In observance of Rosh Hashanah, there will be no quizzes this week. We begin back with Stacy and Brent in the BR last week, Bill shrieking at Stacy about how ultimately the truth is unknowable, even though the whole thing was recorded on cameras, from various angles, for all time. Between that little vacation to Douchery last week, and the pointlessness of him in this week's episode, I think it's safe to say that Jacob is now over Bill entirely. I was never really under him, because he's boring and jumpy, but I didn't care enough about his two-dimensional ass to really worry about the toolishness until now. Bill has taught me to care.
Up in the suite, Andrea is explaining the Brent Conundrum, which is that everyone is so scared of his toxic touch that he will never be responsible enough for anything to get cobra'd -- that basically, they'll have to collectively throw themselves on the grenade and nominate him as PM, in order to get him fired. Which is a problem, because first of all, that's a dumb thing to do, right, but also: wrong, because not even that would work. The only thing that is going to get Brent out of there is a capricious "I hate you too much to ever hire you" firing by Trump, which is in fact how it's going to go down because that's how it's got to go down. Andrea has not completed this thought, but she's telling Roxanne, Allie, and Sean her thoughts, and it's hilarious because they're all goggling at each other like they're telling scary campfire stories, but really they're just talking about Brent, who is a Canadian insurance lawyer, in a penthouse suite, in New York City, with all the lights turned on. And yet he is still scarier than anything they've ever encountered. Allie shivers and intones a premonition that it is Brent who will return to the suite. Andrea interviews awesomely: "Brent is not manageable, he's not even employable! I don't know how he makes his living!" She says that if he comes back, she wants to go home. I don't think she means that. I also don't think she realizes how lame that is.
Downstairs, Bill watches creepily and delightedly as Stacy gets fired, because he hates her and wishes her ill. Brent returns to the suite wishing everybody a happy Rosh Hashanah in a booming voice. It's disgusting, because Brent has been thinking about his entrance all the way up the elevator, which jackass option he should pick, what stupid cliché he could yell as he walked in, what flavor of trying-too-hard and sucking-too-much would really serve the evening best, and this...this is what he picked. "Happy Rosh Hashanah!" Not to be outmatched in the Douchebag Olympics (just like the Special ones, only nobody wins), Andrea grunts "No" and runs off to cry like a little baby. I'm sorry, I love Andrea, but that is some twee as fuck right there. He makes me cry, and for the same reasons, but I don't do it on camera, and could you also lighten up? It's just fashion, you know? This is not your life. Roxanne follows her, and Andrea sobs through the door, "Please just go away for five minutes right now." Outside, everybody wigs and screams silently, and Allie almost starts crying too. It's amazing what Brent can do to a room full of people with only seconds to play with. Dan sets a couch on fire and Tarek's crouched on the kitchen counter, eating flesh off a rotisserie chicken and snapping his teeth if you get too close, and Lee climbs around on a chandelier like a monkey and Tammy and Leslie start making out and eating grubs from each other's hair. Brent sits in the middle of the mayhem with that sickening self-satisfied oblivious smirk. It's like he enjoys being hated. That's so sick. Andrea continues to tell Roxanne to fuck off, while the pandemonium continues taking place all around Brent.
day, Dan and Lee explain to the team that the task is taking place over Rosh Hashanah and they can't play along, because they're going to be going to temple the whole time and observing the tenets of their religion. Tarek's like, "Does God let you talk on the cell phone?" God's like, "Uh, no?" Lenny opens up with both chambers immediately about how the whole thing is "fucking stupid" and that they are using their faith as an excuse not to work, and Dan's all, "But actually, you don't get to tell me how to be religious?" But Lenny disagrees. I think the actually most interesting thing is that Lenny honestly thinks that anybody on this show is so very lazy that they would even think to do it. You know how really suspicious people are always the sketchiest? Like if somebody's like, "Don't steal my stuff," you automatically think in your head, "You're a total stuff-stealer, I see." I think that Lenny is actually that lazy, or something. I mean, I know he climbed up the Statue of Liberty and taught it English in two years and that he built a company with just a blue ox and his strong Russian hands or whatever, but that's just automatically where I go when the accusations start flying, and this episode kind of bears it out. Lenny interviews that even the Israeli army is only so-so on observing these rules, which I find iffy, and basically gives the impression that there is not a Jew alive who honestly follows the rules, and if they do, it's because they're somehow on the make. Which makes Lenny an asshole immediately, but also far into the future, because that means that he literally does not understand religion from the first stone it's built on. Because he is a lazy, godless Communist just like you assumed when you first heard his accent.
The task: Create a corporate retreat for a bunch of "dealer-owners" from GM. They keep saying that all episode: "dealer-owner." I love it. The whole deal is that they will be introducing the DOs to the 2007 Chevy Tahoe, and the DOs will grade them on how well the teams do forcing them to interact with each other, how well they inform them about the Tahoe, and how motivational they are about getting out there and selling the Tahoe. I prefer the Sequoia, because it reminds me of this time I was at the grocery store with my friend Paul and he mumbles, "Every single vowel. They got 'em all." And when I asked him what he meant, he pointed at the Sequoia and it took me like twenty minutes to figure it out, and so now when I see a Sequoia I always think about Paul, and how he is a bit weird. Bryce interviews that he -- in so many words -- forgives Lee and Dan for being Jewish, but that he and the group are going to have to work harder. I really, really like Bryce this week. I also like this project because it has scale, which has been lacking, and it has party planning, which is both exciting to do and exciting to watch people fuck up.
The Weekly Wisdom this week makes literally no sense whatsoever. It's like a Tristan Tzara movie up in there. The words "Plan B" flash on the screen and then Trump is talking about how there are people out there, many of them, who are "highly inflexible," so you have to have a Plan B, which is where you go if you are flexible, because you need flexibility, and without a Plan B, it's not going to work, because without a Plan B, you are not flexible, which is what you need to be. And then Orpheus shows up in a leather jacket and there's a rose petal on the snow and it's all about flexibility. Or something. I mean, we will see Andrea come up with a Plan B, and we will see Theresa being stupidly inflexible, but I do not understand why this made no sense. Or why Kenneth Anger was in it, dressed as Cleopatra.
In the GM Marketing offices, Theresa is the Project Manager for Synergy, and she goes for ten minutes generating statements that begin with the words "I want." She wants a this and she wants a that, she wants "classy," she wants "models" and she wants a comedian and she wants Charmaine to do these things and she wants to stand at the head of the table and she wants to talk over everybody as her list of wants and desires quickly accretes and she wants to make the DOs feel "special" and she wants Tarek to be "the point person for creative" and she wants it all, she wants to hold her team responsible for their tasks and she wants to never, ever stop talking and she wants a "greeting table" and she wants a "personalized giveaway" and she wants a "red carpet" and she wants "flowers" and she wants "a balloon arch," because she has got a real strong handle on "classy." She also wants her breasts to triple in size, and suddenly they do. She's being almost insufferable until Bill comes in, and then she shifts into Turbo Asshole Mode, yelling and being "forceful" and "firm" and repeating phrases ten times or more whenever anybody tries to talk, all, "I wanna horse and carriage, I wanna horse and carriage," and before last week, I would have said, "This is not the way you impress Bill." But considering how he's acting these days, maybe she's right. "I wanna horse and carriage, I want stallions. Stallions. I wanna horse and carriage and I want stallions." It's grotesque. You can't slap a person through the TV, did you know that?
Since Theresa is sucking all of the jerk-off out of the atmosphere, Tarek becomes fantastic, and is fantastic for the rest of the episode. She is like carbon dioxide to deciduous Tarek. He tries to do "creative" but she's leaving out all the adjectives and verbs and just shouting nouns so nobody knows what to say or what to talk about, because...what Theresa needs is a good stiff drink. I don't advocate drinking while you work, but honestly, in my expert opinion, she needs a cocktail, like, five minutes ago. Tarek tries to do his job and she keeps interrupting him, rescinding her orders from a second ago, contradicting herself, sending him on these weird missions and then acting like he's a jerk for following through on them because she's already changed track without telling him. You know, acting like a boss. Like your boss, if I'm guessing right. Tarek's freaking out and getting t-boned by Theresa all over the place, and all he wants to know is what the "theme" of the event is. Is there one? Is there a unifying concept? Tarek gets her to agree that there is not -- and he's learned his lesson in yet one more way, because that was the Sam's task in a nutshell. I think maybe I am being impressed by Tarek. She nods, "But you know what, ours is an experience of class." I would have performed a citizen's arrest on her and had her taken to the brig at that point. Lenny interviews that Theresa is retarded, and that all they have is "booze, comedian, horse with carriage," and that he wishes "her brain was bigger than her boobs." Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lenny. Asshole. But the show's kind of an asshole too, because we cut from that to her borrowing makeup, because girls are just silly and dumb. Like, we're proving him right, but not by showing her fucking up, just by demonstrating that breasts make you stupid.
Andrea explains that you first need a big idea, then you think of all the tasks that contribute to the big idea, and then you carry them out. I love her because she lays it out for you in a way that is deceptively simple, yet people tend to forget once they're in the shit. "Brent will never be fired, and here's why." "Big overarching idea, chopped down to bite size, and then accomplished." Her yoga brain works nicely, although I guess the price to being so level-headed most of the time is that you occasionally shit yourself and run around screaming like that chick from Boy Meets Boy. Trade-off. Plan B, perhaps. Carolyn's hair looks like carpet. Brent starts with the massage crap again for the millionth time, because...I don't even know why he is like that. I have no idea where the non-stop massage thing comes from. I have theories, but I think they say more about me than they do about him. I wish he would be eaten by a shark. Andrea's like, this is a corporate field party, dude, and that is way too personal for the event. Again, we see Brent unable to deal with the concept of a thing. Like, he can't even read the room when the room is hypothetical. Allie goes, "We're not getting them naked." Andrea then handles him quite nicely, looking him in the eyes so he knows that she's acknowledging him, and says, "We're not doing that, okay?" She interviews, over shots of her giving him crap busywork, that her plan as PM is to make him "feel as if he was part of the team," but that "when he screwed it up," it would not affect the team. She's a contender, dude.
Synergy brainstorms, and Roxanne points out the curious thing about Tahoes, which is that they are simultaneously "rugged and outdoorsy," but also "sleek." Sean synthesizes that SUVs are all about the illusion of power, but with the luxury of self-indulgence. All of this is obvious, but I like that they cut to the chase. Michael comes up with "Nature...Refined" as a theme, and they go nuts. Sean says, in a hysterically bombastic way, "In true Synergy fashion, we combined the ruggedness of the SUV" with the luxurious nature of an expensive car. Andrea goes off on how they will have shooting, hunting, fly fishing, and everybody's like, "We are fantastic!" Meanwhile, Brent eats some more, and slurps a soda. I forgot to mention this, but every time you read the word "Brent" in this recap, you can go ahead and assume that he's shoving something into his mouth. We're all about the subtlety on this show.
Gold Rush sets up stages and tents in their business suits as Theresa runs around chanting the word "classy" over and over. There will be a horse-drawn carriage, classy, and there will be a putting green, classy, and there will be Cory Kahaney, super-classy. She was on that show where they tried to be comedians, and I kind of liked her on the parts of that show that I saw, but she has clearly been through the ringer since then, because she looks really ragged and outdoorsy now. Lenny bothers the teamsters and bothers the teamsters, and they hate him, and then he bitchterviews about how that he has to do "everything," but all we see is him tying a few crappy balloons to stuff and affixing a sign to a tent and bothering the teamsters. I don't know why he's so tired. Meanwhile, Tarek is digging post holes for the putting green, which looks like shit, and getting bugged by Bill. Mostly, Tarek is upset because the whole putting green area looks crappy and not "classy," and because he has to dig a hole in front of Bill.
Theresa meets with Lenny about how there's no electric power for the tents and stages that he's been "setting up," and he fully looks her in the eye and tells her it's not his problem. She does not even understand his words. "What?" He gets really aggressive and defensive about how she can go fuck herself, and Bryce is like, "Wait, what?" Lenny explains that his job is done, and if they don't have electricity, that is somebody else's problem. Bryce gets very Dawson Leery on him about how "when one person drops the ball, it makes us all look bad," and Lenny just shrugs and wanders off, maddeningly. Bryce calls up somebody and charms them out of a generator, and then he and Theresa have a little talk about what a douche Lenny is, and Lenny tries to start shit with them, yelling some more about how he's so great and whatever, and is totally affronted by how they are being so rude as to think he's being a dick. Bryce and Lenny wander off in opposite directions, yelling insults, and Theresa and her giant boobs are like, "Man, this is hard. Somebody should really manage this team or something."
Synergy is having a rock-climbing wall delivered, and with a straight face, Andrea tells us that "It's a luxury experience as well as a rugged outdoorsy adventure." I love it when they drink the Kool-Aid about their stuff. She gets all excited about the skeet-shooting and laughs about how many people will die of a skeet-shooting injury if they're not careful. Brent wanders around, having taken a break from eating, and Roxanne asks him if he's completed his task, which is to stack several trash cans out of the way. That's it. He mumbles that he has done "a couple," and then Roxanne does that parent thing where she does his homework for him by explaining how to do his homework. She's like, "Let's stack them over here, out of the way," and then does it for him while he bumbles about, bored. She thanks him, out of simple inertia, once she's done doing his single task for him, and he's like, "No problem." The parks guys, of course, show up and tell them that there can be no skeet-shooting, because it's idiotic and dangerous, and Sean Brits around about how it's "an integral part" of the whole rugged outdoorsy blah blah, and the guy is like, "Work it out." Sean goes to tell Andrea, and she freaks for one second, and then thinks for one second, and then solves the problem. Flexibility.
The guests begin to arrive, and Andrea welcomes them and explains about "Nature...Refined," and then unveils her golf-cart racing concept which has replaced the skeet shooting. Disgusting-looking Sean waxes all amazed about the golf carts, and then very exciting music plays as they race the golf carts. Carolyn watches, either impressed or unimpressed. I can never tell. The DOs are not very impressive to me, I will tell you that. The DOs drive around in a Tahoe with Sean in the backseat trying to explain something about the vehicle and stumbling somewhat over his words, and then Bill and his hair get snotty in front of the DOs about how Sean obviously didn't know these facts off the top of his head. Like Sean's a fucking joke for pulling out the manual or studying the information at all, instead of just knowing it. Like there was any other way to do this part of the task.
Bryce tries to get the Gold Rush models to understand the vehicle, but their minds are all completely blown from the automatic doors, and they seem to think the Tahoe is from the future, or space, or was created by wizards. Cut to the revolving -- and so very shitty-looking -- stage and a model talking about nothing on the stage. Theresa forces the DOs to ride in her stupid stallion-drawn carriage and tries to explain the concept of how it's a metaphor because of horsepower or something; whatever she's saying, she just pulled out of her ass anyway, and everything looks tacky and cruddy. It's sad. Carolyn stands around and quietly hates the putting green with a burning, silent rage. She's almost shaking, with the hate of the putting green, because those are her whole life. She then admits that the people are having a great time, enjoying themselves and interacting, which is the point of the task, so it's okay mostly. The DOs get all patronizing with the models, who are just dumb because they're girls and girls don't know anything about cars or about anything, really, because whatever, Bill watches and rolls his eyes at the stupidity of the models, and we are treated to a thousand shots of their legs; no heads, just legs, and why would you ask just legs how a car works? That's not what legs are for. Bill explains what legs are for: "I hope they are big drinkers, because the entire plan here amounts to getting them liquored up and hoping to razzle-dazzle them with some models." I can't disagree with that.
Charmaine introduces the comedian, and things get wicked awkward. Cory Kahaney looks hellish and broken down like a road whore and she talks miles of shit, about the park, about the South, about the DOs, about the models, about the cars, golf, whatever you've got. Her language gets dirty and everybody freaks like they're maiden aunts, and Charmaine tries to make it stop, but Cory's off on this whole deal about morning wood and penises and whatever, it's completely played and stupid and shitty. Charmaine almost bites through her own lip, the DOs are horrified, and Charmaine finally gets Cory off-stage, and Bill's mind is just entirely blown. Charmaine gives Cory her much-needed money and makes her leave, and then Tarek shakes hands with the DOs because we're done here.
Boardroom. More stupid Fiddler music plays as Dan and Lee get dressed to go down with their team and show them support. Theresa tells Trump that she's "cautiously optimistic" about her team's success, and then Bill tells everybody that the grossness of Cory Kahaney, the team's collective ignorance, and their total lack of salesmanship or enthusiasm were the main issues with the Gold Rush event. Ouch. Carolyn has only praise for Synergy, mentioning that the DOs had a great time, "laughed while they learned," noticed no "dead spots," felt that "time flew by," and said that Synergy "nailed the Tahoe experience." Trump tells Synergy that their reward for winning is to go swimming with some sharks in Long Island. Brent gets really scared and Sean makes a maniacally unattractive, cheesy, jerk-off face, and then everybody, including Trump, admits that they hope Brent will be killed. Theresa says Lenny's ass is coming back to the BR, and Trump's like, "Yeah, he's pretty bad."
Tammy repeats Trump's same joke about "swimming with sharks" in the figurative corporate sense, which makes her a moron. You know, as boring as the rewards are to write about, I really thought the sharks would be awesome. I should have known better. Allie points out one shark that is so amazingly large that it's bigger than fat old Brent! Nice, lady. Jeez. But then, of course, Brent interviews the same joke, about how he's so fat he can't believe there are mammals larger than him. He just begs and begs for it. He pisses off the shark wrangler after about two seconds of concentrated sniveling, to where even the guy working the tank hopes that he will be eaten by the sharks. Allie interviews that she's hoping that the sharks will rip him apart in a horrifying tragedy, and Brent's getting on everybody's nerves some more, and he's so, so scared of the sharks, but everybody watches with bated breath as they wait for the sharks to devour him. Brent gets back out of the cage, and they all laugh at him, but they're sad that he lived through it, and they don't try to hide it. Sean interviews that they all wanted him to actually die in a freak shark attack, because it would have improved the team immensely.
In the suite, Tarek tells Dan that Lenny wasn't the problem, it was Theresa. Which is true, kind of. He blames the embarrassing comedian particularly. Out in the dining room, Lenny attacks Theresa for saying she wants him gone, and there's much talk about who did and did not "fail horribly," and Lenny drops a few more jaws with his complete self-satisfaction. He brushes off the generator thing like she's just harping on it for no reason and trying to get him down, because it wasn't a problem in any way. Charmaine asks him who was at fault, and he screams that Lee and Dan were the problem, due to their being lazy Jews, and Lee's all, "Lenny, Lenny, not cool. Don't go there," and Lenny keeps yelling crazily and pointing fingers all over and saying that Tarek sucks unqualified vague dick of some kind, and again Charmaine tries to ask him where he gets off, and he points his finger at her and screams, "Shut up! I don't listen to you!" Oh, man. The total prickishness of this guy blows my mind. He's like a beast. He's like an alien intelligence, like the Tommyknockers or something. I have no idea which way he's going to jump at any time, and that is so, so scary for a control freak like yours truly. It makes me uncomfortably fight-or-flight angry at the TV. Theresa disengages because she can't yell over him, but he keeps going, and then Bryce walks up and is like, "The fuck you say?" and Lenny catches him up on how the whole failure was Bryce's fault, and that Bryce and Tarek should be fired, in addition to Theresa, the Lazy Jews, and Charmaine. Bryce almost laughs, it's hysterical, because like: for real? "What the hell is wrong with you?" Bryce asks, and means it, and then Lenny and Bryce get into a screaming match about how Bryce didn't even find the generator, and how generators do not exist, and electricity is a myth, so how could Lenny have ever done wrong in his entire life?
Back to the BR, where Trump asks Theresa why she lost, and she responds thusly: "Two fold one is individual execution and creative." How can you expect her to lead a team when she cannot even lead some simple words? She indicates Tarek and Lenny, and Trump and the Viceroys tell her straight up she needs to bring back Charmaine, or the whole Boardroom is going to be a joke because she will have just cobra'd herself, but she doesn't even get it. Trump makes fun of the horse-and-buggy idea, because it has nothing to do with the Chevy Tahoe. Lenny says that she was a disaster, of course, because he's the only person on the team that deserves to be there, because he is at the mercy of some pretty powerful sabotaging forces shooting from every direction. Tarek, because he is not batshit crazy and seems to have turned himself around right quick on this show, calls Theresa "a good sergeant" but not a good general, and that she made critical errors. Theresa starts to shake at this point. She slowly gets crazier and crazier over the course of this Boardroom and it's amazing to watch but hard to describe -- it's like her entire person revolts on her, and she falls apart, and her voice gets quavery and weirdly emphasized, and her clothing becomes crazy and itchy, and her hair gets more and more bedraggled, and her eyes bug out. It's like the Wolfman.
"Maybe if Tarek was actually standing up and doing his creative job he would have told me..." she says in her slowly-encrazening voice. If there were a color alert system, she'd still be a nice indigo at this point, but it's getting worse. Tarek says politely, after she snarls and grunts for a while, "Excuse me, Theresa: What was our theme? I tried to rally the team around some idea and you had nothing." Trump nods. She turns ashen and begins to vibrate. "I had no creative support. I would have fired Tarek on the spot." Bryce says that Tarek did a good job, but Bill has to call bullshit on that, correctly, because of the "atrocious" putting green. "You took an entire day to...dig three holes?" And when you put it that way, he's so right. Carolyn is like, "You thought this was going to be 'classy'?" But I don't think she means what Theresa thinks she means, because Theresa thinks she means to indict Tarek, because she's incorrect about where she herself falls on the classy/not-classy binary opposition fence, but Carolyn is calling them all trash, I think. Trump tells her she has great style, and she laughs because it is so, so true, and she knows it, and she gives him a little speech on how stylish and fucking classy and whatever she finds herself, and how she loves to "switch it up," and she makes fun of his hair, and she is now at a brilliant emerald green on the crazy scale, if you didn't just assume that from the weird fashion speech.
Theresa tells Trump that the bigger disaster was -- all of a sudden -- Tarek, and he totally laughs in her face and calls bullshit, because what she's doing is so transparent and nutty, which is changing "stallions" midstream because she's scared, and that this is the first time she's said anything about him. Which is icky, but for me personally the ickiest thing is that she's doing it also because the Viceroys called him out. Which is stupid, because they will always have the emotional upper hand, and you can't trust them to show you the way, because your mindset is unsettled -- even in a normal, not-insane person -- in the Boardroom, whereas they're not at all invested. Well, except if Bill hates you for no reason, but that's rare. Theresa shoots past yellow and ends up on the rusty side of orange, gargling and hissing and speaking in tongues and acting like Lenny. Just a hot mess, like a just-add-water crazy person is blooming into madness before our very eyes. Carolyn, I imagine because Theresa is getting harder and harder to look at, turns her attention back to Tarek. "It looked horrendous, not classy." He complains that he couldn't "control the conditions of the field," but it's lackluster and not heartfelt, because she just said "kimota" to him, basically, because telling Tarek he's not classy is like punching him in the box while wearing an entire suit of clothing made from kryptonite.
Lenny tells Trump he should fire everybody on the team, and then yells about the Lazy Jews, and how he's Jewish but he's good enough at it that he doesn't have to practice it in any way, and everybody's grossed out, especially Dan and Lee and even Trump, and Lenny goes off on this whole speech about how the smartest thing he could do is celebrate their stupid made-up holiday so that he wouldn't have to do work because he really needs a rest from the burden of denying so very much of reality all the time, and how fucking stupid he is not to use his Jewishness to his advantage like Dan and Lee. It's ugly and stupid and dirty and I don't like Lenny at all. Trump finally cuts him off: "Lenny, it's called life." That is the most hilarious thing Trump has done all season. Crazy old weirdo. "It's called life, Lenny. Some people are Jewish and they go to temple, other people are not, and they like steak. That's why they have menus in restaurants, because sometimes your Plan B is spaghetti, and Melania would never forgive you for eating spaghetti. It's called life."
They ask Charmaine whether the horrific comedian issue was a "mistake," and she denies this, saying that Kahaney was "funny but off-color," and admits that they paid her $1700 for that crap, and Bill gets super-mad because she's not taking any responsibility for the issue, and yeah, it looks pretty bad, and I don't know that Charmaine really gets that yet. Just because you say something wasn't a problem doesn't mean it wasn't a problem, Charmaine. It's a little more complicated than that. Bryce tells Trump to fire Lenny, and then Trump just completely opts out of the Boardroom for the remainder, talking all about how Lenny's "a comedian" and how he's funnier than Cory Kahaney, and whatever, just talking out of his ass about Lenny for awhile, I assume to make us more comfortable with the fact that his worthless ass is going to be sticking around for some time. Theresa's all, "Um, he's not that funny," and Trump takes us yet one more step away from the task at hand, getting into some kind of technical discussion with her about how she only finds him unfunny because she hates him, and she follows his lead into pointlessness, all over Lenny about how they don't "really" hate each other. It's so stupid. Bryce, eyes on the prize, is like, "Fire Lenny because he is an asshole and he crosses the line." Lenny freaks out on him and they get into another shouting match, but Trump's back on the whole Lenny-as-comedian topic, and how they should have hired Lenny instead of Cory Kahaney, and he repeats this over and over, like a hundred times, to himself. So you've got Bryce and Lenny screaming, and Trump babbling endlessly about Lenny and Cory Kahaney, and Bill shooting hate daggers all over with his diamond-hard gel-head bullshit slicing anger figures in the air, and Theresa in the middle, eyes almost crossing with how crazy she's getting, but nobody is noticing how Emily Rose she is about to be, because of all the unrelated pandemonium going on all around her. And this is why I love The Apprentice.
Theresa takes her chosen two -- Lenny and Tarek, of course, and not Charmaine -- out into the foyer, after telling Trump that Lenny is a liability to them all, and Carolyn and Bryce and Bill are all so unimpressed by all this that it kind of takes the fun out of things. Bill tells Trump that Theresa fumbled badly, but that he witnessed Lenny being "a work horse," which I can believe, I just didn't see it personally. Bill -- determined to get his name on my shit list, in ballpoint -- is wearing a fucking Burberry tie. Paris calls Posh and is like, "Tacky much?" Maybe he and Tarek have switched bodies like Judge Reinhold and Kevin Arnold, and that's why I'm so confused. Carolyn is still shaking with the silent rage of how deeply offensive she finds that putting green. It offends her on, like, every level. The important thing is that they both are okay with Lenny this week, and that Carolyn's hair has been dealt with and she looks pretty again.
They come back in and Lenny goes nuts about how he did everything he was told, and that he did his job. Which -- no matter what happened -- I would yell at him for, but whatever. Tarek takes the brave and pretty brilliant step of saying that he doesn't think Lenny should be fired, because he wants to focus the entire room on Theresa's many failings. He describes the event, thanks to the lack of a unifying theme, as a bunch of "disjointed ideas," and points out again how horribly mismanaged the entertainment was. Trump tells her straight up that Charmaine should be there, and Tarek and Theresa get into a fight about how she gave him all the "responsibility" for the creative parts of the task, and immediately took the reins and started acting nuts, putting him in a horrible position. Theresa's edging into the red. She tries to go off on how Tarek is the worst thing ever, but Carolyn stops her dead. "Charmaine picked a bad comedian, Tarek created a horrific golf event. Leadership. Let's be accountable." Theresa's eyes are totally bugging out and she looks like the Runaway Bride as she yells about Lenny and the electricity, but Trump notes that the generator issue is not why they lost. Snakes crawl out of Theresa's hair and brightly-colored twittering birds begin to whirl hypnotically around her face, singing old Beefheart tunes in four-part harmony.
"Lenny, what do I do?" Lenny tells Trump to fire both Tarek and Theresa. Bill mentions how the models were stupid girls and didn't know anything, and Theresa responds that the education of the models was up to Bryce, and is told that she should have brought him in, then. Carolyn asks who hired the models, and it was Charmaine, and Carolyn reiterates that the models and the comedian were also a huge problem for the DOs, and that Charmaine should be here. Trump says that you need "great concepts," and that there was not really a concept here at all, just several kinds of stuff, and Tarek nods, because that was his whole thing. Trump gets really intense about the horse and buggy some more, and Theresa stupidly/crazily/proudly says that was her idea. "I HATE IT," says Trump. He tells her that she has poor leadership abilities, bad concepts, and that "so many things went wrong" that he has to fire her. She starts bleeding from her eyes and is bathed in an unearthly glow. The water glasses buzz and clink on the table and everybody realizes they have to get out of there before she blows.
She chokes out her thanks to Trump for the opportunity, and then levitates out of the room, scattering rose petals and Cheerios (and marbles) as she goes. Tarek promises to "step it up, Mr. Trump," but Trump hasn't received the memo that Tarek might actually be cool all of a sudden, so he snits really meanly, "You'd better step it up. If you can." It's not because I'm suddenly sold on Tarek that this came off weird, either. I'm still ambivalent about him. It was actually just really mean, the way it was said was unnecessarily rude and very out of character for Trump. It was a room full of really strange energy. Maybe Bill's crazy hair was acting as some kind of lightning rod. Tarek shakes Theresa's hand outside, so Lenny does too, but of course does not apologize like Tarek. Back inside, Trump goes, "She shoulda brought Charmaine. So...that's what happens." Like a six-year-old he says this, like "if you don't give me five dollars, you can't play hopscotch," and she didn't come up with five bucks, and he's like, "Well, that's what happens." Over in the Crazy Taxi, she's mostly calmed down, and her hair is not as bushy or angry, as she explains once again that her leadership was great -- it was the people that she was leading that sucked. Which is always, always the wrong answer, because that disputes the concept of "leadership" on its most fundamental level, like disagreeing with the word itself, or having a showdown with the way it's spelled. She informs us that Trump has "truly lost a potential asset," and then makes a tasty word salad having to do with "I don't think that this is the last that he sees of me." Cool. Bye, crazy.
Lessons learned: People can surprise you by shifting back and forth from sucky to awesome. It's almost like you have to keep your eyes open and remember that everyone is a lot more complex than they let on, instead of giving them a thumbs-down on every single thing just because there's one thing you don't like about them. Sharks are contrary and don't eat the right people. The best Jews are the ones that forget they're Jewish altogether, because: talk about inconvenient. The conventional wisdom that says all therapists and stand-up comedians are batshit insane continues on, undisputed. Fat people can eat like a motherfucker. Don't trust immigrants. Or women. If wearing a Burberry tie makes you feel better, I say go for it. It's hard to stay upper-middle-class, especially in the middle of a barren field, but if you try hard enough, you can make it work. Horse-and-buggies are the kiss of death on this show. They are so five seconds ago. And if we can take one thing away from this episode, it is this: Stay Classy!