The task: work with Wal-Mart and Microsoft to promote the new Xbox with an in-store "display environment" comparable to last yearâs Sith task. Which is fitting, since you wonât find a company more vile or creepy than the two sponsors this week.
Sean, meaning of course "Lee," is Rush Chair, while Tammy is nominal PM for Synergy. Viceroys are Ivanka and Bill, but they donât do anything particularly noteworthy. Billâs pretty cool this week, which isnât something weâve seen yet this season. Allie and Roxanne give Tammy her head on the design of the task, even though they know itâs stupid, makes no sense, and doesnât speak to the demographic, but they get to roll their eyes a lot and make her feel stupid, which isnât all that impressive to Bill. Itâs a "red carpet awards show and relaxation lounge" or something. It makes no sense, even though Tammy has full creative control, given that Allie and Roxanne spend the majority of episode playing Catâs Cradle and hopscotch. Lee and Sean go on a date that eerily mimics Seanâs earlier pizza massacre with Tammy, and Sean expresses delighted surprise that they get along so well. As he does every week, because every week he takes on the flavor of whoeverâs closest, like a piece of fish. Supplies mishaps abound, and GR is forced to show the clients about the jankiest piece-of-shit falling down demo ever seen on this show. Any other week, these things would matter. But guess what, though? Itâs Microsoft and Wal-Mart: they donât care if it works right or looks good, as long as the concept is good on paper. The clients find that Synergyâs demo would be great for selling tea or household curios, but has sweet F.A. to do with the Xbox, so Gold Rush wins.
Stupid Sean and Lee fly to Dreamworks to meet Jeffrey Katzenberg, completing this episodeâs Triangle of Evil, and then a really boring Boardroom takes place in which nothing happens except Allie and Roxanne bag on Tammy for her shoddy presentation, and Tammy screams loudly -- yet politely -- about what bitches they are. Trump openly acknowledges that they were teaming up on her, but decides that this was a sign of weakness. Combined with the poor leadership and the stupid design, Tammy is fired.
Previously, Carolyn was finding Michael's protestations of fairness stupid, which they were. Upstairs, Roxanne was antsy about who would be coming back. Tammy pointed out that Sean had already won once as PM. Roxanne wished aloud that they'd all be fired, because after all, "anything's possible." Downstairs, Trump hated that Michael would even admit the possibility of giving up a "prime asset" like tits and ass, and then fired Michael and told his teammates, Lee and Sean, that they are also lousy.
Roxanne screams, "Y'all! Y'all! Y'all!" as lousy Lee and smarmy Sean return to the suite, and there are huge hugs all around. Lee does his best to ruin the moment, as usual, by pointing out how crazy and "different" it is to go into the Boardroom as the losing Project Manager, rather than a pawn or sacrificial lamb, and Allie's like, "Uh huh," but then Roxanne encourages that kind of talk by remarking that Trump must really like him. Lee gives himself the homework of "winning a couple at least," and Roxanne toasts the "Fabulous Final Five." Fabulous. There's a word.
Credits. Such wasted opportunity. I don't know if it's the editing or what, but I keep feeling like this season, we never actually saw what anybody could actually do. We got to see Andrea's good and bad stuff, and all that Brent had to offer I think, but Tarek? Dan? I feel like Charmaine got the even treatment, for what it was worth, and I feel like the people that are left are playing with all their decks on shout, but it just seems so wasteful. Was it like this last season? I don't feel like I was; when I look back I feel a lot more respect for those people, even Adam and superstud77, than I might have thought at the time. It's a shame.
Trump starts this shit with a few declarations about how he "loves" working with Microsoft and Wal-Mart, two of the "best" companies in the world. And I know it's Trump, and he's coming from a bottom-line place, and he likes piles of money, but I mean: don't say shit like that. "Of all the serial killers, the best and the ones I have to love most are Gacy and Myra Hindley. They stepped up and got it done." "The best massacres have got to be Mai Le and the Killing Fields. Say what you want about Pol Pot; he delegated and he never lost sight of the bottom line." "That Sandra Lee, she keeps an eye on price points and she's got a killer figure."
Bill and Ivanka this week, which is exciting, meet us at the Donald J. Trump Watch Showroom, also exciting, for the debrief. This is a Room for the Showing of Watches, named after one "Donald J. Trump." Weep with me. Trump lets us know that these watches are hot sellers and then segues to the task: create an interactive "display environment," "hopefully as nice as what we've done" with the watches, for Microsoft's Xbox 360 to be located in Wal-Mart stores. Three bars so low they could be Special Olympics hurdles. Meet Jay of Microsoft and Stephen of Wal-Mart, who'll be deciding the winners. And in case you weren't horrified enough by this business, Trump cries out like a cat in the night that the two vile companies together are worth over half a trillion dollars. Bring in De Beers and the resulting hat trick of evil would cause Trump Tower to be sucked down into the Hellmouth for the delight of Allie's underworld masters.
Rush Time! Sean writes a ten-minute love letter to the Xbox, boilerplate from every other product placement orgasm of his we've ever had to sit through, and then tells us he's "decided to step up as Project Manager" due to the "flowing" of his "juices." Where they are flowing is his chin. Ivanka arrives, and he delivers his collection of Xbox love sonnets to her again, with Lee playing backup on accordion, until Ivanka agrees to perform the ceremony so that Sean can finally just marry the fuckin' Xbox. Their actual concept is clever, because Lee (and I think maybe Sean) knows what he's doing: "360 Degrees of Interactivity," with all the different stations. Ivanka says the idea "is a good one," but that the task will "hinge upon their ability to bring this all together." I wish that were true, but the other team screws the pooch in such a non-AKC approved manner that it will actually just come down to concept qua concept. Rusher One and Rusher Two scream at two different teams of signage guys about their amazing ideas. One is the tragic Adrian, whom we'll get to know pretty well, who's doing the circular floor and ceiling panels (with the green Xbox swirl), and another guy the ill-fated wrap to go around the whole setup. Adrian promises the floor and ceiling by midnight, and Lee pats himself on the back for us about how they managed their time by outsourcing all the components to "printing professionals." I'm impressed, I really am. At the risk of repeating myself: Lee is the best person here. He's just also, unfortunately, the worst person here, and not in a way that I think means he's a good businessman. He wants a good smacking, one just hard enough that it won't knock loose his prodigious skill.
Weekly Wisdom: "Death To Traitors." I am totally down with this concept, and with Trump's incredible rhetoric: "If you think there may be some sabotage...get rid of them ruthlessly, viciously...just get rid of them, fast." Word, Trumpy. At the end of the day, I don't look as harshly upon the "traitors" in this episode as harshly as others do, because sin by omission is a titch less gross than what Lee and Tarek perpetrated a couple weeks ago, but I still agree. I really, really wish Pepi had set the precedent when he wanted to earlier, about just firing the fuck out of people. Did Kwame actually do that with Miss O? Or was it just a technicality? I can't remember. But anyway, she wasn't a candidate at the time, so it's different. Too bad he pulled back.
Showtime, Synergy! There's all manner of deliriously twee and fun Brini Maxwell music as Tammy investigates the space, talking a mauve streak about having a "red carpet theme," highlighting "entertainment" as something so transcendent that it doesn't approach the gaming thing at the heart of the brand. She talks about wanting them to "feel like they don't even need to leave their house," due to the wonder of the Xbox. And...sadly, this is a boy/girl thing. They're rare, but they happen, and not always when you expect. The thing is that Jay and Stephen and arrested-development Lee and Sean know a thing that Tammy does not know, which is: the Xbox is a gaming console. It's fun to say that it's all about home movies and DVD's of The Object Of My Affection and whatever, but the price alone dictates that it will be bought only by unmarried men. Married men are not going to sneak this whole "it's for the whole family" bullshit past their wives, and only the most overindulged children are going to be receiving it for their very own. By incorporating the huge lie of the "interactivity" marketing into their overall concept, while still marketing it as a big-boy toy, Gold Rush has already won. But the ugliness of this is that Roxanne and Allie both know this, as portrayed through their thinky faces, and they're going to let Tammy fuck this up, and that makes them jerks. Watching this show every week, as I was telling Joe R, you get used to the formula, and generally at this point in the formula, you see the dissenting team members giving other options and questioning the central thrust; there's no such footage in the episode here. Allie and Roxanne just roll their eyes and nod their heads. I'm not saying they didn't fight Tammy on this, but we don't see it if they did, and that stuck out on first viewing: not one second of dissent. Only condescension and "if you think so" bullshit.
Roxanne tells us that she didn't really like the idea, but that Tammy got really repetitive and overbearing about it. Which my ecomagination has a tough time picturing. They go shopping for crap, and Tammy asks if they should have mirrors, and they don't say anything, just look at each other, and then Allie fixes her hair in the mirror while Roxanne tells her they'll put mirrors on the "maybe" list, and that if she's a "good girl"...I dunno. I kind of blame Tammy for not outright asking what the fucking problem was, if this is how they were acting the whole time. It's Mean Girl saying-by-not-saying, and Tammy's a down girl, down enough to ask them why they're being so unsupportive, and when your employees are all but shouting their disagreement like this, it's kind of your responsibility to ask what's going on. And she doesn't, until it's too late. But you don't need a graduate degree in Why Girls Are Weird to know that this is them saying "No" in the language of passive aggression. So she's weak for that. Bill shows up, and Allie shoots him several eye-rolls and practically gives a Loser L Salute, which grosses Bill out. "I didn't like that...you should be working as a team." Of course, Bill doesn't speak Girl Bullshit, so he doesn't get that she's just doing what the most prickish person on the team does to the Viceroy every week, which is express worry and disappointment while mid-task as a misguided attempt to curry favor. Tammy leads them somewhere and they laugh and dally and say "Piso Mojado" over and over, punch drunk. Tammy thinks that their bullshit and obstructionism makes them look less professional, she tells us, over footage of them running around Wal-Mart sharing a hula hoop and laughing like idiots. Not that she listened to the signals, or anything, just that she kind of thought they were being jerks, and that somehow it had nothing to do with her. While they're running around in a hula hoop. It's kind of bleak.
Come night, Team Gold Rush is eating ice cream and fries and gazing longingly at each other, making lists about what is most lovable and sexy about each other, them as a twosome, them as a team, their concept. They call each other "mates" and Lee tells us they're in their honeymoon period and that they are very much in love with each other. Maybe now that there's just two of them, they've become each other's alpha dog. That's sweet. If it were anybody else I would really enjoy it, I guess. It's Girl Power in the grapes, basically, but they're both so lost and childish that it's kind of hard to look at. Sean tells us they are very, very different, but also similar, and that he "actually" adores Lee. They adore each other for a billion years and take loving pictures of each other with their camera phones and giggle like chicks and then go look at hardware.
Synergy: Tammy asks Roxanne when the banners are coming, and Roxanne doesn't know, so Tammy takes off to do some more work. Roxanne and Allie talk about how uptight Tammy is, and how mean she's being, even though she isn't. Roxanne says that you can see how flustered and frustrated Tammy gets, that you can see it all over her face. They come upon Tammy in a pile of stuff, looking stressed, and she whispers, "What would you guys like to do?" Allie and Roxanne get very uppity about "why are you talking to us like that" like she's all of a sudden getting hardcore after letting their bullshit go on too long. Which she is, but that doesn't actually let them off the hook, since that's the game they're playing. Tammy explains that they're not respecting her, and she's not getting any support, and Roxanne says this is "unfair." She says that they keep rolling their eyes at each other, and we get an extended remix of one-on-ones from both of them about how they're not rolling their eyes, blah blah, but...they're totally rolling their eyes. It's funny, but I feel Tammy's pain. I mean, seven hours too late and it really does become your fault, in my opinion. And the fact that she didn't respond means she was either being (A) all timid and Pee Girl about it, which is horrible, especially as a PM, or (B) honestly didn't get the vibes until it was too late, which I can't really believe, and still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me for a PM. Talk about reading a room.
She tells them she wants to "prove" herself, which is a good goal for someone so frequently retiring to have, and then stupidly gives them the ammo of saying two clauses you never, ever say: "I know this sounds selfish, but..." and "I want this to be about me for a change." They way overreact and pretend they don't know what she means, because the scarred half of the Sales coin is that, just like you can pretend pizza sandwiches are God's Gift to the palate, you can also pretend that Tammy said the thing you decided to hear, and not the thing you know you heard. That you can privilege the word over the spirit knowing damn well that's not how she meant it, but have the fact of her words to hold against her. Which is the last refuge of the asshole who's playing emotional games, and now...I have nobody to root for. Nobody at all. I vote for Charmaine and Tarek and Andrea, still. I doom myself to dissatisfaction. I mean, though, really: they're all three playing the same stupid self-justifying game, which is that if you did/didn't actually "say" it, with your lovely little mouth, then it didn't happen. Allie and Roxanne didn't say out loud "this idea is very gay," but they said it very fucking loudly nonetheless and she pretends to be deaf to that; what Tammy is saying is, "Please support me so that Trump will finally realize I'm in the room," but Allie and Roxanne pretend to be deaf to that too. Privileging the ten percent of communication that is purely verbal over the ninety percent that is tonal and physical and contextual, thinking that you can at some later date appeal to the Speech-Act Gods and say, "But that's not the transcript of what she said, it's just implied," which is another way to say, "I choose ignorance and pettiness over authenticity."
Half an hour left, Lee wandering around outside looking for trucks, Sean on the phone with poor Adrian screaming that he can bring the ceiling upside down, black without the designs on it, any other ceiling he's ever made. Adrian says he'll do it, and Lee comes back in -- with eight minutes to Jay and Stephen -- and they jury-rig a truly jank solution: cardboard tubes from the packing supplies aisle at intervals, with the wrap duct-taped to them, no roof, keystone-style, the wrap holding up the pegs by being held up by the pegs, like a tee-pee, or a wigwam. Sean's just too tense: "If Adrian shows up keep him away from me."
Commercial. Firing Allie at 27%, Lee at 21%, Roxanne at 18%. Exactly the opposite of what I expected, frankly, of those three, considering the blasting of hatred Roxanne received after the episode was over. And I mean, Lee deserves to win the credit for this task not only as a Rushee, but as Project Manager. I can admit that, not only because I feel that Sean deserves nothing in this world beyond the Ed McMahon Ass-Kissing Award for Misplaced Enthusiasm, but also that if my voodoo doll is working, Lee should be getting his face bitten off by a Bichon Frise in the couple weeks anyway, so it's no skin off my face to congratulate him this week, knowing he'll get his. And really, "his" in this equation just amounts to a popping of the reality-check cherry, which will come whether I will it or no. And he's a genius anyway, so fuck it. Might as well root for Lee, given that he's the only person who has even Clue One at this point. But I physically cannot root for Lee, because I want to punch him in the box, so we'll call this one a Schrödinger for now and just, whoever wins, we can all say we were secretly rooting for him or her the whole time. That's my plan, anyway. I call it the Rancic Shuffle!
Synergy. Tammy tells the ladies about how she's doing the presentation and she hates using notes, but she has to because of all the technology. Which her entire setup is about minimizing, because she's in the weeds without aid. She interviews: "The vision is mine, the layout is mine..." And here's the vision: black walls, red carpeting, tiny statuettes everywhere, spotlights on the floor, flat-panel screens everywhere, mismatched chairs, papasans and fucking floor pillows and jank-ass-looking loungey crap. It looks like a gay fifteen-year-old's idea of their first apartment, it looks like $200 in the Ikea closeout aisle, it looks like the UPN's version of Big Brother, it looks like "A Crappy Movie Theatre Piece of Bullshit By Doug" from Trading Spaces like a hundred years ago. There are various little separate living room areas, with just enough sharp edges and crappy furniture to keep it from being a womb with cable. Which is sad, because that would have won so fast, if you think about it. It's got a name too: "Xbox 360: Entertainer Of The Year!" Jay and Stephen enter and fear and stare and take notes at the jankiness and bad idea-ness of the place. She goes on and on about how it's a "space that's warm and open." Dumb. This is a high-ticket item, not a day spa. Boys are so fucking easy, Tammy! What's the problem? Matte black and chrome, DVD player smell, moderately sexy edges and lines. You know that room at Best Buy or whatever where you test out the speakers and it's glassed-in and like something out of Wonka? There's a reason those places are lit like a romantic Italian restaurant or bordello. You have to fetishize something before you can spend that much money on it -- one word: Melania -- because those kind of extravagances are not made with the rational part of the brain. I always thought that you should market SUVs to women as Tank Girl behemoth boyfriend-beasts, the same way you sell more Corvettes if you fit them with bras. Instead, Tammy's like, she wanted to make it "comfortable," and make them feeling like it's not "too high-tech for them." Again: taking the rhetoric of the marketing over the concrete reality of the demographic. Nobody with tech fear is going to buy this shit, no matter how aggressively Jay and Stephen lie about it. Induce the tech fear -- "Can you handle this?" -- and boys will line up to defeat it. She gives them a tour, which is stupid and negligible except for how the theme is different awards for movie-watching and gaming and whatever, it's dumb, and Roxanne and Allie looking at each other bored and grossed out the whole time. For reals, I'm telling you that there is one station which just shows a succession of people holding the Xbox with smiles on their faces. What does that even fucking mean?
Sean fully admits that their display is roofless "crap," and worries that Jay and Stephen will exclaim, hands aflutter and eyelashes batting, maybe a little shadowboxing in there, "What the bloody hell is this?" His Jay and Stephen impression needs work, because apparently he thinks they're effete and smarmy British dandies...what? Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you're right. Never mind, my bad. Lots of shots of the wrap sagging and buckling and gapping and melting and falling and showing its ass and wires all on the floor and bowing under the weight of its own hideousness. Frankly, yours truly is worried, because really what I want is for Lee and Sean to win this one, over the shit design and total dysfunction of Synergy, and I'm afraid that their inability to produce something that doesn't actually hurt to look at is a valid failure. Surely, I'm saying, there's a way to make that not look shitty. Perhaps it's my own obsession with presentation talking, but throw Tarek at that -- for example -- or Alla, and I think they'd make it work. It's a particular kind of failure, and sign of immature lack of professionalism, that they can't toss together a viable alternative here. Nobody told them to wait until the last second. On the other hand, if either of them understood the concept of first impressions, or second ones, or n+1 ones, they would be very different themselves, so I can't blame them exactly. I just like pretty stuff, because pretty is commercial, and commercial feels good, and I like to feel good.
Jay and Stephen are wacky poker-faced as Lee and Sean tour the wreckage with them, leading them first around the hideous signage to show them the dangerously coiled and hideous cords poking out all over and sparking intermittently, and then around the corner to show the places where the wrap has cigarette holes and graffiti, piles of broken glass and piso mojado puddles that smell like urine. The body of an old hobo curled up under a satellite dish with newspaper circulars for his duvet. Tom Cruise jumping up and down on the broken pieces of a flat-screen monitor, the small community of refugees making their temporary home near the office furniture area, the slideshow of Jack Black's boudoir photographs running on one screen. Story Hour With Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth in one corner, where she's reading to the children from Tropic Of Cancer and Burroughs' Queer while passing around a joint of hash laced with PCP. It's bad, son.
Lee: "This would look better if the signage were...tight," which honestly, really is the whole of the problem here, but he keeps those cheekbones high as he points out all the Wal-Mart products and price points on display. Jay or Stephen points out that it's a bit small, that it's crowded in there with just four people (and, um, I think three cameras). It sucks! They did so great! And then Adrian tragically muffed it. Sean and Lee do point out that it could be larger, if the execs used their ecomagination and this weren't just a prototype, so don't worry about that. They take off, and Lee and Sean actually have the balls to be hopeful. I always get into it at the last second: what will happen? I really need to know! I'm hating on my beloved people and admiring the nemesis and it's all very upsetting. Taylor Hicks has been the best the last three weeks in a row and I'm just shy of being too obstinate to say so. What's that say about me? Why's Lee gotta be kicking ass like this? And what will happen if they lose this week? I'm all in a tizzy. I'm confused! I'm in a state of confusion! Adrian finally shows up when they're gone. Sean is grossed out. But they're drinking.
To Microsoft! Bill and Ivanka make small talk in the hall, waiting for The Notorious DJT. And by "make small talk," of course, I mean that Ivanka is lovely and classy and brilliant and makes sense, and Bill repeats one thing over and over like a frightened fax machine or color copier, to wit: how the concepts were so different. He says it with a million different emphases, and yes, each one means something. "They're very different concepts," says Bill, and what he means is that's the deciding factor, or should be. "They're very different concepts," says Bill, and by that he means the difference in level of execution is not important. "They're very different concepts," he says, to remind us that he's there, he's a Viceroy, he's seen them both with his very own twitching, equine terror eyeballs. "They're very different concepts," he says, which encapsulates all of the above. "Very different concepts." Trump shows up, nearly scaring Bill out of his shorts, and Ivanka levels: "You'll have a very strong opinion one way or the other, on this one." Trump asks if Ivanka felt that way, and she did, so then Bill did too. Trump and Ivanka head into the Microsoft boardroom, Bill repeating that they were "very different concepts" one more time, into the air where the Trumps were just standing, before following after. It's like some kind of fucking Rowan Atkinson bullshit, this whole part. "Veddy different concepts, hmyes, veddy different. Hmindeed." Barf.
Sean admits in front of God and everyone they "missed the mark in implementing" their concept, so I guess whatever person his internal psychic antenna is currently picking up is not Lee, who goes a bit white at this. Allie, when asked, says she feels a bit more "sure" about the results now that Sean has accidentally voiced the concerns of someone who is not on Gold Rush. Lee busts in and goes "blah blah blah," like, that's actually what went in my earholes, "Yadda yadda blee blee blorp," and apparently Trump's too, because he fully tells him to cram it. They look at the "environments" on the Xbox, because no hand left jobless is the order of the day, and this is just one of the many capabilities of the Xbox that we already knew: looking at images run through a monitor. Synergy was beloved by Jay and Stephen, because they created a "great hangout," but the problem is that it's where they would go if their feet were tired, not where they'd go to make a high-end purchase. Sitting in a "nice living room" inside a Wal-Mart is not only a violent contradiction in terms, it's also a stupid idea. Those purchases are made on a wave of adrenaline and poor judgment, not in a relaxing, Center For Intraspectful environment. And yeah, you could probably buy an Xbox 360 from your fuzzy chair without feeling too bad about it, if you were flush, but if you had a bajillion dollars to toss around like that, you're not shopping at friggin' Wal-Mart. Not unless you're one of those Ripley's crazy people with newspaper in their shoes and rubies under the floorboards, you're not: the psychic cost-benefit is too high. I'm a very poor writer of a person, and it will be a cold day in HELL before I go to Wal-Mart, and when I do, it'll be because I'd rather buy underwear than do laundry. Not so I can buy shiny electronic crap I don't actually need.
Sean and Lee produced something that was "clearly rushed and unfinished," but it was quite retail-friendly, showed a range of different products and price points, and totally worked. Right, and I shouldn't have worried, because I forgot who we were dealing with. Wal-Mart: a company whose main claim to fame is that they deny the same basic human rights to their developmentally disabled employees as to anyone else, and expect a pat on the back for this, and for eating whole the microeconomic life cycles of entire small communities and converting them into ghost towns for no reason except to get their sweatshop goods into the hands of more ignorant people who value convenience over infrastructure. Microsoft: a company who never met a bug or CPU-devouring redundancy they didn't love, who was viewed by Janet Reno as a foe on the level of David Koresh, who argued the definitions of words like "compete"...and I'm not even bothered by the IE anti-trust issue, because it wasn't one, I'm talking about crimes against man. This is a company who moved forward with a Sony rootkit "removal" system which did not remove the rootkit and furthermore installed additional unwanted software. This is a company whose planned obsolescence on software -- which should work pretty much forever -- is shorter than the life cycle of your average spawning insect. And such are the balls of this company they don't even try to cover it with "functionality" and "convenience" like Jobs and his bitches, they just say: "Here's a new one, we don't know why, and it's going to take up more memory and it's going to hang more of the time, and your grandpa still isn't going to understand it, but we've got a talking paperclip and spyware reporting your actions directly to us, so just install it because we're all you've got." Two companies that value over appearance and satisfying the higher-ups and selling product at the biggest rate of return, and have reaped the benefits of doing work that way -- shouldn't have worried about old Lee at all.
The Rushees get to go on the worst (or greatest) reward yet: flying on a private plane to DreamWorks Animation to audition for the movie Over The Hedge, which coincidentally debuted across the country this week, and hang out with Katzenberg. Allie makes sour faces, Tammy is sad, Roxanne makes a mean face, cartoons are stupid and they make my stomach hurt to watch them, especially the latter ones. I almost threw up at Toy Story and ever since then I've been unable to watch them either at the theatre or at home, which I don't feel is that much of a hardship but people seem to think makes me a terrible person in some way. I got through The Incredibles by taking off my glasses and watching it from the kitchen with a glass of water. Those large, fuzzy red shapes were quite clever, weren't they?
Commercial: Creepy robot fingers probing and stroking and touching and fingering and rubbing and frottaging the new Lexus, inside and out. Is it possible to engineer desire? I have neither the time nor the inclination to go there, but (A) GROSS and (B) see, Tammy?
The boys take a "stretch" limo (two trashy concepts I don't understand, one building on the other) to DreamWorks and hang out with (and by that I mean "bore") Katzenberg. Sean writes an intense love letter about Katzenberg now that's a lot like the paragraph immediately above. They sit down and they -- and by "they," I mean "we" -- learn all the fuck about the movie, which they preview and laugh so, so hard at. Sean writes a love letter to the movie, and to William Shatner. I don't have the energy to discuss this behavior with you anymore, I really don't. Sometimes, Sean, we like to feel like the prettiest girl at the ball, but if you're so interested in proving how immensely enthusiastic about girls you are all the time, when you tell us we're the prettiest, we aren't going to believe you, and it's going to be kind of an insult. That is my advice to you, but it is also a metaphor for my other advice to you, which is: stuff and places and companies feel the same way. Your ability to switch asses mid-kiss is not lost on us. They go into the booth and schmuck around and do their lines, where these two dudes are barbecuing and something comes flying from over the hedge, I guess, and they both go "Whoa!" and it's stupid and it takes a billion years for this. "Whoa!" Not interested in letting us down, Sean goes wildly overboard, of course, in discussing the experience: "I truly believed in my soul that I was 'Barbecue Barry'; I was like, 'Man, I'm feeling you, man! I'm feeling you!'" I'd like to feel this: Click, click, click. There's more shadowboxing, and then Sean shitting himself as they watch the scene. He gets all kind of Elliott Yamin with the teeth and the self-conscious "Did you see how excited I am? Hey. Hey! Having a great and hilarious time over here! Sweatin' with joy!" Everybody screening their wonderful "Whoa" performances applauds and they applaud themselves, of course, and the DreamWorks people fake-huddle and Katzenberg says, "You're hired!" Which is, see, a joke. Which Sean doesn't get, so then we sit through a love letter to fate and destiny and serendipshit about how he hopes somebody else says that phrase to him soon.
Roxanne and Allie are so, so bummed. About the task, and not their obnoxious behavior, because they would be "great" in a cartoon, because their voices are fit for stardom. If Roxanne were a cartoon character, she'd be...see, I don't know cartoons! The only cartoon I ever watched was Pepper-Ann, because I support my lesbian sisters. And Mo Rocca used to write for it. If I were making up a cartoon, though, Roxanne would be "Snopes McGee," a no-nonsense kid who was always solving crimes like Encyclopedia Brown, and Allie would be the pixie-voiced villain, "Sweetie Penmark," who fools all the adults into thinking she's sweet as pie, when really she's just biding her sociopathic time. The first season would end with her diving into the town lake for her penmanship award, and all you see is bubbles, and that's the cliffhanger. The second season would reveal that she's faked her own death and it's actually her that ruined the school play, and this particular hijink has set her back a grade, and that's what really causes her to break with reality because she already knows subtraction and she hates being treated like she's not Gifted & Talented, so she leads an abortive coup during naptime that results in the permanent disfigurement of the school's Language Arts teacher: ironically, she bites through her own tongue and can no longer properly pronounce coronal consonants, so she has to just grade essays all the time, which gives her the ability to perfectly mimic all the students' handwriting, including the seemingly repentant Sweetie Penmark, who is eventually struck by lightning after the Language Lab teacher tells her to do a role-playing project about "Bendanin Fnanknin," thus finally getting revenge for her tongue disability. It's kind of high-concept, but that's The N is for.
Roxanne interviews how this reward is "pretty darn cool" and she really liked it, but again I call bullshit: you're only saying it because it's a reward, and in the real world you wouldn't care, because this is just like on Big Brother when their so-called reward is to "go" to a "movie" and it's always like one of those movies where Ashley Judd does something, and then one of three black men shows up and tells her how it's gotta be, and then they do some things, and then somebody gets punished, and sometimes that person is Ashley Judd, but the houseguests all get real, real crazed about it anyhow, because they've lost their minds. Allie tells Roxanne that she "loves" Tammy, but that "somebody" has gotta go, and that it was, after all, "her vision." True, true, true. Allie interviews this same stuff directly to us, and it's still all true. Sin by omission. Roxanne says that Tammy was not behaving in a Girl Power manner because she wanted it to be "her show" and that is: not true. But I like Roxanne more than Allie -- I think Allie's just a better liar. Roxanne worries that they can't be sure if Tammy's going to "roll over or fight," which: it's Tammy, what do you think she's going to do? "Rolling over" is like her favorite hobby. Allie wishes it could be "clean" (lie), and Roxanne says without much relish that it could get ugly. Tammy interviews, for her part, that they gave a "half-assed effort all around," with this task (true, but not limited to two of the three people on the team), and that Roxanne did a "terrible job" executing the signage (true, but not material), and that Roxanne's been "riding the coattails of Allie" for "twelve weeks" (vastly not true, in my opinion).
But, like, that's ass-covering talk, because the reason they failed was Tammy's shitty idea. End of story. Yeah, the other two are assholes for not helping her figure that out, but all three of them are exactly the same amount of embarrassing this week. Because I think what Tammy did was not read their reactions entirely, assumed a loss, and started thinking she could use their bitchery against them in the Boardroom, so she is guilty of exactly what they are guilty of, except she's nailing her own foot with that, because the whole thing actually is her fault. The only way it's not her fault is that they didn't stop her, and that's not viable in the Boardroom: "Mr. Trump, they refused to stop me from fucking this up." She can't honestly believe it was conceptual, the failure -- even though they told her a million times that it was, and all it takes is a split-second viewing of the horror that was the Rush tent to drive home the veracity of that -- so any excuse she makes is going to be predicated on like five wrong assumptions and no well-formed theorems whatsoever, so this is all over.
"Tammy, nothing personal but your idea was bad all the way down to the ground. You demonstrated a lack of understanding of both nominal clients, the buyer demographic, and the product itself. In addition, you decorate like a stripper with an Urban Outfitters gift card."
"Oh yeah? Well, Roxanne was mean to me, and she and Allie are working together and are friends, and they wouldn't let me have mirrors, and they wouldn't help me with my shitty idea, and they wouldn't let me play with their hula hoop with them even though I'm the cutest, and they're big mean meanies!"
"I...see your point. Viceroys, take these two out of here and throw them under a bus!"
Commercials. Final totals: Allie 26%, Tammy 20%, Roxanne 19%. Allie, because nobody likes an eye-roller. Tammy, because she's been a pussy the whole episode. Roxanne, because she's on Synergy, and the ladies of television can't help but eventually turn on each other. Which is, itself, based on a false positive resulting from two facts: one being that the people of reality television always turn on each other, and with some rare examples, the women of TV are firstly people; but the women-are-bitches principal results from gender bunching: the all-girl groups are self-selected (see: the evictions of Brent, Michael, Sean) because of a false individual belief that shared womanhood trumps Type-A Asshole personhood, in some way, so that the other women will be nicer to them/easier to beat, which means that Girl Power will always fall apart on its feet, because it's rats in a cage in any combination, because what kind of person would go on this show? However, it's unfortunate for those of us out here, watching this crap, because it always goes the same way, and people assume that's how things fall out in real life, and it's not, and don't be an ignorant pisshead. But at least it can serve as justification for thinking women are bitches, which is sometimes all you can hang on to if you wanna get through the day.
Roxanne is all smiles into the Boardroom, where Trump asks Tammy why she's PM again after just two weeks. She said she wanted to prove she could win a task, and that she wanted his approval. Oh, my bad, she said "respect." Huge difference there. Allie says Tammy was a good manager in terms of operations, but that her attention to detail sometimes stands in the way of the big picture. She does not mention that the big picture in this case was one of a hairy Xeroxed ass. Roxanne draws an interesting parallel: "Unlike tasks, this was difficult for us." Hmm. And the last time they won, at Rutgers: who was PM? Could you refresh me? That's my girl. "I think...because of the way she led." Trump -- oh, Notorious DJT, you send us with your fantastic lines! -- asks if it was because Suddenly Tammy was so "tough." Roxanne keeps the guffaw down long enough to say it was more about the "vision." Tammy interrupts where she should not, about how she's proud of the vision, but that it wasn't "taken" in the way she'd have hoped. Huh. Also known as failure to produce for the client. Shut your gorgeous face, pumpkin.
But she will not! Her voice climbs, clambers, pinwheels into the stratosphere until they have to get dogs in there to translate. She wanted people to "feel like something was going on," she wanted to "create excitement." "At Wal-Mart." You say you want me to feel like something is "going on" at Wal-Mart? My first thought is always going to be "avian flu." Biggie T calls her environment a "cheap, third-grade liquor lounge." Which is such a fucking awesome thing to say that it KILLS me he did not hear or understand what he himself just said. It's almost more disappointing when you're impressed with him. If I'd had the forethought to open a speakeasy, in the third grade, no doubt beanbag furniture would have been a key design element. Allie laughs, but T-Boz doesn't know why, because he is talking out his ass and not even trying to be clever or funny.
Tammy yackity-yacks about how "husbands and kids" don't like to shop, which means that if they happen upon this display, they're going to be in supplication to the mom, who's already adding up totals in her head and annoyed to be at Wal-Mart, and...Tammy no, no girl, no. T-Rex tells her it was also tough to find out how much the units cost, and she cops to that -- just that -- as her failure as a team leader. However, she should not be fired, because responsibility for the whole shitty thing fell to her, and she couldn't count on her team. T2: Judgment Day is all, "And the signage?" Which is the one time this episode for that word that puts it over the edge. Did I ever tell you about bolus? God.
Okay, so you know how in corporate culture this happens, with the "signage" and the "step up," and you hear yourself saying it when you hate yourself for saying it, but it's like a brain worm of Khan and you can't stop? Back in, I would say, 2002, this word started creeping around my office, and I am pretty sure my favorite Project Manager of all time, the lovely Dr. M, was the one to blame. "Bolus." Yeugh. "We'll be sending that information to the client in a biweekly bolus." "They can handle the data processing, I say we just do a monthly bolus and get it off the associates' desks." This is a word that does to me what "moist" does to most people. And of course it caught on, because (A) it feels dirty to say, (B) it's vaguely medical-sounding, (C) it actually describes what you're talking about, and (D) business is boring and shit like that keeps you sane. The other one was "armamentarium," but I cop to starting that one after the Executive Director for the entire branch used it unironically in a closed-door meeting with me. He was a full-on tool and I found his demonstrably inefficient and admittedly inexperienced approach to site ops violently offensive, so it became a rallying cry for the subversive under-30 element. "Stick that in your armamentarium," "Put 'suck my performance review' in your armamentarium," "Shove your bolus up your armamentarium," and the like, in lieu of actually starting a Fight Club, because we were all too vain for the threat of damage to the face. And to completely change topics: Some time later, I was fired.
Roxanne goes to the lying place: "I did exactly what I was asked to do," she almost-lies. "She said, 'This project is all about me,'" she basically lies. "If I said we should focus on XYZ, she would walk off..." which we exactly see, but Ivanka nods. There is now a screaming match that is boring, lots of screaming about how Tammy didn't get support. She yips at T3: Rise Of The Machines that does he want somebody who "adds fuel to the party" or who can "put out the fire," and Roxanne is like, firefighter imagery aside, she's a choker, she chokes. My Trumps, My Trumps: "Does Allie choke?" Roxanne steps back from that one and says that "we all do." Tr-Tr-Troxie is like, "Not everybody, lady." Tammy whines that "they always put everybody down," which matters not a whit, and Ivanka catches Allie eye-rollin' again and calls her on it. Oh snap! "Allie, if you have something to add...?" God, I love Ivanka. Allie again bitches that she wasn't rolling the eyes, and Bill jumps at the opportunity to speak, yelping out that she rolled the eyes before, and he hated it! Just like Ivanka! Allie fakely apologies to Bill and Tammy.
T-Bag and his daughter have this unending conversation about how he takes things really personally and that if you cross him he will hate you for the rest of his life and he never recovers from it. How very fucking admirable, not to mention professional. Ivanka's nodding, like, "I have no idea why you would want this on record, but...yeah, I suppose your emotional maturity leaves a bit to be desired, Dad." It's not a funny moment, but she does her best to nod with a smile.
Who was the worst? Roxanne, per Tammy: She brings drama (I'll give you that) and distracts Allie (I really do think it's Satan, rather than Roxanne, who holds Allie's attention lots of the time, but I think they do get into more trouble together than they do apart -- and by the same token, they get the most work done that way too, so...), and brings Allie down. Which is BS, because that's a lot of fingers to be pointing at once. Roxanne employs the Tarek Defense that she's a straight shooter and honest and verbalizes her concerns and ideas and should not be punished for that, and T-Bag swerves sharply left to ask if that means she doesn't "get along with people," which: Huh? And everybody kind of ignores that part because he's on some kind of satellite delay in his brain, and T-Bag asks if she doesn't in fact owe some kind of allegiance to Tammy as the team leader, and Roxanne responds that, here and now, Tammy's a losing Project Manager, and has to attack one of two people. Bill, uselessly, points out that Roxanne attacked Tammy during the task. Which...is material in that both sentences use the same word, "attack" in different verb forms, but other than that, it's just Bill talking for no fucking reason.
Realizing Bill's about to send them all off on yet another semantic goose chase, Ivanka gets us on track with a quickness. "Allie's saying nothing. Nobody has said you did anything wrong -- or right." They ask whom Allie finds most talented, and Trump laughs because of course she's going to say Roxanne, and Bill laughs because Trump laughs. Allie is smarter than that: "Both, but I think Roxanne has more talent. I'm friends with both women." Roxanne says that she's the target because she wasn't a yes man, and Bill jumps into the obvious opening face-first: "Are you saying Allie's a yes woman?" Could you tell me what, beyond shit-stirring, that question's supposed to illuminate? What possible answer to that question could make the decision about who to fire easier? Honestly. Say yes, Allie will answer intelligently. Say no, and you're off on another tangent, thanks yet the fuck again to Bill. Don't answer, and you're evasive and showing favoritism. Nothing material at all. Shut up, Bill. And also: Bill Rancic is going to fucking throw stones in the Yes-Man house? I don't think so. Roxanne says that Allie is diplomatic, and Bill is like, "Yes or no!" because he thinks he's Carolyn. Except that when Carolyn does it, she's asking questions with answers that signify.
Roxanne admits that Allie is more of a "yes woman" than she is, and Bill sits back, satisfied about stuff that has nothing to do with the task at hand. You've really fucking earned your paycheck this week, buddy. Tammy blurts that Roxanne has been riding Allie's coattails, and Roxanne yelps, "Oh my gosh -- that's remarkable," in a kind of Andrea way. Then Allie sighs and gets bored as they scream and call each other liars and immature and this and that. Finally T-Bag screams at both of them to stop, loud, and they look sad. "Givin' me a headache," he says. They talk about the actual facts, that they teamed up on Tammy but also got no leadership, and comparing win/loss records, T-Bag says that Tammy seems to be in over her head. She makes a sick face and gets all "Mr. Trump, though" about how "nobody executed." He tells her that as PM, your entire job is to make them execute, and that she had no control, and that nobody respects her. Roxanne chimes in that being "dismissed" so immediately gave her little reason to respect Tammy, but that was hard because her goal was for Synergy to be the Final Three. "So what happened?" It was all about Tammy, she dismissed everything her team said. Which again: was nothing, from what we saw.
Mies Van Der Trump is all, "I know about design," on and on about how he's this person, and that she "missed the mark" with "lousy design." Now, if I were Tammy, I would have said, "So gold-plate the Xbox 360 and give it some fake tits, some fleur-de-lis stencils on the side, maybe a giant penis or pinecone finial coming up out the middle, that would be better?" Instead, she says there were "no better ideas," which is frigging stupid, because that's like, "My head is a box full of wadded-up tissue paper and I like the Oscars, but that's about all I got." Roxanne says it's not true, she wishes it were but it wasn't, and I just wish we'd seen it, man. Trump says Tammy's leadership wasn't good, the design stank, and he thought the room was terrible. All of which is...true. Having the attention span of your average housecat really makes this show enjoyable because when it's an "I don't like you" firing, it's exciting as all get out, because those are my favorite, but then when people get fired for task-related fuck-uppery, it's exciting as all get out, because those are my favorite. So I'm super-happy Tammy's getting fired for task-related fuck-uppery, because that hasn't happened in like, forever. And then she gets fired.
T-Bag thanks Synergy and kicks them out of the Boardroom, and as they stand, Allie turns back and starts to cutely promise there will be no more rolling of the eyes, and T-Bag's all, "Just -- just go. Just go. Okay? Just go. Enough." Couldn't have said it better myself.
Inside: "I think it was the right decision," says T-Bag, and his daughter points out that it's just going to get more difficult from here on in, and Bill yelps, "Down to the Final Four!" and shakes his fist with the little wand, jester's head on the end, and cuts a caper. T-Bag's like, "Okay. Done."
Outside: Tammy's disappointed she didn't "make it through the whole process," and now feels she wasn't "supported" by Trump, not a huge supporter of anything but athletics, so could you not get your needy in my peanut butter, but she thinks rightly that he responds more to "big personalities," and that the downfall was that she was a "problem solver" and not a "problem creator," which may be true, but wasn't the problem; the problem was that you failed to execute the task because you didn't think it through or familiarize yourself with the client or the product, and jumped in like you were giving free manicures to market Revenge Of The Sith or some shit. She says that, when it's a non-sales task, Allie and Roxanne will "crash and burn," which I think is maybe likely, but come on: they're all sales tasks now. This was like the one week that was subjective, and it was a landslide anyway. Learn to be real and read a room and not justify that shit to yourself, please -- there's nobody to complain to later, regardless of what you learned in grade school. Watch your own ass because that's what it's for, and you're always gonna have somebody on your six -- and that's what keeps you good.