On the final task, things are pretty awesome: everybody gets in Lee's face about assigning unpleasant Lenny to ignore the celebrity hockey players, while Andrea's Ebola turns out to be less than deadly. Things are impressively insane for Team Lee, where fundraiser Lys proves once and for all that she's pretty cool, and the entire failure of Lee's event rests firmly on his shoulders. And by "his" I mean "Lenny's," but of course that's most of the problem. Lenny freezes out Michael J. Fox in a meeting with Lys, then leaves Jason Priestley stranded and wandering Chelsea Piers, and finally gets into a bare-knuckles fistfight with Jamie Pressley. Meanwhile, Lee can't even manage to meet Donald Trump at the event, pissing him off beyond belief. The most strife the editors can come up with for Team Sean is a few minutes of "stress" about losing the pre-party music...which is immediately resolved to the gay accompaniment of a choir of actual angels. That's like the only thing that happens there.
Hollywood: lots of runaround, no talk about the task itself, bare seconds of discussion with a few of the firees, and the most uninspiring Final Two ever. The going theory is that we can't know what happened in the final task comparison because it was such a landslide in Sean's favor. Trump bugs Sean into basically proposing marriage to Tammy, of course, which is awkward, and Lenny goes on a shortish rant comparing Lee to "gold" (or possibly a "goat"). Brent is roundly ignored by every single person associated with the show. No Viceroy or Apprentot can manage even a little preference for either unattractive prospect; the live audience itself seems to muster interest only for Tarek, Charmaine, and Lenny. None of whom are in the Final Two. The last ten minutes, after the reveal, the producers randomly cut around to different camera angles in which nothing is happening. Highlights include: more humiliation for poor Pepi, Lenny's lead balloon "jokes," the insane and wonderful outfits worn by Pirate Roxanne, Haight-Ashbury Andrea, and Princess Tammy, and a few seconds of Ivanka. And of course the final decision, made with a fair amount of rudeness and not a lot of fanfare: "Lee...you're fired. Sean, you're hired."
We start in Hollywood, live, with a full band playing the suspenseful song and some announcer guy alleging that Donald Trump is "America's Boss." George and Carolyn accompany him out through the crowd toward the stage, and everybody in the theatre cheers. Trump makes a strange, unhappy face when you're cheering for him. I don't know if he's smiling or what, but it bothers me. There are young and cheesy people either connected to Lee, or very obvious plants in "business suit" costumes, getting way too rowdy about Lee. If I could believe he had friends, they would be tools like this, but I'm not prepared to take anything on faith here. Don Jr. pats his father sweetly on the shoulder as Trump makes his way toward the stage, and the song keeps going and going like you're going to go crazy. There's a cap on excitement that the song doesn't know about, like, if you hear one car alarm, maybe you look out the window, but after a person outside your house has been screaming for twenty minutes, you start to lose interest. I really hope those dudes are getting paid to act this stupid. They have signs. This is so much like American Idol that everybody in a business suit, which is everybody, looks really weird. Less like a group of normal people in business attire and more parallel to a scuba diver's convention. Or a bunch of damn furries.
Finally, Trump finds a place to sit down, which is the clearly marked chair he's been wandering toward the whole time the song was snorting detergent-scoops of methamphetamine. Donald Trump is wearing my favorite outfit in the entire alphabet of clothes: black suit, white shirt, red tie. Except that the tie, and the suit, are so shiny and weird that they look like you could stretch them like rubber. Like his tie is made of Laffy Taffy. But if it were, I suppose it would be the most delicious Laffy Taffy ever created by the hand of man, and Laffy Taffy would suddenly be a 12 billion dollar industry. Trump explains that the reason the finale is happening in Los Angeles is actually fractionally a reason, because the 15-week job interview will be starting in Hollywood in January. If you don't already know that, you haven't been listening to Trump screaming his ass off about it every week in front of a ferris wheel. Oh, and the screaming? In full effect. I think Trump falls under the jurisdiction of "fire in a crowded theatre" because even the words "15-week job interview" are screeched with such a terrifying intensity. Between the Trumpeting and the psychotic music I ended up in a ball in the corner and nothing's even happened yet. He calls Hollywood "La-La Land" -- Why? -- and everybody cheers for a million years. Why?
In "every" "way" this season has been a "tremendous" "success" and Trump "couldn't" have "asked" for two "stronger" finalists than Sean and Lee. I'll be honest, this is where I lost interest in this process, because nobody should abuse air quotes like that. First five seconds and already the ratio of black flies to chardonnay in this bitch is heavily leveraged. Trump tells us how different Sean and Lee are, and then to prove it gives us the brief. Sean is the National Accounts Director of some telecom, wants the job really bad, thinks of himself as "passionate" which is one damned word for it, and would like to provide the "perfect fit," a "driven" employee for Mr. Trump. I feel like I know Sean less now than I did before he started talking. That's the way of Sean. Lee is a business analyst for a global management firm, and feels he has some kind of advantage that I'm not really clear on, but calls himself intelligent, hardworking, and loyal. Lee thinks that he will do a great job for Trump, and I will say right now that Sean is clearly going to win, but all of those things are true of Lee. "It didn't take long for these two candidates to make their mark," says Trump, and then cobbles together whatever evidence he can find for this extreme lie about how they skinned their hearts and skinned their knees or whatever.
Here's the Sean fairy tale: On their very first task, at the Wal-Mart, his teammates thought he was so super charming that they let him talk on the PA and that's all he did. Allie said that probably 90% of his sales were to women, because they loved the accent. What she meant was, "I like the accent enough that the face is negotiable." Then, says Trump, "Sean's popularity only grew." Which is, again, simply untrue. Everybody either ignored him, teamed up and froze him out, reacted weirdly to his sexual advances, or made fun of his "metrosexuality." They went to the White House and he had his eighteenth epiphany of the day and lectured everybody about America and how he's American on the inside or something; I thought it was gay at the time and I've only grown more scornful of Sean's ongoing relationship to exclamation marks since that point. If you really want me to hate you, go somewhere like the White House or Mandela's cell and then demand that everybody in the group sit still for one hundred hours while you impress upon them just how very meaningful the moment is to you, and how special it is for you, and how just because they're also standing right the fuck there doesn't mean they'll ever understand how very special it is to be you -- right at this dramatic moment or, in fact, ever.
Lee fairy tale: he had a "steeper mountain to climb" from the beginning because he was either not there or his team lost all the time, but because of the fact that the show scheduled as many tasks as possible during High Holidays and for no other reason, he got played as a pawn in every single Boardroom. Although he didn't understand that he was getting just as badly manipulated as everybody else on this front, so he just lived in a constant state of fear that caused him to way overcompensate and get weird ideas about who was Trump and who was Lee and who was actually firing people. He finally rejoined his team as PM on the Ellis Island task, where he totally rocked out. Fast forward to the Microsoft task, which is where I really started getting confused about Lee and whether he was awesome or sucky. The answer is, of course, both. Sean and Lee moved on from that fantastic win to a way more fantastic one on the Embassy Suites task, which made both of them look really competent. Sadly, they then faced off against each other, which means that Tammy came back, which means that Sean will nevermore say anything interesting or worth hearing, because the show really doesn't understand why we're all here, so all the interview questions go, "Could you act skin-crawlingly gross about Tammy some more? They love that in Topeka." Which they very well might, I don't know, but I do know that it blows my mind.
In brief: Sean's doing the Barenaked Concert at Taj Mahal in Atlantic City with Andrea, Tarek and Tammy. Lee's doing the Celebrity Hockey at Chelsea Piers with Roxanne, Lenny and Pepi. I don't know if the live crowd in Hollywood is audible all the time, or if they only turn up the sound at certain times, but I do know that Tammy and Pepi get a lot of cheers, which is nice. Trump seems to feel sorry for Lee having to deal with his charity rep Lys, but only because she's a ball-busting bitch that's not pretty enough to marry or point to a car while smiling. Meanwhile, Andrea's got the Ebola virus happening.
Vast cheers over the credits, in which we get basically the only glimpse of anybody associated with this show that is not Sean, Lee, and the constant leering head of Donald Trump. Coming back, Sean receives the following: cheers that are louder than Lee's, cheers that are longer than Lee's, and boos that are less numerous than Lee's, in that they are nonexistent. Damn it. Lee's going to lose. "Believe it or not," says Trump -- and there's a certain Catskills charm in drunkenly screaming, "WE DON'T!" -- "I haven't made up my mind!" Trump tells us to go to NBC.com for some reason I don't care about whatsoever, because of the immediate, visceral, poetic, intense meaninglessness of this entire exercise.
Sean worries about Andrea, who sits down with the doctor and makes a small face about how probably she has tuberculosis and no Ewan McGregor in sight to sing the softer hits of the '70s and '80s at her. Sean tells Tammy and Tarek that, though they are doing a great job, this is still kind of "uh oh," and that -- this intrigues me -- he hasn't yet "rolled up [his] sleeves for this yet," but apparently he's going to have to. Um? Cobra? Get those bitches rolled, Sean. Speaking of somebody who would give her life and lungs to get some shit down, no matter how pointless, Andrea's completely fine. She tells us that she was relieved that she was not dying, but that she felt bad about Sean losing manpower for the time it took her to make sure she wasn't going to drop dead, and that Sean deserves to be the Apprentice. And you know what, I'm rooting quietly and in my own way for Lee, but "Sean deserves to be the Apprentice" is kind of a multivalent statement, and I can't say I disagree with that either. Andrea returns and tells them she just burst a blood vessel in her sinus or whatever, and the way it's edited makes it seem like she was gone for about the length of a cigarette, but Sean said in an interview that it was more like four hours. Sean interviews that she's a "rock" and it's great to have her back, and you know what? It totally is: "I don't wanna talk about it, I just wanna get to work. What's up." Word. WORD, Andrea! I love you!
Lee and Roxanne welcome Lys for the walkthrough she demanded. I hope this is a bloodbath. I wish I were Allie right now so I could use her dark powers and make this even uglier than it's going to be. Lys comes in and immediately starts asking what the hell they think they're doing. Which is: nothing, and she knows that. "Tell me you don't have a script for halftime." They do not. "Do that." They try. "Tell me you know how the 'Shirt Off Your Back' raffle is going to go." They do not know what "shirts" are. Lenny and Lys get into a face-off thing where she starts turning into an asshole, like, Lenny says "Jamie Foxx" when he means "Michael J. Fox," and I guess she has a point that you don't want Michael J. Fox to hear you screw that up, because it's rude, but she corrects him in a condescending way that says she's not really thinking about that right now. I mean, again, I don't blame her for dicking around with them a little bit, because they are an embarrassment on every level, but that doesn't mean she isn't additionally a dick for doing it. The revenge is this: "Who's dealing with the players?" Lenny, they say, and have the class not to rejoice openly at the terrified face of Lys at this answer. Except it's not class, it's the fact that they are too dumb to know why this is terrifying. Well, Roxanne maybe, but she's not going to tell anybody but us, because that is how Roxanne rolls. Lys addresses us, with the Lenny fear still in her eyes, about how Lee might wanna "check out the weaknesses in his team" and how "maybe" Lenny is not a good choice to deal with celebrities. Or indeed, people of any kind. "But," Lys imagines, "that's a choice Lee made as the leader," she says, dropping a couple more flies in your wine glass, because please. Like Lee has made a choice since he saw Lenny back on the horizon. "Not the strongest choice," Lys says. Lys, you have no idea.
Team Sean. Finally, Sean realizes that he should have been meeting with Pontiac cutie instead of pretending to plan his wedding with Tammy and dreaming of the day she'd carry him across the threshold, and vows to "redeem" himself "as much as possible." Go ahead and check out how he plans to do this, because it is gorgeous. There's a spotlight on the stage, and under that spotlight will drive a Pontiac, and out of that Pontiac will step Donald Trump, and standing to Donald Trump will be a member of the Barenaked Ladies wearing a panda bear costume. Pontiac cutie is like, "And then what happens is that they find you in a quarry." Sean is like, "Well, can we have a person in a panda bear suit wandering at random?" And Pontiac cutie is like, "I don't give a shit what you do with your panda suit but keep it away from my brand." And Sean is like, "How about Trump drives up in the car and...that is all?" And the Pontiac cutie is like, "Right, like I already said at the beginning of the conversation before your minor stroke when you suddenly could not manage to quit with the panda suit." And Sean's response: "I get you, I get you. We're on the same page." Ugh. Oh, are you? I think the deal here is that it's supposed to illustrate the issues Sean is having with balancing the branding concerns of the corporate and charity sponsors, except for how in years this was due to the weirdness of one or both of THEM, and not due entirely to the weirdness of SEAN.
NYFD cheers for Lee, coming back live, and Trump arms his cliché cannon and fires the fuck at will about how it's "crunch time," and will their teams "step up"? Sean welcomes the Barenaked Ladies to the venue and interviews how "sexy" that whole experience was, because apparently he thinks they are relevant and/or a rock band. I was watching an old episode of Once & Again the other day and that "One Week" song was playing in one scene. While Once & Again is in fact one of the best TV shows ever written, the fact remains that it was canceled during the first George W. administration. Think about that for a second as I tell you that that's the song they're going to play tonight. Why not just have like "Pontiac Presents Paula Cole's Armpits"? "The World Wildlife Foundation presents Tuck & Patty." "The Pontiac Dishwashing Liquid Variety Hour with Special Guest Duke Ellington." Sean smarms with a Barenaked Lady who tells him rock shows are "easy," or so he's heard. Tarek introduces George and the reps from SLS Speakers, because he's in charge of that event. Because Tarek is awesome and pretty, there are live studio screams on the Hard Day's Night level whenever he appears. Much talk is talked about the awesomeness of the speakers and about Quincy Jones being involved in something or another and George tells us straight up that Sean is not spending enough time with his team. "A good leader has to be sure they're operating how they should." Sending Tarek, even though he should by rights be in the Final Two, frankly, into the field all alone is "not right." George looks awesome, frankly, wearing all-monochrome and a cute argyle sweater. He gets older and smaller every year, but clothing-wise he is on target. Tarek is totally smooth and awesome with the SLS people, but I guess all these problems are to make us wonder whether Sean is going to win, and keep up from falling asleep at the very idea. The thing is, though, that because none of these things are actually problems, and so they should make us feel better and not worse about Sean's chances, they're so hysterical about the suspense that it kind of means that when he does win, it will have certain aggressive undertones of incompetence attached to it. Somnolent and unimpressed is not how I wanna feel at the end of this crap. You know I'm happier with sexism and racism to complain about, and I simply cannot get exercised about, like, "I fell asleep at some point, but I'm almost sure that one loser won and the other loser lost and Roxanne was dressed as the Princess of Pirates on the High Seas."
Team Lee. I get the strong feeling that Pontiac is involved in some way, but I cannot confirm that for you due to the extreme low-balling subtlety of the product placement in which this show rejoices. Lee calls in to "Roxy" about how they're actually on schedule, and all the signage is up and all the gift bags are ready and all the rooms are looking good. Which is: stuff that was tasked to everybody but Lenny and Lee, the PM's of the task. "The team is a well-oiled machine," he says. For the moment. Roxanne is handling the auctions, Pepi is hanging signs or whatever, and Lenny is doing everything else. Juxtaposed with the horrifying scene in which Tarek charmed the pants off the pre-party sponsor, it's almost overwhelming how great they're doing! Perhaps Lee will win after all! Lee meets the non-Lys person from the charity sponsor, Christine, and again wows her with his complete lack of planning or knowledge about the event. He shows her the script that Lys basically wrote for him, I surmise, and then things get stupid. Because Christine was not given a whole lot to work with, from the show's producers, beyond "Make trouble and ask a lot of questions and act like Lee is retarded," it's really up to her to make it work. And while I'm sure she has many lovely skills, comedic improv is not one of them, so it goes like this. "Where are the players standing?" In a line. "Where are they, though?" On the ice, in a line. "But where is that?" On the rink which is covered in ice. "But what is ice? You have to give me something." Okay, you're right, let's do something else. "Where is the drama? You're boring me." Okay so we call the celebrities' names, and they come skating out and line up. "What are 'celebrities'? You really don't have any idea what you're doing."
Meanwhile, Lenny is being his usual worthless self. He tells her that half of the equipment has been stolen and they don't know where it is, and Christine's like, "Oh a comedian, yeah? Well, I'm glad you're having fun." Ouch. Lee tries to get them on target, and she asks about how they're going to dramatize the celebrity coaches, and Lenny says that they will be catapulted over a wall onto the ice. "Great, great. That'll be cool when they fall down and die." Lee begs Lenny to shut up and stop fucking with Christine, I bet because he's scared Lys will come back, and she actually has an intimidating presence instead of simply giving the impression that she is new to society. Lee interviews, quite rightly, that Christine is unhappy and uncomfortable, and that Lenny is not helping. Christine brings up Jamie Pressley, who is apparently going to be flying through the air and landing on slick ice in stilettos, and the suggestion is made that they put her on skates. Jamie Pressley on skates. That's the level we're at. I already liked Lys but at this point I wanted to phone her up and be like, "I'll bring the ski masks, you grab a baseball bat, and we'll take care of this once and for all." Christine points out that they have no idea whether Jamie Pressley can even skate, and cautions them about leaving the entire task up to the whims of fate. Everybody gets scared because the truth is scary when you're out of your league. Roxanne interviews that the whole thing was super embarrassing. Which is no doubt true, but not as embarrassing as the fact that Lee lost this whole thing the second he walked into the suite and saw Lenny standing there, and that Lee is too young to make decisions based on anything more meaningful than his (incorrectly perceived) popularity. And I don't mean "young" as in chronologically, because that is a lie that stupid old people tell themselves to justify their own weaknesses -- I mean "young" as in everybody eats a certain amount of shit in their lifetime and he's unlucky enough to be doing it on TV. Without knowing he's doing it.
Pepi and Lenny assign the players their helmets and uniforms based on no information whatsoever except that they've seen some of the people on TV a few times. Here's an excerpt: "That one's a goalie, so let's say XXL, but he'll have a small head." I swear to God I hate Lenny so much. That's ridiculous. These people have publicists, and the whole point of a hockey helmet is so that you don't end up paralyzed. The audience laughs at this mind-blowing incompetence and Lenny and Pepi are very serious about this very stupid activity. The time it takes them to estimate the size of John McEnroe's head, they could have called every contact in the entire book, and trust me, nobody would mind, because the point of safety equipment is keeping your shit safe. Lenny laughs for an unknown reason and begs Pepi to stop smoking crack. He's so icky and weird and uncool. Going to commercial, quick shots of the Apprenti backstage: Brent has lost weight but that was never the problem, Andrea looks very cute and is the color of a dead vegetarian, Roxanne and Allie look totally smashing, Dan might have gone a little overboard with the Mystic but is still beautiful.
Sean futzes around with stuff in the "War Room," which ... he calls it the "War Room," and I think that my vision is clouded enough that I wouldn't bristle at that, if it were anybody else. He interviews that SLS gave them this special CD to play that would show how awesome their speakers are, and he can't find it, and he looks around, and finally walkies to Tammy to come and help him look. They're at a convention table, right, with the metal legs and the fake wood grain, that are generally less than ten feet by five feet, and it is in this area that Sean is mumbling and grumbling and halfheartedly messing around. And on which he cannot find a CD without Tammy's help. "Or there will be no music atoll!" he whines. Tammy comes back in, points to a stack of CD's, asks if he looked there, and he immediately finds it. Which is annoying, but not as annoying as the one-two punch in the gut of (a) Sean's stupid shadowboxing and "YES!" fists in the air like he just invented antigravity and (b) the music at this point, which involves an actual choir singing his stupid praise and getting so obnoxiously overjoyed and "Jesu, Sean Of Man's Desiring" and...how much is left? We're not even halfway done. You found a CD, dude. Which you lost. Victory!
Jason Priestly checks in, because when any three Canadians gather, there is Jason Priestly, especially if hockey is involved. Christine watches this, and watches the temp at the front desk ask him who he is and what the hell he wants, and then reports to Lee about how Jason just got dissed and is now wandering around. "He's our star player!" Lee explains that the woman is supposed to notify Lenny so that he can greet and valet them, and Roxanne tells everybody as loudly as possible that Lenny is not answering his phone. Fucking A. Lee goes down and gets another staffer to help convey the players to the locker room as they arrive, and is justly proud of solving the problem. Which, I mean, operationally he did, and that's awesome and he did it with a quickness, but now what is Lenny going to do? Tell more lies and bad jokes and act like an asshole. His entire purpose in life.
Lee introduces Lenny to Jamie Pressley, and they discuss how she's going to auction off the cars for the charity. Her hair looks really cute. I used to think she was the grossest girl in Grossolalia, but now I really like her. I was really happy when I heard she was going to be on Earl, because the buzz about that show was so big and I thought she deserved something very buzzy, and she totally turned that role into ... whatever she's turned it into. I think she's just great. She's totally professional, like double-checking that she's going to have all the car stuff written out and ready beforehand, and very friendly and just, "Let's do this." Lenny's immediately like, "You want to see the players? They are naked." Wrong thing, right girl, because she can roll -- she's like, "Sounds great." They go down there for no reason where the players are getting dressed, and here's what my notes say: "The bad Baldwin, sports guy, sports guy, angry tennis guy." This is why I don't play Trivial Pursuit, because where the sports should be in my pie, there are only half-formed opinions like "Marilu Henner is kind of creepy" or "packaging IE does not fall under antitrust, but aggressive buyouts and hostile takeovers do" or "I don't feel like I'll get rabidly conservative as I age, but I've seen it happen." Or still being kind of mad that scheduling missteps killed both Cupid and L.A. Doctors in like the same week. Those kind of eternal questions. All the faceless people laugh about how their uniforms are shitty, and they're all too busy to care that Jamie Pressley is there, and then Denis Leary bitches about the uniforms, and Lenny bumbles around. I couldn't care about Denis Leary if you paid me at this point.
Carolyn appears at the Chelsea Piers pre-party as Lenny manages to confuse Jamie Pressley beyond all reason about what it is she's supposed to be doing, and Jamie can't even remember Lee's name. Carolyn goes all kind of hardcore Connecticut about how horrible Lenny is, and spits antique nail-head trim because Lee is a fool. "And Pepi, why is he here?" Just sublimely pissed. It's gorgeous. Jamie is just like, "What are we doing right now?"
The cobra'd Apprenti enter the live studio, and here's how that goes. Summer still looks like a hostess, but at like an Olive Garden instead of a tanning salon. Stacey basically looks like she's scared Brent's going to come up behind her. Pepi looks lost, still with the cute hair, wearing that same outfit as Trump. Theresa looks like Alla, crossed with the uniforms from that Gwyneth Paltrow movie about flight attendants. Brent looks like a total fucking tool. Dan is hotter than a...anything. Bryce looks ten years younger and has a scary jack-o'-lantern smile. Lenny has gained some weight and has really lovely gray hair, and is wearing a fabulous pinstriped suit. Leslie is...oh, she's gone. Andrea is getting her serious Santa Fe hipster on with an embroidered jacket and tight-leg jeans and a really awesome, soft haircut. Charmaine's hair is a lot softer too, with a part and bangs, and looks really pretty. Tarek is aggressively greasy but still looks like Tarek. Michael gives the impression of having less facial features than before: smoother, smarmy, boring as ever. Tammy is dressed like a princess at a royal prom on the moon. Allie's hair is longer -- the door shuts in her face, which made me laugh even though I'm okay with her -- and is wearing a lovely mint-green dress, and Roxanne looks not so happy to be there, but is wearing this truly amazing outfit, like a swashbuckling Keira Knightly in orange and rust and brown. They look stunning, both of them. Everybody waves and sits. I have to say that Andrea looks the greatest out of all of them, which is surprising and cool, and also that Tammy's dress is very RED!
Team Lee. I wish we could talk to the firees instead and just pretend that this stupid final task never even happened because it's so boring. Which the show basically does, but we still have to watch this crap happen. VIP reception at Chelsea Piers, people milling about, drinking champagne and white wine, Pepi and Lee stressing about something that's not really very clear. Trump calls Lee and Lee answers the phone calling him "Buddy." Cobra. "Am I going to be impressed in ten minutes?" Lee says that he will, but that he can't fuck around or be lame because the thing starts at 5 PM. Ignoring the fact that Lee just questioned his punctuality, Trump flips the script and says that Lee better have his shit together because he's gotta leave and go to the other event as well. Lee yells at all the VIPs that they have to go get ready and to grab a gift bag, and Lenny makes the essential contribution of telling them harshly to "Play good." When Trump arrives, Lee is doing something or another and then gets lost in the building, so that Trump basically has to do a Priestly and wander around by himself. When Lee finally finds Trump, Trump is royally pissed and bitches him out. Just like every year. Lee takes him to sit in the risers with Pontiac cutie, and his nod to kissing Trump ass is to hand him a Diet Coke. In a can.
This is farce. There's a red carpet across the middle of the ice, and Lee introduces the players, and then the dad from that awful sitcom about the two gay dads yells about some stuff, and Lee tells us about how you have to "talk about the foundation" so it'll "make them happy." Lee doesn't understand the whole "charity" thing, I think. Hockey is played. Hockey equals lots and lots of socks and hitting. Both blood and vomit bounce if it's cold enough. That's all I know about hockey.
Team Sean. A panda suit person welcomes people to the event. Pontiac cutie worries about not having enough signage and George -- without even thinking about it -- glad-hands the guy about how "You don't need much! They sell themselves!" I wish that George and Lee would yell at each other in a Chinese restaurant about how they each think the other person's life is perfect, and then they would switch bodies, and then Lee could learn a thing or two. George is so awesome. Andrea and Sean get their last minute stuff together, and she bids him good luck sweetly. Andrea sounds pretty good telling people about the cars, and sounds pretty knowledgeable, even though she never says anything about engines or performance and just about the rims and stuff you can see with your eyeballs. Sean sneaks off and goes shopping for hair gel in the Taj Mall. This is not a lie, this is totally the truth. "It's for good luck," he says more than once, and then we watch him spraying his hair down. Fuckface. This is exactly what I'm talking about: he's going to win, but it won't mean anything, because he's winning by sucking less. You couldn't edit it in such a way that we wouldn't be in a quandary of not wanting to root for Lee v. not wanting Sean to win? That's not entertainment, that's a punishment.
Team Lee, cars out on the ice. Jamie Pressley looks amazing, and points out that she can't see shit from the rink, so how's she supposed to take the bids? Lenny gives her some nonsense directions about "go here, then there, then over there" and she's like, "What are you talking about?" And he gives her the usual sullen look like it's her fault he doesn't know what he's talking about and couldn't express himself if he did, and finally she just takes off, calling over her shoulder: "Your shit is not together, little apprentice boy." Which is...she has given these jokers enough chances, frankly. I'm so down with Jamie Pressley it's not funny. But my favorite, favorite thing is the thing, which is that they lock eyes and go "Ah ha hah" at each other in this incredibly hateful, juvenile, pissed-off way that is transcendent. Just incandescent. That made this shirt worth it. "Neener neener, motherfucker." So Jamie somehow gets out to Lee on the ice, and she takes the mic, and starts the bidding. And somehow, she and Lee work out a pretty smooth routine where she's doing the auction out on the ice while Lee works the crowd up close, and it's nice to see them figure that out so quickly. We don't see more than the first few bids, because we're not supposed to know how incredibly bloodbathy this actually was, so we can't know how low Lee's returns were on like, every front. But I don't mind telling you that from what I've heard, Lee is a drop in the bucket of Sean on every quantifiable level, from the auction to the event to the internet votes. Which is too bad, but his own fault and not his team's, so I'm cool with that. In the stands, Lys laughs and loves it all, and there's a really cool part where she interviews that she "wanted a moment" where she could "see Lee shine," and she finally got to see that. I went, "Awwww," I don't mind telling you. It's neat. Lee walks Trump out and tells us that he honestly feels "on top of the world."
Trump choppers at the Taj Mahal, where Sean's hair has been tamed. He calls ahead to tell Sean that "Lee's hockey game was pretty good" and that he hopes to see "good things" out of Sean. We get a heapin' helpin' of SLS placement, and Tarek introduces the execs at the pre-party, and they talk about some crap. Whatever, it's their party. It's not like I'm dying for the Barenaked Concert to commence. Some Barenaked Ladies talk about how Trump is going to be sitting in the VIP section, and everybody goes shit wild about that, because what's more exciting than sitting in the same room as Donald Trump? Pontiac cutie, not snowed by George, goes all Rain Man about how there are no Pontiac signs at all, and gets very suspenseful on Andrea's ass about it. The Barenaked people are admittedly very cute doing the charity auction. I'm glad they are not singing, because I think that I like them very much. The auction goes swimmingly and Pontiac cutie is very happy about that. We get a faceload of Seanthusiasm about how great the auction went, and then there's a funny thing about how Pontiac cutie is clearly on stage, in the car with Trump, while simultaneously out in the audience watching. Trump gets out of the car and speechifies in the very bright lights, and it's as embarrassing as usual, because he is a man with very little to say. George, the WWF hottie, and the pretty SLS lady sit out in the audience with the magically multiple Pontiac guy. Then Sean screams something so high I don't know what he said, and the Barenaked Ladies sings their one song they ever wrote. Trump gives George the eyebrows about how "I thought there would be Barenaked Ladies!" Beat. "Like, I really did!" George just smiles, all, "If you have to explain the joke, the joke is not a joke." But also and always and finally: that thing really is all that there is to Donald Trump -- more propaganda about how he's so totally horny and bumbling, when the fact is that if it were true, he'd be able to shut up about it. It factors into the overall propaganda telling us how he's so greedy and cutthroat and ruthless but also super sweet and a great dad and a canny business mind, but it's really all the same thing: his vague idea about what he's supposed to be. This is why there's such a thing as Viagra. Sad, scary.
Boardroom! Everybody's wearing black suits! I have waited my life for this moment. Daddy would never let me buy a black suit because he said I don't go to funerals and I would never find work as an embalmer because I am squeamish, and thus should not be wearing black suits. Fashion! Has! Changed! Sean explains to Trump, again, that his team was a perfect balance of sales, operations, marketing and logistics, which is still true, but adds that with all the conflict this season, he wanted a team that could work together without a bunch of bullshit. Which yes, considering Andrea's the only woman Tarek thinks of as a human being, or indeed notices at all, I see his point. "Much of the task was won in the selection process," he says, which is the ultimate statement of the entire two episodes, but Trumpy's pretty clever: "You won?" Don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up. Stick to your guns..."Yes." Good boy. "There's some conviction," says Trump. "You know more than I do?" Don't fuck this up... "Well, the passion of Tarek and Andrea...with respect to Lee's team..." Good, Sean, good. Trump agrees, and points out that it's a "risky team" Lenny selected for Lee. Roxanne's a good lawyer, Lenny's a "passionate Russian," whatever the hell that means, and then there's...also Pepi.
Lee goes on and on about how performance and skill are second to fooling himself into thinking they give a damn about him winning, and Carolyn comes at him sideways about that embarrassing and continual statement. "Pepi's passionate about you winning? You don't know each other." He says something about how somebody with something to prove will try even harder. Carolyn asks why the hell he would have Lenny onboard, when Lenny's only passion is to prove that he's the rudest, most off-putting person you've ever met. And again: crazycakes about how Lenny would die for him. Why should Sean be the Apprentice? He's older and has experience. Lee replies that he's not even "close to peaking," and there is much cheering at this both in the live audience and -- witnesses would say, although I cannot speak about it without my lawyer present -- at my house. George points out that this is not the answer of a businessman but in fact that of a cult leader, which Lee can never be because he has negative charisma, and really isn't an answer at all. Sean says his advantage is that he can "hit the ground running," and instead of going oblique on this like he should, Lee supplies the opposite and way less impressive "a true Apprentice is ignorant" answer, which is not a plus. This is awful because that used to be his thing, the Boardroom thing, like when he made Lenny that vocab list of approved phrases, and now the phrases he's given himself are: "One day I will be good at my job" and "The point is, I'm bad at my job, isn't that great?" Neither of which are worth even thinking, much less saying. Trump pokes them, and Lee says he had a 4.0 GPA every semester at Cornell, and Sean says he had the equivalent of the same thing at his made-up university. (Of which, by the way, he keeps fudging the name to be an entirely different school than the one he actually went to.) Lee claims "President of the Honors Society," and Sean says he was the valedictorian at his made-up university. For some reason Trump and Lee both act like that's it, final answer, the fight is over. "You're both outstanding. time I see you, I'll choose." Oh my God, I can't believe this isn't over. I was assuming that the walls would fly up into the air like at Cage Match, and they'd be secretly at the theatre, and we'd be done here. They take off, and Carolyn stares at them with a somewhat warm facsimile of a smile as they leave.
Is this the part where Trump goes all Probst and fights his away through the jungle with the thing and drops out of a helicopter or whatever? I swear that happened last year.
Guess not. Wouldn't want to take away from the unending dead air at the end. Trump points to his kids in the audience and says once more that they both graduated from the Wharton School of Business, which I bet whenever they go to Arby's, he's like, "My lovely daughter, who I think we can all agree is a sexy piece of ass, graduated from the Wharton School of Business, and she would like a roast beef and curly fries." DJ talks like his dad even more when Trump's around. He offers no opinion whatsoever on the Final Two, and loves them both. Trump jokes about "thanks for the help," and Ivanka gives dad a speech about how she "concurs completely" so "essentially, it's back to you, Dad." Man, I adore her. The thing is that nobody will admit that the reason they don't care who wins is that they don't care who wins.
Randal is wearing the coolest suit, if a little busy, and he looks great, and he's in the audience, and refuses to do anything but plug his website in the crappiest and tackiest possible way, like throwing a cheeky grin on top of it is going to change the fact that he just did that. I just lost a lot of respect for old Randal, I'll be honest. "Who else? Who else?" asks Trump, but nobody cares. Everybody just wants a drink and for this to be over so they can go home because it's a Monday night and nobody wants to be doing this boring shit about these two boring people on a Monday night. Trump points out that Lee is a "native New Yorker" and the youngest finalist ever on the show. He comes out and does some douche actions, and his parents are kind of a disaster. Lee hugs the front row of firees, but VERY interestingly reaches past Lenny to high-five Pepi. Sean comes out looking...the same...and Trump tells us that he lives in Miami. I don't know that I knew that. I think I would have hated him a lot sooner if I'd known that.
It's possible to live in Miami and be awesome, but it's not possible to be anything like Sean and live in Miami and be worthwhile. I just have this image of him standing in line forever to get into some sticky club in some sad metro suit that is just a little too much for his coolness, and finally passing the guy a fifty to get in, because what does he spend his money on? Nothing. Gadgets. Maybe he's got a cat. He doesn't have a hell of a lot of friends, and if he does, they aren't fun. They don't go out, and if they do, it's to the place that was cool last month, and maybe not even that, maybe it's like one of those sad theme places with like shepherd's pie. REM and Oasis on the jukebox, trivia contests on Thursday nights. Buying twice the rounds that anybody else does, because what's all that income for, if not making people happy? And when they ask him to do an Austin Powers voice, he'll actually do it. Sober, he'll do it. And he will feel universally accepted and loved and included in the American dream while they are laughing. Looking for the girl who's just blurry enough that she'll leverage the accent against the rest of the package, and meanwhile his meathead friends are pulling ass left and right, and he gets too drunk on Red Bull and Vodkas and maybe dances alone in a corner or lectures some random person about something, and the meathead friends are like, "That's our crazy British friend, isn't it sad," and then they finally have to stick him in a taxi and when he gets home the last thought as he snuggles into bed is, "What a kick-ass night."
Sean's parents, in the audience, are very British, and have very tiny heads. There's a poster in the audience that says "An Englishman In New York." A song that I hate, because there's this one tiny sound effect in it that always gave me a heart attack because it sounded exactly like my nanny taking a spill outside my bedroom door, and I knew if I opened it I'd find her in a heap, ass-over-teakettle, and I'd have to see her panties, and so I'd stare at my door for what seemed like hours wondering if it was worth it to render aid. The fact that this happened to me not once but several times is the most compelling argument to avoid drugs -- not to mention Sting -- that I can think of.
"Tarek, the women love you for some reason," says Trump. Everybody immediately rushes to refill their shot glasses before Trump can say "Mensa" and Tarek giggles, and then Trump says "Mensa" and everybody takes a shot. "Sometimes I don't know about the IQ thing...you're pretty smart, okay," says Trump, shoving the valentine he made for Tarek himself out of pink and red construction paper back in his pocket, because it's all crumpled. Tarek says that Sean is a man of great integrity. Trump bugs Tammy for a billion years about how Sean's "obviously in love" with her, and she nods and thinks about how Sean is probably going to die a virgin. "Do you think he was hurt in my eyes by being so effusive? You have to say it to everybody?" Which, again: not exactly Sean's fault. Sean's grossness is his own fault, for sure, but the fact that the producers stopped asking him about the tasks four weeks ago and only started getting his thoughts on Tammy's reproductive viability is not his fault. Tammy is just brilliant: "It shows how much passion he has, and that he would bring passion to the organization." That is a fantastic answer. Trump agrees, and says that it explains why Sean is in love with her. Because what turns Sean on is the ability to bullshit. Cut to the creepy smile of Sean, of course, because as validating as talking unendingly about his fake crush on Tammy is, Trump just gave it a creepy little blessing of his own. People boo Lenny forever, so Trump moves on to Pepi. "Also, we love Pepi! I do remember you very well. You're a good guy, Pepi!" Pepi half-stands because people are cheering for him, and Trump gets jealous. "Sit down, Pepi. That's enough, Pepi." It's more awkward than it sounds. Everybody laughs. Pepi laughs. I hate this goddamned show.
"Lenny, for some reason Lee seemed to rely on you, like a crutch." Lenny laughs about "who's Pepi," and nobody laughs. Lenny laughs about "I see a lot of the Sean's babies are very supportive," but nobody knows what the fuck he's talking about. One can assume he's being a dick in some way. "Goat has no age," says Lenny. "Goat is always goat," says Lenny. "You have to invest in goat over time," says Lenny. "That's not a great answer, but whatever," says Trump. Oh, "gold"! He was saying Lee was like gold. My bad. Your anagrams are showing, Doctor. Charmaine speaks greatly about how both candidates are "exceptional," "intelligent," "creative," and "driven." She adds that Sean "has organizational and leadership skills," but does not add that his other main thing is that he never said anything as rampantly douchebaggy as the whole "three guys taking orders from a lady" box of bullshit that Lee perpetrated. Well, to her personally. Trump: "Charmaine, you are one great presenter." Her face is awesome, like, "Fuckin' thanks, dude."
The Jobs! I never understand this part. One job is a new Trump building on Waikiki beach. The artist's pictures of the suites are insanely tight and I can tell you right now that the very second I am a bajillionaire my ass will be living there. It's just beautiful. The other job is a Trump building in "New York's trendiest neighborhood"...which is apparently SoHo again? I didn't know it was back to that already. I think that wherever Trump says is trendy, that's what we're going with, because it's his show. The pictures of the building show that it will be quite tall. He refers to this building as "an awe-inspiring masterpiece." Modesty's all well and good, saith Trump. He's awe-inspiring, all right. Sean says that the whole point of going through this humiliating experience is to learn from Trump, and so he's "gotta have New York," and Lee says that as a native New Yorker who knows the city, he has to be in New York as well. Um, I'll fucking take Waikiki. You morons. Like you're going to be lunching with Trump all the damn time. Like he's going to remember anything beyond "Lee = Politician" and "Sean + Tammy = Eyebrow Apocalypse" five minutes from now.
Lee finger-guns the camera, shadowboxes a little bit, but then immediately realizes he's being a dork and cuts it out with just a sweet thumbs-up. The Apprenti stand for their final choices. If you think I'm bouncing around here, I'm not. This is literally how it went down: no reason, no logic, just different flavors of screams and then unending shots of the unfamous moseying around boredly. For Sean: Charmaine because of the Hair Cuttery disaster, Brent and Leslie and Theresa because who knows or cares why, Bryce because Sean's fractionally more alpha, Tarek because he worked well with Sean and has no respect for Lee, and Dan as a secret message to me that we are buddies. "Lee, remember them!" shouts Trump "They're your enemies!" I don't think Trump knows when he's talking. I really don't. I think people respond to whatever comes out of his mouth no matter what it is, so his Sophia Petrillo filter just dried up on him and went vestigial. For Lee: Roxanne because she hates Sean, Brent again, Pepi and Lenny, Michael and Stacey and Summer for even less interesting reasons than the above. Everybody sits down except for Brent, whose new hobby is I guess standing there like a fool for no reason.
A few brief notes here: That's a fucking compelling reason to take a good hard look in the mirror when your fans include Brent, Pepi, Michael, Lenny, Stacey and Summer, first of all. But more importantly: BRENT. My GOD. You are not that interesting! Nobody is going to notice that you stood up for both of them, and if they do, it's not going to have the effect that you presume it will, which effect I cannot fathom, but I can make some guesses, and they're all wrong, because all it does is point out once again that you should not be allowed to make decisions for yourself because you don't understand one tenth of what the world has to offer, and you're always going to come off weird, and you need to stay in the background while you figure this out instead of using every single possible opportunity to scream: "Look at me! Underpants on my head!"
George says both candidates are "great," but the most hard-hitting thing he can think of to say about either of them is that they both have "more pluses than minuses." "Neither of them seems to be carrying a deadly virus, they both have the use of their limbs, neither of them seems to have a taste for arson, background checks have revealed no ties to Jamestown or the Lindbergh baby. A moveable feast of possible apprenticeship." Trump whines that nobody will help him out. They don't CARE! Nobody cares! Trump screams at Carolyn about "Do you have a PICK? Will you give me a PICK?" Carolyn, who looks absolutely stunning in a lovely Chanel suit, by the way, promises to give her choice. "I think you're both great. Lee, I think you're creative and give new meaning to 'think outside of the box.' Sean, you are a motivator. You have energy I've never seen, and are a true leader." Now, if you don't speak Connecticut Throwdown, you might think that she was equivocating there, so I will translate for you, because her choice was actually quite clear: "I think you're both equally lackluster. Lee, you are shady and a wildcard, and inconsistent to boot. Sean, you won't stop screaming about everything all the time. You have a nervous energy that reminds me of my dog Chin-Chin before we changed her meds, but are at least capable of leadership. Thank you for not embarrassing the Trump organization by foisting Lenny on a bunch of unsuspecting Canadians, for they are a peace-loving people who do not deserve his crap."
Lee promises to show Trump things he's never seen. Trump goes, I kid you not, he goes, "Like a politician?" Like, please tell me what the fuck. Lee too, he's like, "I guess so, you like that whole idea in your weird mind, but also, I stepped up a third of the time to be PM." Valid. He gives mad respect to Sean, but knows he's the "true Apprentice." Sean explains that he is better than Lee and has the "aptitude" or "attitude" to do SoHo, or "any project." In the middle of explaining again that for ten years he's been doing "multi-million dollar deals," Trump freaks out because things are getting so cutthroat and fires them both. Oh wait, no he doesn't. And you and I both know why. Trump posits again that just maybe he despises Sean for the Tammy talk, and having heard the name "Tammy," which is like his codeword to commence babbling, Sean gets stomach-turningly effusive, so he doesn't hear Trump slide in the question of whether or not they're going to get married, and says "Yes," even though it's not true. Tammy catches it and laughs her ass off, but Sean's too out of it to notice this part. I've said my piece about the Tammy thing, but check out Trump's emotional maturity: "You love Tammy? You wanna make out? Are you, in fact, K-I-S-S-I-N-G? Are you going to get maaaaaaarried? Ooooooh, Sean's in looooove with Taaaaaammy!"
Trump tells "Stage Manager Joey" to "get over here with the polling results," and Joey refuses to slap him upside his head for that one, and then Trump says, "Wow." Because, you see, "millions of people" have voted, and they all voted for Sean, but he can't say that because the suspense won't thereby kill us, and also he wants to offer Lee a job in a second, but he does admit that it was "pretty one-sided," and that he happens to agree with the vote. Which, considering how heavily arc-ed and edited this show is, I would think that we'd all agree, including Trump. I doubt very much that he sees a hell of a lot more of the tasks than we do, simply because of his clear disinterest in this entire process. "But it's a very tough kind of thing for me to do, because you are both outstanding. Understand that. I'd like to hire both of you, but I can't do that. That's now how the game is." Cut to Randal, cut to Randal, cut to Randal...no dice. Lee is sad because duh, and then he just says it: "Lee you're fired, Sean you're hired."
Sean acts like a total idiot, of course, and dances around, and I won't watch that. Lee already knew, somewhere on a scale of kinda-to-actual, which simultaneously sucks and makes it a bit better. Sean's tragic family dances around in the audience. Theresa hugs somebody, Sean hugs Tarek. Well, I mean, it was a better team. I don't know who I'm really rooting for. Maybe Sean can go over how he's more of an American than most actual Americans again, because I'm pretty sure that's where I lost the plot. Dan looks as uncomfortable as Brent right now. I would have liked to see him on one of the teams, only because he was such a disaster as PM that I think he would have rocked out like the guys did last year. Trump interrupts everything and sends Sean...out of the building? To...drive around in a Pontiac? And tells everybody else to...go home? But nobody actually does? And also the actual Sean-driving-around footage was actually filmed like hours before this? I think that we should just stop here, because this is where things really go to shit, from a TV perspective.
Charmaine is wearing gauchos, I think, and Ivanka is bored, and DJ is talking to some hot blonde. Nobody onstage will speak to or acknowledge Brent or Lenny at all, which is kind of great. This show is such an assembly line. Roxanne waves at the camera. Yay! Sean runs out of the building, shivering and hopping like a complete jackass, and gets in his stupid car and drives away screaming "I'm the Apprentice, baby! Yes! Hah hah!" I would rather be watching Requiem For A Dream with my mom, is how awkward I find all of this behavior. He screams into space, "Mr. Trump! I'm not going to let you down! I'm going to work my fingers to the bone!" Who is he talking to? He honks embarrassingly at people and gets his mess all over them and screams some more about "I'm the Apprentice, baby!" For this we don't get to talk to the candidates more than that bullshit we got? And now the camera is just going to zoom all over the place at random, cutting at some infant's whim in the production booth, angles on nothing, pictures of nobody, some feet, the back of a lady's head, probably twenty cameras in the mix and not one of them focusing on anything worth committing to film, for a good solid five or six years. Lee and Lenny utterly ignore each other the entire time. The song goes over and over on a loop for ever and ever. That song is going to kill me. Trump shakes hands with all kinds of people, Brent wanders around awkwardly waiting for someone to acknowledge his presence, Andrea approaches Trump but they can't think of anything to say to each other, so she talks to George, Carolyn messes with her purse or something. I don't know what to say!
"This episode had plusses (Jamie Pressley, the firees, Tarek and Andrea, Ivanka and DJ) and minuses (that Death Is Not An Option Final Two, for starters). It thought outside the box, if the 'box' in question is well-produced and interesting television. It stepped up to the most telegraphed final decision in recent reality TV memory. It managed to have only like an aquamarine rating on the Death Of Feminism scale, that's a plus I wasn't really expecting. That was 90 minutes you could have been saving a life or doing the laundry or reading a nice book or writing a nice book or earning some money or spending time with your loved ones or learning to cook a new dish or building a hummingbird feeder, but at least you get the sense of having defeated the season by watching the whole thing no matter how lame it got." And congratulations to us all for that. Nobody who wasn't there with us will ever understand, so that's something we share. We were in the Shit for real, and like the man said: you gotta take credit when you're due. Let's just hope and pray that the people are really nuts in Hollywood, come January, because I'd rather watch a roomful of Omarosas stabbing each other with sewing scissors for 15 weeks than let another couple of chuckers like these under the rope. There's no value or learning curve to this show anymore, they've seen to that, so we can come back to it with a fresh appreciation for the trainwreck. And you know, I have this overwhelming intuition that Trump will provide.