As Mosaic chats about the "in between" concept, Sandy and Andy come up with the concept that Pepsi Edge is "on the edge of both worlds," or, as Sandy writes on the white board, "the best of both worlds." Sandy rattles off ideas for a promotional game where you would collect caps, and the caps would have the name of a country. When you collected all the countries on a continent, you'd get a trip to that continent. It's not a completely horrible idea, although it has some major flaws. Andy figures out what Sandy is suggesting, and notes happily that Antarctica is an instant winner, but...is Pepsi going to send a winner to Antarctica? I'm not sure they want a frozen corpse on the cover of the quarterly report. Sandy tells us that Andy was getting pretty hyped up while they were working, and among other things, he was bolting Pepsi every time she turned around. Well, that'll do it. We then see a montage of Andy fast-talking, improvising, brainstorming, walking around the room...your basic design-a-bottle-in-one-day stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure I see anything out of the ordinary there. The team is working on an "Are you going to the edge?" tagline, which isn't entirely without promise. Sandy interviews that she thinks Andy might lack a little bit of maturity and experience that might have been relevant to his spazzed-out performance during this stage of the task. You can see on the white board that they're already planning a bottle in the shape of a globe, so that idea seems to have emerged early.
Rays of light come down from the sky in a rather majestic manner as, behind an obviously ironic sign reading "Think Tank In Use," Apex discusses its options. Ivana proposes her most favorite thing -- brainstorming! Board up the windows, bolt the doors, and lay in a buttload of bottled water, people. Ivana is brainstorming! Honking music that is not at all a good omen starts up in the background as Ivana suggests a bottle in the shape of an Oscar, which they could photograph movie stars holding. Yeah, I'm sure the Oscars wouldn't mind. It's not like they guard that trademark. Kelly thinks the idea is dopey (unsurprisingly), but Ivana persists, saying that women and gay men watch the Academy Awards, after all. Oh, Ivana. Not all guys who watch the Academy Awards are gay. Some of them like movies, and some of them like the part at the beginning where Billy Crystal sings. Kelly tells Ivana, in the same irritating voice he used to blow off the notion of Andy working on the presentation, that he just got through saying he doesn't like that idea. So how can people still be talking about it?
Kelly moves on to his brilliant idea, which is to build the bottle out of a vertical E-D-G-E arrangement, and put a hole in the D. In other words, there will be a hole in the middle of the bottle, like the hole in a donut. That's not an entirely stupid idea, in terms of being eye-catching, but when he starts to claim that you could put stuff in the hole, like free movie tickets, that is indeed stupid. What are you going to do, put them on the shelves with rolled-up movie tickets sticking out of them and just hope nobody steals them? It makes zero sense. And when Ivana adds that you could put a hot dog in it? Even stupider. A montage follows in which Ivana rattles off a list of things that could go in the hole, including a gold-capped tooth, a woman, and "a piece of a boob." I'm sorry...a piece of a boob? God, I am really tempted to make a very horrifyingly tacky "at least she's thinking outside the box" joke, but I'm not sure I would ever recover my dignity. You can imagine I made it, all right? Kelly interviews that Ivana was sort of all over the place, but mostly in the area of sexual innuendo, which appears to be her favorite thing. He goes on to tell us that when working on a tight deadline, his feeling about sexy thoughts is, "Shelve that." Well, sure. Otherwise, who would ever get any recaps -- I mean, "work" -- done? We fade out on Kelly's white-board sketches of what the bottle might look like, and they all look fairly stupid to me. Of course, I am not a highly placed advertising professional.
“ 'Because I didn't feel it was relevant,' Andy says preposterously. Not relevant? Oh, Andy. You can do better than that. You must be able to do better than that. ”
Trump asks Sandy who did the worst job, and Sandy says it was Jen, for "going under the radar." "You know I've worked hard with you, Sandy," Jen says in her disapproving tone. Sandy's like, "Yeah, bitch, that's why I'm not crazy about you getting here and saying I don't do anything." Only it takes her longer than that to say it. Jen cranks up her routine a few more notches, ultimately saying, "I didn't see any contribution out of you." As Jen and Andy scowl, Sandy points out that she was in charge of the label, which Pepsi liked, and the game, which Pepsi liked. What Pepsi didn't like was the bottle, and who was in charge of the bottle? Oh, that's right. That was Jen. Jen asks the totally irrelevant and weird question of why Sandy has never said anything before about Jen flying under the radar. Uh, because...why would she? Sandy responds by asking Jen why she thinks her team made the decision to get rid of her (Sandy, that is). Jen comes back by saying that Andy tattled to her that Ivana wanted her (Jen, that is) gone, which...why would that shed light on what Sandy asked? Putting Jen on the other team wouldn't be a good way of getting her fired. It would be far better to keep her on the team and gang up on her, so Ivana trying to get Jen fired doesn't seem to be the reason she was kicked off her own team. What Sandy takes away from this, entirely correctly, is that Jen and Andy coordinated their attack on her ahead of time, which Andy falsely states is "not true." Sandy asks why Andy, if he just intended to tell the truth in the Boardroom and had nothing to hide, didn't tell her what his plan was. "Because I wanted to tell Jen that she was stronger!" Andy says, looking perhaps as stupid as he has at any time in the entire show. "So she can come in here and back you up, Andy?" Sandy says, and she's...right again.
Trump jumps in. "You know what, Andy? For the United States debating champion, you're being beaten pretty badly by Sandy." Which is exactly the case. George asks Andy why he didn't tell Sandy he had concluded she was weaker, if he was just kind of letting everybody know where they stood. Sandy, having some fun now, is like, "Yeah, why?" Heh. I have no idea how it happened, but the second time I watched this, I totally started enjoying her. "Because I didn't feel it was relevant," Andy says preposterously. Not relevant? Oh, Andy. You can do better than that. You must be able to do better than that.
And now, everybody starts talking at the same time. "The truth is, she had all day to think about how she was going to defend you," Sandy says firmly. Jen and Andy dispute this, but Sandy makes not one single move to back down, and Trump makes not one single move to break up the fight. He lets them go on for quite some time, and then he finally thumps his hand on the table three times. They all turn and look. "Andy," he says, "You're just being pounded on. You're being outdebated. I just don't want somebody running one of my companies that's going to get beaten up so badly. You're fired." And he kind of snarls "fired," too, in a way he usually doesn't.