I Can't Believe It's Not Clutter

Previously on Riding In Cars With Knuckleheads: Bren, Alex, and Chris were sure they couldn't lose when they were assigned to promote a "sexy" car opposite Craig, Kendra, and Tana. Because nothing says "sexy" like greasy lawyers and freakishly underage millionaires with anger management issues. Hott! Craig and Tana walked off the job in the middle of the night, leaving Kendra to her own devices, which turned out to be pretty advanced, with GPS and all kinds of flashing lights and tricked-out doohickeys. Meanwhile, Alex fumbled the studio photography, Bren wrote the most uninteresting copy since The Nuts And Bolts Of Bolts and Nuts, and Chris thought "blurry" was short for "stupendous." Magna took home the victory following a shocking refusal on the part of Pontiac to recognize the brilliance and forward-looking nature of The Horizontally Oriented Rectangle as an artistic statement, and Net Worth went back to the Boardroom -- again. There, everyone seemed to be at risk, but it was Chris, our seven-time loser, who finally took a walk. But not, of course, before he wept tears of sorrow at the loss of the opportunity to work for Trump. Chris: spitter, shouter, screw-up, future criminal defendant. Stopped exactly one week short of where Troy wound up, which seems wrong. On the other hand? Lasted one week longer than Heidi. Ha.

This week's New York porn opens with a close-up of the flashing red hand on a "Don't Walk" signal, and...you know, it's like they're telling you not to watch the show. Oh, but then it turns to "Walk," so I guess they're just telling you to look out for the strutting white guy all telling your ass what to do. And I think we all know who that is. We listen to the rhythm of the falling rain and observe the proliferation of taxis to which it leads, and then we make our way into Trump Tower and up to the Love Palace for the Aspiring Corporate Weasel Death Watch. And it doesn't get much more weaselly than Alex, Chris, and Bren. Tana asks Kendra who she thinks will go, and Kendra names Chris. Craig, by the way, is lying face-down on the ottoman at the moment, so I guess he didn't get enough sleep, despite his giant flake-out. Tana and Craig both predict that the non-returning Aspiring Corporate Weasel will instead be Bren. Tana interviews that indeed, she expects to see Bren go home. "He's a funny guy," she says, "but I've seen him on tasks and he's a big zero." That's the kind of comment I just don't understand. If you like somebody and think he's a good guy, there's no need to look into a camera and say he's "a big zero." She just seems to be getting meaner and meaner as she becomes cockier and cockier. I liked her better when she seemed a little surprised at her own success. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd buy a lipstick from her now. Mean!

The door to the L-Pal opens, and Bren and Alex return. Hugs are exchanged. Alex interviews, however, that returning to the L-Pal without his little buddy just "wasn't the same." Yeah. No spitting, no paranoid fantasies...it was like there was a hole in his little baboon heart. Tana asks the guys how Chris took his firing, and they report that he "got real emotional." Alex refers to Chris's demeanor as "teared up." Tana says, "He was choked up, but he walked out all right?" And Alex says, "Yeah." Which is awesome, because Tana was exactly asking whether Chris managed to exit without making a big slobbering scene like a leopard just ate his pet hamster, and he totally didn't. But it's not like Alex can say that, I guess. Especially since he and Chris were such close buds, once they got over the threats of physical violence. Alex and Bren compare notes and determine that they both thought they were going . Bren then interviews that he believes that he's now "lower than whale crap at the bottom of the ocean" to Trump. Bren gives Tana the lowdown on the beating he took for writing such bad marketing copy. "I just bit my tongue," he happily reports to her. "I wasn't a smart-ass in any way." And then Bren tells us in an interview that he's actually done a lot of tongue-biting during this experience, and is "tired of the blood in [his] mouth." Then he adds, "Then again, maybe the blood in my mouth is just making me thirsty for more." You know, a guy with that particular look really doesn't need to go down the road of talking like a serial killer. You always have to look out for the stumpy ones who don't shampoo.

Alex and Bren leave the L-Pal together, having decided to just kick back for some drinks. As they enjoy a beer, Bren voices over that he showed up wanting "fame and fortune and working for Mr. Trump," and he never anticipated making a "best friend." But now he has one. And it's Alex! They're best friends! That would be so cute if I liked either of them. I also would like to take this moment to mark the place in history when Bren's tie was straight. Bren's tie, in this interview, is straight! Bren's tie, so frequently convinced that it's 10:20 (tm Miss Alli's Mom), now believes that it is 9:15 on the button. Imagine that. Back at the bar, Bren gives Alex a couple of cigar lessons, because that's neither clichd nor homoerotic at all, and Alex calls Bren his "oasis in this vast, imbecilic land." And he's kind of an ass, but boy, do I ever have friends about whom I would say that very same thing. Not that this particular land is vast or imbecilic. Like, at all. Because it's totally not. And then he adds, "I'm surrounded by morons and their mascots." "Mascots"? Okay, he lost me there. At least the dumb people I know manage without big foam-rubber animal heads. Still, you know, it's kind of ironic that I sense that I know how Alex is generally feeling, in part because of all the time I spend watching Alex. It's the circle of life, with more contempt and fewer lions.

Alex goes on to say that Bren is awesome, because if you give him a task, it will get done. Like...marketing copy, I suppose. "It" might come out sounding like the voicemail menu at a Styrofoam-peanut factory, excitement-wise, but oh, yes -- "it" will be completed. "It's been a very nice night," Bren says. "Tomorrow, let's go balls to the wall." Man, poor Alex. I hate it when dates start out promising and then end like that.

Over at Magna, Craig is the PM, and he tells Kendra and Tana to brainstorm in writing. Which...I'm not crazy about, as it seems a little artificial and motivational-seminar-ish and makes me want an easel, but okay. He then tells us, all confidential-like: "The biggest obstacle at this point would be Kendra. I want her to understand that, you've had your chance to lead the way that you lead, and I want you to respect mines [sic]." Yikes. Putting aside the rather unfortunate use of the word "mines," did Craig really give Kendra the opportunity to lead the way she wanted last week when he totally ignored everything she asked him to do and made her finish the entire task by herself? That sounds like a fairly weak argument to me. Back in the L-Pal, Kendra tells Craig that she thinks they'll definitely want to ask some people who buy office supplies what they think. Craig's response is to chastise her for talking when she's supposed to be writing. He's just really cranking up the overbearing-dick thing already. Kendra interviews, "Craig and I have really dysfunctional and poor communication." Heh. Exactly. She says that whenever he's talking to her, she's never sure what he's trying to say. And indeed, I'm not sure I'd know what he was getting at either, particularly if he did what he does right here, which is to solemnly tell Kendra that he's "experienced lives being changed" by brainstorming. Yes, I remember the day I started spitting out possible career aspirations and shouted, "Maybe someone could pay me to talk back to the TV!" My life was changed, that's for sure. ["Good thing I happened to be walking by." -- Sars] Basically, Kendra then interviews that it will be more productive to just let him talk for a few minutes, and then do what she thinks is right. And while she can't ignore the PM, I sort of agree with her that you hit a point with people where you just have to kind of let them listen to themselves talk for a while until they run out of bluster, and then you do the best you can. In other words: sit back, relax, and enjoy the remainder of the recap.

Bren and Alex road-trip to Smart Design, which is a company that helps design products and build prototypes. The guy offers to show them some metals and plastics and such, and indeed, they are taken to a workroom and shown a block of plastic. You know, that totally inspires me to invent a Block-Of-Plastic caddy to hold all my blocks of plastic! Alex then explains that "it was time to call the executives." But in a blow to the Space Communicator Company, whatever reception they're getting in the Smart Design conference room isn't doing it for them, because they're unable to complete their phone calls to the people at Staples. As it turns out, there's a whole team of folks whom Alex has decided not to meet with, because he thinks he can "get the same thing out of a phone conversation." He goes on to say, unbelievably stupidly, "They're not a client. They're just judges." Idiot! Semantics. The point is that they're the decision-makers. When you want to influence a decision, you reach out to the decision-makers. How freaking hard is that to understand? Alex has social skills markedly inferior to those of my parents' dog, who has been known to throw up under the dining-room table. In fact, Alex admits that as the telephone tag fell apart, he started to wonder if perhaps he should have met with the executives in person. Gee, I wonder. (My parents' dog: "Arf!") He refers to his terrible decision-making in this instance as "a huge risk." A-ha! Turn a negative into a positive! Way to go, Alex! You didn't fuck up, you just rolled the dice! Who knew they'd come up snake eyes! Time for a cocktail! I can't stand him; I really can't. He's Beneath My Argyle Sweater Beats The Heart Of A Champion Guy, and there is no one who bores me more than that guy during a group endeavor, with the possible exception of They Broke The Mold When They Made Me And My Long Hair And My Ironic T-Shirts And My Black Trench Coat Guy.