Well, that was a new low. Things start off shitty -- Arrow actually cheering Frank's return -- and get worse and worse. Task: design a line of swimwear for Trina Turk, who's apparently yooge in the business, and then have a fashion show at the overcast beach for swimwear buyers. Stupidly enough, the winning team won't even have to participate in week's task. Nicole "steps up" and refuses to do anything interesting, remarkable, or useful as Arrow's new PM. Carey designs the gayest swim trunks in the universe, causing Aaron to freak out in a gay panic and several of his disgusting teammates to veer real fuckin' close to getting backhanded; nobody stops him from creating the awful things, putting them on, running around in them, or working the catwalk. On Kinetic, Heidi and Marisa get headstrong with each other, and Marisa gets a little Lady MacBeth about the whole "Perpetual PM" concept. The entire world is shocked at the fashion show by Carey's pink, spandexy, boy-cut, paisley monstrosity, but only Derek has the presence of mind to laugh his ass off. Arrow loses by like a thousand bucks, and things get fucking sickening: Reward? Playboy Mansion. Relevant? No. Appropriate? No. Gross? To the max. Tits and whores and social diseases! Thanks, Trump. Awesome. Awesome how there is exactly one straight man on the entire team, who is not a fucking pig and probably won't enjoy it either. They seem to make the best of it, surrounded by actual literal prostitutes and the pants-shitting incontinent symbol of all that is wrong with Trump, "Hef" -- though you wouldn't catch me going in that pool. Meanwhile Arrow decides to blame the failure on Michelle. Who? Exactly. Not Carey, who designed the horrid thing, or Nicole, who is worthless, but Michelle. Trump sees through this immediately and zeroes in on Carey, then acts like fifteen fucking kinds of jackass about the gay swimsuit previously worn by Carey: he refuses to even touch it, tossing it onto the desk with a pen. This horror about the filthy gay swimsuit worn by Carey overrides Trump's judgment entirely, and...what does it take to go from "gross" and "a sad comment on our world of today" to "actual fucking evil"? Playboy Mansion, for starters, but Trump gives every indication -- between the looks of disgust, stupid cracks, weird Freudian slips, and the tongs -- that he knows damn well he's firing Carey almost entirely for being gay. Or black, I don't know anymore. I do know you can't spin it, though: Playboy Bunnies; faggot jokes; being so grossed out by the black guy you can't even touch the clothes he wore. This is the worst goddamn show on television.
Last week, while you were watching Desperate Housewives (or Cold Case, Celebrity Island, Hogan Knows Best, The L Word, or Without A Trace, or whatever was in reruns on some other channel, if you were smart), stuff supposedly happened. That's not really how I remember it, but at least it wasn't the flaming ram-rod of death that this show's turning out to be. So Trump explains, in the Previouslies, what would appear to have happened, including how they'll now be making up new rules and twists thirty-seven times an episode. Trump says, in last week's boardroom, that it is in fact "all about winning," fires Martin... and Frank shakes his head, disappointedly, staying silent; too classy to, say, throw a thumbsucking immature classless Superbowl Shuffle on his own behalf. Just like last week! (This is not at all how it went. You are being fucked with, America.)
"Business is full of complexities. That's what makes it so interesting. Anyone who thinks it's boring hasn't given it much thought." -- Donald J. Trump, Chairman, Trump University
Right out of her overdramatizing, grade school ass, Nicole pulls the probability that there's "more than a 50% chance" nobody comes back from the Frank/Martin boardroom. Her compatriots on Team Frank buy it, because... I don't know why... and jump around shrieking, "Oh my God, really? Really? Oh my God! That's bad news!" It would seem that you go crazy a lot faster when you're living in the third world. That kind of groupthink, random assignment of authority, and clairvoyance to things that will be happening six seconds from now doesn't generally start breaking out on like Big Brother until around the tenth week. So of course, Frank -- all 100% of him -- immediately shows up, breathing hard, and his compatriots all jump around shrieking "Oh my God, really? Really? Oh my God! Frank is back!" They circle around him and climb him like monkeys and scream and shout because they're so glad he's back. I think also because he was once their PM, and they're so used to kissing ass that they... will ultimately triumph on this stupid game show. There are so many hugs, you guys, and so much hyper, scary babbling.
Frank doesn't do anything heinous this week, except for this part, and we're going to mostly boop-bleep past it because it's obnoxious as shit, but basically, he immediately starts lecturing us in interview, and the teammates in the yard, for a million billion years, about how special and important his day was, and what a drama it has been to be Frank today, and how he overcomes and is amazing, and how he -- or his fellows at the auto shop, maybe -- has given himself at some point in his horrible life the incredibly embarrassing nickname "Frankie Suits," which I will not be calling him unless irony is on the menu. Kinetic watches this depressing, adrenaline-aided performance, over the hedge, and laugh at him. It's like if you took how sad and annoying Glengarry Glen Ross is, re-cast it with illiterates, and gave them each a bag of cocaine and no expertise in any field. Team Frank's eyes are bright and stupid as he lectures them. It's like, "For the first time now you see who 'Frankie Suits' is about!" and "Listen to me! This is how we do it back at home!" and various other [sic]kening talk like this. Considering he's pretty decent the rest of the episode, it's not the best way to get things started, but whatever. I mean, how can you hate someone like this? "Frankie Suits." That's just touching, is what that is.
The Stupid You're Fired Remix is I guess here to stay. I noted that in the credits, Angela, Frank and Michelle are at some event, while Marisa, Derek and Nicole's clips are from the car wash last week. Not everything has to mean something, but it's interesting. Hopeful piano music plays us into to the candidate mansion, where it is quarter of five in the AM, and Aaron and Kristine answer the phone. Evan Rachel Wood all full of devil babies is on the phone, calling, and her name is Andie, apparently being so awesome and super cute that she's able to handle not only the three jobs formerly staffed by Robin, Rhona, and Otto, but also still keep up her busy career of being in the eighth grade. I didn't get much time with Otto but I can't say I won't miss him.
While everybody in Hotel Voulez-Vous gets ready and checks their email over coffee, the Valley View Restaurant is sad and dirty and covered in trash. James takes a freezing shower; Carey stares into the void that is this show. He interviews that "Living in Trump Trailer Park" really is that bad, and he "implores" anybody that would disagree to spend two weeks outside their own house. Which, I guess I understand his point, which is that nobody wants to go to a job interview after sleeping on the lawn, but it makes it seem like people are aggressively scoffing at them for bitching about their conditions. Which I'm not, it sucks, and you best believe that I would be bitching, but I would A) do it in like my diary, or after I got home, and B) I don't have anything to prove about how high-maintenance I am, or what a pampered hothouse flower I turned out to be. There's something kind of Louis Vuitton about bitching about it at this point, that says more about how you need to project yourself than would sacking up and dealing with it. I want you to think I am a rugged outdoorsman who's killed before and can strip and clean a Kalashnikov blindfolded. I have no interest in making you think I grew up in the lap of Nantucket luxury or rowed crew or whatever the hell Tarek stuff is going on here. Understand that my reasons for that are no more interesting or valid, and the bullshit under the surface of this episode is a huge reason for my needing you to believe that in the first place, but we'll get there later. Right now I will just say that I have an idea why he's invested in this kind of propaganda, and I am sympathetic. However, I will put forth the idea right now that the amount of time these people bitch about living in the yard is inversely proportional to the amount of time they're going to last on this show, because that is some wasted goddamn energy.
Unaired, but adorable, so we're doing it. I'm going to be talking more about the deleted scenes and webisode stuff than usual in this episode, because I wanted to make sure I was seeing as many angles as possible. It's probably going to be a bit longer than normal, for the same reason. So at sunrise, everybody is up and dressed when Stefani and Muna get on the phone with Trump. They both do a good job of proclaiming their respective teams' awesomeness, and then Trump grins while they talk good-natured shit back and forth about who's going to win the task this week. Muna is the cutest thing; Stefani does a great job of being adorable as well. A little more of this would have calmed me down considerably, by the end, but I just remembered something interesting: this episode was originally scheduled, I think, to be as long as last week's, which means it's possible that a lot more stuff got cut than they planned originally. Which fits what I think happened overall to make this episode so felching horrible in the first place, and really adds to the overall sense that television itself is outweighing its welcome. Trump tells them to pick team names and a team sign, and they'll meet with him and a special guest before everybody heads to Santa Monica to hear about the task.
Team Heidi brainstorms concepts like "take action," "movement," "vitality," and "energy," everybody nodding their heads vigorously and in constant agreement about everything, and Muna comes up with KINETIC, which she prefers to the other things because it is an intangible force that is also an adjective, or something, and the logo is... classic looking, love the font, with a pendulum swinging from the capital K, which looks a little doofy and literal, but works overall.
Team Frank yells and screams and bitches and moans and talks nonsense, and over all of it there's Michelle shouting about how she hates the logo, they need to do this, work that, change this, go over that, rethink and retool and refashion. And I still like Michelle for now, because she doesn't actually know that she's being off-putting, she's just being sure, so she gets an D for social Dumbness, but an A for being -- relative to the rest of the team -- competent, if confusingly and Abrasively so. Frank, whom we've seen before reacts poorly to any kind of forethought or analysis or discussion or anything, because it takes him three times longer than a normal person to process anything, complains that Michelle "likes to really, really go deep"; this intrigues me because I still don't like Frank, but he has a point, so he gets an F for being Frank but an A for his ADD, which is right. Michelle continues to nudge and offer notes and helpful critique and make everybody go even crazier, and Frank makes a face that is hateful but also: correct.
Then: fucking Regis Philbin. Really? I miss when he was the butt of jokes. I know he's probably a fine person and he really is a professional, and you know how much I love his daughter, so I'm sure he's a good dad and man, but my God with the voice and the face and the mugging and the nervous affect. Why is he here? Not even Trump can tell us, he just points him out to Kinetic and they clap and Jenn offers him a tour of the house. Nobody asks why he's here, which is just as well. Trump calls him "Reege," which is fine. Surya does a good job presenting the logo and whatever, he's very confident and speaks well, and then Derek calls Regis "Reege," and Trump is menacing about it but then everybody laughs and it's kind of awkward.
Outside, "Arrow" schmucks around about what if this and what if that and whatever, and Michelle wants to present the logo but doesn't want to be the one leading the pack but wants to be the one talking but doesn't want to... whatever. She's an overthinker, and I don't mean in the Frank way where thinking is bad, just in the way where she thinks too hard about everything and ends up stalling out. You see it in her syntax, where the weird constructions and strange phrasing all have to do with trying to answer every question at once, or get as many details and truths in there as possible. Like lawyer talk, only... she's not that great at it. Like last week, calling the tent their "first pseudo-task." Makes sense, is not untrue, and yet implies a certain retardation on the part of the listening party that they might somehow confuse building a tent with washing a car, so she just wants to be clear. Trump and Reege appear, Trump explains about the tents to Regis and how Regis knows all about being a winner. Michelle takes control and right out the gate: "The company that we call ourselves is Arrow Corporation." The hmm? And you know if you asked why she said it that weird way, she'd tell you exactly why, but it's like, if you're going to fit in with us Earthlings, you have to talk like us or somebody is going to catch on. Like this, or in other ways not clearly expressed in the above paragraph or otherwise disclosed, is the way that at all times, including the present meeting and in and future business environments, she speaks, for reasons that have not been previously laid out or otherwise made clear, to her associates.
The sign looks like ass. Hot buttered ass in pink paisley hotpants. Trump says, tangential to the task at hand or indeed any reasoned discourse at all, that "passion breeds success." He asks if Michelle has "a lot of passion," and instead of mowing him down in his tracks with her passion for misused language, she barks, "I have so much passion!" Which... the first thing I would say about Michelle would probably not be "unbridled." It would be "Mind Map," because you know she's all over that shit. She officiates about how their mission is to be a "globally recognized corporation," and goes on a serious word hike. Does she know this is pretend? That it's actually a game show? Carey explains her in terms of her predilection for creating "moments," how everything she does, she does it in the spirit of making it "a moment to remember forever." HA! That's hilarious. The thing is, though, that these qualities are linked, and all they really mean is that her brain goes everywhere at once, like the red-shifting universe all around us, which is just as awesome and useful as it can be a hindrance. Inclusive, expansive, contingent thinking is just as helpful as deductive reasoning, and just as scary if it's the only tool you've got.
Trump brings out the "Mister Philbin" joke again when she calls him Regis, and then Michelle just straight-up shits the bed, indicating to Reege that she's "known him all her life," okay, because he's really old. Strike one. She says they're honored to have him there, abruptly adds Trump to the list of honored guess, and then awkwardly waves one hand at Ivanka: "... and you as well," she says vaguely, weirdly, hilariously. Ivanka gives some brow. Trump and Reege agree that "not winning" is somewhat like "losing," which seems to be the winning phrase this season. Reege screams, "Call me Mister Regis" at them, to defuse the awkwardness of Trump tossing his balls all over the place, and everybody giggles. Smoothly done, Philbin. He also lies about how great their logo is. I will tell you that it is not. It looks like they're selling fruit on the side of the highway. Frank is, of course, really proud of it, and especially -- and without irony -- explains that it "really gets to the point." Which is just so funny, because it's a bullseye, but that's not what he means: "Our team, from here in, we're going to hit the mark every time." If you put Frank and Michelle in a blender you'd have a person who could make sense when they talked, charm without that corresponding greasiness, and intelligence without the negative charisma. I say chuck 'em in.
More swanky music to meet Trump & Trump, on a horrible cloudy day, at the Santa Monica beach. Ivanka is wearing black gauchos, and looks totally awesome as usual. Nicole's hair is pulled back so harshly from that face of hers that she looks like she's on rumspringa. Trump talks about how everybody loves the beach; Derek rolls his eyes, and he hasn't even seen Trump's inability to deal with the outdoors yet. They're going to be dealing with Trina Turk, who apparently is a swimsuit maker of some popularity, and Ivanka explains that they'll be designing and manufacturing lines of men and women's swimwear, and then hold a fashion show on the beach, with Turk as the MC. They'll be provided with hair and makeup people, and a secret number of models for the show. This is the result, I guarantee, of somebody noticing the ratings for Project Runway and saying, "Why don't we do that?" And nobody gave this person the correct answer, which is: "Because it has jack-all to do with the concept of our show? Which is about business acumen and not fashion design?" I don't know whose job it is to answer those questions, but they were gone today. Probably at the beach; probably wearing Trina Turk. Or pink paisley man-panties. Trump drops the bomb -- for all we know, he is making this up right now live on camera -- that the winning team gets a bye week. They literally won't have to participate in any way. Which is so, so dumb, and causes Jenn and Aaron's mouths to drop open. (And Nicole's, but she was already doing that.) Derek goes "Hoo!" in concern for the losing team, which is obviously going to be Team "Arrow." As much as I talk about Derek more than is justified, this week I need you to pay attention, because this episode uses Derek as effectively and as subtly as a brickbat through the screen, to get its point across: as Kristine interviews for us all the things we just heard, Derek puts his arms around Angela and I think Jenn, and the group takes off. Remember that image, because it's important.
"Back to Picasso's statement ['Art is a lie that makes us see the truth.']. One take on that is that artists often make the difficult look effortless. How hard is it to put paint on a canvas? Easy if you don't know what you're doing. A little more complex if you do know what you're doing." -- Donald J. Trump, Chairman, Trump University
So is this show idiotic and ham-handed? Or is it art? I maintain it's both, for the reasons above, but we'll see. Think about this, though: what we're watching is 42 minutes long; it's picked and chosen quite deliberately out of probably 72 hours or more of footage, by people who are very good at what they do. People who are paid to create a story, a backbone for the episode along predetermined milestones: wake-up call to task announcement to task to judging to boardroom parts one and two. Every shot, every interview answer, every candid moment, every single thing we see is the result of a decision, made and check-marked by several different smart people. TV isn't pointing a camera at people and waiting for them to do things: it's art; a little more complex if you know what you're doing. And they really do.
Nicole is now the PM for "Arrow," and gives them a huge speech about how losing will cause their lives to be sucky, while if they win, they "will forever have the glory of winning this task." Glory, they'll have. Paging Perspective, anyone? I think it got rained on by the sprinklers on like the first day. "My leadership style is to really motivate." She elaborates that basically this means she wants everybody to be so overjoyed about the task that they give it their all. Which is exactly half of management, I suppose, because the other half is about having a modicum of control over what happens . I'm sure they're motivated; their asses get motivated right out into the yard again, because "to motivate" is not in and of itself a leadership style, it's a component; on its own, as she describes it here -- and she's true to her word (right to the end, when she regrettably wigs out on James for zero reason) -- it's an attempt to win Miss Congeniality in the popularity contest of life. Which is a fun/pathetic diversion, but has nothing to do with anything.
Carey describes Turk as fun, young and upscale, and tells us how "expired" he is to be designing for Trina Turk, because he's always wanted to design clothes, and this is the apparently only time he'll have the chance to do that. It's awfully telling that his basic comment on the way this episode/season plays out is that he's now started a bathing suit company, as though to somehow get Trump's respect or prove a point or something. In the van, he sketches out a cute boy-cut suit. Oh, it's for boys. I don't know what you call that, I guess spandex man-panties. I've seen people in them, of course, and there's a small margin of not-scary that you can hit with them; there's a window of actual hotness rather than eye-rupturing ill judgment that is attainable. Aaron's queasy about it and tries exactly once to be cool: "Um, gotta be careful... the print's gotta be pretty masculine if the shorts are that... small?" He does a hilarious bunchy fingers gesture at this, like he's squeezing a ripe orange still on the tree. Carey snorts -- "Not if your market's gay" -- and one of the ladies, I don't know which, agrees. Aaron nods, a little off-put, because that was not at all what he was saying, but Carey's got this idea in his head. As we will see, this is not an idea that you can get out of Carey's head, and it is wrong, and if there were a Project Manager maybe he or she could point that out, or introduce Carey to reality, or overrule him, or do anything at all other than "motivating" him to make a terrible error of judgment, but since there's no PM this week, I guess he'll have to hang. (Ahem.)
Aaron interviews that two of the men's suits are short, tight trunk cuts. "The suits that Carey wears are probably not the suit that most of the guys in America wear." True, and I am with Aaron, because most of the guys in America are A) not in shape and B) not interested in having their goodies on the shelf for sale. And yeah, it's a gay thing, but not the gay thing Aaron betrays with his eye-rolling statement in the van, about how they are both allowed to have opinions, but Aaron's is the "straight male" one. Which is also right, but there's a spin on it and the spin is this: Carey's style is not the gay style, it's a gay style. It's unnecessarily limited, and has no mainstream appeal, and that's all you have to say. Saying it's unappealing because it's gay is... an ugly simplification that skips most of the valid dots instead of connecting them, or -- since we're all adults -- leaving them unconnected because we're all on the same page. This episode is less about which stereotypes are valid, and more about which stereotypes are okay. (Hint: "maybe sometimes, but never good to say aloud"; and "no.")
Deleted scene in which everybody runs around at the fabric store. Just like Project Runway! Maybe nobody will notice, since "most Americans" don't watch that gay show. (Hey, this is easy!) Heidi explains that Turk has a really big following and upscale Hollywood clients. Jenn points out that they need to spend time looking at the details, the embellishments and the exact colors, beyond the casual view of cut and general theme. Heidi notes -- awesomely -- that "shorts are long right now." Jenn interviews that it's important not to mess up the message Trina wants to send with her fashion. Turk explains that she's inspired by Southern California beach culture, its lifestyle, and its architecture. She claims her fashions are "upbeat and optimistic in feeling." Jenn notes that she's not conservative or serious, but fun and different. I get that you have to inhale the weird vague cloud of design sensibility this way, because clothing isn't words, but the words are always funny. Like, "Could you show me to the dour, conservative, serious, boring swimwear? I've got this funeral and I'm having hell tracking down the right bikini."
Nicole interviews how Aaron and Carey had the passion for the men's suits; I think it's more like Carey had the "passion" and Aaron had the "racemus phobia," but whatever. Nicole then decided to just put the guys on men's suits and the women on the women's suits. Carey claims he actually ended up designing I think five of the six anyway, and I'm inclined to believe him at least on that score. Aaron pushes I think the black and white fabric we'll see later, and Nicole resists because it's not in the color scheme. She interviews about how "collaboration is hard," and we see her laughing about the short-short suit. Michelle worries that it's not quite "Trina Turk" enough, and Carey fights her on it, interviewing how terrible it is when you're in "a creative moment" and somebody bags your idea: "I wish I could fucking strangle this person!" Which...everybody responds to her that way, but it's worth mentioning this specific time. Michelle asks the obvious, which is why on Earth a buyer would get those in bulk when it's a very specific kind of thing, and he tells her, exasperatedly, that it's a "Plan B," but as we see, it's also a "Plan A" and just nearly the "Plan C," so... shut him down. Now is the time. Project Manager? Is there a Project Manager around? Michelle assures Aaron that it's going to be okay: "There will be plenty of other options." She has no way of knowing how terribly wrong she is about that. You know who does? The Project Manager.
Kinetic: Five seconds of talking about the colors and embellishments. Jenn describes their line as "beachwear kicked up a notch," which makes me giggle, and Aimee (who?) comes out wearing a cute pink/brown two-piece with a gold clasp on the top and at the hips. Heidi is not going for it, because it's plain and classic, and I think because it's unadorned and looks unfinished, and she wants to show as much manpower and time management as possible without being gaudy. Which is hard, but like the ultimate challenge, so her weirdness about it all is believable. Marisa interviews that there's project management, and there's aesthetics, and her belief that this is Heidi's fashion opinion, not necessarily her PM opinion, and I feel Marisa in this distinction, because it's clear that Heidi is used to being right. There's also a scene in the webisode that leads up to this, where the two of them get into a pretty ugly pissing match about their fashion cred:
Marisa: "I organized all the fashion shows at my high school, because I love fashion that much."
Heidi: "How fun for you!"
Marisa: "So like I'm thrilled to be part of the design team, because fashion is my life."
Heidi: "You're so cute!"
Marisa: "Like, I read fashion magazines all the time. I have been known to crush up the style network and smoke it at night, in my room."
Heidi: "You're a funny little thing!"
Marisa: "Listen bitch, I breathe fashion. I haven't eaten since 1963."
Heidi: "Sweetheart. I was a swimsuit model for thirty years. I can use Donatella's private jet whenever I want. I made love to Janice Dickinson on the floor of Studio 54 with Halston and Tom Ford watching. I invented the miniskirt. Last week I had dinner with Linda Evangelista in Paris and then straight to New York for Fashion Week. My jetlag was so bad I slapped Naomi Cambell's assistant and I had to send her a fruit basket."
Marisa: "You win this time, Gadget."
In the design room, Marisa gets huffy with Heidi about how you could get the pink suit in a boutique and then design a "fabulous look" around it. They downplay it in the editing, but I think what was going on here was they were also inspired by Project Runway somehow and thought they could create a whole transformable Infinite Dress situation where you could take a bikini and, with the right accessories, turn it into a cocktail dress for a classy occasion. I don't know that that is possible, or if in fact this was their theory, but it seems both crazy and funny enough to be true, and if they'd lost, I bet there would have been a lot more of that kind of nuttiness. As it is we get the meeting becoming "tense for the first time," and Heidi tells her to set Aimee aside so they can work on the suit, but Marisa won't drop it, because she loves the suit as-is, and Heidi's interested in moving on, but Marisa wants her final and definite approval on the suit. Which Heidi, she interviews, gives out of exasperation, lodging her first "it's on her ass" of the episode, should it prove too plain and mainstream. Which makes me personally a bit less excited about Heidi, because you can think it -- and we all did -- but you don't need to say it, because it goes without saying. Marisa, to Heidi's dear ear, continues to basically say, "I don't want you to buy flowers for the bikini, I want you to want to buy flowers for the bikini," which is similarly unnecessary and way overinvolved and emotional for the task, which is the one edge Heidi has on her. Heidi's being a tiny, miniscule amount of creepy, but at least she's not being creepy and needy at the same time.
Cutting and designing. Soak it up, because the task is over faster than this sentence. (Thirteen minutes into the episode, in fact. Remember when this show was about people doing things? That's over. Now it's about people taking a moment or two out of their busy shit-starting schedule to do things we don't get to see, and returning to the previously started shit.) The pink paisley man-panties are completed, and are unlined. Which ... the reason you want to line regular-length trunks has to do with visibility issues, but the reason you line a bikini or this kind of thing is completely different. But just as vital. Carey wows in interview about how something went from his head to a piece of paper to a piece of unlined, paisley spandex, and how amazing it is. And I will say right now: it is. Both in the way he means it, in that I'm fascinated by consumer arts like this where your art is also a durable, usable object... and in the way of how it is amazing, what has happened here.
He puts it on. They all stare at his batch. For a million years. It is saying hello, and how are you, and I think something in French. In context, like the beach or Geffen's backyard deck, it would make sense, at least. But half the issue at this very moment is that he's standing in the middle of a tailoring workshop and everybody else is wearing business suits, and he's wearing... his business. And speaking French. To Frank. Who -- with a very sad, very lovable face -- says he likes it. Carey explains that this is for one consumer, a fellow with a great body, who is going to the beach, and who wants you to look at him. Everybody fills in the other stuff the hypothetical grape-seller is looking for; I thank God that Martin is gone or I believe that he would have fallen down dead at this moment. I wouldn't have been surprised by anybody dropping dead this point. It's startling. This should not have happened. Aaron -- still gaping -- talks like he saw The Ring six days ago: "It's so... different... " More staring.
Tim interviews, shaking his head hilariously, that he thought it was a female bikini bottom, and even thought Carey was making a funny joke at first, by putting it on even though it was for ladies. Michelle, of course, is upfront: "I don't like it." The camera slides around fisheye and focuses on Carey's badonk for a while, just so you know it's there in the room with them, as he explains to her that this is what Trina likes. Michelle reiterates (I'm sure 87 times, of which we see the last) that she doesn't like it, and Carey assures her that her disapproval is now "falling on deaf ears." If only there were a Project Manager... oh, there she is. Interviewing with us. About how Michelle is the problem here.
Nicole explains to us how, in business, if you don't agree with a person's task-losing decision and personal fuckup, sometimes -- even if it's going to result in you living on the lawn for two more weeks -- the best thing you can do is just keep your trap shut. I'm not kidding, I'm not exaggerating. She says, "You keep going," and that the reason Michelle sucks is that she doesn't have that ability to shut her trap and let everybody do whatever they want, no matter how horrible. "A lot of the guys aren't connecting with Michelle." I don't know if she means "guys" there literally or figuratively, but I don't think I'm stepping too far off book when I suggest that the approval PM "Hi, Boys" Nicole is looking for might have certain qualifications. And if I'm right, she could win this season. Michelle tells Carey, who knows damn well, that she feels like he's not even listening to her. She interviews that Carey is an opinion-pusher and if you don't like his opinion, it's too bad. And yeah, Carey is being abhorrent -- on screen, he's getting angry, in his little tiny suit -- but especially so for a Project Manager, which he seems to somehow have become. Only if that's the case does this behavior make sense, from any of them. But he's not. He's a team member, using his dubious gay-adjacent fashion cachet to intimidate his teammates into agreeing with him. Which is sucky, but personal to him, and as was pointed out to me, is basically making a Tara mistake: using perceived personal attachment to a tangential concern in order to make a statement in the middle of the task and act somehow as a role model. The rest of them are assholes for not telling him to shut it well before this point, and getting on with the task.
Of course, at this point Michelle loses me altogether: "He was just going in his own direction and he had claimed it... " (Don't do it, don't do it... ) SNAP. Full circle formation, like it's suddenly 1991 and there's one gay black image she's ever seen in her whole life, or like Carey is a drag queen right now. Here's a tip, kids: Do that snapping shit to me? You're losing a finger. Those are the rules. You know what? Time out.
Gay people are scary, and we know it. Black people are scary. A gay black man is about the scariest thing in the world, if that world is Trumpworld. Where we are right now. Not that you'd be getting an Awesome Person Award for being weird about it, but the real world is awesome and we should try to live there instead of worrying about anything but fixing it. Most of that is above-board, modern-day awkwardness, because you don't know the rules, because it's not something you have any experience about. You don't know what's okay to say and what's off the table, if you're not that thing, whatever it is. (Hint: No more snapping those fingers, for starters. Especially not on camera, for Pete's sake.)
"Rosie O'Donnell is disgusting, both inside and out." -- Donald Trump, Entertainment Tonight
At its worst, there's racism of the sort we mean when we say racism: it turns into anger. But it can also turn into acting really goofy and insulting and weird, like when Cameron Diaz goes on Oprah and can't handle herself and starts swinging her stupid head around on her stupid neck and saying things like "Girl!" and "Don't go there!"
"She's very lucky to have her girlfriend... and she'd better be careful, or I'll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend! Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?" -- Donald Trump, Entertainment Tonight
The secret is that, if you're a minority, you get to think like two people at once: the minority that you are, and the standard from which you're deviating. At all times. You know the rules for both worlds, which makes it even weirder and more noticeable when the standard betrays its nervousness. It's your job to cross that bridge, because historically, people are not good about their comfort zones, or stepping outside them.
"She talks like a truck driver." -- Donald Trump, Entertainment Tonight
In the official world, you view the world from your own experience, and have no real reason to step outside that. Of course, if you don't, you start to rot. But if your box happens to be the official one, from which all divergence represents difficulty, it's easy to assume that "official" is also "correct."
"She's crude, she's tough, she's arrogant, she's pushy, she's disgusting. In certain ways, she's a degenerate." -- Donald Trump, Entertainment Tonight
But the rest of us don't live in the official world, because you built it around yourself, and you're doomed to extinction: it's a cage, but not for us. Enjoy it.
"People hate Rosie. She's a degenerate." -- Donald Trump, Entertainment Tonight
In an ideal world, you could be a paragon of insight and whatever, and nobody would ever be victimized or repressed or dealt weird deals because of it, but in the real world, you suck it up and deal with it.
"Every day, you'll have opportunities to take chances and to work outside your safety net. Sure, it's a lot easier to stay in your comfort zone... but sometimes you have to take risks. When the risks pay off, that's when you reap the biggest rewards." -- Donald Trump, quoted in OC Metro Magazine
Sometimes, for example, by letting them infantilize and feminize and emasculate you, because that puts you in the cute and harmless box. That's an option, and all the fashion cred you need if you're going to take over a task and screw it up, but it has nothing to do with the kind of respect that this show, and the majority of the business world, are about. It's not the only option, but it's fine if you can handle the consequences, if you can remember that you pay the price of having to fight harder in other ways to be taken seriously. If you can remember that's not actually who you are, just like with any other persona that takes advantage of perceived vulnerability: the airhead game is another one. But if you get lost in it, or take it on as your actual personality, you're operating from a place of no power at all, and you'd best find a job in the kind of industry where nobody blinks an eye at that stuff. The distance between that place and the official world is vast. In Trumpworld, the only thing scarier than a gay black man is a gay black man's penis.
Aaron, Nicole, and Stefani discuss pricing, and Nicole interviews that it's essential to the task that everybody agree on pricing, for some reason. Michelle says, awkwardly and begging the question, that she doesn't "feel comfortable" giving a price when there was a whole segment of the team that did actual research into it. Of course, she says it so strangely that everybody thinks the same word at the same second, and that word is "boardroom," and I don't even think she meant it like that. Nicole accepts this, because Michelle is simply unmotivatable, having these opinions and convictions and standing by them all the time, but Carey tries to start a fight with her about it. "Interesting time for Michelle to not have an opinion," he cracks, in the interview, and says it's clear to him that she's avoiding responsibility. In the room, Michelle reiterates that they've already got the numbers and can figure it out easily enough without asking people who have no information on any of those things. It's reasonable, but because everybody else is looking just as hard for a scapegoat as they think she's looking for an out, this strikes everybody as suspicious. Carey most of all, because she gets on his nerves. He interrupts her giving an opinion -- that they should be priced differently from each other -- to bitch about how she doesn't have an opinion, and Michelle is weird, and Carey is weird, and basically it's a big drama that is worthless and results more than anything from the inability of these people to communicate with one another because they're so busy blaming everybody else for not communicating properly. In fact everything is fine. Except the pink paisley man-panties, but there's no PM to take care of that this week, and the only person who has been vocal about them is Michelle, whom Nicole has decided is a bitch because she said the right thing too many times, instead of going along with the group's idiotic ideas like a good PM should.
And that's... all we see of the task. In the van on the way to the show, there's a bit in the webisode where Marisa spills her cappuccino on the bathing suits. Which is bad news, but what's really bad news is the deft and practiced way that Heidi makes her feel like complete, utter, total shit while saying calming, sweet, managerial things about how they'll work it out. I would do the same thing, but it's a particular kind of Connecticut Throwdown in which I was already kind of scared Heidi was skilled. She goes a bit far with it, because the fact is that it happened and it's over and they need to deal with it.
Heidi: "Oh, that's okay. They go in the water."
Marisa: "I'm really, really sorry. I know I was on thin ice for getting whiny about the... "
Heidi: "Trust me, it's fine."
Marisa: "Your mouth is saying it's fine but your body is saying I'm a jerkoff."
Heidi: "I cannot control how you read my body language."
Marisa: "But I'm really sorry and I need you to accept my apology."
Heidi: "Nothing to apologize for! It's just our whole task and living in the mansion for two weeks and none of us going home that whole time. It'll wipe right off."
Marisa: "I feel like you're mad."
Heidi: "Stop crying."
Marisa: "I feel like I should hurl myself off the Santa Monica Pier."
Heidi: "I can completely understand why you would feel that way, but it's your decision to do it, let's be clear on that. I'm not your mom."
Later on in the webisode, she has virtually the same conversation with poor Surya, who has been chosen to model one of the men's suits, given that Derek is too much man for the suit as designed, because he is the size and shape of a refrigerator.
Heidi: "Little late, Surya. Put it on."
Surya: "I just realized there are going to be people."
Heidi: "I want to make sure that you're comfortable doing this."
Surya: "I just said I'm not."
Heidi: "Right. I want you to tell me that you're comfortable doing this."
Surya: "But I'm really not."
Heidi: "Okay well, it's just our whole task and living in the mansion for two weeks and none of us going home that whole time. No big. We'll just have one less suit than them."
Surya: "Okay do you want me to be comfortable, or do you want to ram-rod this down my throat?"
Heidi: "I need you to do this and stop giving me shit about it."
Surya: "Fine, I'll do it. Okay?"
Heidi: "I don't want you to buy flowers for the suit, I want you to want to buy flowers for the suit."
Surya: "I can't promise that I will be able to do that."
Heidi: "I will cut you with a knife."
Surya: "I bought some flowers for you, suit!"
Heidi: "I just want to point out that you're changing your mind of your own free will because you are a team player and I am the best Project Manager this game has ever seen. Say it."
Surya: "Put down the knife."
Heidi: "SAY IT, SCRUB."
So the reason for all this is that there are six suits for each team, but only four models for each team, so one man and one woman from each team have to model a suit. That's Aimee and Surya, of course, and you just know Carey's there (he claims to have been talked into it, which I have mixed feelings about, because Aaron and Tim are at least as good-looking as he is, minus the complicating factors). Frank and Aaron talk Nicole into walking the runway, just like she wanted them to, because at this point I wouldn't be surprised if there is a tiny part of her that hopes she'll be picked by a talent agent at the fashion show who will be so impressed with the diamond in the rough that he will whisk her away from this whole gross venture and also he will be a European prince and they will get married. (Which is in fact what's going to happen, only the part of the European prince/modeling agent is played, improbably enough, by Tim.) Everybody gets ready, a makeup tech tries to silk-purse Nicole's face as Carey -- wearing the suit -- shakes hands with still visibly unsure Aaron. Trump arrives with some poor assistant and kneels at a campfire log to take off his shoes and socks, tossing one sock over his head in a flagrant "check my coolness factor" way, and of course it lands on the poor girl's head. Which is the metaphor for this entire show in like every way, down to the assistant laughing hysterically about how funny it was that he threw his disgusting sock at her and it landed on her head, and how she's started making little cuts on her legs alone in the bathroom at work. His feet are like a deadly white waterlogged corpse as he approaches the crowd in the stands; they applaud for the same reason groups always applaud for Trump, that reason being that this is a really confusing time for our country in general.
Trina Turk, who's like a cuter, saner Anne Rice, comes to the mic and we begin. First up is Kinetic, starting up with a really cool "vintage" one-piece that's brown and teal. It's very awesome, she looks totally cute. The back chevrons down in a cool way, and the top part ties in the back like a halter. Oh, also: I don't know anything about fashion. That's not some kind of self-defining statement, it's just something I ought to disclose at this time. A guy walks out wearing a nice board short in weird faded-looking turquoise and melon trim. Trump is not convinced: it's a good basic design, but the colors are cheap looking. Luckily, the other Kinetic board shorts are way better. The controversial "Plain Jane" two-piece looks really good, although I'm still confused by Trina confirming that it's meant to go "from sporty to soiree" in a "heartbeat." What are these parties? Are they at the Playboy mansion? Before today I could ask that question without knowing the answer. Surya comes out grinning, wearing cool brown shorts with white trim on the pockets, and then there's a pale turquoise two-piece with a halter strap on the top, which looks like one of those full-coverage Victoria's Secret bras like I saw Queen Latifah wearing on that commercial. The kind that could stop a bullet. Also, strangely, the model is wearing -- and fiercely selling it -- a... plaid belt with a doubloon on it. Who knows? I guess this is a Trina Turk thing. Donald, of course, remarks on the model, asking to hilarious canned laughter whether she "works for us." Which is funny, but would be even funnier if it were one of the team members and he didn't remember her face until he saw her in the cute bikini. He would have loved that*. Finally there are very, very awesome and hot yellow board shorts; the model brushes his shoulder off like a hater, which is funny and strange. Carey gives his expertly gay opinion about how their bathing suits suck and how "Arrow" is going to win. Chump.
* "All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me--consciously or unconsciously. That's to be expected." -- Donald Trump, quoted in the New York Daily News
Arrow's up: there's an admittedly awesome red and orange print board short, and a black two-piece with a neat white trim on it that's like stylized lace, a boxer brief "that appeals to all the gents" in the black and white pattern I'm pretty sure Aaron was pushing, and then... Carey, working the runway in his tiny man-panties like the rent is due. The camera tracks verrrry slowly up his admittedly amazing body and to the hideous pink paisley and the Trump Kryptonite it contains, and there are quick shots of Trump, James, and Frank laughing. There's also Derek laughing, and I know why, and so do you because you're laughing too, but that's not why it's here. He talks about what a shock it was to see Carey, "nipples erect," doing his "fiercest runway walk," and grants that Carey looks great, but opines that perhaps a fire extinguisher might have been required. Which is two things, depending on who you are. Because if you're gay, you get to say, "I know, right?" But if you're not, and if the pink man-panties are kind of freaking you out, you get to say, "Whoo! What a relief! I thought I was being a bigot, but thank God the other one okayed it for me." Walk the tightrope like a linebacker or do it like Mary Lou Retton, sparklers in hand like the Fourth of July: either way you pay a price, so rock and roll.
Crickets greet the paisley; the buyers are unsettled. Trump may or may not be having an actual stroke. The show goes on, with a cool white bikini that Trina tells us has "turquoise accents and stones," which looks way better than it sounds, and Trump says just loudly enough, "I like that better," to thunderous grateful laughter. Nicole prances around in her bathing suit and there's a short shot of Tim staring at her approvingly; in interview, she tells us at length how amazingly "gutsy" she is. For wearing a bathing suit to the beach. Muna interviews that she doesn't know a single man who would wear the Carey suit, and pronounces the amount of data she now has about Carey to be, in a phrase, "TMI." She's very cute; I get nervous about whether or not I find her Jamaican accent appealing and cute, and whether or not that makes me some kind of monster. The buyers total up all their stuff, and James bottom-lines it for us: it'll come down to whether the buyers -- who are buying in bulk for a national consumer base, okay -- are going to be "progressive and liberal" in their purchases (i.e., gay, which is what Carey has assured everybody is what's going to happen), or "conservative and safe," which is what national buyers actually do. Act out on some NASCAR-looking buyer guys who didn't like the way it was "clingy." Even the buyers are being nice, about the pink elephant on the runway.
Trump joins Trina onstage after the totals come in, and she gives Arrow's first: $19,616. Jenn and Derek and Angela give their usual cute appreciative faces about the other team's totals; Kinetic made $20,511. That's a total difference of $495. Currently, Trina Turk's online offering of women's suits ranges from about $50-80. You're talking about ten units, probably less. Not that this ameliorates the loss -- it's a loss. Due to the underperformance of the men's suits for Arrow. In a second, Trina's going to explain that the buyers only bought one of the three men's suits, and spent $350 on that. So that means that four of Arrow's suits, including the underperforming design, sold almost the same amount as the six from Kinetic -- who could have had between zero and five underperforming suits of their own, that we would have heard about if the win had gone to Arrow -- which again, does nothing for them. But Carey's opinion that he helped design the women's suits as well -- the ones that nearly outsold Kinetic's offerings all on their lonesome -- points to just how bad an idea the pink monster really was. Trump agrees with both Trina and simple mathematics that it was the men's suits, and then quietly shivers with PTSD. The reward is announced: a visit to the Playboy Mansion.
Gross. This is exactly the kind of LA that Trump would find most appealing. It's all there: the hideous opulent trashiness, the wink-wink prostitution, the pornographic appeal, the complete disconnect between sex and desire. It's all there. Meanwhile, on Kinetic, nine forced smiles meet his huge grin. Surya -- the only heterosexual man on the entire team -- is not impressed. Everybody laughs painfully, because it's just so awful. Over at Arrow, Tim laughs because it's hilarious that their reward is a trip to hell, Frank's jealous because he's always jealous, and Nicole is upset because she didn't win the trip to the Playboy mansion. Heidi, appalled and smiling, is still the PM of Kinetic, and will be sitting in as Viceroy on the boardroom. Frank makes some stupid faces, Michelle is terrified of the boardroom, because she can read a room sometimes, and for some reason we act out all frenzied on Frank's worried face, even though he's the only one that did nothing wrong this week.
"Nicole was the Project Manager on this task, as well as one of the swimsuit models, and if I was in her shoes I probably would have delegated someone else to do the modeling, but she did a good job on the runway nonetheless." -- Ivanka Trump's Yahoo! blog
Carey calls a meeting, back in the yard, about how he's not going to be doing any political stuff or jockeying for votes. He puts forth the ridiculous suggestion that there be "no conversation about who should get fired" because that's "not what it's about," somehow, in Carey's version of reality. Frank and Aaron talk about how losing is now -- for "the first time in his life," Frank overacts -- like a nauseous, sick feeling in their stomachs. Stefani is nearly crying and talks about how she's so mad she just wants to spit. Mhmm. Frank interviews -- over footage of him dealing with the garbage cans in a very stompy manner -- that it "really sucks" that they get to go to the Playboy mansion, while Arrow has to go back to the cold, cold backyard. I would go to cold, cold war-torn Czechoslovakia before you'd get my ass to that awful, trashy place, but I can understand why Frank would be upset.
They, of course, take a limo to the Playboy mansion, and of course it's a female team member that gives us the soundbite introduction to everything. "Whoo! What a relief! I kind of thought that place was disgusting and stands on the grave of every woman who ever fought to be taken seriously as a human being, but thank God the cute one okayed it for me." Jenn explains that they were greeted by Hef's three "girlfriends": Bridget, Holly, and Kendra. Holly's the one he's going to impregnate. She's 26. Walk the tightrope like Susan B. Anthony or wearing a bunny suit: either way you pay a price, so rock and roll.
In the parlor, at the fireside, Hefner explains to them how he started with no money, and now has lots of money, and sells it as this amazing story where he was ingenious because he realized there was a niche market for naked boobies that included... all straight men. "I noticed a trend where men masturbate, and I jumped right on it." That's keen business acumen, there. It's a real honor to be in your house, sir. Think I could get like a seat cover or a jacket to sit on or something? Because I just realized I'm sitting on a couch in the Playboy mansion, and I got very terrified.
The "girlfriends" lead them from their "fireside chat" to the party. Where there were thirty or forty women standing around, in what Frank keeps telling us is the cold, and some of them are dressed as bunnies, with little ears and tails. The only thing more vulnerable than a woman who's been reduced to sexual utility her entire life and blown her brain out with coke is probably a bunny rabbit. Stick those in a cage, thirty or forty of 'em, you pet those things whenever you want. They're not going anywhere. Breasts everywhere, uniform and identical and inauthentic as the laughter. Kinetic drinking at a wild rate. Trump arrives from inside a screenwipe transition, shaped like the head of a defenseless little bunny rabbit you can fuck whenever you want. Girls snuggling in the pool, taking snapshots of themselves fondling each other, laughing hollowly in the cold, cold, cold. Trump joins the team and can't distinguish Heidi from the bunnies and sexy ladies everywhere. He has to call her name and make her identify herself. The one member of either team with whom he's spent the most time, and he can't pick her out of the crowd.
"[Hefner] doesn't really do anything. He just lies there with his Viagra erection. It's just a fake erection, and each girl gets on top of him for two minutes while the girls in the background try to keep him excited. They'll yell things like, 'Fuck her daddy, fuck her daddy!' There's a lot of cheerleader going on!" -- ex-Playmate Jill Ann Spaulding, from her book Upstairs
Marisa watches Heidi shaking hands with Hef and repeating the lie about what a wonderful place the Playboy mansion is, how it's an honor to meet him, and burns with jealousy, interviewing that she has fallen out of love with the idea of Heidi being PM forever and ever. She offers that there should be an opportunity to shine and showcase their leadership skills, like every other year, back when this show made sense. The bunnies giggle and push Derek backwards into the pool. There's applause all around; two women dance and shiver, even though there's no music. Derek comes out of the pool with a bunny on either side, in his arms, one giant fake breast in his face. He laughs, and it's very funny and very cute. It's also obligatory; imagine every day: this is the tightrope. You walk it or you're out, and woe betide the boys who don't learn that one early enough.
Morning, Tents, fat congealed in a skillet. Seriously. Tim and Nicole are talking about how they're not a coherent group, and Michelle comes up and asks to join them. Nicole is like, "Whatever, sure. Go on, Tim?" Tim explains to them that the group doesn't naturally mesh, like that's so incredibly probable, and that there are people he "wouldn't normally hang out with." Michelle asks, knowing damn well who he means, and he's like, "Um, you?" He tries to cover it up about how they just don't have friends in real life that are like each other. I am sure that's true. I imagine Michelle as hanging out with like anthropologists and museum curators and Knot Theory people. Michelle is sad nonetheless; Tim interviews that when your team loses by a small margin and there's "no obvious screwup," you have to adjust your algorithm: "Who do I not like? Who doesn't help morale?" Which is funny and true, for what it's worth, but: OBVIOUS SCREWUP! I guess I missed the part where Nicole's horrible decisions -- or those of Carey which reflect on her management -- weren't on the table. Kinetic listens as Michelle wigs out, trying to explain that, unpopular or not, she's not the problem here. Nicole can't even meet her eyes. The group comes to a consensus around her, Aaron vocally and Nicole in interview, that she should have done this "level with me and work with me here" stuff before she became an endangered species, and I agree with that sentiment, but: OBVIOUS SCREWUP! Right over there! Burned into your mind!
Andie lets Arrow into the Trump mansion, and Nicole greets Ivanka and Heidi as they enter, looking hangdog and guilty as ever. That's just her natural face: discomfited. Ivaka is wearing an awesome red shirt with satin trim or whatever; Trump's -- I mean, come on -- wearing a pink banker-collar shirt and fuchsia tie. You are in the Matrix. He's wearing a pink shirt and tie, disingenuously, in a room that's full of cameras and lights, about to lead the charge. How hard is this to figure out? He screams at them about whether they just enjoy losing, and asks what's wrong with them. Nicole offers, whinily, that they took a risk, and Trump tells her that a risk it was not. (He's wrong.) He points out that they lost precisely on men's suits, because the women's suits did fine. "Whose idea was the tight suit?" he asks, and Nicole explains that "ultimately," Carey was in charge of men's suits. Like he ran off with them to another room and threatened to bite her if she came in. (Which: valid, but grow a pair.)
Trump's really on the ball this week. I actually like him a lot in this boardroom, except for a few minor things coming up. He goes less and less to the subtle Dad-style deadpan humor, and I miss that. "I have a great body, I really do," he says, giving Frank a giggle, "I could wear that suit, Carey, and you could wear that suit... " But nobody else at the table. Nicole rolls her eyes snottily: "Mr. Trump, come on." Cut to Aaron, of course, who should try it on just in case, I think. Everybody laughs, and Heidi, perfectly polished apple in hand: "They may be able to, but would they?" Which is a good and central point, but the way she says it is so ... who's that chick with the pigtails on Rugrats? She's like that. Sam McPherson on Popular is how superior she can get. Just eminently mockable. I really do want to like her, but this week she's a little gross. Carey nods that not many people would, perhaps, and Trump tries to get back to his train of thought: "You looked good in the suit, but ... " Nicole, out of nowhere, snorts, "I woulda worn the suit, as a bottom!" Shut up, dude. Carey explains that there are gay people in the world who buys things, and Ivanka tries to explain -- and for all I know she's the first person to actually do so -- that these are not consumers, but buyers. Whose job depends on understanding the entire market, not just the one that applies to you, the designer. And also: Carey said gay. Which means everybody can now say gay, and imply it even when they don't say it, and this just got stupid. Carey has dropkicked us out of the world where that's off the table.
Trump says he was with the buyers as they were refusing to buy the suit, and Carey tries to explain how they branched out with three designs: the great board shorts, the pretty-cute but very tight boxer-briefs, and the horrible pink thing. He spectrumizes this out as the straight suit, the metrosexual suit, and the gay one. In other words, he hands it to Trump. Not that this failure wasn't Nicole's, but you know at this second that Carey's going, because what he just said is: "Fire me, Trump" followed by the word "gay" thirty times in a row. "Carey, are you gay?" asks Trump, in his pink banker-collar shirt and fuschia tie, as though he's still unfamiliar with the term. "I have never heard of 'gay suits.'" He asks if Carey tailored this to a gay consumer, and points out what a huge disadvantage this was. "It was reflective of only your taste," Ivanka says, as usual making the point better and smarter. Trump points out that the women buyers didn't like it either, and reiterates that Carey looked great in it, and then he and Ivanka talk about how very "proud" he looked in it. Which is weird. "You loved it!" he screams. "Your head was so high, you were like a peacock!" Trump does a weird chest move that might be offensive or not, I have no idea what he was trying to do there. The question I would ask is: why that question, twice? Why, of the I'm sure hours of boardroom footage, that's right out the gate, twice? What's so off or wrong with the picture of a man assuming a pose of pride -- chest out, standing tall -- that it's a major factor in this discussion? What does that image represent? Vitality? Strength? Virility? Something unearned, maybe? Something way back in the brain, where maybe he should show a little shame for standing there in his underwear?
Trump asks Carey who he blames for the loss, and instead of Nicole -- who did nothing wrong, from Carey's perspective, by allowing his disastrous idea to hit the runway -- he says Michelle, the easy safe playground choice. Trump talks a bit about the mansion and Heidi being in the mansion and how they can't wash their hair in the yard, and how he can't wash his hair very often or... I don't know. It'll fall out and he'll realize he's bald.
Frank, apropos of nothing: "I'm claustrophobic! I'm sleeping outside every night! I won't even go in the tent!"
Ivanka: "The hell, dude?"
DT, smoothly: "You'll be back in the Bronx very soon, don't worry about it."
Jacob: "Trump for the win!"
Frank: sad, fake laugh, still not really understanding anything that's going on around him
Heidi: "Was Michelle part of the design team? Where the problem is? Which is why she would be in here at all?"
Trump: "Nope, she's just got a lousy personality."
Ivanka: "Yeah, and she's the weak link."
Trump, verbatim: "Other than that, you're doing great, Michelle."
Sometimes I love that old dude. Two zingers in three minutes. Heidi points out to the group at large that the PM is responsible for making sure that design, and everything else, flow properly. "If the design wasn't... " And Nicole pissily interrupts her: "-- I would ask then that you go down this row and ask if anyone feels I should be fired." Oh, would you? Instead of me doing the job that I get to do because I won? Again? I would have insisted at that point on finishing the statement, which is that Nicole let the beast out and it was her entire job to keep it in a pair of pants, away from the Trina Turk buyers, and also to suck it, but Trump's like, "Um, like every week? Thanks for the tip, idiot. Let's do that." And Nicole gets snotty with him, too, all "Okay then!" Gross me out. She's even worse than I thought.
Tim says Carey, for this particular task, should be fired. Stefani repeats this verbatim like always, and Aaron says Michelle.
Frank: "I would ... we lost because... "
Jacob: "'At the end of the day, Frankie Suits, he asked you a question.'"
Frank: "... of the men's line. I would fire Carey."
Carey says Michelle, who responds that she would "absolutely fire Carey, without even thinking about it." See? Weird.
James: "I can't go with the popular vote, Mr. Trump. I would have to put responsibility on the PM as well."
Nicole, out of nowhere screaming like somebody on Jerry Springer, ripping off her wig and starting on the acrylics: "What would you have done? If you were the PM, I guarantee we would have lost. Guarantee."
James: "Nicole, this is not about you and... this is not about that. I'm giving an objective opinion."
Nicole: "Whatever, what would you have done as PM?"
Fucking shut up, Nicole! My God, the nerve of this girl. How gross is it to start a "what if" fight in the middle of the boardroom because ONE of eight people, seven of whom have already voted in your favor, had the balls to blame you? How close to the edge is this freak all the time? You know she starts fights at the grocery store and counts the items in other people's baskets. She's waiting for a fight, because she's angry and stupid.
James: "You're a great motivator ... "
Nicole: "Obviously not great enough!"
James: "That's not what I'm saying... "
Trump: "Obviously? What he is saying is that if Carey made a mistake, it's your job as PM to correct that mistake, Nicole."
Nicole makes the kicked puppy face some more and Trump tosses them all out of the room. Nicole's choices are of course Carey and Michelle, because she has neither a brain nor a backbone, and on the way out, Carey kisses some more ass about how terrible the tent is, and Trump asks Heidi if this isn't just so hard. "Did she approve the designs? Or was it just ram-rodded through by Carey?" Trump and Ivanka agree that this is the basic point, because both candidates are "both likeable and intelligent." Which is nearly zero percent true. And a strategy that they immediately drop as soon as they come up with it. Well, one part of Heidi's question remains, like an unidentifiable stink in the air, but we'll get to that.
Carey says that first and foremost, as a businessman, Trump should recognize that this was a risk, and should be applauded. Trump explains again that you only get to call it a "risk" if it works out, otherwise it's a "mistake." Carey then says the killer phrase: "The designs were approved by my team. If they didn't like them, I'd start over." Which is true on paper, and should have been true in practice, but because the team was horribly led, is a null sum. If the team didn't like the designs, and at least three of them very vocally did not, it was up to Nicole to get him back on track. It's not a defense for him, it's a strike against Nicole, and he's wording it in the stupidest way imaginable, which is to say that it was his job to act irresponsibly and theirs (Nicole's) to rein him in. There are six people in the room, exactly five of them are allowed to make that assertion. Michelle blurts out that she strongly objected, but doesn't draw the line to the fact that Nicole was part of the group of bullies that made sure her opinion was the only one less important than Nicole's, so that's a null sum too.
Michelle (weird, watch!): "I didn't understand why the pink, for the bikini -- I call it a bikini, it's for a man -- I had several tough questions to ask."
Trump: "I'm wearing a pink tie so I can't say anything, because that means I'm okay with gay people, but I wouldn't go so far as wearing a pink bathing suit, in that my understanding is that it would turn my penis gay. You know, there's a difference between a pink tie, and a pink bathing suit, in Trump world."
Nicole admits, in a weirdly edited moment, that she totally signed on for pink in the men's suits, because pink is the new black, and that's your title right there. Except that title is horrifically offensive, considering black was also the new pink this week. Stupid fucking show.
Trump, still awesome: "No! Pink Is The New Black doesn't apply to bathing suits!"
Ivanka, laughing: "Or spandex!"
Nicole, rasping and gross as ever, equivocates on behalf of nobody but the spirit of arguing when you should be shutting up that it might work on a longer bathing suit, and Trump asks them outright why Michelle is ever there. Carey, who needs to hush, explains the kind of man he is: the kind who can "get over her disruptiveness," because -- he hastens to point out -- he's "a team player," and on teams, "you're going to have some kinks." He brings up Michelle's waffling about the price point and shouts, "You can't be indecisive, Mr. Trump!" Trump remembers how "price point" was the Bloody Mary of last week, but this week it wasn't -- it had nothing to do with the price. "Good point, that's a good point," Carey says. At which point I wanted him fired. Carey's like, but coming off that loss, we were all dicey about that, so why waffle at that time? Ivanka asks if he's saying that she was hedging and wouldn't step up, and Nicole -- pushing to get rid of Michelle, just like Tim and Aaron want her to, which is how great PMs always work -- starts off on a thing about how even though it had no bearing on their loss, it was still a big disaster to have her there not giving an opinion on something that had nothing to do with her. Carey, obnoxiously to the eleventh degree, tries to hop on her declaration so it seems as though they're saying the same thing at the same time, because he's such a freaking team player, but says "thing" where Nicole says "disaster," and it's just... these people. I don't know what to do about them. They suck so bad.
"Absolutely! That's what I'm saying! If you're going to be a leader, if you're going to be the Apprentice, you have to step up and make a decision!" Unless, of course, you've been very honest and rational about not caring. "It was not being indecisive, Carey, it was being smart," Michelle says, and he hisses, "It was being safe." She reminds him of how she didn't have any of the research and hadn't been involved in that part of the task at any point, just like she said at the time right before he started bitching. Heidi agrees with her. "You have a group delegated to choose pricing, that's what they do. The entire group is not responsible for that." Michelle nods: "I would never do that on the fly like that." Heidi shakes her head. "You find out who's good at that, and make them responsible." She tells Trump straight-up that Michelle shouldn't even be there. I agree, and I like the way Heidi said those things, because it wasn't obnoxious and it was smart, and was I think more like regular Heidi: find the problem, fix the problem, remember what you did for time. On to the thing. I hope that's the deal there.
Michelle says she would fire Carey, because... Trump finishes for her, because this boardroom is so over: "He just did a bad job." She agrees. Carey again starts to whine about how, "ultimately," they approved his bad job, which is not doing yourself a favor, and Trump takes out a desk pen. "I do this because this suit is really gross, okay," he says, and produces the suit. Which gives me pause for several reasons. Number one being, "the suit" is gross? Because it's pink, or because it's unlined -- which is valid, even though it's not like he wore it jogging, still I wouldn't be in love with touching it -- or what? Because later on Trump touches the suit, so he is able at some point to reconcile himself with the "grossness" of the suit, but at the same time everybody in that room is on the same page as far as how the suit is Carey, in this boardroom. Not wanting to touch the suit is not wanting to touch Carey's "gross" business. Again, this is not overt and it's not hateful, but it's weird, and it's off, and really inappropriate, and could be coming from a million different places, but all of them are places we've visited with Trump before. All of them are about the hologram, in some way.
Nicole laughs, Michelle laughs, Carey laughs, Nicole claps it's so hilarious. Heidi: "That's a men's suit?"
"Why would any man wear this suit?" Any real man, he means. Any official man. Because what just happened there is that Donald Trump asked a man he saw wearing the suit what kind of a man would wear the suit. He just gave Carey the X of not being a real person, right there. And Carey's answer is coming from that place: "Mr. Trump, there is a marketplace for this suit. I kid you not." I exist. You're looking at me. I'm in the same room with you, right now, looking you in the face, and you're asking who? "I wish you guys could understand me," he says. If wishes were bathing suits we could all go to the beach and look at each other's junk in minute detail, but that's not how it works. "There is a marketplace for this suit. I didn't invent this concept," he says. Who did? Other people that don't count. "Who is going to wear that suit?" Trump asks again. "There are a lot of men who would wear this suit," Carey insists. They exist. Those men are real. Ivanka asks if there's enough of a population to support giving it to a group of buyers, which is at once a very different and the very same question Trump asked. She explains that there are only three options, so making one of those three unnecessarily narrow was stupid. "That's like 1% of the male population," Trump asserts. From 0% to 1%. That's how many now. "I'm a pretty wild guy, I mean, I have a certain taste that I think is a little bit out there?" You're not fucking kidding. "I would never wear a suit with a lotta pink in it." Valid. Speaking from your own experience, you're never wrong. If you're talking about yourself. "And I would say -- I'm not a fashion person, but -- I know that suit doesn't sell." Valid. Carey: "I personally like this suit, but if this suit wasn't right for the team, it would have been X'd, I would have started over. I never push anything. If you did not like it... " Trump asks Michelle if she felt that the giant black man, whose giant gay penis was nearly visible to them all earlier today, if she felt "that he ram-rodded that down everybody's throat," and she replies that she "absolutely felt he ram-rodded it down our throats from the very beginning." Carey complains, because he honestly thinks he did not force this issue, because Nicole "motivated" him to think it was okay, because she wasn't doing her fucking job. "I'm not ram-rodding... " he says." You really liked it!" says Trump. "Even with me, you're trying to convince me that suit sells." No, he's not. He knows it was a dumb design and that he ignored the team consensus about that, which was his prerogative as someone other than the PM. He's not trying to convince you it sells, he's trying to convince you he's alive. "And I don't think it sells! That suit, I can tell you, is a loser. On this task you did a horrible job." True, all of it true. Except he fucked up his job which was a small part of the task, whereas Nicole fucked up her job, which was the entire task. I hope she goes home week.
"Carey, I'm going to give you that suit, but I'm going to say: Carey, you're fired." Carey's sad, Nicole is either sad about it or that's still her face, Trump shakes everybody's hands and they take off. Inside, he says it was a "tough call" and that Carey's a "terrific" guy, and Heidi agrees that he was in charge of design, so had to go. "It's business," Trump says, and immediately loses all memory of the experience, or the fact that a man named Carey Sharrell ever sat in a chair across from him, and was told that he didn't exist.
Michelle and Nicole, outside, wish Carey luck, but he breezes past without speaking. "Oh, this sucks," says Michelle. Which might well be her attempt at bonding, I don't know. I do know that on the way back to their house, Nicole, for some reason, breaks into this bizarre unbalanced run toward the door like she's suddenly grown a hump and it's got control of her luggage. It's weird. Her slacks are really cute, though. Well tailored pants, Nicole. Always say something nice.
"I don't have much to say... I think it's really disappointing. Um, I absolutely feel like the girls were dishonest. I never ram-rodded anything down anybody's throat. I think that Michelle going back is just going to be a hindrance. If they don't win the task, they won't win at all." Which is funny because first of all, he actually did his level best to talk Michelle down from disagreeing with him, because he's a pack animal like the rest of them and knew that he could give her shit no matter what, because nobody would call him out for it because she's the scapegoat, which somehow means that all the right and true and correct things she kept saying -- the stuff that was bringing down morale, per Tim and Aaron -- don't matter. Saying the right things the wrong way is the most important screwup these people make, and they always do it. The second funny thing is the last thing he says here, because he's clearly distraught and has forgotten that there is no way for them to win the task, because Arrow is competing against itself. I do truly hope that the rest of his pronouncement comes true, though.
Lessons learned: There are at least three stories going on here, and they are incongruent, they don't match, they contradict each other, but they all three are true. The story you see is the one you're telling, and wherever it doesn't Venn up with the other ones, that's where the other stories are lies, unless you're willing to step out of the box and have some sympathy for the other ones.
The first one is a story about acceptable levels of gayness. You can be this "gay," whatever that means to the guys who make the rules, in these ways but not those, and you'll be okay -- as long as you reassure the people who need it every now and then -- but if you don't get it, or expect the world to follow along behind, or do any of the stupid things these people on this show always do... if you are waiting for the world to fall into position with that, with how you would like things to be. If you can't compromise and remember that it's not the sum total of who and what you are, if you can't keep quiet when you know you should, if your desire to draw attention to yourself outweighs your desire to tread lightly on other people's evolution, you're an astronaut and I applaud you, even though you make things harder in my personal life sometimes. Your facts are not my facts, and yet we both represent the same monolithic group, which means if you're wearing that awful thing, I might have one in my closet too. That might be one of the artifacts the Trumpworld sociologists bring back to the party. Which is your prerogative, but doesn't bode well for your results on game shows like this.
The second one is short but sweet: this show is disgusting, and goes for the ugly laugh, and does everything it can to reinforce everything that it can about what's above and what's below this paragraph. And I honestly don't blame Trump for that. It's not really his show, it's his decision -- we're told -- but he's not the editor. He's not the artist that brings it to life. He's not the guy who chose I think nine incidences of the phrase "ram-rodding it down people's throats" and chose to put all nine of them onscreen within the 42 minutes of this show. He's not the one who ignored Derek for every scene except the ones in which he indicted Carey while letting the audience off the hook. He's not the one who kept focusing on Carey's junk and ass at every opportunity, like a slasher film for people afraid of black and gay sexuality. He's not the one who traveled slowly up Carey's body, revealing the pink monster as dramatically as possible, and he's not the one who cut audio to the formerly clapping buyers group, so everybody at home would know their disgust was valid. That wasn't Trump, he'll tell you he isn't an artist beyond the art of the deal: that was the work of a true artist, and I applaud the team that managed such a disgusting display, given so little time. The second story is one about art: the lie that tells the truth, as Picasso would say.
The third story is about masculinity, as divorced from questions of sexuality and lifestyle, and the many ridiculous things on which it can sometimes rest. Things that work and support a certain type of masculinity include: jets with your name on them, breast implants, Viagra, gold leaf on everything, fucking more women than names you can remember as long as somebody's watching, lots of money, lots of houses, lots of cars, lots of bullshit. Somehow thinking you can behave like a pimp and still have honor and respect and admiration -- because I guarantee you the only people that admire that shit are people in the same boat. The really terrifying thing about this masculinity, as cherished and beloved as it is by those who jealously possess it, is the curious place in which it esteems women (and where that puts gay guys, frankly). The specific kinds of women that are allowed to exist in Trumpworld, officially. Even the smart ones -- unless they're too smart -- or the strong ones -- unless they're too ugly -- have a place at the table, as long as they walk that tightrope. As long as they don't call you out; as long as they're prepared to stay a Viceroy and not get uppity; as long as they know their role. Even their drug use -- if they're cute enough -- and bisexual experimentation -- if she's cute enough -- are okay, because second chances are good for the young and hot. Just as long as nobody forgets who's in charge; as long as nobody forgets their place and looks too proud.
"If you want to buy something, it's obviously in your best interest to convince the seller that what he's got isn't worth very much." -- Donald Trump, quoted by Evan Carmichael