You know, it's really too bad that this got moved opposite 24, because I think this might be the best season yet. It's certainly one of the more enjoyable episodes of the show I've ever personally seen. The task: to promote Sam's Club (a wholesaler/bulk sales warehouse store in the States) memberships and upgrades using Goodyear blimps and in-store events. After a wind-tossed introduction on a runway, in which the contestants must shout their credentials at the top of their lungs, Trump picks Project Managers and play proceeds softball-team style. Team Synergy is headed by Allie, a cute tiny blonde bobble-head with some amount of common sense, and Team Gold Rush by Tarek, a gorgeous piece of shit and MENSA member -- which pretty much tells you all you need to know.
They pick completely based on how conventionally attractive their fellows are, and we're off. Team Synergy -- assisted by the freakishly out-of-it, squealing, screeching, sweating lawyer Brent -- decides to promote the drive with free massages and manicures. Gold Rush -- assisted by the vacant and crunchy-looking restaurateur Summer -- promotes it using ugly gift bags filled with...nothing. When Summer refuses to make any targeted phone calls -- or do anything else whatsoever -- Gold Rush loses by three memberships. Whilst winning Synergy is off on an embarrassingly brown-nosed luncheon at the Wharton Club -- and a truly mortifying speech from Trump demonstrating just how ignorant he is about the world outside his own ass -- Gold Rush is engaged in a backstabbing witch hunt all about how the whole debacle was Summer's fault, led by the cultish PM and his (even more attractive) toady Dan. Tarek threatens the youthful lone dissenter, Lee, with swift death should he mention the complete lack of any ideas whatsoever that also might have made the difference. Lee refuses to do so, in front of Trump, enraging Tarek and getting him Boardroomed.
Tarek brings in Summer, Lee, and Lenny -- a Russian ex-pat with an awesome glower and a deadpan sense of humor -- for ill-defined reasons of "not stepping up to execute" his total lack of a plan of any kind. Carolyn only openly implies Trump is a total jackass twice during the episode, if you're keeping score. Trump makes an open joke of Tarek, everybody openly laughing, but when she goes haywire, interrupting/babbling at him for no damn reason for the better part of the Boardroom, he's forced to fire Summer.
This thing where the credits for the last show run at the bottom third for the show that's actually on is really confusing. Thanks, NBC. We open on the always-weird, never-helpful mishmash of the Hopeful Weasels, this time starting with Andrea, who I was assuming I would despise given her profile answers ("I do not identify with any movie stars, because they are not as deep as I am"; "I do not identify with any former Apprenti, because I do not know what a 'television' is"), doing yoga on the patio of her mansion, which overlooks beautiful sagebrush and rolling hills. "My net worth right now is $8 million; I have four successful companies; I am self-made, didn't go to college; I created everything that I have out of nothing." That's exactly how long my pre-hate for Andrea lasted, because nothing gets me like a Tess McGill tale of the unmatriculated. One of the thirty petite, blonde Apprenti (Leslie) talks about how she loves tennis, has the L.A. title and two U.S. championships for swimming, and says that "athletics is part of [her] business," but then also I must give it up, because she says she has to win, that it's in her blood. The best thing about athletes.
Charmaine -- Filipino parents, awesomely thick Kentucky/Tennessee accent -- says she gets her "determination and drive" from her mother, who came to America "with nothing to her name," and who she wants to make proud. The boring and very tall Bryce tells us he set out at 24 to start a multimillion-dollar building company, and did it. Which is all fine and good, but he ruins himself for me with the slap-worthy line of bullshit: "I'm aggressive, I'm a baller. Trump's gonna like me, because the truth is I'm a lot like him." That's your three strikes right there, dude. You are not a "baller," Trump's not going to anything you most of the time, and "the truth" is that if you have to tell us you're just like Trump, you're actually telling us something vastly sadder and even more troubling than if it were true.
Trump comes shooting up in a fast penis-shaped car, flying toward his giant throbbing airplane, and starts screaming at us immediately about how he's "looking for someone who's a natural leader" and he's "looking for someone who's a strategic thinker" and he's "looking for...THE APPRENTICE!" and then he hops like a gremlin into his manly air missile and heads to New York to berate the eighteen candidates in the most dehumanizing way possible. We flash through a bunch of people getting into cabs. There's Dan, who usually looks like John Michael Higgins-slash-Cliff the lawyer, but has one of those faces that can look like any famous person at any time. A blonde lady who apparently has breasts we need to know all about right away, Charmaine, lots of people, Lenny the stock Russian guy, Brent the terrible loser, a woman in a taxi.
Tarek and his whole bag of bullshit, telling us his "will to succeed is unstoppable," and which we'll find is only matched by his complete inability to do anything properly. A tiny blonde who was number one in her class -- at the University of Florida -- and got an MBA at Harvard, and describes herself as "tough as nails" and willing to "run through a brick wall" to get what she wants, which is apparently both to fool herself into thinking she's "tough as nails" and to memorize the immortal writings of effing Donald Trump and his stupid brick wall metaphors. A totally nasty British guy with lips that assault one's finer sensibilities tells us how he's the "highest achiever in sales, globally" in his company, and that his cat-anus-looking Angelina lips have grossed people out from the Mid-East to Europe to "all across South America." "This is a done deal for me." They are all heading toward the airport; they are all either perfectly lovely or very scary. In Tarek's case, both.
Oh how I have missed this song. Yay! Let's do intros now, in the interest of you giving a tiny bit more of a damn throughout the rest of the recap. Team Gold Rush is composed of Dreamy Famous-Looking Dan; Leslie who looks like British actress Billie Piper and is a Louisiana realtor; Lee, who looks like one of the Andy Apprenti plus Adam from last year; the eponymous Summer, a restaurateur who looks like a stripper and/or tanning salon receptionist with crunchy hair; Tarek, the Orlando Bloom look-alike with the Rory Gilmore backstory and about whom this recap will be; Charmaine again, who bounced around the country her entire life taking apparently only jobs that would fit the fifteen tasks they'll be doing (marketing, sales, real estate, consulting, et cetera); Lenny "The Russian" from Jersey who passed his Series 7 and learned English the first two years he was in America; laughing Theresa the psychotherapist, skinny with blonde hair and quite a forehead; and Boring Baller Bryce, who's misshapen in the credits with a boss eye. Those were the hotter ones, and you'll see in a second how that came down.
Team Synergy is made up of: brunette Tammy, who has fiercely defiant eyebrows and Hasselbeck lips; super-cute Pepi, the goateed Miami attorney; Roxanne, who has a lot of gums and two professors for parents, and who was inspired by Sandra Day O'Connor to become an attorney; Sean, the creepy British dude; Allie, a bobblehead of a person, who looks and acts like she could be Dharma's weird aunt; the nondescript and nearly silent Michael, lately from both Chicago and Arthur Andersen; Andrea, the hippy from above who has the exact same coloration as Daphne Zuniga, down to the reddish highlights and bright blue eyes; Brent the bloated and squealing lawyer who has added insult to injury with his truly unfortunate haircut; and yet another Stacy, this one a fairly cool journalist-turned-criminal defense attorney, who looks like Dar Williams's uptight sister.
Trump's plane is so damn exciting that we have to watch it forever, as it flies, the wheels coming up, the landing is cleared, and it finally lands at Republic Airport in Long Island. Carolyn and George usher the hopefuls out onto the runway and up the jetway, Tarek bringing up the rear, as Trump tells absolutely nobody on the other end of the phone he's holding that he's going to "meet the candidates" and "be in in about an hour." Did you know Robin left? She'll be on this season, I presume, but she's gone. Sad. Trump yells at the candidates about how awesome his "airplane" is, so pneumatic and girthy, and they all nod and agree on its awesome power, then he explains a bunch of basic bullshit to them. They're so cramped in this sickening display of...whatever it is...that Brent's basically in Lenny's lap. They look super-cozy. Trump tells them about how one day they might have planes. I wonder if, one day, he won't need one anymore, but I think it's obvious that the possibility of Pinocchio becoming a real boy has left the coop for good.
Tarek tells us that "This is what you're working for, this is what the Trump dynasty is all about: wealth, success" and that you "couldn't leave without being motivated to be the last guy standing on that podium." So I guess the voodoo worked on Tarek, but now's a good a time as any to lay out the ground rules of Tarek anyway. He grew up poor. Like, bad poor, development poor, in New Bedford Mass, and this was so shameful for him that his entire "adult" life has been a rocket ship away from the drudgery and squalor of Massachusetts and into the klassy high life: he went to "elite" boarding schools, and then after St. Anselm's and the Catholic University of America, he played rugby and rowed crew. None of these, taken alone, is a sign of being the particular thing that he is, which is overcompensating worse than Donald Trump, but taken together? You bet your ass. He joined Mensa, which he always writes "MENSA," as though it were an acronym. As though it meant anything. I can't even tell you how sad it is to write this paragraph for you. This is limousine classy, this is sevruga classy, this is the symbolism of conspicuous wealth, this is exactly what Trump feeds on, and what feeds on Trump, but...for somebody who's smarter than Trump, and more beautiful than 99% of all human beings, it's depressing as hell, because none of that matters, because all that matters is: propaganda. Hot people that don't know they're hot, are even hotter. Hot people that don't notice they're hot because they're busy trying to sell a pack of lies to themselves? Not hot. He cannot even taste the caviar on which he sups, unless you're there to see him do it. Which is why he cannot cover a single one of the checks his depressing ass regularly writes for your benefit.
And the king of that, Donald "Little Blue Pill" Trump himself, is now going to give a practical demonstration of why that sucks. Standing at the top of the jetway, gusty winds blowing his fake hair -- all in one piece -- to and fro, he yells down to the candidates at the top of his lungs that George and Carolyn are two very special people in his life, and acts like he's just as sad that this had to happen on the tarmac as they are. Except he calls the shots, so fuck him. He then commands them to shout their credentials up the jetway at him, screaming why they're important into the careless winds, while he looks on toadishly and without listening. This might be worse than the golf course thing last year: "Tell me why you matter! What? I can't hear you! Scream louder, little trolls!"
Lee is 22, graduated with a B.A. and a 4.0 from Cornell. How cute are they when they tell you their GPA? Stacy is the criminal defense lawyer, who works for the public defense office in New York City. Michael is a mergers and acquisitions consultant. Roxanne graduated from Baylor and her law degree is from the University of Michigan. Summer owns a restaurant in Huntington Beach and a truly terrible case of crabs. Leslie went to the University of Mississippi on a volleyball scholarship, which is fine -- get there any way you can, that's awesome -- except for how inordinately proud she still seems to be about that fact, ten years later. Brent is an insurance defense (like my dad!) and real estate attorney, and "created his own diet" and lost 110 pounds, at which point apparently the diet failed him, but also: I created my own diet just today! It was called The What-A-Burger and Fries Diet, and it was delicious to put it into effect. And then yesterday, I created the Taco Bell for Lunch and Some Homemade Pesto Chicken For Dinner Diet, and that was awesome too! Where's my patent attorney?
Tarek is the "worldwide product marketing manager" for Texas Instruments, and a fucking member of fucking Mensa, "meaning I have an I.Q. in the top two percent of the world." He says this last just like Ana Gasteyer doing Cinder Calhoun, which is cute, but here's a tip. If you're a member of Mensa, keep your trap shut about it. Because it means one very important thing to you, and a whole mess of completely different stuff to everybody else, and that's a bad mix. But also, it's pretty much entirely a way of announcing how intelligent you are to the entire room, which is...not that intelligent. Imagine if, instead of just dropping the Mensa thing in, off-handedly, you looked right into a person's eyes and said, "You would not believe my genius-level I.Q.," or " I made $800,000 last year. And you?" Announcing that you're in Mensa is the exact same thing, and there's no way around that fact. And it stops being about the whole intelligence issue, even the "Don't ever tell anybody your SAT scores if you want to be happy in life" rule, just circles around all those related issues and heads straight for: that is a retardedly rude thing to mention, much less repeat over and over. It's a blustery sign of weakness, frankly, which is the opposite of what one might think. It's not intimidating, it's just a confirmation that your social skills are lacking. Don't do it.
Mini-Quiz For Reading Comprehension: True or False?
1. I am in Mensa.
A. True.
B. False.
Answer Key: FALSE. ALWAYS FALSE. Don't keep reading until you can get this one cold without even thinking about it, smarty-pants.
Charmaine is the area manager for "a Fortune 500 company." Andrea's patchouli-scented companies have a combined worth of $10 million. Bryce started his own construction company three years ago. Theresa currently owns two...something unimportant, because we cut to Lenny, who "ran a multimillion-dollar company back in Russia." Pepi went to Columbia and is an attorney, Allie has a Harvard MBA, Tammy has a "major" investment firm in Beverly Hills, Dan is the father of two boys, and Sean was valedictorian at Southampton University, a distinction memorably compared by British forum poster quaintirene to "Admiral of the Swiss Navy." All of this is going on in the force-ten winds of the outdoors. Even though they were just stuffed into the stupid plane a second ago. Why?
Trump: "Tell you what I'm gonna do." Due to his "great respect for Mensa," which obviously proves that Tarek has a "bigger I.Q. than anybody here, other than" Trump, says Trump, which is a house of bullshit cards built on the edge of a bullshit teacup in a bullshit house sliding down the side of bullshit Pompeii, Tarek is one PM. And since Allie went to Harvard, which is "second only to Wharton," where of course Trump went, if you didn't know, she's the other. So their election to PM for the first task is basically the result of Trump masturbating. Cool!
"Ladies first," of course, so Allie -- who looks so crazy! Tiny little head, hair all round atop it like a doll! -- points to the lady with the eyebrows, citing her "credentials" and "demeanor," which Allie apparently finds tiger-like in some way. The ongoing sorority game of Crap On Markus has left its taint on the show, now, as they quickly pick based on who's cutest. I actually kind of love it, because A) this show is stupid, and B) that's how the actual world actually works, so it's nice. We'll talk about Summer in a bit, w/r/t this factor. Tarek picks Dan, for the even dumber reason that "He's a parent, he has two boys. I respect that," which is our first example of how Tarek's not too fast on his feet, because he so should have answered better than that. Allie picks Andrea (whom Tarek wanted, because to run four different businesses somehow shows she has "creativity," but, like, wouldn't the pot stench tell you that?) and Tarek picks Bryce due to his pink tie. Allie picks Michael, whom she calls "the handsome [read: black] man in the orange tie," and Tarek takes "the lovely [read: Filipina] lady in the brown." Allie wants Sean, even though she, along with a lot of viewers, thinks his British accent might be fake (Trump and Carolyn scoff, because what's wrong with Sean goes so far beyond his posher-than-posh accent). She tells us she picked Sean not because of his accent, but because of his presence. And his accent.
And so but who's left? The two fat lawyers; the child; the dumb, trashy-looking one; and the Russian. I love this show so, so much. I want to marry it and have its condescending, bullying, violent little babies. Seriously: How much would Season Four Chris and Josh have rocked this season? Tarek takes Lee, since he's not fat, a foreigner, or a girl. Allie takes Pepi, because he's the only decent one left. Tarek takes Summer, so Allie is stuck with Brent. Brent, who has little cartoon confusion whirlwind lines emanating from his head at all times. Brent, whose only voice is that of a severely pissed-off Mickey Mouse. Brent, who even in the hurricane of a Long Island runway is sweating like a freak. Brent, who might as well be wearing a sign around his neck that reads "CLUELESS + UNPLEASANT + ENTITLED," with a fucking propeller beanie spinning around on his frumpy little head. He's not even funny like Markus, or wrong-footed ambitious like Markus, or weird-looking and funny and froggy like Markus. He doesn't even have the Farrah-feathered locks of Markus. I miss Markus. ["Fired." -- Sars] Brent squeaks his lies at the camera, full of flaccid and undirected rage, simply surrounded by a confederacy of dunces: "It didn't really bother me...in high school, oftentimes I was the last one chosen. I wasn't bothered then, and quite frankly it didn't bother me...now."
Time for the Trump awkward segue of the week, starting at "Aviation is so cool" and ending at "Each team will have a Goodyear blimp to advertise Sam's Club," via "I often leave my giant veiny airplane tumescing at the end of any damn runway I please, and that's also advertising, because it has my name written on it." He then ascertains that they all know what Sam's Club is, and then explains what Sam's Club is. The task: Sell as many memberships as possible, either new members or upgrading current cardholders, and the team selling the most memberships wins.
Strange little Allie interviews about how, given that she's the PM, if they lose, her "neck is on the line," and then -- this might matter later, I don't know -- she and Pepi make friends as they leave the gusty old runway behind.
In the Synergy van, Allie's got the whole group in a circle around her, all about how she's "so pumped about this team!" because "we all went on instinct!" when picking teams, and somehow, thanks to fortune and instinct, she's ended up with "the nine most talented people here." Brent flumps about how the team should be called Killer Instinct Corp., which is dumb, and everyone's bored and irritated by this. Most of them in the right way, which is: "Stop yelling with that voice already," but Sean interviews smarmily: "Absolutely horrible...my opinion of him started to fall then," and he talks about how Brent's "delivery" is "almost awkward" and whatever, that's true, except for the "almost" part, and also: Look at your face, man. All you are is an accent. Pepi floats "Synergy," everybody nods, they all cheer. Brent cheers. A little louder than everybody else. I don't think he's ever really known what was going on, so much.
Tarek's van is full of scarier-looking people, basically, all looking up at him adoringly. "Being in Mensa, it allows me to think on my feet very quickly --" No, it doesn't. It allows you to think about thinking with the greatest of ease, but you've still not said a damn thing, other than how smart and classy you are. "The ability to think quickly and think on your feet separates you from the pack." Tarek lectures them all about how he can "sum people up very quickly," which, admittedly isn't all that different from Allie's "instinct" stuff, except for how you don't want to sock him in his beautiful jaw. He floats the team name Gold Rush, "because it's a double entendre! Gold Rush! We are all trying to make a lot of money one day..." and we don't hear "entendre" number two, but the first one is enough for me to barf. They all nod and kiss his stupid ass. Summer is faker than fake, and dumb as hell too. I'll tell you right now she gets cobra'd, so there's no suspense, but seriously, Summer. What is it that you do? "I thought, I hit the jackpot with this task! I am a small business owner! Sam's Club is out there to help the small business!" Emphasis mine, because: Are you in reality retarded, lady? "Sam's Club helps the small business"? What Sam Walton giveth to "the small business," Sam Walton taketh away, I guess. Moron. Her basic argument, about the task, and her worth in this task, is this: "I know how to use my Sam's Card, so we're good."
Lenny the Russian, very deadpan, kind of scary, but I think a very funny man: "I know the area around Sam's Club. Left and right." The Sam's the team is dealing with is in New Brunswick, where he happens to live. They meet up with a graphic designer to discuss their promotional stuff, and get all creative because Tarek demands "new creative taglines." Theresa screams at the graphics guy: "The logo! Do something with the arrow that says it's a big deal!" She confides in us that "Sometimes you can overanalyze marketing, but Sam's [existing marketing strategy] works." They all agree that "Come see the big deal!" is the best slogan ever, but forget that this is the only idea they've had or thing they've done, and that "The Big Deal" doesn't actually exist beyond: "Hey! It's Sam's! In New Brunswick!" Five little words, call it a day.
Meanwhile. Allie's thinking that "out in the burbs," the blimp will "be a real eye-catcher!" I love everything that Allie says, it's so "burbs" this and "eye-catcher" that. You know? Like just her very round head bobbling on top of her tiny body, spitting out Donna Reed-meets-Faith Popcorn tidbits. Andrea the Hippie goes searching her giant brain for, you know, a reason people would come to the store, putting her above Tarek in terms of getting it. Brent suggests -- I'm not lying about this at all -- a "karaoke machine outside," and then smiles limply as they give him fifteen reasons that's dumb as hell. Allie's like, "It's stay-at-home moms out buying bulk goods at 10 AM, Brent. Not short-bus lawyers who've never been outside before." She gapes around at anybody that will look her in the eye so that they can bond over Brent's cluelessness. It's a team-building exercise! She interviews, "But I appreciate his energy! He's full of it. Full...full of energy. That is." She giggles. She's either twice the bitch I think, or five times the actress, or totally above-board, and I can't tell which, because that seemed totally innocent. "Oops, I called him a jackass in the middle of telling nice white lies. Hee!" I'm looking forward to the opportunity to get to know Allie more, because PM or not, we don't see a whole lot of her this week. And I can't say that I wouldn't have rolled my eyes twice as hard as she does, with the Brent stuff, because he bugs the hell out of me. So who am I to judge? I'm a very non-judgmental person, you know that. So I'm not about to call her on noting and having a laugh at the expense of Brent, who is worthless and should be struck by a car mid-snivel.
Brent suggests another idea -- he's full of them, which is one thing better than Markus, because even though Brent comes up with fifteen very shitty ideas, that's still fifteen better than the unstoppable river of nothing that pours out of Markus all day long, and at least it can spark brainstorming in the clued -- this time, "Free makeovers! Women love to get their hair done!" Um, I appreciate that he's responding to the feedback, I really do. It gives me hope for him. However, we have a term for ladies who get their hair done sitting in a chair on the cement floors of Sam's Club: "Welcome K-Mart Shoppers." Andrea gently tries to explain to Brent that, yes, ladies do enjoy getting their hair done and dishing on celebrities and gossiping about each other, the television is right on that point -- not that she would know, because she refuses to accept "celebrities" and "television" as concepts -- but they like to do these things in a more clean, upscale, beautiful environment than the sales floor at the local warehouse store. "I like to go to a very nice salon," she kindly tells him. Tammy floats massages and Allie is very, very excited about this ("Free manicures! Free massages! Heck, I'd come!"), and everybody's excited, and Brent is super-pissy because, after all, he suggested "haircuts," meaning that he's the genius responsible for the massages, in some way clear only to him. Apparently the grab-bag free-for-all of group brainstorming has passed Brent by. Along with the idea of working with a "group."
"Maybe she's THREATENED by me!" Brent squeals to the camera, and I go from simple bullying dislike to actual disgust. Yeah, that's it, you fucking chucker. She's so intimidated by your ability to come up with shitty ideas and waste time that she simply refused to give you credit for Tammy's idea like she should have. I mean, I can follow the train of thought, but it's about how he wants them to understand that he's not completely a non-contributor, because he did spark the discussion that led to the thing, regardless of the fact that blowing him off is their new hobby. And yeah, "random word-spouter" is a good position for a group brainstorm; everybody should have one. Creativity works best when bouncing off, or synthesizing, or limited by, incompatible ideas. The forced recapitulation of garbage into the art, or noise into the signal, or pushing against a wall to increase resistance and flexibility. (That's why all the quizzes and stuff.) Brent's probably the most useful team member, in this first task, because they all automatically have to think outside his lame box, take his ideas apart and see what works, like a crew of Markuses. Whereas without him, nobody's going to venture anything, or question anybody else's ideas -- witness Gold Rush -- because they're all feeling each other out as a team. So he's useful, in that way. But it's a nonsensical short cut to jump the gap from "please treat me like a human being" to "prove that you accept me by applauding every time somebody turns my crappy ideas into something salable," because it leaves out the, you know, actual creative person when you do that.
Use Your Life Experience! It's time to pick a restaurant. Your weird maiden aunt with the bird feeders keeps mentioning places that closed down long ago, or stuff that sounds made up, or that one restaurant which is clearly a Mob front. Do you:
A. Bench her. Stick her doily-tatting ass in a blimp.
B. Nod your head at every interruption, getting nowhere, as the sugar crash renders the rest of the car into people like in 28 Days Later.
C. Institute the "talking stick" or "conch shell" method of debate.
D. Keep it cooking while she goes on and on, mentioning random bullshit, on the off chance that somebody will actually have an opinion as a result. ("Well, Doris, we're not actually in Hawai'i as you seem to think, but you have reminded me of a tiki-themed burger place a few blocks away. Are we feeling that?")
Answer Key:
Not A: It's the purpose of a good manager to actually use what's there, instead of turning somebody off based on what's not -- the whole "give Markus a thing and he'll tell you what's wrong with it" theory. Everybody's got a skill, or at least a use. Find it out.
Not B: Because there's no reason to encourage her at the expense of the team goals. By setting a poor example as manager, everybody will follow your lead. Misplaced "politeness" is trumped by getting the job done.
Not C: We're all fucking adults here, and it'll fall apart anyway, and it's disheartening to have to wait your turn while Aunt Doris tells everybody a story about her nonexistent sister that died on the Lusitania.
It's D! She's gonna keep going regardless, and that's a pretty easy snowball to get started, and once you do it, everybody else will actually start thinking, instead of just wishing she'd keel over already. Use what you've been presented with to better the team as a whole.
Tarek talks with his hands, overexplaining to Summer about how she needs to call a bunch of nearby restaurants and explain her whole "Sam's Club is for the small business" idea, and then beg them to come down during their narrow window tomorrow for...no reason at all, beyond her asking them politely. She tries to explain that it's the dinner rush, and that as a restaurant owner, that's not only rude but makes your entire enterprise look sketchy, but he's not hearing it, because she's wearing eye shadow and he doesn't have time for "No." He's like, "Just get it done." Which is him being an asshole, but he's got nothing on Summer: She calls one place, gets shut down politely, and then...turns herself off like little Vicky on Small Wonder, staring blankly into space for the remainder of the day. Instead of doing anything whatsoever. And her issues with this -- that it's a really bad time of day, that she doesn't actually have anything to tell these people beyond "Hello!" -- are true, and even task-losing, but she would seem to have forgotten that she has other options. She could send out a mass email, as one forum poster suggested, and have the entire fucking thing done in five minutes. She could call at another time. She could force the entire team to understand that there's no hook here -- Lee would agree, and I'm sure others as well -- and try to work some of the budget into making at least a gesture toward incentivizing this non-event. Instead, she just sighs and stares into space, which makes her a bigger asshole than Tarek. There's no higher authority here, she doesn't have anybody to appeal to later: "What did you do?" "Nothing! Can't you see how helpful that was?!" And in fact, she's doing worse than nothing, because now she doesn't even have a defense against the ultimate question: "Stupid and wrong though it is, why not just make the calls? Couldn't conceivably hurt, dude." The inability to come up with viable alternatives is one thing -- maybe she's just not creative -- but the fact that she's cool with doing literally nothing, beyond hugging herself with the knowledge that she's heard of Sam's, is rather grotesque. Charmaine's like, "Summer seems nice enough, you'd think she'd at least be able to connect with these people on some level, but for some reason she gave up after one phone call. Which was unsuccessful."
Trump's Weekly Wisdom: "Change The Team!" This has nothing to do with the episode, but basically, Trump is of the opinion that you always have to know "when it's time to pull somebody" and time "to change the squad." You don't want them to fail, because your team will go down with them. "Pull that person before they fail." Which is bad advice, most of the time, and not so much "management" as "refusal to manage," but especially dumb here: Yeah, Summer's an asshole, but her mistake was in doing nothing. Which, if you benched her, she'd still be doing. And frankly, if anybody would look away from the hypnotic freaky power of Tarek long enough to listen to her or Lee, this wouldn't have been an issue in the first place. "You didn't do enough to publicize the fact that nothing in particular was happening!" is not a valid critique. So my feeling is that the responsibility for this loss goes to Tarek anyway, for having no game plan whatsoever beyond what Trump gave them: a Sam's Club and a blimp. Now, if we're talking about Brent, I agree more, but it's still wrong, because he's not actively ruining anything, and is providing about four different needed contributions by contributing none at all. So whatever. Not to mention the fact that two team members are going to end up in the blimps anyway, which is an automatic bench, so it's not exactly revelatory to tell us about it, this week. "If only they had known to Change The Team, they might have...oh, that was built in to the task? What am I yelling about, then? You're fired!"
Brent bitches about how putting him in the blimp today is a "waste" of his "talents" and he is "very upset about it," because he's not a "troublemaker" and -- yes, still -- he "started the brainstorming that came up with that idea." Which: there is nowhere else he should be, because if his freaky aggressive pointlessness in the group meeting is any indication, he'd probably cause anyone he approached to cancel their membership. "No, honey, they've got sweaty crazy people working there now. I can't do it anymore. No bulk goods are worth that." So he complains and bitches and it's like, he's like a human brownout. Like there's so anger and disgust and whatever, but it just doesn't come through at all. Like in ten years his foundation's going to be cracked and there will be spiders and finally somebody's going to say, "No wonder there was no water pressure; this pipe has been leaking into a standing puddle for ten years." You know? Lots of hustle, not a lot of energy. "So at this point, I've kept my mouth shut [HUGE FUCKING LIE] and I hope we win the task but...I am a true. Team. Player. But I definitely am not happy about it." Because to really "give his all," I guess, he requires that everyone follow his horrible suggestions to a letter, or else he's being "obstructed" by the shallow volleyball players of his high school years. Fuck that. You're thirty years old and yet have not noticed that other people have rational thoughts as well, and thus might be able to teach you a little something. Go join Mensa, ya douchebag.
Sean talks his super-classy British talk into the PA, and we see people getting massages and whatever, but, like, no matter how British, no matter how strong and capable the masseurs, you're still surrounded by the smell of cardboard and baby wipes and old ladies with shit glued to their sweatshirts. You know? There's something deeply unsanitary about cost-effective shopping solutions. You're standing on the cement floor of a Sam's Club, with a hundred layers of wax over wads of chewed gum, until they're like part of the floor. I don't want a stranger touching me in a Sam's Club. I'm certainly not taking any clothes off in a Sam's Club. "Cheers," Sean smarms. "Bye bye." Meanwhile, the rest of them are, you know, actually selling. Michael's charming, and Allie's loving it -- "He's not gonna let a single sale go through the door" -- and he's dazzling as he offers to stand with a customer's cart and kid while she gets a manicure. This is a person who gets the appeal: "You deserve to be pampered. Anybody that shows up at fucking Sam's Club at 10 AM or whatever deserves a medal." Allie projects that the "women really take to Sean." Or maybe she's right, I don't know. He makes me want to vomit. She estimates "95% of his sales" were to women. "Because it sounds so good!" Ah, the "burbs." George loves the whole strategy -- and if he knew what Gold Rush was up to, he'd be even more impressed at the fact that Synergy has any kind of strategy at all -- and notes how they put the two pampering areas up front, before they start shopping, and then make contact with the distracted visitors in a "nice, friendly manner." It really is smart. It's got that whole real estate vibe, like, "Let me wrap you in this lovely blanket and here are some cookies and some hot tea, and now that you're comfortable, let's talk about the buyer's market."
Tarek laughs hugely, fakely, dramatically, self-conscious-teen-girl-ily, staring up at the blimp in the parking lot like it's the first time he's seen snow. It sounds like this: "Ha! Ha! Ha." He walkies with Lenny, up in the blimp, who's there as the navigator and not, you know, because he's benched. Like Summer, who still has not been turned back on. They discuss the route he'll take, and then Tarek tells us in private that she's up there because he had "no confidence that Summer would be at all successful on the sales floor, given that she didn't complete the one simple task that I asked her to do, which was call people up on the telephone." Well, I would think from talking to her for five seconds that you'd know she'd be great at this, because not all tasks are equal, and her whole stake in this task has been talking about how great Sam's is, which is what the sales part of the task requires, but what do I know, Tarek? I clearly can't "sum people up" very well. Inside, Dan schmoozes and is suddenly raging attractive, and Tarek explains to Carolyn that "the first 485" people will get a free -- and oh so hideous -- duffle bag, to "add excitement to getting there early," which: Tarek, they were going to do that anyway. You haven't given them a reason beyond "the novelty of blimps" to change their schedule in any way. My grandmother, a harsh woman but one with an ear for a phrase, could have taken this ass down so fast with her ultimate killer line: "Breeding tells, you know." Dude, his face would melt like the Nazis in Lost Ark.
Carolyn confirms they get the bag either way, just for showing up, and then inspects the ugly things. Carolyn makes Tarek say out loud that they are "gift bags" without "gifts" inside them. Making them "bags." Also making them "more useless crap to deal with right now on top of this 18-pound box of Frosted Mini-Wheats I'm juggling while my baby attempts to turn her clothing inside out while still wearing it. Thanks." Then: Lee is awesome! "Mensa. Okay. But we don't have that big idea, that huge thing? It's this 'Big Day At Sam's Club,' but...what's the big thing?" Theresa -- with the sharp, darting movements of a truly calming psychologist -- says that she and Lee and Leslie were "crushing it," and that she rocks because she has "more of an excitement level," which is "exciting" -- cut to some customers, not sure if they're just irritated or should attempt to flee the scene, manic Theresa, scary Theresa, yelling about "percentages" at old people. I think I like her, though. So far. I think the meltdown when she's PM should be bastard good television. Theresa explains to us about how Lee was wearing a suit and talking in terms of "business consulting," and I really like that, the semiotics of that and the basic distraction of it, too. It's a smart move. She says that -- I'm guessing this is "with suit" only, since he looks about 19 -- he "commands," and that people were looking to him for information. "We were a force to be reckoned with! We were going to win this competition!" They all agree at length on how awesome they are, and do the whole hands-in, screaming "Gold Rush!" If you've seen this show, you know what automatically happens .
Into the Boardroom! Trump asks Lee why he's not wearing the same thing as everybody else -- both teams are color-coordinated, so Lee sticks out even to Trump's rheumy eye -- but Lee explains that it was because he was giving "business analysis advice to the customers." Lee might be the sleeper this year: he's not only stood out with his team, but he's stood out both visually and task-wise in front of Trump himself. And the Boardroom is just beginning! Trump asks whether the team is down with the whole "You do your thing, I'll do mine" of Lee's getup, and Tarek -- proud manager vibe, lots of teeth, patronizing and paternalistic and unearned -- says he looks "very handsome."
Trump turns to Synergy. (Marvel, if you will, at how many times I've mentioned that word without going to the Jem place. I'm impressed, so should you be. But I can't hold out much longer.) Allie tells him she thinks they "did fantastic," and that the other team, and the Trump/Viceroy department, will be shocked at how well they did. Dan worries cutely, sitting at Tarek's hand. Summer's "fun" hair has gone even crazier, just this sloppy, blowsy bird-nest on her overly made-up face, but she's speaking wisdom: "It went rather well...there were things I would have changed." Tarek's shock and horror are so unbelievable and absolute that I want to stick a fork in his hand. Fucking deal with yourself, Tarek. Please. Saying it could have gone better is not a personal attack on you. The only person, in fact, lame enough to engage in personal attacks is: You. In five minutes, and at two-second intervals thereafter.
Carolyn gives the Gold Rush report: they used "simple marketing techniques," and the slogan "It's a big deal," and they sold 40 memberships. Carolyn is a spinmaster, because "simple marketing techniques" here means "slightly less advanced than those of the drunk carny-looking guys that sign you up for credit cards your freshman year." George says that Synergy did things differently, using the blimp, manicures and massages to create an actual event. They sold 43 memberships (which is not a huge margin, but the only salespeople we saw nailing it -- or even just making sales -- were on Gold Rush, besides Michael and maybe Sean, so I tend to the think the massage/manicure stuff was valuable regardless) and Brent yells, "Yes!" as Michael embraces him and Allie. Brent! Too much! Stop trying so hard! It's the essence of cool! No trying! Zip it!
Synergy gets to go to "the Wharton Club," known by most people as The Penn Club, and they'll get to, as Trump tells them -- Brent's stupid head boggling all over the place at the powerful advantage he's going to take of this -- "You're going to get into my head for an hour." God. That's like...I don't even know. I don't ever want inside Trump's head.
Up at the suite, Tarek is yelling at his minions about how Summer "has got to go," and how they lost by three memberships. Which is true, and Summer needs a good hard slap for it, but is...beside the point, and the fact that only Lee, and possibly Lenny, get that they're all inches from following Tarek all Helter Skelter into the fray is really creepy. I prefer to believe that, in fact, they all know he's the hotter form of David Koresh, and are just playing along for now, but I doubt it. Darling Dan is the full-on Squeaky Fromme, getting very fucking intense and proselytical about how there's one person that "didn't give 110 percent," and how if asked they'd all "point at one person." And Theresa is like the Ulrike Meinhof: "Who throws the entire team under the bus before you even know if you've got a winning team?" It's a bit early for the "throwing under the bus" analogy, if there is in fact a valid time for that, but also: crazy superlative projection much, my Psychotherapist/Wellness-Center-Owning friend? "The task fell down because of Summer: her negativity, her ineffectiveness, and her lack of follow-through...she has to go. Buh-bye." That's so awesome that eight bajillionaires could not combat the insidious influence of one ditzy ho from Huntington Beach. Her unwillingness to dial a phone was simply too powerful. Dan and Charmaine and everybody scream their asses off about how she needs to go, nearly clapping in unison, but Lee is having a huge Orthodox problem with how lashon ha-ra kills not just the person who speaks it and the person of the receiving end of it, but also the person who hears it. He is also, on a more secular note, packing some huge guns, for having such a skinny neck. Lee speaks up to Tarek about the complete lack of a creative idea, and Tarek stares at him in creepy slow motion.
Meanwhile, at the Synergy lunch, everybody nods, no matter what, and Brent nods too hard, laughs too hard, claps at weird times, tries too hard, is too much. Trump offers some amazingly bullshit wisdom at this luncheon. "What I do to get rid of pressure is say, 'It doesn't matter.'" They all nod like idiots. Andrea is wearing some kind of magic dream-catching necklace. Trump continues, saying something I hope we can all remember for the rest of our lives, as an example of what can happen when you have so much money that you build yourself a permanent residence up your own ass. "We think it's so important, what we're doing -- and you know, especially for us it's important -- and if you really think about it, you have an earthquake in India where 100,000 people die; you have some other huge problem going on in Africa where so many people are just being killed viciously, and when you really think about it, what we're doing...isn't really so important." He opens his hands at the end, like, "And there was the wisdom."
But like, who knows where this vital info came from? This "huge problem" in "Africa" where "so many people are being killed viciously": can you elaborate? Can you name a country in Africa? Or might you have just said "in Asia," or "in Red Hook" or whatever, and assumed that, God willing, something horrible was happening in those places? Because the vagueness and generally clueless demeanor would suggest that, in fact, and contrary to your entire point, those things are not so much important to you at all, in any way, and this is actually just a handjob, given in a vacuum, to nobody in particular. "What's more important than my success? The fact that somewhere, somebody is imperiled, or something. I really mean it. It takes the stress off." Everybody clinks glasses, Brent sends back his steak because it's too rare, and Sean is just "feeling so good about the whole afternoon." They drink, to Trump, to success, to minorities dying of something somewhere. To Synergy.
Summer and Lenny are hanging out in the kitchen while the witch hunt continues on the balcony outside: "I called one customer...sitting, waiting for a gimmick, a hook...waiting for something to offer tomorrow. I did say, 'I don't think this is an appropriate time or environment to call these companies. It's phony to say you know about their business and can help their business -- and then call during dinner rush.'" Which is all true, and salient, but there are two extra things going on here. First is that she put herself into the "I'm a restaurant owner just like you" box, and Tarek didn't care about that, because the sales department doesn't have that "I need a reason to call you" gene, which is what makes them good, and scary to those of us who do have that gene. Remembering not to be a nuisance, or throwing enough smoke and mirrors around so that they don't notice you're being a nuisance, is key to pulling off a cold call like this. And second, she's just rehearsing her Boardroom speech on Lenny anyway, and it's boring for her, for you, for Lenny, for me. Lenny tells her she'll probably end up in the Boardroom, and it's possible he will too, for the simple reason that they were benched on the blimp. He interviews that this fact means they technically "worked less" on the task, regardless of how important they were. He's got Tarek's number. "When we go to Boardroom," he explains calmly and intensely, "be quiet, please. Don't bring anything up. Just be quiet. We'll kick asses. We'll be fine." So, as we'll see, he's got Summer's number too.
Tarek corners Lee in the bedroom. "I'm committed to not bringing you into the Boardroom...but I need you to stand by me with Trump." Lee protests, "It's just...you didn't have it, creatively." Tarek: "I just warn you, if you bring up to Donald Trump anything you would've changed or done differently, you are immediately going to set yourself up as a target." Lee's worried, which is much classier than my response would have been.
Quick Quiz! It's the first task of a fifteen-week job interview. The one person who dares to question you -- and is just as lacking in task history and track record as you, and has just as much right to be there as you do, and is obviously correct -- has enough backbone and balls to tell you where the problem was. Do you:
A. Thank him for the input, elicit more, and use this information to better your campaign?
B. Ignore anything that doesn't fit your rigorous and yet vague plan of "how things will go," given the fact that everybody else is silent and still trying to get over your enchanting face, and not sure where they stand at all because this shit just started, and are ready to give in to the asshole just delusional enough to assume he knows best?
C. Ignore the input both on-site and post-loss, because clearly it's Summer's fault, because neither your helpful team member nor anyone else on the team is so richly laurelled as to have paid fifty-two dollars cash money, yearly, for the privilege of referring to him- or herself as a member of Mensa?
D. Jump the entire fucking idiotic gun the first time somebody questions you, because you've thought through your entire "strategy" for the months leading up to this, because it's like all you have in life, like those hosers on Survivor that get all "Wanna be in my alliance?" in the first week when there are like fifty people on the island and nobody even knows anybody's name, resting comfortably in the delusion that in a team of nine independently successful adults, this one aberrative person is the only one with an opinion contrary to yours, by making pussy intimidation moves and "threatening" overtures? And, thus, ignoring the fact that you've just created a counter-alliance, simply by being a dick?
Back to the Boardroom! Trump is gonna start the ruckus right: "So, Tarek. You're a Mensa genius -- how does it feel to lose?" It "hurts" Tarek: "Not because I'm in Mensa [fucking okay?] but because I'm a wild competitor!" As the PM, Tarek takes "responsibility for this loss," but immediately busts a back flip with the independent clause: "But it's important to note that we lost not because of a lack of leadership, we lost because two people on this team did not step up and execute the tasks to which they were assigned." He's talking about Summer and Lenny, all of a sudden, and I don't know if it's editing, or if he's just horrified that Lenny is in the kitchen talking to Summer at all. Since he's already threatened to eat Lee's face off if he questions him, it's not out of the realm of possibility, and in any case, how fucking disingenuous is this to even think, let alone say aloud? "The two people I marginalized simply didn't do anything at all!" Choad. At least use those sexy brain cells to get around the fact that the point of the task as designed by the producers is to cause exactly this kind of friction. ["The 'I was a good leader; they're just bad followers' thing is, bar none, my most loathed Boardroom 'defense.' The tasks 'were assigned' BY YOU, underpants! It is therefore on you to make sure they get 'stepped up to' and 'executed'! MANAGE, Project Manager, God!" -- Sars] I would have made a proviso in this task that if either PM neglected to bring back either of the blimpies to the Boardroom -- having figured out the manipulation going on here -- and maybe called Trump and the Viceroys on it, he or she would somehow receive exemption week. It doesn't fit the "real world interview analogue" paradigm particularly well, but then, neither does the show. Trump brings up the fact that Summer apparently announced that they were going to lose the task, based I assume on the lack of a credible idea backing it up, but Tarek doesn't think that matters at all, because he's still thinking that his nonexistent idea was brill, and would have worked like gangbusters if only Summer had done the stupid thing he'd assigned her. If only Lenny had stepped up and been in two places at once like he was supposed to.
Lenny explains patiently that his task, as assigned, was to direct the blimp, because he knows the area intimately, and that he did this, so the whole "failure to execute" is coming out of nowhere. Trump doesn't even look to Tarek this time: "Is he not a leader? Or did he just do a bad job this time?"
Flash Quiz!
A. Shut the fuck up and listen to what Trump just accidentally told you.
A. Shut the fuck up because you've said your piece and answered Tarek's charges perfectly fine -- Trump might just send you up to the suite in a sec.
A. Shut the fuck up because Trump's trying to trap you; both answers are easily twistable to disloyalty, which is as sneaky as Trump can possibly get, which is: not at all.
A. Shut the fuck up because you're too big an idiot to help your own case, Summer, and you're gonna win a taxi ride unless you surf this one into the beach.
Answer Key: A.
Lenny replies honestly and diplomatically, which is the best thing to pretending you have no idea what Trump means: "I don't want to end up having a leader like Tarek." Tarek pisses his panties, so astounded is he, and Trump goes for the extra moron point: "You know what? When they put you in the blimp, they sent you to Siberia." I can see him saying that to anybody, like, I don't even know if in that second he was thinking of Lenny as Russian. You know what I mean? It's a poor choice of words either way, because it's dumb, but still. Lenny makes a sad face, either because he just realized Trump's right, or because he feels sorry for Trump.
Trump turns to Lee, and it's very exciting, because it's a moment of truth: is Lee going to prevaricate like Jodie Foster in Panic Room and pretend everything's fine, or is he going to risk a boot to the head by being honest about the task? The Percival edit he's been getting, you already know the answer, wrapped in fifteen gauzy layers of lashon ha-ra vaccination. "Severe lack of...mismanagement. No creative process whatsoever. Aside from giving out duffle bags, no juices flowing at all." Theresa, going all don't you touch my cult leader, busts into it: "Excitement! Motivating the team! And getting the respect of...most of the team, was excellent!" Trump nearly rolls his eyes: "Um, he didn't get the respect of Lee or the Russian." "The Russian"? I don't think so. Theresa launches back into Summer: "She gave up on the team at the time of the phone calls." Which is true. However, Summer's right about her angle on this as well: "I know the restaurant business -- mine runs like a ship." She talks a bit about how you don't call during the dinner hour, which is the hour she last remembers before somebody recharged her and she woke up in the bedroom. Carolyn's on her like a hawk, because good answer or not, she's been outclassed in this game from the beginning. "How many people did you call?" One. "You only called one person." Carolyn makes her scary "case closed" face.
Charmaine takes, actually, the smartest possible approach, managing to say all the true things and none of the crazy, in a velvet accent that sounds totally weird and awesome coming out of her face, that it wasn't person's fault, but she can damn sure tell you who she'd want to go home. It's really cool, and basically describes the entire situation precisely. I like Charmaine a lot. Trump pushes that, again, Summer correctly predicted their loss in this task -- and he keeps saying it without the footnote that makes this a point in her favor, instead of just making her look like some weird, overly-tanned Kassandra with AquaNet toxicity -- and my man Dan is pretty awesome too: "Her outspokenness did not present itself until the Boardroom." I believe that, because all I saw was 404 on her face the entire task. Well, that and discount bin Maybelline, in a four-inch layer.
Trump asks Tarek to pick two people -- "Or three. Or one." -- to bring back in. Tarek, now that he can pick three, has the perfect solution for his sickly little nasty ego: everybody he thinks is mean. Summer, Lenny...and Lee. Lee laughs heartily at this, because how sickening can you be? That's just spite. That's all it is. There's nothing to back it up: Lee was great in the sales part of the task, and the whole team knows it. The whole team shivers with the cognitive dissonance of St. Augustine: how can Tarek be so wonderful and all-powerful, and still do something so shitty?
The rest of the team, still confused and smarting from all the doublethink, heads upstairs. I think that Dan is maybe hotter than Tarek; I wouldn't mind if Tarek went home tonight. Those two concepts are not actually related, but they're what I was thinking at the time. Inside the Boardroom, Carolyn says that Tarek actually "led the team fairly well," which is true in its own limited way, but that Summer should have made the calls somehow, and that Lenny was in the blimp, and probably didn't contribute too much. I don't think I've ever been so unimpressed with Carolyn's analysis. George totally steps up to the plate and picks up the slack: "First of all, [Trump] picked him. He didn't volunteer, and that makes it slightly different." He and Carolyn agree that if Summer had done anything with all her intense knowledge of the arcane works of Sam's Club, it might have made the difference.
Back once more! "Lee, you have disdain for Tarek?" Lee admits that he kind of does, now, because everyone on the team said he did "a phenomenal job," and Tarek interrupts him: "...And you told me I did a good job!" Which is a pretty good point to make: On reflection, I've changed my mind -- just like you did. Trump tells him to shut up and let Lee talk, and Summer speaks up: "I heard the conversation, he didn't say that." Oh snap! Tarek stutters. Lee: "I said you did some things well." He turns to Trump: "The second I said maybe you should fire Tarek, he brings me into the Boardroom? It shows dishonesty." Tarek scoffs, and Trump asks whether or not he was being creepy with Lee and told him he was safe. "Yes sir, but that was when I thought I could only bring two people in!" Summer's like, "You still could've, douchebag," which is awesome, and stores up a lot of the good will she's going to need in a few.
Trump asks why he picked these three, and Tarek repeats that they "didn't execute on the task," and Trump turns to Lee, but really he's talking to himself: "Are you less impressed with Mensa now?" As though anybody in this entire Boardroom, on this floor, in this building, is naïve enough to have Trump's man-crush on Mensa. "I...have respect for people in Mensa?" Lee extemps, because...huh? Like if the guy was in the S.C.A. or whatever, Trump would be like, "Do you respect tools that dress up in frilly costumes less?" And Lee would have to be like, "I...think they seem like nice people? What are you talking about?" Tarek wigs: "You think I'm unintelligent?" in this kind of roidy way, and Lee is delightful, all, "Um, yeah I think you're unintelligent." Trump: "I don't think he's unintelligent, but maybe...lacks common sense?"
Answer Key: A.
Lee nods and Tarek gets pissed, and Trump presses his angry little buttons: "Okay then, why Lenny?" Lenny is beautiful. "Because he doesn't like me, dude." Tarek wigs, all, "He did nothing! He did not! Step up! When he was called to step up! He is a communist and an atheist! Who does not step up when required!" George mentions the value that Lenny added, and all that. Trump: "Didn't this thing fail because of you? You can't blame him for being on a blimp." [A.] "I blame them for their effort," Tarek begins to say for the millionth time, and Trump's like, "Well, but leadership, though. Listen, it's clearly personal with Lenny and Lee and they shouldn't even be here." Tarek insolently mutters about how they didn't -- you know it! -- "step up."
Carolyn jumps all up in Summer's ass some more: "So you made no phone calls and then you hung out in a freakin' blimp, basically?" Did this happen on seasons? Because last year, she seemed predisposed toward the women's concerns, and when she was harder on them, it was because corporate life is harder on them, and she, I thought, made that mental process clear. But now it feels like Rush Week and Carolyn's all, "Nice bra straps, whore. And did you see her shoes?" Which, with Summer, is actually the correct response, because she's the girl you don't want in your sorority, because she's going to get drunk and sleep with Kevin G and catch a case of the Mathletes at like, the first mixer. And she's not doing anything for the average GPA, either: "What I contributed were...not things that everybody could see." Cobra! Right there! Trump yells, "Come on! Give me a break!" That's maybe actually the dumbest possible thing, saying that. Carolyn gets all "dig a little deeper, fool": "So...tell me." Summer was "aware of the product." The end. That was...not everybody could see you sending out these vibes of intense knowledge? I can't even see that, and I'm invested not a whit. Trump's like, just make the calls. "Maybe you hit, maybe you don't hit." That's a good point, actually: what skin is it off your ass to just do it? Because it might cut into your sitting-around time? Summer explains that the first call was not a glowing success, because the mean woman on the phone was all, "We'll call you back," and she looks at them like, "Clearly I had to stop, before something even worse happened." Carolyn's all, "But so, I'm still trying to figure out what you did the whole time? What did you contribute to this team? This is the third time I've asked." And honestly it's more like the fifth, but Summer's kind of confusing. "I had product knowledge." It's fucking Sam's Club. You go in, a person of diminished mental capacity says hello wearing a smock, you fill up a forklift with more Pop-Tarts than a family of four could reasonably consume, and then you...it's a store! Exchanging currency for goods! It's just, like, shopping! "I can properly operate 'shopping'! This is priceless information! My years in the industry have given me intense shopping skills! I almost never fuck up by accidentally shoplifting a flat of Diet Coke, or by trying on a bucket of buffalo wings thinking they are apparel."
Trump asks if Lenny would be "disappointed" if he fired Summer, and the answer is: Wait, who exactly? Anybody but Tarek? Yes. "She's a strong woman, she's practical." George jumps Tarek from the other angle. "Tarek, why didn't you give something away, food or something? [Food is like 90% of George's appreciation in any given task, because he is adorable.] You had a budget." Tarek mentions the ironically-named "gift bags," and Lenny laughs. "Without gifts!" Tarek says it was a good call, the "gift" bags, and Trump's like, "Giving away...nothing?" Lee and Lenny laugh openly at him. "These people are laughing at you! I'm about to laugh myself!" There's a whole "You're from the Valley and I'm from Reseda" happening here, inside Tarek's weird little overcompensating mind, and he's about to wig about Nobody Laughs At The Tarek, but Summer stupidly interrupts. "You know what? Let me just say something real quick." Trump's like, "Answer Key: A? Remember? Why are you interrupting me when I'm knocking hell out of him? When I'm knocking him? What are you doing to yourself?" Her brain is just completely gone, I think. "I'm being truthful, and I'll always be truthful."
Trump, like, doesn't even know what that word even means, dude, so he gets to the point. "How stupid is that?" Lenny gets a little Brent around the edges: "It's stupid." Trump, getting laughs, goes into his cruel uncle routine where he can't shut up. "I'm about to fire this guy for being a horrible leader, and you keep interrupting me and stopping me from doing it." She interrupts every three words throughout that sentence, going on and on about something having to do with Tarek getting fired "in the truth." Send her ass home, dude. "You know what, Summer? You're fired." I said this in unison with Trump. Which is scarier than anything I've seen on this show, second to the whole Clay and Adam Sexapalooza Boardroom of Horror.
It's nice, because he's right, but also, she's dumb on a whole other level she clearly doesn't get, because: you're gonna disrespect the Trump? Lee and Lenny are now scared shitless, because he's off on a crazy thing, but he just tosses them out. They stand and file to the door, and things get crazy good as Trump calls after Tarek, "You didn't make it by much! She saved your ass with her own stupidity!" He nods, calmly agreeing: "Understood," which is the coolest thing he's done the whole episode. Lenny turns back around in the doorway, facing Tarek with dead, Dolph Lundgren "I vill break you" eyes. "Not for long." It is amazing and intense and very much makes me excited about the season.
Outside, Tarek is very effing decent, shaking Summer's hand and wishing her luck. "I'm sorry," he says. I haven't seen that, on the parts of this show I've seen previously, and it helps me deal with the fact of him. There's being a good man, and knowing how to get there, and it's not something you can do by sheer force of will, or by rowing crew or joining Mensa. But at least he wants something to be proud of, so maybe he'll grow out of it. I certainly hope so. She babbles stupidly at him, and exeunt.
Awesome part number three or four chronologically, but equal to or better than the Pine Barrens shit a second ago. "Sort of obvious there at the end, wasn't it?" Trump says this like a goober in a suit. Carolyn smirks so hard, the sidewalk outside Trump Tower groans and cracks. "...A little obvious before that," and the "…jackass" at the end of that sentence could set your ass on fire. Trump ends on a high note, though: "I'll tell you what: Tarek is totally overrated." Which I guess means that he's going to be around the whole season, lugging his dot-matrix smarty-pants certificates and daddy issues all over New York state.
"SEASON THE APPRENTICE IS HEADING TO L.A. AND IT'S GOING TO BE TOUGH," Trump shrieks at us in a bumper, and then Summer jabbers at us about how she's "happier with [herself] than [she's] ever been," and how "these bright people don't know half of what my family taught me without an education in my own home." Apparently her home also lacked punctuation, because I have no idea what she means by this.
Lessons learned: Don't bother dealing with people you can't interface. It's not your job, as a manager, to manage your employees. It's your job to banish them and then blame them for being banished. Demonstrating pettiness and trying to be "cutthroat" well ahead of the game is only cute if you're Hateful Jim, and even then, only if I'm watching you do it, because everybody else hates you. However, you will not be reprimanded beyond slight jeering if you do so, because it's not important to point the finger at the actual party to blame, because none of this is important, because we're fairly certain that somebody died in Africa once. Being totally hot and a genius is worth nothing if your entire life, history, persona are about self-loathing. If you grew up poor, it's best to learn nothing from it, because apparently you can always buy back your childhood with some gold-plated crap and a mannequin for a wife. Honor, respect, and real inner kindness might get you by, but they mean nothing to the gods of success. And if you honestly think that your self-identified brilliance exempts you from correcting your luridly party-girl and/or chess champion vibe, get real with the fact that people are exactly as shallow as you think they are, because that's how first impressions work. They don't know you got there from nothing, they don't know how smart you are, they don't know how funny your friends think you are: they see what you look like, and it's ugly but it's true and nobody's exempt, and you'll get busted just as bad for looking sloppy at thirty as you did when you were eight. Sorry.
week, Lenny and Brent lose their minds altogether, and it is awesome. Brent may or may not murder Stacy in the parlor with the monkey wrench. Ivanka Trump, it would seem, is awesome. That's breeding, people.