A Lonely Drive

Previously on Uhhhhhhh...: The teams competed to create the Detained By Airport Security Collection on behalf of American Eagle, complete with jackets with little wires running out of them and bulky laptops stuffed down your pants and whatnot. Tana obtained "valuable insight" into the fact that kids love cell phones -- insight she obtained from a focus group, because the only other source of said information would have been any periodical publication dated between 1998 and 2005. Craig and Kendra didn't like each other, and it was easy to sympathize with both of them. Chris lost a credit card, but hey -- that didn't matter. Because Angie stammered during the presentation. Bad Angie! Net Worth went to the Boardroom again, where Alex escaped blame for horrendous management and Chris escaped blame for losing five grand, because Angie went, "Uhhh..." So, of course, Angie was fired. Six are left. Who will go ?

Up in the Love Palace, Bren is telling Kendra that his money is on Alex to get the boot. Kendra says she thinks it will be Angie. Tana, meanwhile, wonders why Chris "always gets to snake out." Good point. I think the bottom line is that any of the people at the final table could be suggested as reasonable firing candidates, which makes the entire thing both totally just and totally unsatisfying. Tana interviews that she'd like to see Chris fired. "He's a virgin, and we're all sluts," she says. Have to say, I'm really not finding that as evocative as she'd like it to be. She's starting to come off as one of those people who says stuff like that for effect, because you'll think it's so shocking coming from her. That's a routine with a limited lifespan, to say the least.

The door swings open, and Alex and Chris enter. Hugging ensues. Tana is wearing a lavender Muppet pelt around her neck as she explains in an interview that she was shocked that Chris wasn't fired. Alex tells Magna how Trump called them "losers," and Chris talks about how Trump called him a disaster again. "We were having the same conversation," Bren says. Heh. Chris smiles, but then he says, "That's not funny," in a way that I think...is supposed to be funny, but kind of isn't. Lots of levels. And none are working. In an interview, Chris and his olive green pullover tell us that after all these losses, Trump is "disappointed" in Chris, and therefore, Chris has decided he has to be the PM and "kick their ass." Yeah. This is the part where he makes his big move! He hasn't even been tryin'! Get ready! Stand back! Look at him go!

Back in the suite, Alex puts his arm around Chris and says, "This is the Net Worth team, just so you guys can..." At being cuddled by Alex, Chris grins like a nutbar, which he basically is. Kendra now interviews that this was the point where she realized that this was the final six. Can't take anything away from girlfriend's ability with the counting, that's for sure. They don't actually show her looking around the room going, "Ooooone...twoooooo...," but I'm totally sure it happened. She says she surveyed the situation at this "pivotal moment," and realized that this was the time to "step it up." I'm not sure looking around and seeing Craig, Chris, Alex, Tana, and Bren sharing the room with you would make me feel like I really had to excel in order to succeed, but then, I'm not Kendra. You know what else? They don't show any cooking this season. By this point last season, it seemed like they were always cooking. You know, Doritos from scratch and stuff. When do they eat? ["I think we saw Michael eating at one point, to emphasize the fact that he wasn't doing anything useful, but it does seem like there's a lot less making of chicken-breast-related dishes than in past seasons." -- Sars]

Magna enters the studios where the interior shooting is going to be done, and we get our first good look at the Solstice. It really is very pretty, but to me, more than "sexy car," it says "cartoon car." Like, I kind of expect it to have googly eyes on the front and a grill that turns into a mouth that opens wide and says, "How's it goin', fellas?" I mean, it's pretty and everything, but I don't exactly think it says, "Stud." Kendra asks Craig to stay here and supervise the shooting of the car. She interviews that she wanted to leave him there so that she and Tana could go off and do the exterior shots. As Kendra talks generally to the photographer (I think) about wanting shots of the "curves" and "lines" of the car, Craig complains that she "began micromanaging" the shoot. Which...I mean, that's just not what micromanaging is. Micromanaging would have been leaving a list of what shots to take and what order to take them in...that's micromanaging. "Get shots of the curves and the lines of the car" isn't micromanaging, to me. That's just managing. But of course, Craig doesn't feel like she delegated enough and so forth, because he's sort of primed to feel offended in the situation. I think Craig doesn't like management at all. I think he likes to be left entirely in charge of an entire area of a project, which really isn't necessarily what happens when you aren't your own boss. Kendra leaves; Craig pouts.

Net Worth now visits its studio and looks over the car. They all admire it. Bren compares the car to a beautiful woman, rather predictably, and with a certain aggressive lameness that suggests both unoriginality and underlying unctuous sexism. Bren becomes enamored of a little tag on the dashboard that says "Solstice" and features a little line drawing of the car. He instructs Chris that they have to incorporate that tag. Bren tells Alex to make sure to get "plenty of interior pictures," and makes Alex write it down. Bren is surprisingly bossy. Alex makes a note. Chris and Alex send Bren off to work on "research" for the copy that will be in the brochure. And why? Because he's "very well-spoken," because he's a lawyer. Pfft. That doesn't make you well-spoken, for God's sake, and it certainly doesn't qualify you to do marketing writing, of all things. Give your marketing writing to a lawyer, and you'll get back a brochure with footnotes. Chris goes with Bren as Bren goes off to work. Alex is left behind to do the studio photography.

Tana and Kendra are out shooting Magna's exterior shots. As they work, they ask people standing around what emotions the car evokes for them. They give answers like "sexy" and "young." Nobody says "goofy," like I would. Kendra notes that the ideas generally revolved around the central concept of desire, so that's what they'll be incorporating into the brochure. That seems like a start, tentatively speaking.

That evening, Chris is carefully putting the gray Solstice up against a gray building for a nice, monochromatic shot. The photographer snaps a series of shots. Chris likes them so much that he calls them "sick." Why am I not surprised that Chris sees that as a positive quality? Chris interviews that he loves the pictures, and Alex is doing the other ones.

Specifically, Alex is directing a very boring model in a very boring series of pictures where she's sitting on the front of the car. He's using words like "coy" and, even more revoltingly, "kitty." Yes, kitty. With an adult woman, he is using the word...well, you know. At least it wasn't "princess." At least not that we saw. Sigh. They finish up the shoot, and Chris returns to see how it went. Chris starts to ask about some of the detail shots that he was hoping Alex got, and it quickly becomes clear that Alex, for the most part, did not get them. Did he get a shot of the tire? No time, "dude." Chris looks disappointed. He asks whether Alex got the picture of the tag. "Not by itself," Alex says, which is awesome. Yeah, he got a shot of the tag in the sense that it's attached to the car, so in a sense, it's in all the pictures. Just not by itself. Chris says Bren will flip out when he learns that they didn't shoot that little tag. Chris then interviews that he was disappointed in the way Alex "screwed up the interior photos." I really hope Alex didn't spend all his time on the ones with the model, because those looked like they were going to be horrible. At any rate, Chris is shocked at the way Alex "dropped the ball" and such. Alex yawns.

Later, Net Worth is working at some secret location or other, and Chris is all excited about a really out-of-focus picture that he has decided looks cool. In fact, "that's the cool part." Of course, you can make artful use of out-of-focus shots, but you have to know what you're doing, and it's generally an effect that's planned, rather than being a "when life gives you blurry lemons, make blurry lemonade" situation. Alex has a bunch of pictures laid out in front of him as he tells Chris that they should have a section in the brochure about "interior styling." And then he walks right into a trap by starting to count off all the great pictures they have of the interior: "One...and..." Wow, awkward. Bren sort of can't believe there's only one interior shot -- nothing with the door open, and nothing featuring that tag that he's completely obsessed with. Indeed, it looks like time was spent on a bunch of very stupid-looking shots with models, which...you would never use shots like that. If you were going to use the model, you'd put her outside, because the studio shots here look clinical, and they're sort of supposed to, I think. They're on a gray backdrop, so they look minimalist and are about shape, so having people in them looks dumb and unnatural. Bren interviews that he told both of the guys how important it was to get that tag, and I really wish he would get off it. It's a nice detail, but that's not going to sink the project, so get the hell over it and move on, dude.

Kendra, on the other hand, is admiring a round crop of a picture of the front split grill, with the "Pontiac Solstice" lettering above and below. Kendra points out that this could be the front of the packaging. Tana rubs her eyes. Craig complains that they were sitting "watching" as Kendra reviewed the pictures, and he thought they should have been working on the copy. I think Kendra doesn't intend for him to watch, but to help, not that he's likely to do that once he decides he doesn't approve of what she's doing. Craig decides that because he's not "interested" in looking at the pictures, he'll just leave. Which he does. I am totally trying that the time there's something in my job that I don't feel "interested" in doing. "So, why did you not do the task you were assigned?" someone will ask me. "Oh, I wasn't interested." I think it's a winning strategy. I expect to be running the place within weeks.

Kendra interviews that she doesn't think Craig and Tana entirely understand how much time the process of producing and printing a brochure like this takes, and because of the experience she has, she knows it better than they do in this case. She goes back to see what Craig is doing, as she interviews that she knew the task would probably take all night. When she finds him, she asks him what he's doing, and he says that he's working on "structure," because they don't have any text to go with the pictures. She says she doesn't agree. Craig argues that they have no "concept" or "theme," but I think he's being too literal about that, as if they have to have some really literal "theme," like "This Is Not Your Father's Pontiac." Craig complains once Tana shows up that they've worked all day and have no -- you guessed it -- "concept" or "theme." Kendra interviews that she did have a concept, and she'd told him what it was, so it was frustrating that he apparently wasn't listening. Which I kind of believe, because it's his way, a little. I also suspect she didn't do a great job of explaining it. She says that at this point, she was beginning to feel "all alone in the process." Nothing like reality television to make you hate the word "process," that's for sure. Craig tells her that he refuses to work on the pictures anymore, basically. What a team player.

At Net Worth, Chris tells Bren that he's going to write all the text, and Bren says it will take all night to write. And then, in possibly my favorite part of the episode -- and maybe the season -- Chris goes to move his rolly-chair and dumps himself on his ass. Oh, guys falling down. That just never gets old, it really doesn't, especially in a season this grim. More slapstick, please! I would also accept girl-fighting and the throwing of pies. Alex and Bren appropriately laugh. Bren then asks whether the boys think the other team will "pull an all-nighter." He says "most assuredly not," and slams Craig and Tana for not even understanding the concept of all-nighters. Chris predicts that Craig will be "passed out at, like, 2:30."

At 2:30, Craig is looking very sleepy. Tana is telling Craig that the two of them both know they can't stay up all night. She says her throat hurts. Aw, her throat! She interviews that Kendra says the task will take all night, and she'll just "drink four more cups of coffee." "Well, guess what?" Tana rhetorically interviews. "I don't drink coffee." She says, "My comfort level is, I like to get my ass in bed around one. Her comfort level is probably she wants us to stay till 6:00 AM. So I have no problem saying, 'Honey, I know I did a damn good job. I'm exempt. My ass isn't going anywhere. So good night, God bless." And...she sucks. It's hard to even convey how condescending and superior Tana acts during this interview, except to stress the fundamentally asshole quality conveyed in her statement about how she doesn't care about the task because she's exempt. You're supposed to want to win because you care about winning, and when people bail simply because they won't be fired themselves, it's exactly like throwing the task and sandbagging the PM -- it's a fundamentally pussy maneuver, and you ought to be embarrassed by it. You're telling me you can't stay up past 1:00 if your job requires it? You're telling me you expect to remain in your "comfort level" at all times, even when you're on deadline? Well, dear, get yourself a nice 9:00 to 5:00 office job, because for most people with very much responsibility, life isn't always like that. "Comfort level." Pfft.

At any rate, Tana tells Kendra that she and Craig "shut down early," and Craig says he objects to staying up "just to be staying up." Kendra answers, by way of explaining why she'd rather they stayed, "I'm the kind of person that really respects my teammates' opinions, and I enjoy doing things as a team." Craig comes back: "I'm not convinced that what you just said is true yet, so." Kendra looks stung as Craig wraps up with a non-heartfelt, non-helpful, passive-aggressive "It's all good." Ooh, I hate that. Tana says that Craig is trying to say that "what he wants to see is some vision of your magazine experience, your publication experience." Which is absolutely not what Craig said, nor is it what Craig was trying to say. Craig was trying to say "fuck you," which is pretty much what he said, so Tana can butt out or speak for herself, but she doesn't need to restate "fuck you" as "we would like to see more manifestations of your publication experience." Kendra swallows hard and says that she at least appreciates the honesty. "While," she adds, "I'm extremely offended by it." She leaves, and Tana cackles to herself, because really hurting somebody's feelings is just about the most fuckin' hilarious thing that can happen. That is a lady who badly needs to be brought down a couple of pegs at some point, because she has become intolerably full of herself in a very short time. Kendra interviews that she felt like Tana told her that because she has experience, she has to do the whole thing herself. Which I don't think is what Tana meant, but it's kind of how it came off, because of the attitude. "If that's what it has to take to get the job done and to win," Kendra interviews as we watch Craig and Tana head home, "that's what I'm going to do."

At 3:30 in the morning, Kendra is writing copy. And elsewhere, Bren is, too. And Bren's copy sounds...well, suffice it to say it has the phrase "brainchild of GM chairman blah blah blah," and that's not a good sign. Because in a brochure? No one cares. It's a sensible transition to move from Bren's copy to shots of everyone yawning in the offices. At 5:30 AM, Craig and Tana are snoozing at home. As the sun is coming up, Kendra is looking at a really cool purple-toned picture that is set up to make the definition of "Solstice" appear to be "object of desire." That dictionary-definition thing is, I think, really cool, and if Craig wanted a "theme," that's sort of it, and I'd be curious to know whether they knew that was what she was doing before they left. Because unless she came up with that idea at 3:00 in the morning or was keeping it from them, espionage-style, I don't know why there was so much bitching.

At 6:20 AM, we see that Alex is napping on the floor with his sweater sleeve covering his eyes. And he's snoring. Chris thanks Bren for staying up all night, and they scoff at Alex for being asleep. That amateur! "He's such a little sissy," Chris says dismissively. For, you know, sleeping. I certainly hope that Chris isn't going to do anything sissy-like for the rest of the episode! I certainly hope that Chris is going to embrace masculine stereotypes and be a pillar of steel in the face of adversity! Because that's what you're vowing to do when you start throwing around the word "sissy," I think. ["I would add that, if it's so 'sissy' that it bore commenting on, perhaps one of them might have woken Alex's ass up already, then, but what do I know." -- Sars] Kendra, meanwhile, leaves the Kaplan Thaler guys working on her brochure and heads back to the L-Pal to freshen up for the presentation. She interviews that the team "fell apart" on her, and "didn't believe in [her]," but she assures us that she created a brochure she's totally happy with, and on her return, was "on top of the world." When she's back at the L-Pal, she pokes her head into Craig and Tana's bedroom and tells them that she just got back, it's about 8:30, and the brochure is done. "I'm like a girl who just had sex," she says. "I've got like a silly grin on my face." And in about five minutes, all her clothes will be on backwards, so that will work perfectly. Tana and Craig pretend to be happy for her. Tana finds a foreign object in her bed, but that's really all I can tell you.

We visit with Net Worth as they review their finished brochure. It's basically a horizontally-oriented book-style brochure, maybe double the size of your checkbook, but opening down the left side. The first page is a red translucent sheet that says, in three different fonts, "Gorgeous. Sexy. Affordable." Because as they always say: tell, don't show. And just inside that sheet is their out-of-focus shot of which Chris was so fond. George reviews the brochure, and Chris calls him "bro" while informing him that he will love it. George looks notably noncommittal. Alex, on the other hand, voices over that Bren's text wasn't "persuasive." Because it was boring as dirt, presumably. I'm telling you, that's what happens when you have your copy written by people who specialize in motions to dismiss. Chris is clearly extremely happy with the brochure; Alex, not so much.

Magna receives its brochure . Kendra has basically designed a round brochure on a spiral binding at the top. Kendra says that she was anxious to see the looks on Craig and Tana's faces when she revealed it. And indeed, they can't help but be impressed. "Oh, I love it," Tana coos. They admire it, and Craig says that he knew it was possible, since they had a great product. Among other things, Kendra has used filters on the photos, I think, to produce ones that match the colors of the pages they face -- in other words, the orange "Passion" page faces a picture that's tinged with orange. It's a good effect. And for a promotional brochure made on this show, I have to agree with Kendra that it's unusually good and unusually interesting. She definitely deserves the praise she's heaping on herself. Kendra interviews that she was grossed out by the team's effort to take credit for what they eventually made her finish up on her own. "I just have a completely different type of work ethic," she says. Craig kisses the top of Kendra's head, which is a moment he entirely has not earned, and he's got no business acting like that. At all.

Later, the Pontiexecutives meet with Magna, which is ready to present its brochure. Kendra isn't even fully into the room before Tana starts talking. "We wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for this incredible opportunity to work with such an incredible car," she says. Wow. It's not easy to be that inarticulate in that short a time. Kendra seethes. It isn't clear whether responsibility for the presentation was ever divided up properly by the PM here, but in any event, Kendra clearly believed she was going to be presenting, and she clearly is miffed that Tana is stepping on her shit after bugging out on the work. Kendra says, "Tana created the appearance that it was her concept." Which the executives are probably smart enough not to assume, but then, Jen got away with it last time. Kendra tries to jump in, but Tana jumps back in. And then Kendra jumps in again, and she shows off the fact that she did in fact include a slot for a CD -- which works nicely and unobtrusively in the round brochure -- as well as a slot for a business card. She did a good job, there's no question. Go here and look at the winning brochure, and you'll see that she did do an excellent job. You can look at Net Worth's, too, and observe the raging suck. At any rate, Kendra does take over enough to get out her best line, which is that all the emotions talked about by their "focus group" centered around desire. The Pontiexecutives thank them and send them on their way.

Trump approaches in his limo.

Net Worth comes in for its presentation. The first photo to go up is one of the really stupid ones, with the models. Bad first impression, to say the least. "The first thing I thought when I saw the Solstice," Chris says, "was not only exteriorally, but interiorally, this was truly the design of a sports car." I'm not sure if the Pontiexecutive really made as much of a laugh-choking face at the non-words "exteriorally" and "interiorally" as they make it look like he did, but I'd certainly like to believe it happened that way. Alex interviews, as a tuba of failure honks, that Chris is a horrible public speaker, beginning with those non-words he likes to throw in. Chris also refers to the "Solster roadster," and then corrects himself. I think he's thrown off by not being able to spit in the middle of his sentences anymore. The Pontiexecutive asks Chris what exactly he was going for with the blurry shot. Chris says that they thought it would push people to the . I guess...to figure out whether the whole thing was out of focus, or just that one picture. Nothing like enticing people to read your materials by tempting them to wonder whether there's been some kind of massive printing screw-up. In other news, Alex insists that "the shape" of the brochure would make somebody pick it up. So...rectangles are the new trapezoids, or something. The Pontiexecutives send them packing, and none too soon.