely lack emotional intelligence." Jen has lots. She's so emotionally intelligent that she never does any work, and she still isn't fired.
For the fourth task, the teams were told to set up a restaurant in an empty space. Jennifer C. made everybody nuts. Again, Ivana drove everyone crazy, but at least she was doing work. She was also unable, we now learn, to keep from criticizing Jennifer C. by throwing out a description of her "porky little finger." Right. Right, exactly. Because calling a thin woman who isn't quite as skinny as you are "porky" is very, very much like calling her a slut. You already don't like her. Why not throw in "porky"? After all, it's hurtful, and maybe it will be the one punch that will land if none of the rest of them do. It's not like she can argue, right? What woman have you ever seen say, "I am not fat, what are you talking about?" It's funny; every time I see somebody do what Ivana just did -- and I see it from very, very smart women from whom I would never expect it, who wear this one bit of nastiness like a old scar that doesn't entirely fade -- it just makes me want to scream. Because it's always thrown in like that, like an afterthought, like, "She doesn't have enough merit as a person for me to do what I usually do, which is do women who are above a size 0 the favor of not mentioning their hideousness, but in case you didn't notice? She's got a fat ass, too, and if she's not going to be a nice person, I'm going to talk about it." But it just reminds you that whether or not they're saying it, they're always, always thinking it, whether you're spared the comment or not. You...you and your porky little fingers. If you stay on my good side, I'll pretend not to notice. I hope Ivana doesn't have any size-six friends, because if she does, she just knifed them in the ribs.
Anyway, Jennifer bickered with everyone over the task, but Mosaic won the task largely because the women hovered over their customers in their black dresses, looking like twittering imbeciles. In the Boardroom, Stacy pointed her finger at all the finger-pointers, and Carolyn was like, "What is the MATTER with you crazy harpies?" Jennifer C. kept talking and talking and talking, and she pretty much made everything worse, and Trump spoke the immortal words, "Your entire team hated you," and she was fired. She reflects that she anticipated going into the show that she would stand out for determination and intelligence the way she usually does (snerk), not anticipating that everyone else would be good, too. "They gave me a run for my money," she says. Yeah, you went out fourth, dear. I think they did a little more than that. Trump says insightfully that "She wasn't good." No encouraging words for her.
So anyway, because of the "constant bickering," Trump sent Pamela over to be the boss of Apex. She started by telling them not to spend all their time talking about boys and makeup, which I would find kind of insulting, except that my guess is that they did in fact do that, and it probably is irritating. Pamela informs us that "women don't respond well to other women telling them what to do." That must be why the TWoP staff and management is all fellas. Wrangling chicks -- what a drag! Ptooey! Anyway, as hard as Pamela tried to get the team pulled together -- which she kind of did -- the women lost again, this time by the painful sum of ten dollars. Yep, ten dollars. Even Trump agrees that "everybody ganged up on [Pamela]," and we now see that the major movers behind the ganging up in the suite were the men, who immediately descended on the women to tell them how important it was to get rid of Pamela. Raj insists to the women that Pamela is smug, is "irreverent" (due admiration for Trump being apparently a requirement), and that she believed herself to be above being booted. "You have a spider of great poison and cunning in your presence," he says. Wait, now it's because she's poisonous and cunning? I thought she was smug and disrespectful. Raj certainly is having a difficult time nailing down exactly what it is about the strong, smart woman who's taller than he is that bothers him so much. Stacy, whom I had mercifully almost forgotten, tells us that the guys were "practically unanimous" on the need to get rid of Pamela, so obviously, the women had to consider that in deciding on whom they would gang up. So now, people are going to be fired according to the complaints of the men, as relayed to the women, as transmitted to Trump. That's a reliable chain of hearsay if ever there was one. Can't imagine how anything could be obscured along that trail.
In the Boardroom, Pamela ticked off Trump by wanting to categorize the narrow loss as a "tie," and then when the team all attacked her simultaneously, she wound up fired. In her update bit, Pamela reflects that she still finds it rather ridiculous that she pulled together her group of buffoons on demand, and they only lost by ten bucks, and she was still fired. Trump says insightfully that "she wanted to be a dictator," but "the team didn't respect her." He adds, "She wasn't a dictator that people listened to." Again, he is missing the fine points. It doesn't matter whether the team says they respect you. She did, in fact, markedly improve the performance of that team, and I think they did listen to her. The fact that they can't own up to the fact that she was right about most, but not all, of her management decisions, and that they professed not to respect her because they'd rather die than suck it up and give credit to anyone else for making them shut their yaps, doesn't mean they didn't listen to her.
The task sent the candidates to the upper reaches of high fashion, where they were supposed to produce a clothing line, and whoever earned the most would win. The women threw themselves into the task, and they picked a decent designer. The men, on the other hand, screwed up their pricing and picked a weirdo designer who liked plaid and burlap and stuff. We see NBSF in which Isaac Mizrahi comes to visit the men before the fashion show and says, "Raj, you're wearing your pajamas, did you realize that?" HA! "This is not pajamas," Raj protests, and Mizrahi's like, "Yeah, yeah, smoking jacket, whatever." Mizrahi is introduced to Mosaic's designer, and then says dryly to Raj, "For some reason, I took you for the designer." I think it's the stink of slight insanity. But I do love the way Isaac Mizrahi just walks in and puts a pin into a guy's pretentious BS and you can see the guy just shrink down to nothing. Raj is very lucky he didn't have the cane. Anyway, this was the task where Apex beat Mosaic, at last, and much jumping up and down ensued. In the Boardroom, John seemed like as weak of a candidate as any, and he was the PM, and nobody really covered himself in glory, so John was fired. ["Seriously, I had completely forgotten John's existence." -- Sars] He reflects that he had a nifty time and made great friends. Trump says insightfully that that particular firing was not easy, but he ultimately blamed John for the pricing screw-ups. I can't tell you how much I've learned from having Trump return to repeat solemnly into the camera exactly the reasons he gave for firing people at the time he fired them.
At this point, Trump reshuffled the teams. The new Apex was Jen, Elizabeth, Ivana, Raj, Chris, and Kevin. The new Mosaic was Wes, Kelly, Andy, Maria, Stacy, and Sandy.
We now watch Shirtless Andy and Shirted Wes chat in bed (not in the same bed, but still) about how good they think the new Mosaic will be. They think Sandy is a "workhorse," they think Kelly is good, they think Stacy has promise even though she's "annoying" (heh), and they think they'll do well. I can't say I am inspired by Andy's appearance so much, but...I do miss Wes all over again, in spite of the shirt. The first task for the mixed teams was providing dog services. Not kidding. We now learn that Apex started by talking to a local dog groomer, which didn't go well, because generally, professionals aren't in the business of admitting that you could do their jobs in Central Park with ten days of training. The groomer tells them that you can't just go out and wash unfamiliar dogs. You can't! It's maaaadness! He even warns them that they could pop a dog's eye out of the socket, which the Spike Jones Memorial Sound Guy punctuates with a "boing-oing-oing-oing" sound. Apex persevered and washed dogs anyway, though, just hoping not to have to return to the groomer later with a bag of dog eyeballs like, "Okay, you were right...uh, can you put these back in?" Mosaic's business involved dirty dogs also, unless you were Stacy, in which case it involved going, "Ewwww." I would point out that during the dog task, Sandy wears, I do believe, the exact denim skirt she wore during the M&M sisters task. If not, it is exactly the same length. Interestingly, she was not called a "whore" or a "hooker" or a "stripper" at the time. Just an observation.
Anyway, Apex came out on top, and in the Boardroom, Trump was like, "Stacy, you are so irritating, are you still here? Go away." And she was gone. She reflects, but not very much, that she has a big personality, and she "learned" that when there are lots of intense personalities, you should listen more. "Stacy was fired," Trump says insightfully, "because she got on everybody's nerves. Including mine. I just couldn't take her anymore." You and me both, Trump-o. For all your flaws, at least you sent that stinker packing.
, it was time to go back to "Nipples" Deutsch and design a recruitment campaign for the NYPD. And Deutsch wanted to make sure the teams would hit 'em right between the nipples, where it counts. Raj didn't understand why his team didn't understand his point that all police officers are boys, duh. We watch even more footage than before of Elizabeth's team complaining that she's not making a decision, but it also looks even more than before like the team made it practically impossible for her to actually implement anything, due to the constant bitching. Ivana and Kevin take a walk and gripe about Elizabeth and her indecisiveness, which is probably meant to bolster the perception of an Ivana-Kevin friendship in preparation for the upcoming task, in which Kelly will be exempt, so if Apex were to lose, it would be between Kevin and Ivana to be fired. At any rate, in the recruitment task, the Apex Campaign of Fear in which the slogan was apparently "Run For Your Life...Straight To Our Offices!" fell flat. When Mosaic brought in a campaign that Andy pulled off without any notable support from his team, they won the task. Elizabeth was blamed in the Boardroom, and it was really too late to defend herself, so she was fired, without even a final table. Showing that she is probably the only person to have actually learned the appropriate lesson from her experience (shocking!), she reflects that she probably spent too much time worrying about what other people thought, and it caused her to freeze and cease functioning. Yes! That's it! Eureka! Good for her. Who knew anybody was going to learn anything from this train wreck of a season? Trump says insightfully that Elizabeth had no one's respect, and she just plain "had to go."
The task saw the return of Bradford, Stacie, Jennifer C., and Rob to help the teams renovate houses, each with a $20,000 budget. We watch a new segment where Apex removes a birds' nest from the air conditioner, and when a bird escapes, Jen provides a metaphor for her performance all season by griping about what should be done about it while waiting for Raj to be the one to actually take care of it. Oh, and Jen thinks he's doing it wrong. Aren't you shocked? The birds are relocated, no thanks to Jen, and life appears to go on as before with no great tragedy resulting. Trump now explains that unfortunately for Raj, he made the odd and unpopular decision to combine two rooms upstairs so that the four-bedroom house would now be a three-bedroom house. Apparently, Raj believed that everybody loves a huge master suite, but others were skeptical. Raj also had some other problems, in that when you add a bathroom, it should actually have installed plumbing when you're done. Apex went to the Boardroom...again. Raj made too many mistakes, and Trump fired him. Raj reflecterviews that looking back on the way he went out, he's not that upset. "I lost a real-estate task to a wedding planner," he says simply. "I deserved to be fired." Of course he also tells us that we haven't seen the last of him, and I really hope that's not true. I also suspect it's not true, but don't tell Raj, because I don't want to hurt his feelings. He would be fine on something like Hollywood Squares. Or if VH1 had a show about guys in canes, they could do a quick segment on him, as long as it was limited to men in canes from this year. ["He's in a commercial now, with Andy." -- Sars] Trump says insightfully that everyone liked Raj, especially because he was a weirdo. But the house wasn't handled properly, so that will do it for him. What a valuable insight.
up, a bridal shop. We see Sandy take Mosaic in hand in NBSF, even though Kelly is the PM. She tells them all about how to put the space together, and she points out where they have to lay sheets down and where they have to sweep so that the dresses don't get dirty, and how they need to clean the bathroom. Andy cheerfully takes on bathroom-cleaning duty, proudly showing off his accomplishment in building a toilet-paper pyramid for the brides to enjoy. He sees it as part of the "wedding experience." Well, sure. You won't see a sophisticated wedding venue without a pyramid of toilet-paper rolls somewhere. Apex, on the other hand, had absolutely no clue what to do, as PM Chris just kept telling everyone how hopeless it was. Oh, and they "advertised" with nothing but little flyers at train stations. In one of the greatest NBSF moments of the episode, we watch as a completely tin-eared Maria talks on and on and on about herself to a bunch of dress vendors who do not care one whit. It's one of those situations you have nightmares about, where you hear yourself talking and can't make yourself stop, except that Maria doesn't even have the sense to wake up screaming.
Aaanyway, the wedding task saw Apex get its ass kicked yet again. Its proud PM Chris, who had boldly predicted defeat in the week -- kind of like calling your home run, only you'd make a whiffing motion instead of pointing into the stands -- got the boot. He reflects that he "didn't do a good job." Trump says insightfully that Chris wanted to be the PM, and then he got crushed. So what choice did Trump have? Wow, he sure has made his case for all of these firings! I can't imagine anyone arguing that he wasn't well within his rights! I'm glad they put this on, so that I could better understand what motivated a man who theoretically controls people's livelihoods to keep Ivana around this long!
From bridal fashion, the teams moved to denim fashion when Trump asked them to make an in-store Levi's catalog. In an absolutely fascinating little bit of intrigue, we learn that Wes found Apex's fit wheel sketch in the copier, and then he took it back and reviewed it with his team. I don't really understand the "windowpane" thing Sandy says they came up with in response, but she apparently thinks it was even better than the fit wheel.
Meanwhile, Maria turned into a complete nut bar while directing the Mosaic photo shoot, and PM Wes was doing nothing to yank her back. Even after "butt attitude" came into the picture. So in the end, what's worse? Is it the nut bar, or is it the person who doesn't do the appropriate de-nutting? Trump was unable to choose just one of them, and both Maria and Wes were fired. Fired! Maria and Wes, who had to share a cab home, also have to share a reflective interview in which they certainly seem to have made up, and Maria still claims that they were only fired because they were so awesome and took on so much responsibility. It totally wasn't the sucking. She is loooony. "I'm just glad that when I was fired, he came with me," she says. I'll bet. I would be, too. ["Eeeeeeeee CALL ME, WES!!!!11!!!!1" -- Sars] Trump says insightfully that he fired Maria for yelling at Wes, and he fired Wes for not yanking her back. "They were both fine, but not great," he says. Maria will tell you that he later said, "Of course, Maria really was great, but I have to say she's not great in order to satisfy certain contractual obligations. But Maria is great. And awesome. And I really hope she unties me and lets me go home to see my family now."
Sandy and Andy were all that was left of Mosaic, and we now see the bizarre coin-flipping ritual they went through in choosing a PM, which seems to have involved an undue amount of discussion over how coin-flipping is accomplished. Andy won, so he was the PM as they headed to Pepsi to promote Pepsi Edge. Oh, and Jen came over to "help" Sandy and Andy. Andy cracked the whip on the designers, handing out cash, but not letting the guys eat. Which is a great way to become such a beloved boss that you get a new key mark on the side of your car every day. When the teams presented, Apex's bottle was nothing really good, but at least it wasn't as freaking ugly as Mosaic's. In the Boardroom, Sandy went all feisty, pointing out that Andy had fallen prey to exactly the technique of Jen's that Ivana promised Jen would employ, which was PM sucking-up. Sandy yelled and yelled, and somehow, that wound up being Andy's fault. Control your women, Andy! Andy was fired. He reflects that if he could go back and do it again, he wouldn't give up the floor to Jen and Sandy. And also, one would hope, he would produce a less hideously ugly bottle to begin with. Trump says insightfully that he likes Andy a lot and thinks Andy will be enormously successful, but he let his teammates stomp him in that instance.
So now, only five people are left. Kevin! Jen! Kelly! Sandy! Ivana! More polo, more basketball, more short skirts. Who will succeed? Who will fail? Who will be...THE APPRENTICE? I'll tell you who: not Sandy or Ivana, that's who.