First things first: let's brainstorm how I can marry Ivanka Trump without her thinking it's related to her family? It would be rude to just promise her that her family is not why. Ivanka Trump is the smartest, prettiest, coolest, funniest, level-headedest, insightfullest, rockin'-awesomest lady on the planet. There's almost a "Carolyn Who?" vibe in the air. Too far? Anyway. Charmaine goes through all the stages of grief, from Shut Up Tarek to Chardonnay-Enhanced Weeping, after she learns of her part in Theresa's firing last week. She is PM for Gold Rush on the task, of course, while Tammy takes point on Synergy. Kinda.
The task: design an eye-catching billboard for some kind of Grape-Nuts byproduct without letting Lenny or Brent drive you crazy. Successful: Nobody! While Brent continues to push weight loss, with himself as the spokesperson, the rest of Synergy shoots for reality -- but ends up at the longest slogan in the history of advertising. "Introducing the generation of Grape Nuts -- Trial Mix Crunch Cereal from Post! Great Taste & Lighter Crunch! Finally, a cereal for Everybody!" This, on a billboard designed to kill motorists before they have a chance to try the product. Brent, unsurprisingly, immediately becomes convinced that Andrea and Tammy are trying to marginalize him, poison him, or feed him to a shark, but at least he doesn't mention massage. Both teams have a creepy time finding actors for their billboards by wandering up to strangers -- Gold Rush's Tarek in particular gives their young woman a very abductee feeling. Gold Rush's poster involves a woman chugging the cereal, but it looks really cool and not stupid like it sounds, like, there's this manic 40-Year-Old Virgin glow on the chugging. Synergy's poster involves mostly words, but also a "father and daughter," who end up appearing no more than five minutes apart in age once the team finishes their makeup. It's like Synergy took approximately seventeen good-to-played out ideas, loaded them into a tennis ball cannon, and then launched them at high speed toward the canvas. After forgetting what they were.
This is all Andrea's fault, and she should really be fired for it, but she's too much of a player to get fired this early, so BRENT gets the capricious dickwad firing I prayed for him for last week. Which is fantastic!
God, I love this season. It's such a train wreck. It's like if they finally figured out that American Idol has nothing to do with singing, and cast a bunch of circus freaks. (Wait, what did you say? I didn't quite catch that.) Anyway, last week, Theresa went nuts, and Trump was mean to the apparently overrated Tarek. Upstairs, Lee, Leslie (who?), and Charmaine talk about how it was the scariest Boardroom ever. And they weren't even there for the freakout! Lee opines that the admittedly terrifying "screaming" was not half as scary as the "divisions." How's that Kool-Aid taste? He then interviews in full-on little-brother mode that it was enough tension to "rip a family apart!" Dear Adam Rich: it's not a family, it's a game show. Trump's your momma now.
Lenny and Tarek return, and the three-person family of bitchers sigh and can't believe it, and then show up smiling fakely. Charmaine's, like, swallowing her gorge as she tells Tarek that she's glad he's back. Brent, of course, screams at the top of his lungs and congratulates them -- and of course is soundly ignored by everyone. Tarek tells us how he cannot go the Boardroom for a couple of weeks, or it's a "foregone conclusion" that he'll be fired. He tells his girlfriend Bryce that Theresa got fired because she didn't bring in Charmaine, and the full stages of grief happen right there in the well-appointed kitchen. Charmaine, overhearing this, first goes into denial mode, and gets angry with Tarek for saying such a dickish thing, like it's pointed at her. Very, "WTF, asshole?" She then tries to confirm and bargain her way out of the truth of it, asking several times if this isn't just a nightmare. Tarek elaborates that Trump mentioned in particular the whole comedian issue. You can see Charmaine's stomach go all cold and zero-g. It's sad. She then takes off into the bedroom to be depressed about it. Allie simperingly interviews that Gold Rush is really in trouble because they're so mean and bad or whatever. No group hugs. No, that's not fair to Allie, because she's right about that: they are an extremely backbitey and ambitious crew. The way she says it is a little irritating, but she's on target.
Charmaine lies down on the bed and cries, with a bunch of lipgloss and makeup on, and complains to some blonde woman -- Leslie? -- about how it's unbelievable and depressing that Theresa would be fired just because of her...and how scary it is that she would have been fired. I agree with Bill when he said that the actual problem was that Theresa tried to talk her way out of it, but I have no doubt that she would have been fired no matter what, and I am glad that things fell out this way, because I like Charmaine and I didn't like Theresa. Charmaine complains to Leslie that she doesn't feel a cohesion within the unit -- like it's "Tarek and Bryce versus everybody," and I can see that. Leslie comforts her by saying that it was surely not the entire reason Theresa was fired, which is true, and that they just have to saddle up and figure it out, which is the ultimate truth. Charmaine knows that, but just feels "so bad about it" and gives herself leave to cry it out. Normally, I don't like that, unless you do it in secret like this, but I am totally feeling Charmaine. To worry and worry for hours like that, upstairs, and then the survivor guilt and -week suspense on top of it? I feel you, girl. I think Tarek would, too, since he's having most of the same doubts, but I don't know that they'll reach a rapprochement on that, because all he wants to do is hang out with Bryce.
In the Post offices, we see everybody eating PGNTMC by the handful. (I didn't know anybody on this show ate, besides Brent, although sometimes Tarek cooks.) Tammy asks the members of the group who among them has previously presented to executives, and Brent raises his hand and says that he...hasn't. But he would like to. Andrea and Roxanne quietly wonder why he brought up that irrelevant info. Tammy nods, and says that she was thinking about putting Brent on "clothing" for the event: "Coordinating clothing." A better word choice, or a more complicated task, this might have flown, but "coordinating clothing" is so obviously French for "sucking on your own toes for the duration" that I can't really blame Tammy for how badly it goes. Which, to be fair, is not as badly as it has in episodes, because I do think Brent is capable of adjusting his behavior somewhat. Even Roxanne laughs when Tammy says it, like, "Ouch!" Sean rolls his eyes and interviews that "there is absolutely no way we're going to let Brent present," because they don't "trust him with anything. Absolutely anything!" All Sean is, so far, is like this black box machine that takes the prevailing sentiment, cokes it up, and then spits it out again in British. "PGNTMC is delicious!" "Brent Buckman is disgusting!" "We are fantastic!" Oh, and then there's the fact that Sean is a terrible public speaker, but all the PMs keep assigning him to present because of his accent and -- counterintuitively, from where I'm sitting -- his looks. So those are two things. All of which amount to a business acumen roughly equivalent to...that of Mr. Donald Trump, whose fame quotient is basically based on the fact that he used to be rich and now pretends to scream at nobody at all on the telephone while being filmed.
Ivanka enters in a cool navy shrug-with-vest outfit. She's so cool. Tammy gets that PM voice they always get when the Viceroys enter, but tones it down more than most: "How are we going to capture people's attention?" Brent wants to go with a health message, about weight loss, and wants to have a bathroom scale feature heavily into the image. Which is, I suppose, an original concept in that nobody has ever used it, but the whole accusatory campaign is a very dicey one. Even a gym campaign is usually predicated more on either incredibly sexy, headless people working out in a sweaty, sexy way ("You could fuck this lady if you lost some pounds!") or on how fun and not-at-all inconvenient or heart-killing the experience will be ("Come to Curves! An invigorating obstacle course hidden far from the sight of menfolk!") -- only actual weight-loss programs occasionally stray into "Go weigh yourself right this second, fatty," and even then they have a seemingly friendly moderately-weighted lady telling you how great it's going to be. (Although I will tell you right now if the price of weight loss is having to hang out with Kirstie Alley's crazy ass, I'd rather be fat.) Allie also points out that this strategy wouldn't really point up the "newness" of the PGNTMC, because "the old Grape-Nuts was healthy, too," which is very insightful and a good response. Since nobody knows what they are talking about besides Brent, he registers this less as an acknowledgment and rebuttal, and more of an outright rejection based on playground politics. His face falls. If this didn't happen, it wouldn't be Brent. Much like the thing that happens: Tammy asks for other ideas, and Brent has one: "Try [PGNTMC], and kick-start your ten pounds-plus weight loss today!" Everybody is irritated and Tammy makes Brent agree -- to Ivanka's subtle nod -- that this is old ground and that they should be moving on. He does so graciously. It's not that sophisticated to remark on the irony of Brent's diet obsession, but I will say this: he's got the aspirational market down pat. He looks at the product and thinks, "What would make me buy this?" And there are two answers that you can count on: "I will magically lose weight and somehow thus become likable," and/or "the hands of a stranger on my naked, pale flesh." Which makes him a good guinea pig. But the point of advertising is being able to jump back and forth over that fence: I'll buy it, but I'm not the only audience. What's the broadest possible appeal? In other words, asking Brent to consider the thoughts and needs of other people, which makes him half of a valuable team member on this marketing task. Which is half more than usual. In other words:
Quick Quiz! Who can design a successful maxi-pad campaign?
A.: Only a woman.
B.: Only a menstruating woman.
C.: Anybody with a talent for advertising.
Allie goes back to the well of this incredible Passions storyline I've created in my mind, where her father was kidnapped by guerillas when she was young and this gave her amnesia and all she can recall of him is the sound of Grape-Nuts crunching. Which, I freely admit to being an ass if Allie lost her father young, but I don't think so, because she was a child gymnast -- a great one -- and gave it up because she was homesick, and that kind of fills in the blanks anyway. So she floats the idea of "somebody that looks like our [my] father, passing the Grape-Nuts down to somebody [me] in their thirties." I'm just joking about the daddy-issues stuff, really, because she seems very together in a lot of ways, but it's edited so strangely that it provokes a "Put your stuff away, Allie" kind of reaction. Actually, it's probably because I watch too much Starting Over. (Or possibly because all I can remember about my own father is the smell of gunpowder and revolution, or something, but I'm not supposed to talk about all that mess in public.) Everybody goes nuts about the idea, and it's the usual suspects for the overdone enthusiasm: Michael, Sean, Andrea. Brent's not feeling it, of course. Andrea interviews that she helped refine the idea out of Allie's personal psychodrama by redirecting it to "the generation." Tammy writes it down and adds yet more words: "Try the generation of Grape-Nuts -- finally, a cereal for everybody!" They applaud themselves, even though it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Like Allie's father was consciously denying her the taste of revolut...er, Grape-Nuts, until she proved herself on the international gymnastics stage. Ivanka asks who's presenting (Why, Tammy and Sean, the stumbler and the mumbler, of course), and asks Brent of what he is in charge.
Flash Quiz! Your self-obsessed predilection for thinking everything in the universe is an elaborate plot to validate your self-hatred comes up in a boardroom meeting. Do you:
A.: Do a little fake-smile monkey-dance for the Viceroy, because a win for the team means you get to stay, and it's frankly embarrassing that you're being so brutally marginalized?
B.: Passive-aggressively "tell the truth" in such a way as to beg for the Viceroy's sympathy? Even though a small child would be able to deduce that she has none in her?
C.: Take a pass on the whole thing and just reiterate your desire to help the team as a whole, without specifics?
Answer Key: Honestly, on this one I'd go with C., because Ivanka knows damn well that Brent's getting screwed somehow, and she's just asking for the specifics so that she can smack Tammy with them in the Boardroom, so C. actually makes you look the best of the three. Nobody looks like a winner with the situation as it actually stands, so why point that out? It's not a situation where Brent will somehow get exempted from the Boardroom just for having driven the team to active spite, so Ivanka shouldn't be put in that position, because she'll take it out on him eventually. Guess which one Brent picked? Ivanka's like, "The...clothing? For real?" And Brent gets his full Markus on for a sec, giving the impression that they've also been beating him. Ivanka interviews that the team is "trying to manage Brent by having him do absolutely nothing," but that this is a strategy that is "not going to work." I agree with this, in that Brent will always find a way to bug everybody, but my stock answer -- that management is realizing that everybody is good at something -- is getting a real strain hernia from the Brentitude of Brent.
Brent and his dandruff take Tammy aside to reiterate that "his strength is presentation." He's got crumbs on his face as he says this. She's got that jumpy management dance happening that tells us she was just on her way to do something of actual import before Brent ambushed her for this redundant processing session. He nods and nods as she explains, maybe not for the first time, that she and Sean "are very comfortable meeting with executives," because it's their actual jobs rather than a hobby or whatever, and also since the team's not doing the weight-loss thing, the overall package with Brent presenting is not exactly "the image that we want to present to the execs."
Unnecessary. I get it, but he doesn't need to hear that, because he's going to go straight for the discrimination place, instead of the reality place, which is that it's not about checks and balances, it's about presentation. It's a hot button for a lot of people, and very difficult to navigate, so I won't really try except to compare it to American Idol again: if you come in front of me thinking you're going to be the pop superstar, but you don't look the part, if you are not "put together," it's not going to happen. And there aren't a whole lot of ways to explain that without coming off a lot cruder than it's meant. Which is why most people don't push the issue this far. There's no judgment in saying, "Physically, you do not fit the profile." If somebody went in to read for the part of "Bikini Babe #3" in the Paul Walker movie, and the person didn't look great in a bikini, there's no good person/bad person in saying they're not right for the part. Or if you were reading for a Jersey mobster on a crime drama, and looked like Charmaine, or Allie. If Brent's self-esteem is so tied up with his physical form that he honestly thinks he's being called a terrible person when someone is forced to point out the image issue, it becomes a self-reinforcing issue, because it lets him off the hook for a lot of other stuff which also has nothing to do with the point. I feel like going for it over and over like that is in some way an attempt by Brent to get Tammy to admit that his looks are a factor -- but his "looks" have to do with so much more than a simple weight issue, and he will never understand that. Let alone understand that there's no higher authority he can debate this with: it's not like by sheer force of will he can make the world stop judging how attractive something is overall by...looking at it. Whine away, but it's not changing, because of the enduring truth of eyeballs. That kind of reductiveness really irritates me, especially when combined with the personalizing and the delusion of it all. Lest we forget, Brent's opening salvo was to reply to "Have you ever done this before" with "I have not," and then blamflasted surprise and resentment that somebody else got to do it, followed by an attempt at negotiating this further. It's not even really like he's excited about it, he just wants to be involved in some way, and figures at least this way he won't get shouted down, because it'll be just him talking, and then maybe Trump will notice how amazing he is, instead of ignoring him and his yelling for approval altogether.
Brent goes to interview and immediately gets limply rageful about how he's not allowed to do the presentation "because [he's] fat," and that Tammy "treats [him] like...a piece of dirt," which we haven't really seen. "I can't stand her face," he says, jiggling all over the place with something like anger. On the other hand, I'm impressed with his reaction back outside the meeting room: he cordially thanks her for her time and drops it. I guess he learned from the Stacy thing after all.
Trump Weekly Wisdom ain't even trying this week. "Keep It Simple, Stupid!" on a title card, and then Trump talking for five seconds with zero action shots about how something "too detailed, too complex" will always go "over the heads" of a large portion of the demo. Not that I enjoy this segment, usually, but Trump's just telling us what's going to happen for the rest of the episode, and like any virile young man with a poetic heart, I do prefer a bit of mystery.
PM Charmaine -- and let's talk about that a minute. I really, really enjoy when the beat-up (justifiably or otherwise) person gets the troops rallying around her, that "you deserve to be/have to be PM this week" deal. When they give in because the person is endangered and/or demoralized. Love it. And I hate that this moment was denied us for this episode, because it started off with a really intense session of freaking out that set up this kind of thing perfectly. I mean, I love the eventual dénouement here, but it still bugs me that we didn't get a second of the decisionmaking for Charmaine, because we were spending so much time on Brent and his crazy ass. So Charmaine asks the room what they know about the cereal, and Tarek (I believe) says that "it tastes pretty good" for starters, and Charmaine mentions "good health" and "whole grains," and then Dan makes a hilarious face and waxes explosively about how it has a "honey flavor to it that is amazing!" I love him so much. He's so willing to go there at any time and just completely Sales it up like that. "Homeless dudes are so very important, Mr. Trump! They have a honey flavor that is amazing!" I've said it before and I'll say it again: sales people are aliens to me and I love them for it. If any of the words Dan ever says came out of my mouth, I would actually drop dead right then. I am too, too self-conscious for that shit. I'm balls-out and exuberant and all, but the layer of falsity that you have to deny...it all has to do with the fact that even the word "karaoke" causes my stomach to flip over. I cannot watch people do it, even in the spirit of fun. That's like eating in the bathroom to me. Eating in the bathroom of my mind.
Charm interviews about the process and how she stepped up due to the diuretic fear Tarek inspired in her at the beginning of the episode, and smiles tinily to herself when she stumbles over the incredibly long name of the cereal, only barely keeping from rolling her eyes. Back in the small-b boardroom, Charmaine quiets the group down both quickly and effectively, just as George enters. This endears her to him forever, because it's a Herculean feat and he knows it. Leslie floats this idea of many flavors of animals bringing all the different ingredients of the PGNTMC to a bowl, and I can't picture how a billboard of that would even look, other than "pretty creepy," and Charmaine wins the entire task without knowing it: "Less is more." She calls attention to the fact that it's a billboard, meaning that you have like five seconds to process the whole thing, and all but one of those seconds is reading the incredibly long name of the cereal. So you have to focus on a single iconic and striking image, basically. She once more reins them in easily and quickly and gets them back on task, and George interviews that it's "a difficult group" of seven "Type-A" personalities, and that Charmaine handled them and kept them focused very well. I am sad that this is such a groundbreaking strategy. Bryce comes up with the picture of a guy just pouring the cereal directly into his mouth, unendingly, because it's just so good. Charmaine is like, "That's what we're doing, let's move on," and Lenny of course is all in favor of moving on from any task ever, because he is in a chronic hurry.
Showtime, Synergy. Allie is dressed like that weird lady in Four Weddings And A Funeral, with an umbrella and a strange hat and sheathy outfit, just completely rampaging through the streets of New York harassing passersby with abandon. Sean approaches...actually, she is possibly the prettiest girl in the world. The full data is still being processed at the time of writing, but I can say with authority that My God this girl is ridiculously pretty, at the very least. Sean asks her to be their model, and she is, of course, convinced by his accent. Allie asserts that they now have to find a man old enough to be the girl's father...and approaches approximately thirty-five men the same age or younger than the "daughter" is, and keeps getting turned down by her teammates. Some of them, she herself recognizes as too young and attractive to actually be her father. Put your stuff away, Allie. They pick out a blond, thick dude, who looks about thirty-five (he's older, but doesn't look it, so his age doesn't actually matter) who is vastly attractive as well, and cast him even though it doesn't actually make any sense. Creepier and creepier. Allie calls him a "mountain man." I don't think she realizes that this whole idea came out of what she was saying about her dad in the van. She can't, right?
Gold Rush: Tarek, Lee, and Leslie also hit the streets. Was this in the dossier for this task? Why not just hit a modeling agency? I hear they sometimes use models in advertisements. They find a pretty girl ("wholesome," "girl--door"), and Tarek lays on the...something. Charm? I think he's good-looking enough that, no matter what, it's going to be charming. From this side of the screen, what it is, is creepy. He comes running up to this girl and opens with "I am going to be totally shady." He asks if she speaks English, which is...I get where he's coming from, but it's somehow also creepy. He offers to give her $200 and buy her "a sporting outfit," and all she has to do is hold a box up to her face. I was going to have a quiz here, but there's only one appropriate answer, so screw it. People, I don't care if they have a TV crew with them, I don't care if they look like Tarek, do not get in vans with strangers. "Have your producer call me" is the only thing you should say. Instead, the girl smiles beautifully and agrees. I'm glad it worked out this one time. She sits in the van with them, thinking about how she is going to die, as Leslie chomps disgustingly on a wad of gum and calls in on the walkie that they've "secured the model." The girl is clearly frightened by all this, but game. Tarek interviews that he's still worried because their idea is so safe, and that he hopes the other team didn't come up with a more creative idea. Such as a bagel diet, I think is the limit of their creativity right now.
Synergy: Andrea and the graphics person at Post discuss the ad and graphics as Brent stands behind them, just outside the circle of their conversation, and mumbles incessantly, irritating the graphics girl, who keeps smiling at the cameramen like she can't believe he's real. Dude, we know. Brent mutters that he's "curious to see what other images they could use," in this very hushed tone, like maybe Andrea and Tammy won't hear him, like it's just him and the graphics lady and everybody else is a distraction. That faux-collaborative thing Brent does with Trump all the time. Andrea and the woman continue their actual work, and Andrea reminds the woman to save their work before making any changes. "Yeah, save it first," mumbles Brent, as though he's sitting right there, instead of talking to two women who have literally turned their backs on him and are creating a visual unified front to make him go away. For somebody who generally only responds to eye contact, Brent's really not at all sensitive to that whole deal in the ongoing. Michael watches Brent bugging the graphics chick, after the decisions have already been made and they're moving on to new business, about "can I see this, can I see that, what about a giant spoon," and Tammy finally just says that there are "too many cooks in the kitchen," and reiterates that Andrea has been tasked with the graphic design. Which is...true, for good or ill, and that's her call as manager, and Brent's not interested at all, in any way, in what his tasks actually are. Not that they matter, or exist, but it's...this cannot be accidental. Brent cannot be completely unaware of what's going on here. Can he?
Speaking of...delusion, Andrea is talking the talk hardcore: "I have a pretty good eye for that stuff." She tells us how she's done graphic for her four companies, and she's comfortable with it. She and Graphics Lady continue their conversation; Brent keeps talking to nobody. Andrea interviews that anyone Brent "gets his hands on," he immediately sucks out their life force. It's clear that this is what's happening to the poor graphic designer from Post. Andrea continues restating the basic Brent Conundrum like she just came up with it. In the office, Brent keeps asking the lady to change the graphics around "for [his] own curiosity," as though that isn't the most fucking obnoxious thing he could do. I guess he's hoping to roll a seven with one of them and they'll all spontaneously start clapping and crying and he'll finally be popular. Based on his manipulation of text in a cereal ad. I guess it could happen. The whole team is like, "DUDE!" and finally Andrea spits, "Time is really of the essence, so what you need to do right now is an outstanding job on everything that you're doing, Brent." This is stressful in terms of the room's energy, and the other Post rep goes a little green, but I assume that Brent has some kind of duties we don't know about, or else this wouldn't make any sense.
Brenterview: "I don't think Andrea ["OHHHHHNdrea"] is an expert in graphics design. The only thing I think Andrea is an expert in is being an asshole." That made me laugh. "Andrea, you might be joining Tammy in a taxicab -- and I hope you both have a good time smelling each other's crap, because you both stink!" This is punctuated with a lot of nodding and creepy smiling to himself, like this is a poop joke Brent shares with...anyone. Maybe Chevy Chase would laugh, but only if he's old enough to be senile.
Then Tammy and Andrea are both assholes, kind of. Everybody on the team talks about how much they love the design -- which looks like a total ripoff of the Cheerios heart-shaped bowl, at this point -- and they all agree that they "nailed it," and Michael nods portentously, and Andrea agrees forcefully, and they smile fakely at each other, and tell each other just how much they love each other, giggling cruelly and whatever, I haven't seen anybody do that since about third grade. "Oh, aren't we such good friends? I love that we're all such good friends. Did you hear somebody talking about a giant spoon? No? Must have been a bird or something. Wanna come over to my house after school? I have a TV in my room and sixteen ponies in all the colors of the rainbow, but my mom says I can only have three friends over at a time, so..." It's all for Brent's benefit, but it's not like he's going to understand what they're trying to tell him, which is that he's put himself outside the circle and only a superhuman act of getting his shit together is going to get him inside. It's hilarious to watch, but...fucking grow up. That's such a fallback position. Tammy and Andrea giggle and Brent looks worried and left out. As intended. By all three of them.
Synergy's taking pictures of their beautiful girl, who is covered in makeup and looks like Princess Mia. Allie and Roxanne are going crazy like sleazy photographers in the movies, all, "Like that! Like that! Gorgeous! Now show me a smile, she me a sexy little smile, you little minx...excellent! You're so sexy! Carangi, you whore, give me eyes! Eyes! Okay, now hold the bowl over to the...good! You're doing great!" It's not really weird, even with the kissy noises, because Roxanne and Allie are so funny and goofy and nice while they're doing it, so it's weird, but not...bad-weird. Over at the monitors, Sean is, of course, going crazy and getting enthusiasm all over everything. He comes close to shedding literal tears talking out his ass about how it "captured the old and the new," whatever, he's such a shit-talker it doesn't even register. They walkie with the other half of the team, the design project, and it takes Tammy a few seconds to remind Sean that there are two graphics to combine here. They look at the images Andrea and Tammy approved, and both Sean and Allie bitch about it, so I guess the overabundant enthusiasm is just a contact-high thing. He won't tell Tammy and Andrea that he likes it, and compares it to putting just a "box of cereal up on the board," which is what it would be if they weren't doing the photo shoot that he's currently at, and it's clear he's having trouble mentally compositing the whole concept together. Which makes sense, because they now have about fifty words of text -- all in different colors, fonts, sizes, and degrees of lunacy -- and two different graphic images (three if you count the models separately), so it would be hard to imagine unless everybody was really clear on the overall concept. Of which there isn't one, really, beyond "we hate Brent," but the magic of Brent doesn't sell cereal, just bagels.
Gold Rush watches Dan wisecrack deliciously about the different pictures of the woman they abducted: they cut one because of the "crazy eyes," and one with a bowl that's too big. Charmaine has a moment of uncertainty about the pictures, but that's quickly forgotten in the shitstorm of Bryce having a full-on identity crisis about the whole concept. He hates all the pictures, and starts brainstorming a completely different campaign about a bunch of empty cereal boxes. He makes a wimpy face, which catalyzes Charmaine to say "fuck it" and make it work. She interviews that Bryce is "not taking responsibility" for his ideas, and asks him where the enthusiasm went, considering that the whole thing was -- she admits -- his idea. He muffles that he doesn't like "the way it's going," and then clarifies in interview that he's scared because if the thing goes wrong, it'll blow up in his face, and he's "terrified" of ending up in the Boardroom again. Charmaine turns this into a blame-shifting thing, that Bryce is going to pull back on the "this was my idea" thing and go into the problems with execution, but the deal is that they both have a point. They're phrasing it in a weirdly paranoid way, but they both have personal concerns on the line. Charmaine can't have Bryce pulling support due to execution concerns, because that indicts her as a manager, and Bryce can't have her passing the whole idea off on him, because the Viceroys and execs, looking at the finished project, won't see a good idea gone wrong, just a bad presentation, and that will fall at his feet. So Charmaine has to reframe it as a withdrawal of team support, and Bryce...flounders because his only option is to openly withdraw his support from the way things are heading. He admits that he's "second-guessing this entire project," in interview, and Charmaine makes the same jump in the boardroom: "We are not questioning ourselves. We're done." Which is brilliant, because it keeps the momentum, but is also correct. When you lose your way in the woods, you don't have to drive all the way back home and start over -- you find the weak spot and start there. Where you went wrong. Bryce is packing the whole thing into a hands-off responsibility-free box when he should be actively working towards identifying his issues with the project at hand. And Charmaine is awesome for expressing that in the most rah-rah, "Thou Shalt Not Fail To Step Up" way possible, which gets Bryce back on track. This is the first management decision I've been impressed by that didn't have to do with Brent, I think. Very cool.
Charmaine and Gold Rush are in the car by 7 AM to get to the presentation, shivering with anticipation and talking up about how the delivery should be like a two-minute deal that's very simple and just ties it all together, their basic ideas and the driving campaign stuff behind the billboard, and everyone nods sleepily, because they've got it in the bag. There is no mention of the twee as fuck plastic baby at this point, which: small favors, because I would have lost interest at this point, had I known what they were planning as a backup.
Tammy gathers Synergy, or tries to, already worried that they're going to be late. Brent is running around in his underwear at 7-ish, ironing his clothes. Tammy's like, "So I guess we just...wait for him. He got in the shower at 6:45!" Brent and Andrea have a very awkward face-off. She interviews that he's running late "again," and that he was already a drain on "time, resources, and energy," and that this -- over images of him still waddling about in his underwear and "fixing" his hair -- is going to make them another twenty or thirty minutes late, and altogether it's a "big huge deal." We don't see how Brent and Andrea end up discussing this, but it's either that Andrea felt like bugging him about it, or he picked up bluntly on the resentment and decided yet again to have a whole fucking conversation about it instead of just doing his best to get out on time, but either way, there's not really a winner here. Brent's going on about how "normally [he has] been ready on time," and Andrea full-on "Um"s that this is untrue, and that he was late for the last event, as well. Brent gets defensive: "Oh, come on! First of all, I was up until 4 AM working for you as the employer..." and Andrea says that this is hardly an excuse -- which it isn't, regardless, Mr. Adult ADD -- because he wasn't "doing what [she] asked" in the first place, 4 AM or no. He keeps repeating, "Excuse me, I was up till 4 AM," and Andrea is funny here: "Doing a bad job!" There's a bleep, and it could conceivably be not Brent but in fact Andrea, which is hilarious, because means she just said, "Because you were doing a fucking bad job!" But they're talking over each other and I'm not sure. Brent starts yelling, "You're full of it! You did a horrible job! We pulled it out of the hat for you, you unappreciative you-know-what!" He says this not only verbatim, but playing to the camera. I don't know what to do with Brent. Andrea rolls her eyes, and Brent interviews nonsensically about how she should be "locked in a prison somewhere."
And then Andrea crosses the line: "You pulled it out of the hat for me? Okay, that's why I'm a multimillionaire and you make $50,000 a year? Okay." Gasp! You just fucking handed him the argument, Andrea! What are you doing? That's like the crassest thing. I mean, it shut him up, but come on! That's like how Joe R. always says that when you say "You think you're better than me," you're admitting that the person is actually better than you, at least in your perception. Just handing the whole thing over, while simultaneously making the entire conversation pointless. Andrea just came out of left field with the ugliest possible Godwin Variation I can think of, in this game. Gross. Brent wanders off, and Andrea Angela Chases into space, like even she can't believe how bad that was.
Gold Rush. Has brought a...baby. They meet in the Post foyer with Trump, Ivanka and the execs, and Charmaine is holding a plastic baby, and there's a stroller. Why? Both teams admit that they think they will win, and then they all turn to watch the banners being unfurled from a higher level. The music is very dramatic as this happens, but it's awfully impressive, in the moment.
Charmaine explains that their billboard design involves a "health-conscious adult pouring the cereal into her mouth," adding that it's creative and unconventional, and has a certain shock value. The tag line on the poster is "It's that good!" She jokes that it wouldn't be surprising to see a man doing that, pouring crazy amounts of food into his face, but having the actor be a woman is more intriguing. Good point. The whole thing -- I think this is in the recaplet -- has a very attractive, glowy 40 Year-Old Virgin quality to it that I love. It's like a bright new future full of hope and this woman pouring cereal straight down her gullet. It sounds like porn, I know, but it's actually a very cool image, not too much creepy sex stuff going on. I mean, she's wearing a headband and pouring Grape-Nuts up her nose -- how sexy could she be? There's then a very gay moment where they explain the baby and stroller -- they're "announcing the newest addition" to the Post family of cereals, and again: I would drop dead -- and Dan hands out cheesy little birth announcements. If this had anything to do with the banner, like if there were a baby or something in the billboard concept, which there wouldn't be, but if babies were involved beyond that stupid "new member of the family" thing, I might not hate it so much. Luckily it's glossed over in the episode, and it's exactly the kind of lame thing that those guys love, but it gives me hives. The Viceroys and execs are like, "Great, more crap to deal with" with the announcements.
Tammy talks weirdly about the Synergy billboard, how it's "an older gentleman," a father and daughter...and Trump makes the same joke one hundred times as she's speaking, about how the guy is totally young and hot and is not a father but a boyfriend character, and he's right every single time, but that's a lot of times for one joke that would occur to you when you saw the billboard. They have a slideshow, presented haltingly by the illiterate Sean, using Powerpoint, and they're all wearing sparkling Post aprons. Andrea and Brent are both disappointed by Sean's presentation skills, like to the point where Brent isn't even gloaty about it, and Trump stops Sean after less than a minute: "We get it." Ouch. How many licks will it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of Sean Is Bad At Public Speaking? The world may never know.
The execs explain that the Synergy billboard is incredibly busy and will cause multiple-vehicle pile-ups and unbelievable carnage, but that the Gold Rush one is brilliant in ever way. The music goes nuts, and the beautiful faces of Gold Rush go crazy with joy. There are seventeen close-ups of Charmaine's beautiful face shining like a Christmas tree made of wonder and heartwarming delight. It's very awesome. Trump congratulates them and they applaud themselves, and fuckin' Dan goes, "It's that good!" Oh, Dan. The reward is for them all to go cooking with world-renowned Jean-Georges, apparently a chef of some renown. We cut to sad Brent, not sure why -- is this like metonymy and any time cookery or food are mentioned, we're supposed to think of him? That's stupid.
Then we see the actual commercial for the PGNTMC, which is like Brokeback Mountain, but with bears having a picnic. I don't get it at all. This one guy is eating PGNTMC out of this like Delft crockery at a picnic table covered with a fresh checked tablecloth, in a forest faker than an Old Navy commercial, and there's like a sports bottle on the table, arranged very artfully in this simulacrum of the camping experience that is really, really creepily unreal, and then his buddy comes out of the tent fully dressed and watches bears have a romantic picnic a few feet away, and they both think it's unbelievable -- but they are talking about different things! "Unbelievable" delicious cereal v. "unbelievable" grizzly bears on a date! I have no idea why this is happening. If the fakeness was the point, to get away from the hippie stench of Grape-Nuts, which is actually brilliant -- "Grape-Nuts! Like your Chevy Tahoe, it is an elaborate joke about the idea that you actually enjoy nature! Share it with a friend and enjoy the outdoors without the allergies, or the enjoyment! Now in delicious fake-fruit flavors! Be the to win the lottery and go live on The Island! PGNTMC is not made of people! Repeat! Not Made Of People!" -- it still should have pushed further. Instead it's just kinda...German. (And speaking of? Dear Peter Stormare: This is a public apology for thinking I hate you. I think you are actually quite wonderful, now that I have been watching your freaky VW commercials over and over on purpose, and I realize I am the idiot, for seeing The Brothers Grimm in the first place. That does not mean that you can get me to watch Prison Break or anything. Love, Jacob.)
The members of Gold Rush go see Jean-Georges at Trump International to cook with him in his...restaurant? Isn't that a golf course? I guess he's the club chef. That is world renown. I wonder if Carolyn ever slaps his face for talking back. ["Trump National is the golf course. Trump International is a hotel which is almost certainly very overpriced, even for New York." -- Wing Chun] The mysterious-yet-not-alluring Leslie appears out of nowhere and the team watches Jean cook for awhile. Lenny keeps giving the chef "hilarious" and unasked-for advice. Tarek interviews that Charmaine rocks because she "added calmness" and wasn't "running around" on their task the whole time acting like a chicken with its head cut off. Which is lovely, but also kind of unfair, because Theresa is like three-quarters of the way to actually being a headless chicken, for all intents and purposes, and you shouldn't poke fun.
Jean finishes some dish, and Lenny decides to "help" by sprinkling cayenne pepper or paprika or whatever all over the dish. Jean calls this either very "1995" or very "1985," but they're both funny, because of an old fairy tale that Anna and I often tell each other at bedtime, or any old time, about how all of Eastern Europe gets shipments once a decade from the Warner's lot, of the last ten years' worth of clothing, so that in 1990, it was all '70s diaphanous gowns and scary Dynasty makeup and shoulder pads, and then last year they all got Jordache jeans for Christmas, and how it's so sad that Hollywood is painted as this uncaring tower of the liberal elite, when they clothe all of Eastern Europe, once a decade, without asking for any praise or recognition. It's not even a tax write-off, because of certain union rules and sanctions, and Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillippe have risked life and lip on more than one occasion to make sure that these things arrive when they are supposed to, and that makes them heroes and freedom fighters. Freedom for the Eastern Bloc to express itself through fashion. I wipe a tear and hit "Play." Bryce is bitching about the Lenny spice attack ("Like you're Emeril? What's wrong with you?!" but you gotta take that with a pinch of salt, or whatever you'd like, because Bryce is a victim of Lenny from last week and still aching from it).
They clink glasses of white wine with Jean and sit down to the meal. Charmaine interviews some nonsense about how Jean is a success and a creative person, and that their team won through creativity. They actually won because Charmaine handled Bryce brilliantly, and because Andrea doesn't know what the hell she's doing, but both of those things involved creativity, or the lack of control thereof, so the point stands. Jean talks and talks and Bryce interviews about how Jean is this amazing American story of Horatio Alger, and then says -- with a straight face -- "Why waste a single day not doing the things you love?" Like it's the most original and heartfelt thing he's ever said. How very Dan of him. Jean makes fun of Lenny with the pepper, but Lenny loves it, because abuse is all he knows, because he is obnoxious, and because the French are known for acting like Lenny a lot of the time.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! Sorry. I wasn't ready. I wasn't prepared. I need warning for shit like this. So Sean, hair very après-sex, lies in a bed with Roxanne and Allie, all up in each other's jell-o, like octopi. They talk about how they will never get rid of Brent, or something. It's so hard to listen to what they are saying. I can't even think. They lie indolently and sensuously, lost in thought, and Sean interviews that you can't blame Brent because he has no tasks, again the conundrum, and nobody's ever going to ask him to step up. Roxanne mentions the cluttered billboard, because she's not half the groupthinker Sean naturally is, and Sean...agrees, of course: "Too much information." Roxanne interviews that it was Andrea's responsibility to make the billboard look like something other than a big disaster, which she failed to do. And I agree, and this is Andrea's fault, in a way you cannot blame on Brent, in all fairness. But I need Brent gone, and the team needs Brent gone, and I think that if Andrea stays on, she'll reap what she's sown with this crap, so I'm okay with whatever happens. As long as Brent leaves, of course, but I say that every week, and no joy.
Andrea and Tammy sit -- a normal, human distance from each other, on a fainting couch -- are being refreshingly upfront about how the whole thing is straight-up their fault, but that they should probably try to use it against Brent anyway. They bitch at length about how terrible Brent is, warming up for the Boardroom with each other as their audiences. It's cool because it's not done without self-knowledge that they are doing it: "Yes, we fucked up, but it's not like we're going to admit that, so let's screw Brent over." If they were doing the usual -- if they were actually convinced that they'd done nothing wrong -- this would bug me, but I really get the impression that they're just fully practicing ousting Brent with their guilt intact. Which is so much more awesome than the usual. They talk all over each other with destructive soundbites: "This is someone I would never do business with. I don't have confidence in his ability. Rude. Overbearing. Embarrassing. He embarrasses himself!"
Cut to...yep. Subtle. Brent sits at the table with Lee and Lenny, staring at him and his fucked-up hair looking sad and weird vocal tone. He's got this weird, like, wizard voice going on this whole part. I don't know if I can explain it. It sounds like the voice-over at the beginning of a fantasy film, like about hobbits or whatever. "...That's up to Tammy, to decide who she is bringing in...save me a place at this table. I will be here." Lee attacks his spaghetti intensely, so that he can finish and have an excuse to get away from Brent without being rude. "I will be back stronger and more powerful than ever!" Brent declares. He smiles and looks around for someone to validate him in some way, but it never comes. He is surrounded by bagels in sandwich bags. Man.
As the members of Synergy pack their bags, Brent voices over, "I have my arguments prepared for tonight. I am ready. Tammy, I will out-argue you, and everyone else on the team. I am a nuclear weapon in that Boardroom! Keep me out of the Boardroom, or you'll be sorry!" He jiggles around with self-satisfaction.
Yowza Quiz: Pretend you're at an actual job interview. After demonstrating and openly admitting that you have no skills you can admit to, but holding forth the promise that you do have amazing secret skills you will one day reveal, you are called into the Boardroom for the Quickening. Do you:
A. Rest, confident that you've demonstrated the best of your abilities?
B. Consider how you might counter specific criticisms in order to redirect the focus to your better qualities?
C. Pray that you were the least of the screw-ups this week, and promise yourself that you will do better round?
D. Resolve to be honest about your performance and that of your teammates, to keep your mouth shut as much as possible, and to demonstrate respect for everyone in the room?
E. Crawl into your creepy-crawly hole and think of Byzantine "arguments" that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, and everything to do with blaming your current teammates for your lifelong lack of popularity?
Answer Key: If you didn't register on the bell curve this week, either by being helpful and unnoticeable, or by rocking as the PM, let the others speak for you or pass you under the radar by choosing A. If you know you screwed up but that your past performance or specific skills make up for it, keep your mouth shut and only open it for applications of B. If you're forced to do C., make it count, and remember that this is a last-ditch strategy, not the way you should be playing the game. If you were on either outlying side of the bell curve on this task, you are going to have to speak. It's unavoidable. The Boardroom is, unfortunately, the only way your teammates can prejudice Trump against you for week, so they're going to tear you down as much as they can even if you fucking rocked. Go with D., and if you must mention your "integrity," tie it to another quality to which Trump has responded well in the past: "loyalty," "teamwork," or "flexibility." (Not, we stress, "flexible integrity," however. Unless you are magic and can spin this.)
If your choice is E., let's chat. Life is not a debate. Life does not care if you've got it all figured out in your head, and the pieces as you see them might fit together or not, but life doesn't care. Get real with the facts and stop trying to argue it out. If you respond authentically, from a place of logic that doesn't frame everything in the reference of your insanity, you'll find that the need for "arguing" drastically lowers in frequency. There are all kinds of people that can go weeks, months, years, without having to initiate a single "debate" on the basics of life. Why do you think that is? Optional Essay: If your choice is E., then why aren't you happy? Is it possible that people actually exist when you're not in the room, or that their little rooms are filled with just as much shit and weirdness and pain as yours is? If you jump out of a plane without a parachute, no amount of rhetorical skill is going to stop your descent at thirty-two feet-per-second per second. Understand that there are rules of social interaction, an entire physics of people, that are similarly immutable, and devote yourself to learning them, not arguing them. The way you want things to be is rarely how they are going to be, without regard to how much you wish otherwise. At some point, we must realize there is no one watching: no authority that's going to even things out on your behalf because of what's "fair" according to your needs and wants. That's your responsibility, and if you don't assume it, all the resentment in the world isn't going to make anything better. I'm convinced that, season, they're just going to have actual sociopaths, stabbing each other at night. That's the only way I could be more exasperated. Sorry about the lecture.
So Trump asks Tammy why the Gold Rush billboard was better. He admits to liking both, which is sporting of him, but notes that, as time wore on -- and the differences were explained to him in easy-to-understand language -- the Rushees had a better billboard. Even though they were both good. Andrea admits that the Synergy billboard was "cluttered," with which George is in full agreement, but this gives Tammy the opening to jump in and cut Andrea out of the equation altogether, in a very subtle and non-arguable way: "We all brainstormed, and as a group, we came to the consensus of the slogan." Which has the additional advantage of being completely true, which means it spreads out the dumbness equally over all of them. Trump asks for the slogan again, and Tammy almost laughs with how dumb they were, rolling her eyes about how easily she walked into it. It's very funny. She takes a breath. "Introducing the generation...Post Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch Cereal..." She closes her eyes and takes a moment, and then even Ivanka is like, "Whoa!" when she starts talking again, extending it longer and longer: "The cereal for everybody..." After a second to make sure she's done, George offers that if you have to put it all "in text" you lose the ad value, and Tammy agrees. Ivanka is soooo awesome as she compares Synergy's to the other billboard: "She is ravenous! She's trying to get as much of this in her mouth as possible! It was...it was exciting!" I love that Ivanka can just jump in with this like the water's fine and there's no creepy sexual element, like if Donald had said it. Ivanka Trump is my total hero. ["Ha! My sister happened to be walking through the room just as this part aired, and I rewound that so she could hear it and we could both reply, in unison, That's What She Said." -- Wing Chun]
Andrea says that Tammy was a "great Project Manager" and an "asset to the team," and calls attention obliquely to her own victory in praise of Tammy: "When I was Project Manager, I made Tammy my right hand." Roxanne says that she thought Tammy was the best Project Manager they've had, and Trump clarifies, for dramatic purposes: "Better than Andrea?" At Roxanne's assent, Andrea does a funny, smiling "Oh come on now, I don't know about that," in this hilarious matronly character. She should, of course, keep her mouth shut, but she delivers the line well enough that it's not offensive. Roxanne goes on to say that Tammy's "sincerity" made the team "want to go the extra mile," and Andrea acts completely shocked, in this very broad, affected way. Now, I am open to the possibility that I am making excuses for her, but I will say this: as an incredibly affected person myself, I would have reacted the same way. "Oh, reeeeallly? I am shocked!" I would have gone for the pearls. It's not so much sophisticated irony as it is a natural reflex -- I would think she's proud of being "insincere," although I bet she would use a different, more self-aggrandizing word. I prefer to think of myself as "fake and shallow." But it also undercuts the point that Roxanne's making in an untraceable way, because Andrea's letting everybody in on the joke that is herself, to the point where the veracity of Roxanne's comment is beyond the point. Whether Andrea is or is not a lesser PM than Tammy, she's implying, it's all part of the mystique somehow. I have not seen this strategy in the Boardroom, and I don't think it's conscious, but Andrea's definitely done this before -- code-switched so fast to a "we're all adults here" level that creates a false sense of complicity and urgency that you forget Roxanne's actually right, because we're all suddenly having a different conversation. I mean, Andrea fucked up and should go home, but it's still amazing to watch her adjust the dynamic of the entire room by...essentially agreeing with Roxanne that she sucks, but doing it so grandly that it sort of stops mattering. Make a note. Only a crazy person can t-bone an entire room like that.
Michael nods, weirdly intense, that Tammy "managed timelines" and "avoided chaos," and Andrea nods at this subtle dig at her own skills, and Michael adds that Tammy was able to "get everyone to do what she wanted," which I will agree was a very good part of her skill set this week. Trump asks about the disastrous PowerPoint presentation, and his first question is basically, "Why?" Michael says that Tammy wanted to present their ideas, and Trump responds that it was too long by far. Tammy admits that it wasn't "executed" well, shifting things so immediately to Sean's side of the table that Trump doesn't even know he's being played, and announces, "Sean, your presentation was terrible." Sean admits this failure, and Brent, look like a toad with canary feathers in its mouth, fucking jumps in: "As far as the presentation is concerned..." And I'm telling you every single person at that table leans back in satisfaction. Andrea closes her eyes with pleasure and smiles, Roxanne bites her tongue, and Tammy nearly giggles. Brent: "I said to Tammy, I feel I'd be excellent for this presentation...Tammy said to me, in so many words, 'You're too fat to do this presentation -- it's not the image we're trying to create.'" Tammy shakes her head and rolls her eyes, because Brent is taking this in a totally bullshit direction, but explaining why is very, very dicey. I mean, she was being an asshole, because she knew this anyway, but it was the right decision to make. She should have just kept putting him off, because he was being a jerk by pushing it and pushing it and pushing it in the first place, for reasons he will never understand. Trump asks if Brent could have done better, and Brent gets very excited: "That is something I could have done, and I would have been impressive. I would not have choked like Sean." Trump nods to Sean: "You choked." Sean agrees, saying that he was "flustered." Shut your giant grotesque mouth and let the guy hang himself, Sean! No explaining, no complaining.
Trump asks how Tammy was as Project Manager, and this is the reply from Brent: "Tammy stank as a Project Manager, and it smells right over here, Mr. Trump." Ivanka actually flinches at this. What's with the bodily secretions, Brent? Like you're not nasty enough, you gotta pull the stinks and smells in all over the place too? Could you be more odious? Andrea rolls her eyes up like she's having a seizure. Tammy starts to express her disappointment that Brent disliked her management so much, but Trump's stuck on the "stank": "That's a very tough statement. In fact, Andrea, I think you almost threw up just now." She's like, "Pretty much." Trump addresses Tammy: "Horrible? Disgusting? Terrible? Frankly, you didn't do a bad job. The other team was better, but you did okay." Which he's now said I think three times. Two of which were before Brent got weird.
Andrea summarizes that Brent is embarrassing, and a liability to the team. Brent turns on her like a wolverine: "I think you're a liability to the team! How do you like that one, Ohhhnndrea?" Andrea laughs, because Brent's ass is grass and they all know it, and he's acting crazy and saying crazy things, and is sucky anyway. "Um, that doesn't bother me," she tells him. Brent continues to talk at her, but to Trump, because that's all he ever does -- beg for attention in the most self-defeating way possible: "If Mr. Trump asks me to expand on that, I will!" Is this the Weapon of Mass Brent he's been talking about? Are we about to go thermo-Brentacular? Andrea's not even kidding with the laughter now. "Oh, please do!" Just blowsy and perfect and dismissive. Normally, the "I'd love to hear it" response is kind of a cheat, but honestly: don't you want to see where this goes? If you were Andrea, wouldn't you be secretly hoping Brent whipped it out right there?
Trump cuts this off, or it's edited out, so that Trump can bring up the income issue again. Why? Is this to balance out the shittiness of Andrea's bringing it up? You know I think she's a contender -- if we're going to have her here for the long haul, what better way to cancel out the shitty thing she said earlier by having All-Father Trump say it, in his infinite wisdom? Andrea sniffs, like, "I'm totally rich, motherfucker," and my sympathy for Brent is so incredibly low that I don't even hate her for it.
Roxanne describes Brent as "hard to deal with," and says he "doesn't listen," and Brent's off again: "Outside of this group of people, a lot of my friends do love dealing with me, because I am a very good people person." I find the affidavit of Brent's friends dubious at best, given that they associate with...Brent. They may be wonderful, but the only thing we know about Brent's friends is that they are friends of Brent. Assuming that they exist at all. Ivanka tries to level: "But Brent, your team doesn't love dealing with you." Like, "See the distinction?" Brent just throws up his hands: "You know what, this a tough team to deal with." Cobra, right there. I hate that so much. "Destiny is just soooo capricious that in a sample set of seven people, self-selected or not, all happen to hate me for reasons that science cannot explain."
Tammy goes turbo about how the reality is basically that Brent has been a drag on every single project, because they're not operating with seven people, but with six, plus the resources it takes to manage him. Brent interrupts her, but she keeps talking about how he can't finish a project, pissing off George and causing Andrea to shake her head amazedly. Brent: "That is not true, Mr. Trump. I have put in good ideas to all these projects Mr. Trump. My ideas have been listened to, finally. I have saved this team's behind, Mr. Trump." Again with the behinds and all that. God. "This is a bunch of baloney, Mr. Trump. If I wasn't here, this team might be 0 and 4 instead of 2 and 2." Roxanne literally cracks up at this last piece of crazy. "I have great ideas, Mr. Trump. I put them forward. Some ideas are taken and some are not."
Ivanka's on Brent like gold leaf on something her Dad owns: "In all fairness, you were the one that sort of opened the floodgates here, tonight. I mean, you were the first one to attack Tammy and say she stank [he tries to interrupt, is struck down, nods dumbly] as a leader? I mean, they weren't really attacking you yet. I mean, now people are kind of ganging up on you a little bit." I love how she's like, "See this 2 and this 3? Can you tell me how many apples?" And Brent's response, as always, is "Apples smell like doody! They should go to jail! They should be ashamed as attorneys! Apples are an embarrassment! I am the boss of all apples and the best leader apples have ever seen, but God made apples hate me! The apples have sold Brent Michael Buckman down the river once again!" Andrea drops her shoulders; she knows it's over. Ivanka continues: "Because maybe it's the way you approach situations? The way you...interact with people? It's an interpersonal dynamic that...that's why they don't like you?" I think that a first date with Ivanka Trump would really go my way. If I could explain the baby and the boyfriend, I mean. I would like to discuss some things with her. Who knew I could love a Trump? "My only love, sprung from my only hate." Brent argues with Ivanka: "I was asked my opinion by Mr. Trump!" As though that's relevant. Trump's stuck on the verbiage: "Why couldn't you be more moderate? You said she stank!" Ivanka deadpans the awful truth: "It's offensive." Brent pulls a really weird left turn: "I was offended when Tammy said I was too fat to do the presentation!" Tammy's like, "I didn't say that!" Brent: "In so many words." Bloody huh? Trump asks you to choose different words, and you respond by saying you were offended by the words somebody else didn't say? Maybe the sociopaths are already here. I think this is a case of attorney Brent having come up with a certain number of "arguments" guaranteed to win success, and then got blindsided by people repeating his own gross and overblown talk back at him -- an attack for which he has no defense, because he couldn't have reasonably known he would gross everybody out, because his image is predicated on him never knowing that -- so he just reached for the closest one, which was the "nobody actually called me fat but I am so mad" argument. I mean, I'm glad he brought it up, because Tammy's an idiot for getting within five miles of that argument with a person of his size and she needs to understand that, but still. The linguistics of this, the speech-act working out of this, are ironic.
Tammy would like to "defend [her]self," but first Michael intones, wetly and creepily, like a bad guy on a soap opera: "The word 'fat' was...never mentioned." It's like he's taken over by the ghost of Alec Baldwin for a sec. Tammy tries to construct the bare-bones minefield of professional appearance, talking about how these are two executives from Post cereal specifically working with Grape-Nuts, a "healthy cereal," and how you have to assume that the client is "looking for a fit person." Which is still far enough away that it opens you up to the attitude again, but Trump's down with the sentiment: "She has a point" -- basically that Brent is not representing the face of the group that would win this particular account. I mean, let the "or any other account" stay secret for awhile, because you don't want to kill him, but in this case, Trump agrees. I would have pointed out that five seconds is enough to know that Brent is unskilled at best in the corporate presentation arena regardless of the way he looks -- Clay last year was fucking gorgeous, and I wouldn't have let him within a mile of addressing the client directly, because he read a room worse than Cory Kahaney.
Trump tells a little parable, an imagination story game: "You're an executive with Post." Brent murmurs, "Right." Like he's going to suddenly get it. The crass and sickening leading the moronic and clueless. "I'd rather have Andrea, in beautiful shape -- or Roxanne, who's in beautiful shape -- or...any of...these people are all in beautiful shape, except for you. I'm not in the greatest shape, but certain things in life...you sort of...do." I love that the one time Trump and I fully agree, neither of us is a gifted enough communicator to actually get the point across, so we're forced to just Paula Abdul at each other through the screen. It's like if Koko met Amy from Congo. "...Maybe I'm better off having Ivanka present [She nods: yes, I am hot, and a good speaker] than me, or than having George present. There's nothing wrong with that." George, fed up like Lenny: "Why can't you understand that?" he demands of Brent. "Why is it so objectionable?" Brent replies that he...has a "creative mind" and is "very passionate." Which are weird words for what he is, but more importantly, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? You have a creative mind that is constantly thinking about weight loss that doesn't work, and massage in inappropriate places; you are very passionate about picking out a different enemy who is ruining your life each task; but neither of those are cool, and neither of those have to do with the fact that your fatness does not itself absolve you from being fat, which seems to be your only point here. Everyone in the room smiles creepily, of one mind and vindicated purpose. They all sit back once more to let Brent talk himself to death, and this time they stick to it.
Trump asks Brent how come he can't get along with anybody: "There's not one person on this team that thinks you're even slightly good." Brent floats the somewhat technically valid point that his teammates would seize on anything to screw him, but Trump questions whether they've really been that rigorous about it. Allie says that hating Brent beyond all reason is "an individual decision that each person has decided" for himself or herself. Okay I officially think she is doing that on purpose. She keeps saying these seemingly-innocent things that are actually quite wonderfully vile, and I officially am now on her side because of it. She might just be a player, despite the lack of impact she makes at any point. I hope she keeps doing that. Tammy wraps up: "We're all embarrassed by him," she says of Brent again, and she thinks he's the only cobra possibility this week. Which is both how it's got to happen, and will save Tammy and Andrea from their just deserts. Hopefully they'll come back from it week -- they're both good managers. Brent: "Well, there's a surprise, Mr. Trump. That's something I would have expected her to say." Andrea sees her opening at comedy for comedy's sake, and takes it, but I would point out that once again, she's initiating the entire group into a different conversation, where they're all metropolitan, clever young things, who know a good irony when they see it, and isn't this all just so silly? My dick is scared of Andrea, as they say. She'll kill your dog. Don't push her. "I don't think anybody that's met you would be surprised by that statement," Andrea says, cool as ice. Ivanka grins, and Andrea wriggles with how proud of herself she is. Brent: "Nobody was asking you." She barely avoids doing a what-what on her robin's egg turtleneck. "That's true," she smiles and nods, totally sexy and mean.
Brent has a deadline. Trump tries once more for the molten core of Brent's obliviousness: "Brent, don't you think it's important in business to learn from experience? Weeks, or years, or decades -- not just a specific task, right?" Brent agrees, eternally uncomprehending this. "Your team can't stand you, they think you're a loser and they think you're a loose cannon, and they really don't think they function very well with you. In fact, they think they're not doing well because you're such a negative influence. Now, I could send you out and keep sending you out and bringing you back in, but I don't wanna do that. Brent you're fired." Brent breathes. Tammy breathes and closes her eyes. Andrea nods gracefully. Trump yells at them to leave. "Out. Over! Go! I don't wanna waste anybody 's time." Brent thanks all three of them, Trump and Viceroys, and Trump says "thank you" like a million times in case Brent starts talking.