Sean flees the constant chicken-like squawkings of Synergy for the warm manly embrace of the Rush, bringing us "back" to what Trump calls "the basics of life: men against women," thus explaining everything that has gone wrong this season. The task: run an Outback Steakhouse booth at a Rutgers game -- the team selling the most food wins. Meaning, of course, that the task takes place in a parking lot. This show is many things, but you can't say it's not classy. PM Lee and his new Gold Rush team of Sean and Michael overload on events -- a cash-grab booth, cheerleaders dancing around, an eating contest -- while PM Roxanne, with Tammy and Allie, concentrates on bulk and delivery sales around the lot. Michael negotiates an exclusive deal with the cheerleaders to keep them away from Synergy, then attempts to reverse this deal for some reason, then initiates yet another creepy and homoerotic beef orgy. Which might as well be the name of this show, at this point: A Series Of Unfortunate Homoerotic Beef Orgies.
The women -- wearing cheerleader outfits into the Boardroom -- win the task $2750 to $1700, earning a winery visit as their reward. Lee plays the wheeler-dealer game some more with Michael and Sean, while Michael gets very intense all over everybody in the world. In the Boardroom, everyone is horrified by the fact that Michael was willing to compromise on the Cheerleader Fetish Objects, even though that happened in the first ten minutes of the episode and did not affect the loss in any way. What did affect the loss: Lee's utter focus on promotion and lack of sales ability. Again. Even though Michael technically deserves to be fired for the non-stop emceeing that caused him to avoid sales altogether, he's instead fired for bitch-sharing, because that's how this show rolls. Week: Wal-Mart. So yeah.
to the show, a very gay man hops around on the set of Deal Or No Deal, having won something or another. In other words, I still don't get that show. I do know that the hour will contain more gay hopping around than I've ever seen in one place.
Previously on the show, Sean said that a Synergy loss was Allie's fault, even though everybody including Allie's Dark Lords agreed that it was Andrea's. If you don't remember that happening, it's because it was literally fifty years ago, on The Sparkle-Fresh Dish Soap Business And Variety Hour, now in syndication on Nick at Nite. Then last week, Charmaine and Tarek were both eliminated for the right reasons, and between the two of them I lost anyone to root for this season, because all that's left is the smarmy, a passel of well-intentioned dorks, and some closet cases. Upstairs, Roxanne was scraping nopales while Allie looked broken and rough and scraped...leeks? Asparagus? Some kind of stalked foodstuffs I wasn't paying attention to. Spooky music was playing as Allie complained about Sean to Tammy and Roxanne, with Sean in sleazy earshot. Tammy tried to take his part, but Roxanne replied that she "could give a shit about him at this point." Roxanne is cool. Sean listened and whimpered to himself in another room as Roxanne explained to Tammy that all this "team spirit" stuff would be better off in a speech to Sean himself, since he was the one that didn't fall in line with their group assassination of Andrea. Which normally, that's coven talk, except that he had no comprehensible reason to do it beyond his apparently complete lack of any sense of self. Having had enough of that, Sean storms into the kitchen forcefully and...sulks and makes sad faces, and is ignored. He interviews that there's "an awkwardness" due to him not backing Allie in the Boardroom fifty years ago. Cut, and cut, and cut: Sean making sad-clown faces in a variety of locations, nobody caring. Between him and Lee I could punch somebody, my God. Could you be authentic for like two seconds?
Lee and Michael return and tell them what happened. When Lee enters he yells, "Two-for-one special!" which is his special way of saying it was a double cobra. And which he's been thinking up since they got on the elevator, and just couldn't wait to say. Allie hugs them and feels just terrible; Roxanne yells, "Holy crap!"
Roxanne lectures Tammy in the bedroom about how Sean needs to apologize to Allie, and hasn't, even though what he did to her was "sickening!" Sean rolls about in his lush featherbed and feels put upon. He interviews, hysterical, that he's been feeling like he's "Adrift!" In a sea of "'Istrogen'!" (Note: "Cooties" are made up. They are an urban myth. Gross me right the fuck out.) Roxanne continues to bitch about how it's not that Allie's her friend, but just that whatever, she's perfect and it bothers her when people aren't as perfect as she is. Sean rolls around indolently some more and finally cries out into the air that he doesn't want them to talk anymore, but that they are the pea under his mattress because he's too busy feeling patronizing and making love to his lack of accountability or manhood to actually talk to them directly about it. Trump Tower must be fucking pimp if this entire conversation is going on through the walls. That's quality, right there. He wants them to stop having the conversation that they're having, and have it tomorrow, when he's not feeling quite so tender and kittenish. Roxanne shouts that they're not talking to him, and he says that they are being so loud it's going in his "earhole." I would like to stick a mechanical pencil in his earhole. Click, click, click.
"Roxanne, baby, I need to work with you on a lot of other tasks before..." Roxanne doesn't blink at the "baby," but asks him why the hell he's being so ass-kissy with her when it's Allie he utterly attacked and savaged and destroyed. The unbelievable drama of being locked in this show for eleven weeks. Usually this is my favorite part of the season on any reality show, when they just completely forget what life is like on the outside, and go just a tad bit nuts. I love those Colonial and Regency House shows on PBS so people can go on thinking they're too good for reality TV because they're "learning" "something," because there's a point every season where the people just start letting flies crawl around on their faces and they don't even notice, and I love that so much. In this show, the flies are not literal (although the smell is the same), so you have to assume the flies. But it's the same thing. Like on Survivor when every other word starts being "alliance" or how they stop talking English about halfway through Big Brother and just communicate in mumbles and grunts and chuckles and twin language. What is better than that? So then there's a stupidly fake and fakely stupid edit where the dialogue of the women starts to overlap and sound like squawking chickens and you can't even really understand them anymore, while poor, poor Sean rolls around in bed like Orestes, clutching a pillow. Finally, he puts in ear plugs, because that's what you do when women are talking. There's a "hilarious" edit of him in bed with the plugs in, and Allie's voice over it: "Sean? Sean?"
So they're at Rutgers. That well-known haven of sports excellence. Well, I can't make that joke, in all honesty, because I know nothing of football, college or...other. Professional. But I went to the Rutgers Football website? And their current scores were from 2004. Go Rutgers. So it's Week 11 of 15, meaning there's three weeks and change left of these sad bastards. Trump asks Synergy who they'll give up to the losers on Gold Rush to even things out again, and they all laugh awkwardly and won't look at each other, because nobody wants Sean there, least of all Sean, whose dubious masculinity is somehow threatened by being on a team with women. And not at all by his lack of masculinity. He volunteers, which makes Synergy Roxanne, Allie, and Tammy; and the GR lineup is now Sean, Lee, and Michael. A heady rush of testosterone there: the Gormless Brit, Undescended Testicle McGee, and the Gay Martian. Lucky Sean. What if they threw a men's team and nobody came? Trump seems to find this deep or something: "This is the basics of life! Men against women!"
Fuckin' what? Gross. I know he's a dipshit, but his dipshittiness is so often in that territory that it can't just be a coincidence. I don't want to know about him like that. He asks Allie why Synergy has done so well, and she says that it's "rare" to find "three women" that are "so confident" and "get along so well." ["It's only rare on this show, bobblehead. Don't play into Trump's shit." -- Sars] Aww, I wish Charmaine were around. She'd love that. Charmaine was so in synch with Synergy -- they'd never joke about gang-raping her! Now that's Girl Power. Or, you know, Human Power. Allie says their chances seem good, and Lee says the Rush chances seem good. Trump talks about Rutgers and football and my brain turns off, because those are magic hypnotism words, and then all of a sudden their task is to throw a tailgating party by selling the food of Outback Steakhouse. Which I will admit upfront I do enjoy and I am not ashamed of that fact. I have been there twice and both times it was a gustatory lollapalooza. The difference between me telling you this -- just between us friends -- and the people saying it over and over and over on this stupid game show is quite simple: I am not being paid to say it. Because I am not a whore. I'm just a boy, who likes a delicious steak every now and then. Two parking lots, two tents, two tailgate parties, the team to sell the most Outsteak and Deep-Fried Onion Crap wins. As Trump goes on and on about how much he loves Outsteak, as opposed to the steak he, you know, actually eats -- when he's not chowing the fuck down on nonexistent Arby's, that is -- Tammy smiles like she's a blissful blind girl in a television movie about a country kind of hope. Who dropped E a half hour ago.
Synergy is the yellow team, Gold Rush is blue. The yellow team dances around dorkily like the beginning of Laverne & Shirley as Trump points and goggles at the Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects and talks to them like an over-friendly uncle. (I put the two things together and invent my TV show, which is inspired by the edgy and dark "re-imagining" that's right now all the rage. It's called Laverne/Shirley, and it's about a pair of best friends and possible lovers who operate a vigilante ring in Milwaukee, and it's loosely based on the biography of Aileen Wuornos. In the pilot they steal Trump's chopper and mangle his face a little bit. But the high concept is that Laverne, the more forceful and charismatic of the two, doesn't really exist!) So Trump leaves the Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects alone and as soon as he's gone, they bust out the Purell. Roxanne interviews over highly embarrassing dancing and hopping footage about how Sean's exit left the team feeling "so good" that they "just had to dance." It's really dorky. But, I think, when Sean is gone, I too shall dance. And I cannot say that it will not be dorky, but I can guarantee that it will not be televised, and I think there's a lesson there we can all appreciate. Roxanne terms the whole activity a "celebration" about "the fun" that they were planning on having by trouncing the men. So yeah, in terms of the way this show works, I think that you might as well mix up some lemonade there. But with Roxanne, I wonder if it's lemonade or Kool-Aid in the pitcher, and I'm scared to find out. Footage of Team Synergy and the cheer squad is intercut, just in case you were thinking of the women as grown adults with any kind of business acumen.
Weekly Wisdom: "Deliver the goods." Heh, that's funny at the end of the episode. This is so straightforward: you can talk the big talk, but if you don't deliver the goods, the talking doesn't mean anything. See, what that means to me is that Lee will not only be fired, but perhaps tossed under a literal bus.
Gold Rush comes into their conference room to plan. Please note that this situation, once more, is what Lee is "talking about." I miss Tarek, I really do. Independent of Lee's bullshit. Surprising indeed. Lee wants to be PM (no, I know! I was shocked too!) but this time it's not because Trump asked him expressly to pass on the memo to his team that he is supposed to be PM this week. Fucking pisher. No, this week it's because "this is what [he knows]: sports, colleges...if there was ever a task..." Oh, you mean like every week? Like how every single week except for The Hair Buggery Salon And Teahouse For Sensitive Boys, you were perfect for the job? He tells us that if he wins this task, he'll be 3 and 0. God, don't remind me. Michael and Sean, of course, have no thoughts in their weird little heads, and no forward inertia EVER, so they acquiesce. Well, Michael's got thoughts, you just can't render them on this keyboard. They mostly have to do with how many panels in the ceiling times how many steps from Trump Tower times the derivative of a complex equation involving a random assortment of numbers, symbols, and fragrances. "This is a tailgating party! Not a salon!" scoffs Lee, like he's ever been to a tailgate in his life. What would he do there? Yep! Man the keg. You got it right on the first guess. He's like a walking argument for why they shouldn't let little eighth graders go to college, even more compelling than the Highway To Heaven episode about that important subject, only even more hardcore, because it's not his age that's inappropriate for college, it's Lee that's inappropriate and embarrassing for his age.
Meanwhile, in the Pastiche of Heterosexuality Olympics that's suddenly going on, Sean's "just thinking girls, girls, millions of girls." Michael fake-laughs and fake-woos. "Yeah!" This is the saddest thing in the world. This is like three Steve Carells locked in a room together and never getting the joke. Lee: "Steak. Girls. Lots of girls...hundreds. Literally thousands of them. Dressed skimpy. In a pyramid." Michael: "I like that." Lee: "Oh, should I see if I can get, like, a giraffe, or something?" Sean laughs. Michael suggests an "eating contest" and Lee's like, "Yeah! Write it down! Let's think big! Bigger! Flying money! So much fun!" Sean's like: "Okay, but the Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects?" and Michael does his scary Buffalo Bill voice: "That's it! They'll bring the guys in." This is like Suddenly Last Summer, this shit. Sean interviews, "As soon as I moved to Gold Rush, I felt testosterone flooding through my veins. I felt like a man again!"
(Insert ten-page rant about how actual men don't need each other's approval to be men, because manhood isn't a secret club, it's a fact of life, and if I thought for a second that these guys were the exception and not the rule, I wouldn't be half so fucking scared all the time. When was it, do you think, that American men just handed that shit over? And to whom did they hand it? Where is it now? When did masculinity start being something that was in the eye of the beholder? When did it stop being about spreading seed and start being about begging other men for the nod? When did the men in America get broken? When did they decide it was a club they needed to get into? You know who I blame, because I always blame them for everything: the Baby Boomers. The Greatest Generation has some shit to answer for, but at least they didn't assume that the burden of proof for basic questions of identity were everybody else's responsibility. It's the Tarek thing again: "Did you see me eating that beluga? Wasn't that so classy?" Only when it's gender and sexuality instead of just poverty anxiety and pretension, the stakes are raised, and you start talking about actual crimes, and about the pile of shit we had to sit through last week.)
Allie wants to talk to the cheerleading coach, because Girl Power! And because football fans are also breast fans, which is where cheerleading comes from to begin with. Roxanne tells us that she's PM because she's "ready to step up again," and there is more mention of Girl Power. "I'm stuck in a box and I can't get out!" That wasn't a very good mime, Roxanne, because I didn't see that at all. Allie, reading the school newspaper or something, notices that it's Homecoming week and there's a pep rally later. Roxanne says they need to be there, and Allie squeals that she feels like she's "back in college!" She's one of those, yeah. You didn't know that?
But first, Synergy goes to Outback to sample the foods they'll be selling, ostensibly so it won't be "disingenuous," per Roxanne, when they sell the food. Actually, though, it's so they can be incredibly fucking disingenuous making visual love to course after course of delicious, amazing, orgasmic Outsteak and Deep-Fried Onion Crap and Chowder and whatnot. They eat the food. They eat the food. They continue to eat the food. It's like more creepy porn. The food they're shoving into their cute little faces is "delicious," "so delicious," has "zing," and is "delicious." I think Roxanne's being snarky when she growls ferally into the camera with a hilarious crazy face: "The food was grrrrrreat!!!!" They eat the food. They all moan, and eat the food and make fake faces and orgasm noises. Allie says in that sales voice: "If we can't sell this, we can't sell!" Shudder.
Michael does his weird talking about the invite, and he and Lee give Sean quite a drubbing for his use of the word "whilst" in the language. "This isn't Shakespeare!" And while on one level, this is about linguistic difference pond-wise, the real point is that they're continuing the conversation from before. Since none of them know what men are actually like, they're coming to a decision that men do not use the word "whilst," because using the word "whilst" is basically the same as putting on a cheerleader costume. But that's the not the worst, most bone-chilling part; the worst part is that, given the facts about Michael and Sean, the alpha dog tiara goes to Lee, which is just mind-bending. At least when they were checking with Tarek every five seconds it made sense, because at least Tarek made a convincing man. Especially by comparison. But without Tarek, it's a curious mix of blind fumbling, gay jokes, and Lee giving the nod. And that's really fucking rough to watch. Michael calls up the cheerleading coach at Rutgers and gets her to agree that Gold Rush will have exclusive access to the cheerleading squad and dance team. They all dance around and make out. Sean shrieks, "Steak and Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects! Steak and Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects!" Lee yells about how "that was huge" because whilst Synergy has three "good-looking girls," Lee now has ownership of "forty of them!" He says it's going to be a bloodbath, and they all giggle and snuggle and act like retards.
Roxanne and Tammy head to Kinko's for the flyers, while Allie goes to campus to talk to the cheerleading coach. She looks...insane. She's wearing a cute black dress, but her hair looks like she just crawled out of a wind tunnel -- in Uzbekistan -- and she's making creepy demonic faces. Maybe it's a cheerleader thing. The coach, a cute blonde, tells Allie about the exclusivity deal with GR, but says that in "all fairness to the University," not to mention blonde ex-cheerleader solidarity, she wants to split the teams now for both tents. They hug goodbye as Allie interviews about her background in cheerleading back in Florida, and how they "bonded." I'm not saying girls aren't weird, I'm just saying this episode is ALL ABOUT how weird boys are, and in such a way and to such a degree that it almost makes up for last week.
Homecoming Week! A marching band plays in a courtyard, Gold Rush passing flyers. Allie, fresh from being lied to in her face by the cheerleading coach, sees them and freaks. There's footage of Allie, the boys, Allie, all trying to get the word out. Lee tells some guy that the yellow tent "sucks," which was pretty awesome. Some dumb college boys tell Allie how much they love steak, they want steak, and she's like, "Yellow lot. Repeat after me," and they're like we know, we know. "...But we get steak?" She walkies to Roxanne and Tammy about how Rush already has their flyers out and they're on campus, and as they're talking Allie overhears a DJ talking about how there are "money and prizes" to be found at the blue tent, and screams cutely into the phone: "You don't even know what I just heard!" Roxanne listens to them clearly giving all kinds of publicity to the blue tent, and Allie takes off to get the guy to announce the yellow tent also, and then there's a long, awesome, long long shot of Roxanne staring into space with her mouth hanging open, in the van, with her phone still flipped open, the letters OMG like a halo over her lovely head. It's hilarious and so relatable. I'm altogether very conflicted about Roxanne, because I like her virtue and how it has cracks in it, and how she seems to be very sure of herself...but the cult-susceptible behavior makes me think that's not half as true as I think it is. I want to be friends with her, that's for sure, so I guess I like her, but this isn't a popularity contest. It's a game show about making sure you tune in each week, that itself doesn't really care who wins, except wanting you to talk about who wins, so you'll tune in season.
Whilst Lee and Sean are at the pep rally, Michael meets with the cheerleading coach lady. "Just so you know," she says, "I had told you originally that we would be exclusive to your group..." Yes, he hisses like a freak. "Afterward, I met with Allie, and told her I would send a couple of people there." He nods spookily and says he has "no problem with that" because he "absolutely" knows where she's coming from, and he "understands fairness," and thinks it's fine to send Synergy "one or two" Short-Skirted And Bouncy Fetish Objects. He says he needs to check with his Project Manager, and interviews with us that he "felt compassion" for the coaches, and (note this for later) openly thinks that there's no problem with sending "one or two" Skimpy-Suited Fetish Objects over to Synergy. "What will one or two" of them do? "Nothing, really." He walkies to Lee and Sean, saying that there were bad feelings about the exclusive deal, and that he told the coach they'd "reconsider." Lee tells him to shove it back up the chicken with a swiftness, and Michael whines about how couldn't they do one or two as a "sign of good faith?" Lee and Sean shake their heads, agreeing that this is a pussy move, and Sean screeches into the phone about how "we have been losing" even though he's been on the team five seconds, and "no, just no" in this condescending tone, and hangs up. Then he interviews some stupid shit about "grow some balls" and "phone her back, you wanker!" There is more shadowboxing. I cannot even watch his interviews with the sound on anymore. He's just too horrible. The voice and that clockstopper face and the shuddery fakeness of everything he says. For someone with no internal direction or...any qualities, of any kind, the violence with which he champions the feelings and thoughts of everyone else would be a lot less sickening if he didn't do it with such flair and pizzazz and jazz hands and spirit fingers and self-satisfaction.
Coach calls her BFF Allie to apologize for lying to her feral, insane face earlier, but there will be no Objects available for them. Roxanne expresses disappointment, and interviews that "watching the [Objects] spill through [their] fingers just stinks," and that their sales could suffer. Allie tells everybody about this great thing her dad taught her, over a bowl of Grape-Nuts, that's often called "denial," in which they just doublethink their way out of depression and pretend that Gold Rush doesn't even exist! And that makes the bad feelings go away! (Girlfriend is scary! I told you!) They pull up to a light and outside their van -- this is frankly gorgeous -- GR has got all of Fraternity Row screaming "BLUE! LOT! BLUE! LOT!" and "YELLOW LOT SUCKS!" It's amazing. That might be the best moment of this season, just this tidy little WASP-y "pretend this isn't happening," while outside the van the whole world is screaming "YELLOW LOT SUCKS!" The ladies in the van are like, "Fuck."
Commercials. Public firing squad votes: Lee at 26%, nice; Allie at 24% for some reason ["because references to 'girl power' are fatuous and tired, even on the rare occasions when they're backed up?" -- Sars]; Sean at a paltry 18%. Now, there's no reason to go on for three pages about a commercial, unless there's a point, and this week there really isn't, but in brief: "There's a secret in tonight's GE 'ecomagination' commercial! What is it? Record it and see!" Now, I had my skepticisms. Is there really a secret? Is the secret that it's part of the war machine? That "ecomagination" is retarded and the opposite of what it means and kind of evil? Like how buying a Ford Hybrid makes Kermit happy? Nope, it's just overwhelmingly stupid. The commercial itself involves a CGI elephant dancing around in a rain forest while lots of animals watch it dance in the rain forest. I think the point is that General Electric makes life-giving rain, and not bombs like we thought. Now that's ecomagination! "Imagine that your grandchildren won't get cancer in grade school!" "Imagine that when your husband comes back from Iraq he won't have strange syndromes and unexplainable chronic pain!" "Imagine that Outback Steakhouse never killed a tree!" So anyway, if you pause it and frame-by-frame it, out of some kind of end-of-season self-destructive recapper masochism, there's a one-second flipbook of frames that are basically like the actor bios in a DVD extra: The elephant was in teenage porn. The flamingos were a discredited vaudeville couple. This is so stupid. The gecko is a performance artist. The end. I did not make that up. Please send nasty things to NBC.
In their van, Synergy dresses up as Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects, since they don't have any Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects to pimp. How is that different from Ivana shaking her shapely ass for chocolate? Roxanne tells us that this is so great because the three of them "always figure out a way to use our Girl Power to win! Win! Win!" This is Girl Power in a very third-wave sense, and I approve only in the same way that I approved of Ivana, which is that men are dumb and will give you money. And if it's no skin off your ass, go for it. Shame about that is just another thing Trump wants women to feel so they'll stay small, and that's one to grow on. Over Roxanne's latest Girl Power Rebel Yell, Allie futzes in the van: "I just put my pants on backwards..." Cute!
Lee and Sean talk about how the cash booth is "so student," and Lee interviews smarmily about how "amazing-amazing" it's going to be. Dude, I just remembered how last night I dreamed that I accidentally got spoiled that he was in the Final Two, and I was mentally composing my resignation letter to Sars when I remembered it was a dream. The power of hate just kicked that memory loose! So funny. The game starts, and there is screaming, and there is Fetish Object Synchronized Movement out in Blue Lot, and Michael is on the mic, droppin' weirdness about Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects and the food, and there's lots of food, and people eating, Sean snagging people and Lee selling food and somebody doing the cash-grab game, and more food, and Michael doing nothing, steak, steak, steak, and you know what? Kinda craving Outback, right about now. I'm kidding, of course. I just had some Arby's a couple hours ago.
Tammy is selling her ass off, and Roxanne and Carolyn have a little meeting about how great things are going, and how everything is $5, and that's so great, and Tammy tells one family they'll deliver their order to them as Allie sells to a group of baseball players. They make her do this Rutgers chant, of which she grasps a surprising amount on her first try, but still stumbles enough on it that it's adorable to the guys. Cut to Roxanne being tackled by a very excited Allie, who tells her she just sold $200 to a single group. Roxanne interviews that the delivery idea is what will win them the task, should they win. (Remember the Weekly Wisdom? That's funny, right?)
Michael takes Polaroids of other sad boys with the Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects, yells into the mic about this or that, and generally just fucks around. Like he does on every task. Lee sells and sells, screaming at one person, "ARE YOU EATING?" and then screaming at Michael to try and sell something for this sales task. He interviews that once you get the crowd there, you have to sell things to them.
Meanwhile, something awesome happens. It's small, but I really like it. Allie goes to another tailgating group, and produces the Rutgers chant for them on the first try, and the reason that I love that is that she's totally using her cheerleading skills to win the task. I mean, think about that. That's some Kristy Swanson shit right there, using your cheerleading kicks to defeat vampires and shit. I love that so much. Cheerleading is an ugly thing, from one side of the mirror -- showing your ass as football Viagra -- but of all the many life lessons I've learned from Bring It On, of which there are literally thousands, the number-one thing that I learned is that cheerleading actually has nothing to do with that, and it's like this huge joke that the young women of America have been playing on the men and boys of America, for decades at this point, because in fact cheerleading is a sport, but the men and boys never actually see them practicing the sport. And if you ever meet a professional one, like a "we went to nationals" one, you'll notice the unmistakable scariness and intensity of an athlete all over them. So anyway, one of the things that you do in cheerleading is memorize long, stupid chants and then remember and shout them at the drop of a hat, and that's what Allie does here, and it earns her sales. This episode is kind of my hero. It's like the violent younger sister of the roofie-eyed thug last week.
So Roxanne watches Allie do this grand, small thing, and they run back to Yellow Lot, and Roxanne's like, "You have magic powers!" and they giggle, and Tammy continues to charm the ass off everyone that comes near the tent, and Roxanne interviews about how they will win, if they win, because they all "worked hard together."
Simultaneously, things are happening at Gold Rush. Things that make everyone watching quite nervous. George walks up, and Carolyn also looks on, bemused, as a chubby dude in the back, almost out of frame, cracks open a beer. And he can't be blamed for this, but if he'd looked a little closer, he'd have noticed it was a leftover can of Schlitz Gay. And you know what happens : a beefy kind of anarchy. It's like the I WILL EAT THIS MEAT gay-adjacent Iron John bullshit from last week stopped being polite and started getting real. A man feeds another man a piece of meat. Then another. Their lips are all greasy and their eyes are darting and beastly, and they won't stop with the meat, they're shoving meat into their own mouths, into each other's mouths, and Michael is screaming and cheering, and everybody's covered in au jus and stuff is dripping off of chins, and cheeks, and it's never ending, and scary, and violent, and really...forceful. The word is forceful. I don't remember any situation in which I've seen this much food getting shoved places than this episode, in which it happens nearly constantly. Oh, we're not done. So one of the guys was able to cram more meat into himself than anybody else, and Michael congratulates him even as he spits the meat back out into his hand -- all of this lovingly, passionately recorded for all time -- and taut, muscled arms appear from outside the frame, offering Michael meat, and he bites into it with the ferocity of someone who does not work his issues out anywhere normal. All the men's eyes get that squinty tryptophan puffiness, that satiated creepiness, and they stare around like beasts.
Carolyn interviews that, while GR did "a great job creating a spectacle," and their traffic is a madhouse, they may or may not be "converting that into sales." They raffle off a grill, which of course pushes some kind of idiotic Tim Allen internal button inside them, and they all grunt and yell and act gross. And then something intriguing, which is when I turned the corner on this episode, and started to think I wasn't giving this show enough credit. What we're hearing is Michael's voice, and here's what it's saying: "This is man food." Men jump and push against each other. "We're a bunch of men." A large man screams incomprehensibly with a beery exuberance. "Football is a man's sport." Shots of the ravaged remains of trays and trays of food. "It's about meat." Hot young college boys shove their meat into Michael's willing mouth. "It's a guy food." More meat juice all over everything; Michael's eyes closed because the meat is so, so good. "Guys like steak. Guys like [Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects]. We're going to -- [giggle] -- whoop Synergy's ass!" You tell me now. I don't know. Troubling, right? I'm not just...I mean, that's fucked up, right? Lee goes like this: "WOOO!"
At some point, I suppose, the football game ends. I didn't even know they did that -- see, you totally can learn from this show. Into the BR, where the ladies are still wearing their cheerleader costumes that are lovely and kind of triumphant suddenly, and Lee is wearing a -- mustard polo, collar popped -- dickwad costume that he can never hope to pull off, and everyone is wearing grim faces. Lee tells Trump the Rush won. It was a great event, they sold a lot of food. He admits he "couldn't take the money fast enough!" Sean says that Lee was a good...no, great Project Manager, in his Seaniest tone, and he thinks they won too. Trump makes reference to "these beautiful women in these crazy outfits," so you know that he noticed them, and there is nervous laughter. There is an idiotic debate about whether "beautiful women" have the advantage over men, as far as "selling food," and Sean absolutely thinks they do. Michael gives his fucked-up Speech And Debate equivalent, I think, and the men say, though, that they had "25 to 30 women" on their team, as opposed to three. And Allie and Roxanne laugh, because (a) it's a compliment, and (b) suck it.
Trump asks Roxanne the same, and she admits she thinks they did very well. He asks if she thinks they won, and she redirects: "I hope we won." Carolyn talks about how Rush had different events, including Ogle, Orgy, and Cash Grab, and that they earned $1750. George kind of gives it away immediately: "Rather than concentrating on events," he says, Synergy "concentrated on selling food." He says they "sold everywhere, and to everyone" and "really hustled." I like it when George is impressed. He's really cool about letting you know. Tammy smiles as he tells everyone Synergy earned $2750. "They won, George." That's Trump's contribution: "...The women beat you. Badly." Heh. The reward is that because Outback is so tasty and quality, now they get to have some tasty and quality wine, courtesy of the Raphael Winery, to which they will be flying in his chopper. He calls it -- this made me want to give him noogies and a hug -- "the finest on Long Island."
The ladies giggle and cheer in the helicopter, flying over the fields of Raphael -- that well-known vintner -- because that's like their favorite thing to do: giggle and cheer and show joy and enthusiasm. I mean to say that they clap when they land. I mean they applaud. "Brava, terra firma! Once again you have proven your solidness!" Then they have a totally wild fun time. They get to ride a tractor through the field: Fun! They get to cut the grapes down: Earthy! They get to sample the grapes off the vine: Delicious! They get to admire the loveliness of earth's fecund blessing: Overdoing it! They get to do the Lucy and crush grapes in separate barrels: Adorable! But kind of weird! (I do love ladies like this, like when they're baking and they give you that conspiratorial grin and they're like, "I just love getting my hands dirty! You really gotta dig in there!"...And then immediately go wash their hands like five seconds later. And when I say that I "love" ladies like this, I guess I really mean..."am.") So they dance around and giggle, and the men stand off to the side, watching, and yet again, food where it does not belong, squishing and being shoved around, and I swear I'm not a pervert, I don't normally think this way, but the camera work is just so detailed and strange and it makes everything seem clinical and creepy. They all climb into the same barrel and embrace whilst squishing. The man off to the side keeps giving them a "do a twirl" motion, and the part of my brain that is separate from this filthy show knows that he is saying they are not squishing the grapes properly if they're just standing in the same place, dancing with their arms around each other, but the weirded out part thinks that he just wants to see more of the hot grape-stomping action. Oh, how they dance. Roxanne: "It was Girl Power. In the grapes." Maybe I am in love with Roxanne after all.
They blend wines: I don't know what they are doing! And they name their wines "Tammy" and "Roxanne" and "Allie"! Roxanne tells us it was the perfect reward, due to their double loves of wine and each other's company, and that "to go through the process of making wine" was a great bonding event. They sit out on a luxurious deck and consider their wine, staring at length at the labels, which say their names in fussy script. It's like Build-A-Bear for drunks! The conversation gets idle and foggy: "I love the label." "...Yeah." "What do you think...the boys are up to right now?" "Michael is..." "Primping in the mirror." "Sean and Lee are...shooting hoops." "I...think you are right. About that."
Cut to Lee and Sean shooting hoops, bitching about Michael -- who's primping in a mirror, and that's what we call "the gander" -- and how he didn't sell, he was just on the mic. Sean says it was narcissistic ("I'm on the microphone! I'm doing a show!"), but I can't help thinking about how he was the shitty presenter for like every Synergy task and always did the same thing, so don't throw microphones in a narcissistic house, basically. Then he gives interview, and I'm going to level with you: Sean's speech in these has become so sharp and painful to the ear, so anima-possession harsh and harpyish, with the horrible voice and his stupid face, that I had to start hitting mute on them. But my razor-sharp recapping instincts tell me he's most likely bitching about Michael, though. If he said anything really meaningful and insightful or interesting in any way, let me know, 'kay?
Michael comes to Sean with this creepy, breathy, intense voice and pauses between every word, about how "as you know" the "question" is...going to be asked...who should be fired. Sean's like, what do you want me to say? He interviews, and from his left-then-right gestures in the blessed silence, I think he's saying it's stupid to come to him when there are three people on the team, because it's like, either you're the one or not, and I'm not going to be honest about it, because you'll come out swinging, so what are you, stupid? Which I think is the right thing to say; I just can't say for sure if that's what he was saying. Michael gets very sibilant and scary and intense in Sean's face about "I was on that mic! I wasn't selling! We didn't have a sales force! You were the only one selling!...I don't think Lee did a good job!" Michael interviews, and it's clear he's already in the weeds from the weirdness of his syntax: "It's Lee's fault...he didn't set us on a right path. The strategy was flawed from the beginning. We ended up throwing a great party instead of taking the food to the people...and selling the food." Except Lee and Sean...sold. So basically your complaint is that you didn't have the exact same strategy as the other team, which is a stupid complaint. Do the math. $2750 divided by Synergy is $900 and change. $1700 divided by Sean and Lee is? Almost $900. You know? I won't miss him at all, this Michael. Too weird, too retentive, too scary of the talking. He goes to Lee and stutters and hisses and ass-kisses him about "the questions are asked" and he doesn't want Lee to take it personally when he blames Lee, even though it will be incomprehensible when he does so. Lee's like, "Whatever." Because in Lee's mind, he's already fired Michael himself. And he's right, as usual. It's not his business sense, or his game sense, that I hate: it's the way he is. That's all. "This is my first time losing as Project Manager," he smarms to us. "A cat only has nine lives...and I'm about to use my eighth one!" YOU ARE NOT A CAT, YOU ARE A PANTS-PISSING, PRECOCIOUS CHILD. Drop the aphorisms and say what you actually mean.
27% Allie, 21% Roxanne, 20% Lee. Again, no idea why any of this. I guess because voting was cut off before the results were announced, so nobody could tell that Allie was actually going to win. This show hasn't been this unpredictable for a while. That's a pretty cool thing about this episode of kind of cool things mixed into the Bakhtin Word Jumble of Horror and Nasty Stuff.
Boardroom. "Lee, what went wrong?" What went wrong was that even though he did everything perfectly, they lost. Basically. Trump asks if he's surprised that they "lost so badly," and Lee redirects just like Roxanne did, to great effect: "Surprised we lost. Very." Michael gives a garbled, weirdo speech about how Lee "lost sight of the complexities" and had a flawed strategy and that Lee failed because he's not Roxanne, in so many words. Carolyn watches him like a hawk throughout this, and then just says it again: "Your concept was to have so many events...and then you didn't convert that into sales." Lee, pointlessly, lets her know that he "wholeheartedly" agrees with this assessment, just tossing the ass-kiss out into space and hoping it sticks, and she stops him dead: "This was a sales task." He goes silent.
Lee tells Trump that Michael should be fired, because he has skills in sales and didn't bother to sell, because he got too caught up in running the events. Michael is sad about that, and halfheartedly protests that this was his responsibility. Sean chimes in that he didn't sell, and I think I side with Lee and Sean. I get that Michael had shit to do, but the fact is that we saw Lee try to repurpose him into doing both, and he refused to do so, and Lee was worried by that. Meaning, it's not like they weren't standing feet from each other, or that Lee's making this all up after the fact. Trump's bored of that, though: "Eating contest? ...You eat and eat and then you're supposed to buy food after that?" Lee babbles in response, and George gets bored: "Who fixed the price?" Lee says they all did, and that the price wasn't wrong, "and here's why: I know college students. They don't carry around more than a couple of bucks in their pocket?" His diction is a huge fucking problem for me. There's a difference between the accent, which is cute, and the mush-mouthed, ignorant way the kid talks, which is not cute, and makes him seem thuggish, like those Long Island kids they always show on that MTV show where you go through three girl's bedrooms and then decide which to date based on how slutty their bedrooms are. Carolyn stops him right there: "The ladies were able to sell their products for $5 each." The Rush team, by the way, was selling at like $3. "Right," says Lee, "I understand," even though he doesn't, clearly, or he would answer the implied question there instead of nodding like he's about to "fire" Carolyn. George is like, "Eh, but don't you 'know college students'?" He says that college kids at a ball game are going to eat and drink, and they aren't going to do this with "a couple of bucks." Trump wakes up from his nap to say some stupid shit for no reason: "College students just wanna drink and have sex, isn't that right?" They smile at him, including Carolyn, but that has nothing to do with anything except for Trump's shriveled, nasty junk and how every thirty seconds it's gotta remind everybody that it's still there, or else Percival will show up and take over the company or something.
Lee starts talking about how the cheerleaders were great for the crowd, and brought in the frat guys to eat the food, but (you can hear the eeeerrrrrrrk of a smartly-executed left turn echo through the room) that Michael thought maybe they should just give a couple of the Scantily-Clad Fetish Objects to the other team. NICE. I clapped. For Lee! Trump, also funny: "What would be the purpose of that." Michael gives a hearty speech without any kind of identifiable point or meaning or sense about how "fairness" but also making people feel more comfortable by lying to them, so they would never have done it, but he called Lee to ask if they could, but it was never his intention, even though he told us in his interview that it was, but it kind of was, because whatever, whatever, the whole room is laughing at him because he's a freak. "I don't get it. There's fair and...wonderful...and then there's...stupid." Trump declares that he "hates" the suggestion of giving up some of your "assets" to the other team. Lee points out how the original exclusivity deal was so that wouldn't happen, and for some reason Michael feels compelled to point out that he was the one the negotiated that deal originally. Which is not a point in his favor, because it implies that he was smart and not-crazy, and then suddenly became not-smart and crazy, like, in the middle of the day.
Sean is caught here slightly rolling his eyes as Trump sets off on some kind of spice of life lecture about the nature of Trumpness, and how he's "sort of like a fair guy in life?" And that he is also the kind of person that hates Michael for sharing "assets," by which he means "fine-assed bitches," and Michael points out that he, um, didn't do that, and Trump's like, "Because Lee and Sean wouldn't let you!" Which may or may not be true, I don't know. Lee's all over it, as usual, about how he would NEVER share bitches. "Giving up beautiful cheerleaders -- I learned a long time ago: when you have a cheerleader, you never give her up." Michael's like, "Gross." Lee's like, "Let me write that down." Sean laughs because he's fucking useless. Last night my friend Amanda wondered, vis-à-vis our viewing of Big Love, how much Viagra Hef probably takes. And it really made me think, because: none. Because as long as everybody thinks you're getting ass, after you're a man of a certain age and decrepitude, it doesn't matter if you actually get off or not. And the way you keep that going is, I think, doing this shit that Trump always does. Which is just another way of getting men to co-sign on your masculinity, and it's gross, but all we've done is prove that Trump is gross, which...the grass is green! Blue Lot sucks! You know?
Carolyn screams about them about the "competitive edge" some more, and I still don't think anybody knows what she means, and she says that none of their worthless asses will be simply "giving away" any of Donald Trump's "assets," not as long as her handgun is still registered in Connecticut it won't, because she'll blow them to hell before they do that. Michael tries again to explain, but it's 20% outright lies, 30% his own confusion, and 109% blabbercrock, so we're skipping it. More of the same. Trump wades through it for a while, and then tells him that he "didn't" or "couldn't" or "wouldn't" sell -- "Who knows?" -- but since he was willing to give up a "prime asset" to the other side, "who's doing well, beating you to a pulp, and you're willing to give up the prime asset?" Okay, maybe he's talking about in terms of team history. That makes more sense. I really did think for a while that he had gotten a wrong idea about the task, as he has about so much else. Michael is fired.
"You two guys did a lousy job also! Don't feel so great!" Trump screams after Lee and Sean, and Michael wishes them luck in the foyer. Back inside: "Carolyn, you agree?" "It was very easy." "George?" "I agree with it." And then, in case you thought Trump had somehow gotten reality: "Okay, well. I agree also." Like now he needs to sign off on people agreeing with him. That's how in control of everything he is. Ha! Sorry your stupid show is now plummeting to sub-UPN ratings on a regular basis, you old nasty freak. In the taxi, Michael's just like, I can't believe something that didn't happen, and never would have mattered, bit me in the ass. I mean, he goes on about three times longer than that, but it's his point, and he's right. But he still deserved to go.