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We begin with Mark, James, Adam, and Brian waiting up in the living room and gossiping. Mark, charmingly, characterizes the Toral ouster as "the blondes versus the brunettes," and Brian and James both feel that last week's PM, Felisha, is the one going home. Adam smiles and giggles like an infant throughout this conversation. Mark gets up on a high horse, like any good cowboy, explaining that it's "all about team dynamics," which explains why Excel keeps winning. Yeah, because their dynamic is all about crapping on Markus all the time. For which I blame them not at all, but Capital Edge has been unlucky in that each week their scapegoat gets sent home, and they (and the show's editors) spend like the entire episode figuring out who the new "problem" is. Right now, they say, the women are all "acting like sorority girls that got caught sleeping with each other's boyfriends." Well, I would say more like "eleven-year-old girls that got caught crushing on each other's chosen Hobbit" or whatever, but close enough.
Everybody returns to the suite and all the guys are excited to see them; the boys ask about what happened -- hoping, I'm sure, for more stories of Toral's insanity -- and Kristi's all, "Ladies, let's go back to the bedroom." She does this in a mildly off-putting way, but it definitely gets everybody on track and reminds the men of their place, which is not all up in Capital Edge's business. James is like, "That sounds fun, we'll be right there," and Felisha laughs.
Rebecca interviews that the team has decided to leave things in the Boardroom, having their team meetings in the evening, so that they can be "fresh and new" for the task. Kristi addresses the group in a pretty even tone, underscoring that they need to leave the past in the past: "Task number five is a new beginning -- bring what you have to the table and don't hold back." Marshawn adds that they might also try cutting out the "back-talking" and general nastiness behind people's backs. "At the end of the day, it hurts us in our task." Kristi leads the pack in agreeing with this concept, which leads me to believe she didn't hear a word Marshawn said, because Marshawn, of course, was talking about her.
In the morning, Alla stumbles out to answer the really odd phone they have. Rona explains to her that "Mr. Trump is very busy today, but he'd like to meet you at 7:30 AM at Grand Army Plaza...Fifth Avenue, on the way to a meeting." Nothing makes me feel special like my boss meeting me at an intersection on his way to something actually important.
Felisha's there with a giant bag, and the ladies are all wearing pink, and Trump is screaming. Bill Rancic is working with them instead of George this week. Trump yells about how Capital Edge is "dropping like flies" and gives them one minute to decide if they'd like to choose a team member from Excel. Immediately and as a group, they yell, "We're ready!" I wonder if they've talked about it -- losing fifteen members of your team at a pitch might nudge the conversation in that direction -- or what. Trump's like, "What does that mean?" Kristi yells, "That means we want Randal!" Josh screams, "Shit!" and all the guys look bummed and pissed. Trump's like, "You wanna Rhodes scholar!" and Randal kisses his new teammates hello. Felisha interviews that they chose Randal as both "an asset" to their own team, and in order to hurt Team Excel. Randal is incredibly gracious about all of this and you can clearly see him already scheming about how to get everybody into shape. I feel cheated because obviously he's demonstrated some kick-ass leadership skills that we didn't get to see, because the show decided to get us there by another route, namely his dead grandmother and one hundred academic honors, and I wish we could have just seen him being awesome from the beginning. Not that we haven't seen him rocking out, just that the reaction the other candidates always have to him is out of joint with what we've seen, and that sucks, because I just really like him due to what little I've seen, and the rest I'm taking on faith, and there's no good reason for that except for how I think he's going to be Final Two and we'll really see him pull it out then and we'll all feel super-great about how we were backing him this whole time.
“ Jenthura weeps, a little, but as a former beauty queen, it does not affect her makeup in any way whatsoever. If women in business must cry, my dear, do it like that, indicting your own poor performance, like a champ. Like a champ in GreatLash. ”
Later, Jenthura and James are hanging in the kitchen, Jen bitching about how Kristi is a "pain in the neck," and right before the presentation was really "rotten" to Jen, which I wish we'd seen: "Jennifer, don't screw it up, don't miss the point, like, right in my face, like, totally trying to unnerve me." James points out that the loss wasn't about the presentation, but about the float, and he's right: the Excel float ruled all over the Capital Edge one. "I wish I could've done better," she says, and I feel really bad for her.
Jenthura weeps, a little, but as a former beauty queen, it does not affect her makeup in any way whatsoever. If women in business must cry, my dear, do it like that, indicting your own poor performance, like a champ. Like a champ in GreatLash. Interview: "I know that I made some mistakes as PM [true], but the reason we lost is that Kristi couldn't be managed. [Kind of true, but more like a Y.P.] Kristi needs to go home, because she's a negative person -- she whines all the time, she complains, she's bossy." To James, Jenthura is like, "She won't take a single order!" and James is like, "Okay, whatever, but you have to outsmart her, you know?" Yes. Jenthura kind of understands this.
Into the Boardroom comes Rebecca, hopping weirdly. Could somebody maybe grab her bag, please? As Capital Edge enters, Bill looks rueful, Jenthura looks hardcore, and Rebecca is of course totally intense. Trump immediately asks Kristi why they lost. "Branding is obviously a huge part" Jenthura jumps right the hell in there. "Mr. Trump, I don't think Kristi is the person to be asking, because Kristi is a liability on this team." Kristi starts with the scoffing, and I find this whole jumping-in-swinging thing a little lacking in subtlety, but she's right. Jenthura turns to Kristi: "You're very hard to work with, I think everyone agrees." Felisha looks all wild, like "Oh snap!" and then she and Kristi both get matching OMG smiles, like she's just talking crazy. Alla speaks up that "at one point during the construction of the float, I did feel that Jen really had it together: she was decisive, she was resourceful, she was giving everybody direction" Kristi's awesome, because she means both halves of the following equation as she's saying them: "I can agree with that -- it was a short time." Rebecca and Felisha nod slightly.
Carolyn asks Alla about the presentation, and Alla calls it "horrible." "In the final hours she just crumbled." Carolyn wonders aloud if that contributed to the loss, and then turns full blast on Jenthura. "You said [you] had to amputate the little boy's leg... You wanted to be PM, and this was your time to step up. And you blew it." Jenthura admits she was a little overwhelmed, but that's not cutting it with Carolyn: "You missed all the criteria of this task! Every single one!" Trump nudges, "As a team." Carolyn's like, "Yeah, as a team, but, like, you totally fucked up the title of the movie, for starters and that was all you." Randal looks worried; Bill looks silent. "And the scale was awful!" Trump's like, who was that? Jenthura goes, "It was Kristi's concept," and Kristi jumps in, "Which got tweaked a lot." Jenthura goes back to the original thing of how Kristi is impossible to work with and makes it hard to manage the team. Trump's like, "She's tough...but that doesn't mean bad." Jenthura goes, "She's bad tough," which made me laugh because of Sars's poll joke a couple of weeks ago.
“ 'Shut. Up. I don't even wanna hear it, Jen.' So not necessary, that. Even Toral -- who wouldn't hire you as her administrative assistant in the magical headquarters of Religious Fanatics Against Milkshakes -- showed more class at that point in the day. Good Lord. ”
They leave, and Bill looks freaked. I don't know him well enough to know what he's thinking, but I'm guessing he's just amazed by the behavior here. Carolyn says that Kristi is headstrong, but not the reason that they lost this week, and that cumulatively, Jenthura has made way too many mistakes. Bill concurs, saying that Jenthura wasn't even around for the final prep before the presentation.
Kristi comes in looking hella pissed, and they sit, and Trump's like, "You guys don't really like each other," in a weird way like maybe they'll fight right there. Kristi straight up says that she wouldn't ever hire Jenthura -- she's not a straight shooter, she can't lead well, and her problems with time management should be obvious with this task. Jenthura responds that Kristi is "very outspoken," which I think she means positively, "but...in a bossy way," and that she cannot be managed. Bill, who totally thinks Jenthura's going home, is like, "Then why didn't you bench her?" Jenthura admits that she was pressed for time, and that Kristi got a lot done. Carolyn's like, "How do you manage one of his companies, if you can't manage one individual?" Kristi has the total lack of class and self-awareness to actually nod at this. Jenthura says that she managed Kristi as well as she could, and talks about how much her sales reps back home love her as a manager. Kristi answers that with the fact that she was hired to turn a company around for sale in three years, and got it done in one year, and that she did it with a team that "highly respected" her and her high standards. Jenthura's all, "This team doesn't respect you, though." It's pretty funny. Trump agrees that the team hates her all of a sudden, and Kristi agrees that she's "outspoken" and has "an edge."
Jenthura kind of gets to me a little bit: "I get results. Sometimes I get a little tongue-tied...I'm human. I can lead people, people like to follow me." That part I sympathized with, like, Yeah, I talk like an idiot a lot of the time, but I'm obviously not an idiot, and it makes me feel like a jerk when I do it. Carolyn again hammers the whole "this is not a popularity contest" angle, and I haven't seen her go after anybody this hard ever. Even Melissa, she mostly just let her twist. Jenthura's like, "Okay, but you have to respect the other team players," and Trump defends her again to Carolyn: "I agree with her on that." Trump describes them as "almost exact opposites," because Kristi's too hard to work with, while Jenthura is a good leader in theory, but has trouble with "concepts" and is maybe not so good under pressure. Which, to be fair, we don't know, because she wasn't there. She's like, "Oh, I am good under pressure," and Trump's like, "Maybe so, maybe not, but not on this task." Then he fires Kristi.
Jenthura's near tears, Bill's eyebrows go sky-high, and Carolyn looks grossed out. Outside, Jen approaches Kristi, mumbling, "I'm sorry about" and Kristi puts the final, surprisingly violent nail in the coffin of my love for her: "Shut. Up. I don't even wanna hear it, Jen." So not necessary, that. Even Toral -- who wouldn't hire you as her administrative assistant in the magical headquarters of Religious Fanatics Against Milkshakes* -- showed more class at that point in the day. Good Lord.