Decimated by what Trump and Heidi seem to think is a decade-long losing streak, Team "Arrow" is offered some Kinetic. Heidi, Marisa and Surya -- for various reasons of wanting to look awesome -- offer to come across; "Arrow" picks Surya and he goes all Furonda on them with a list of demands, which gives them all narcolepsy. Task: design and market a new "signature chicken bowl" for El Pavo Guapo -- which Aaron wins, due less to Surya's help or his own sudden management skills and more to Heidi's sudden inability to manage altogether. That British person with the face from last year serves as a Viceroy and adds little to nothing to the proceedings. Heidi sends the lovely Lady MacMarisa and Derek to deal with marketing, while Kristine comes up with a California fusion Paradise Bowl that combines rice, chicken, and the refreshing tastes of mango and pineapple. Trump correctly pronounces this concept as gross -- though you kind of have to wonder what he would say if it were served up by any of his visionary chef friends -- but mostly it's not commercial, which reflects directly on Heidi. Similarly, Marisa's mule-like disinterest in contributing in any meaningful way, combined with Derek's sick humor in watching her self-destruct, creates a marketing vacuum centered on their restaurant which is so intense that neighboring fast-food franchises go into orbit around it. (Her main ideas are renaming the Paradise Bowl to the Bravado Bowl and putting on chicken suits, but the amount that she suggests them might make you think there was more to it.) Heidi does nothing about this either, other than egging Marisa on with her Mean Girl clique tactics. Meanwhile, Aaron mobilizes selling machines Frank and Tim to go after bulk sales and decorates the entire place like the Queen's Jubilee. "Arrow" is delighted with their reward -- a seaside performance by Andrea Bocelli, followed by fireworks -- to the degree that each of them are tacky, and Tim and Nicole begin a gross romance. In the boardroom, Marisa talks her way right out the door, continuing to talk as it hits her on the ass. Given that the failure was completely Heidi's fault, she sits in the middle of this maelstrom silently laughing like the very devil she is, and then joins Kinetic in the yard. Stars this week include Aaron, Frank, Derek, Muna, and Aimee; losers are the usual, plus poor Heidi, who I hope rocks out week. When apparently the Apprentices are attacked by killer bees? All I know is this: sometimes on a warm summer night in LA, when the Santa Ana dies down and all the tweakers are asleep, if you listen hard enough, you can still hear Marisa, yelling about bravado and chicken suits, and that fills me with wonder.
Last week Michelle quit and was a quitting quitter. Still not buying it. Back in the yard, James was in total shock and kept talking about how he was in shock, while Tim was preparing "to really be angry" and "split some infinitives." They all apparently forgot that the show has no rules this year, and that it's entirely up to Trump -- not Michelle -- what happens . He could put them all in tutus, he could send them to the Playboy mansion, he could take them to the zoo and feed them to the yak. (Not that he would ever do any of those things.) But no, game show reality has a might hold on their little minds right now, so Trump's less a deciding decision-maker or figureheading producer-monkey, and more like a force of nature, so they're in pre-anger. Then Frankie Suits gets the call that the boardroom is cancelled and jumps around in a cape looking idiotic, and then Frankie Suits and Tim and Nicole dance around looking idiotic, and then they are in freezeframe looking idiotic, and this whole time, Michelle is walking away from Omelas and into a bright and sunshiny day.
Inside the mansion, Heidi was telling everybody about how you have to take timelines seriously, like Surya does, and you have to be awesome like this and like that, and everybody sips some delicious Kool-Aid and then leads Heidi around the mansion on a donkey, waving palm fronds at her and throwing down dummy brochures and toner cartridges in her path. Somebody talks about how we all have feelings and the entire world is like, "Kinetic! Has Feelings! Got It!" Heidi interviews about how her team has total spirit, but it's not the kind of spirit you can detect based on eyeballing them or seeing what they do or their behavior or the way they feel about their PM or teammates. It's a new kind of spirit that Heidi has discovered, and mainly that spirit has to do with obeying Heidi. She thinks it's awesome. She talks to us about Team "Arrow" and how trashy and loud and "boisterous" and gross they are, and how this conveys their spirit in a different way, and the way that this conveys their spirit is that they are disgusting.
Out in the yard, Team "Arrow" is drinking wine and yelling about Cheese Doodles drunkenly, and Stefani is informing Frankie Suits that he is "on crack" and that they are in LA, and inquiring as to "what language" he is speaking. It is SO awesome. People who look really hot in night vision are Stefani and other people you might not suspect, such as Surya and Frankie Suits, both of whom look much better in night vision. Science is still trying to crack the code on the optimal lighting for when you have to look at Nicole. I'm sure the beer is helping. Frank and Stefani have a drunk discussion about Cheese Doodles, and it's at least as interesting as watching stupid people get stoned, and Tim pulls the drawstrings on Nicole's hoodie. Tim is that scientist! "I can't see..." she says drunkenly, and the whole thing is just gross and shameful on every level. The smokers outside your freshman dormitory are like, "Please chill out, dude. It's just beer."
Inside, Aimee is telling us that stress is harmful to feelings and other living things, and that especially when we work late into the night, our sensitivities are more sensitive, but we should be more sensitive to those sensitivities and also that we should keep in mind other things having to do with kindness, boundaries, and openness to discussing feelings and processing those opennesses. The phone rings and Marisa -- who should be listening a little bit more closely to Aimee right now, instead of talking talking talking -- answers inside, while Aaron picks up the phone outdoors. He tells Trump that they're "just doing the night routine around the fire," which: barf, and Trump informs them again of what they already knew, how Michelle quit and "Arrow's been decimated." Everybody realizes that, after three losses, it's time for somebody from Team Kinetic to join Team "Arrow," and everybody gets very wiggly.
Aaron, who's pretty much the PM in perpetuity -- or maybe, come to think of it, he actually is the PM at this point because of last week -- due to being, I'll admit, pretty awesome, whispers to his team that they must choose either Angela or Surya. The quietest people on the entire show, not to mention Kinetic's most masculine members. Marisa strangles out -- kinda Michelle, this -- "I'm getting a consensus, Mr. Trump!" And outside, everybody goes, "So intense!" "I know, it's like intense." "It's like so intense!" And then they drink some more, and eat more Cheese Doodles, and make more disgusting messes around their campsite.
Heidi puts it in just the most awful way imaginable: "Who are we willing to give up?" Surya laughs at that, and Derek's like, "Right now?" Yes, right now. See the phone? Heidi stares at/through the floor into the Earth's molten core and says in a deadly voice, "I would be willing" to leave. Surya -- still smacking the tasty Kool-Aid on his lips -- goes, "No! You're the PM!" Which makes little to no sense unless you are in some kind of Heidi Cult. Finally there are three volunteers: Marisa, because she thinks Heidi has a problem with her when in fact the only problem Heidi has with Marisa is Marisa's problem with Heidi. Surya, because I don't know why, because I don't get him, because it turns out he's even more boring than Aaron, but in the exact same way. And Aimee, who says that it's inevitable that the fellowship will be broken and she's willing to go to Mordor and whatever, she says it well but it's still kind of culty. Of the three, Aaron picks Surya, and Trump informs them that Surya's moving into the backyard right this very second. Also, the teams have to meet Trump at 9 AM at the Hollywood overlook off Mulholland, for just a quick second because he's so terribly busy.
Out in the yard Aaron's yelling at his motley crew about how when Surya comes outside, they should "embrace him with a huge hug." Gross. I can't think of anything worse than Arrow coming at you like that, with Cheese Doodle dust on their hands and beer breath and no showers and whatever. "Here we come! We like hugs! Be our friend!"
While Surya is packing up he gives us a hint to his scintillating inner monologue as he reminds his team to A) Keep doing what they're doing, B) Keep doing what they're doing, and C) Keep doing what they're doing, in short succession. He continues to do what he's doing, all the way out into night vision; meanwhile Derek is totally bringing sexy back in some shorts one's uncle might wear on a casual weekend. Outside, away from the scorching heat of Derek's "Mowing The Lawn Is Exhausting" fashions, Aaron is wagging his tail and humping things at Surya's approach. He interviews that he knew little about Surya beyond the fact that he doesn't talk, which means he's calm and level-headed, or possibly that he is a serial killer. Just like Aaron. Who is looking super-fine in his own right during this interview, in a lovely pink polo, cloth belt, that whole Cape Semiotics vibe he likes to work. He looks like the inside of Tommy Hilfiger's mind. Before, I mean. Aaron tells us that Arrow needs less yelling and more not yelling, and that whatever whatever, he realizes he's in charge of a circus and so do we. Surya comes upon them, Nicole acting like a fuck, and asks if they've been drinking. Frankie Suits screams some unjoke about how "No of course not...but would you like a beer?" and he says no. Because nothing's a stronger deterrent to getting drunk than drunk people who got there first, especially if they're drooling morons. They chatter at him like the microcephalics at the beginning of that movie Freaks, crawling around and picking at his hair and investigating his pockets. Over the hedge -- so cute -- are Derek, Angela and Kristine, sadly waving goodbye.
What follow is comedic. Surya sits down with some crazy-looking napkin Mind Maps and proceeds to educate Team "Arrow" on what it means to be a grownup, for one hundred hours: all about not screwing each other over, being open to other people's ideas, acting like this but not like that, doing this but not that, just basic shit. Which is funny, but not as funny as the fact that A) No team should have this stuff explained to them, and B) Except this team. I've never gone from meh to bleh about anybody so fast. But what's funniest of all is their reaction, which is so honestly hilarious and in character that you couldn't script this. Part of it's editing, but most of it is the truth about Arrow: they sit still for approximately five seconds, then start to fidget, then Nicole takes a nap, and Stefani and Frank and Tim just wander away for more booze, and the whole time he's talking, talking, talking. Surya interviews that he wanted to illustrate for them "discipline" and "structure," and explains to us about how he has worked in businesses ranging on the Goldilocks scale of small entrepreneurial businesses he started, to midsize companies, to Fortune 150 companies, in case we thought he was being a dickwad. Except he totally is, because the one thing this show is still doing right is recruiting people who are already successful, regardless of what Donald Trump believes. It goes on and on. Frankie Suits almost bursts into tears. Heading into the credits is an awesome shot of Frank grinning around a cigar as Surya goes, "Never stop, just never stop anything, just keep going and don't stop. Is this helping? I don't wanna be annoying..."
Too late! Frank is growing on me, Tim is growing off me, like a third thumb, and Aaron I still just can't tell. Surya however is off the list.
Crazy awesome music! Like an army with trumpets! Trump drives toward the overlook in a stretch with a bald man, and they turn off to meet the teams, and there, Aaron is making quite a Trump face but wearing more good colors and looking amazing. Stefani and Marisa look just as gorgeous as ever. Heidi, I don't even see her anymore. She's like a walking spreadsheet. Maybe the bathing suit last week just blew my mind and gave me that disease where now I think she's my hat. Oh, Sean is there! Gross! Trump calls him a "great champion," and notes that he went through hell, but not the kind of hell where he had to live in a tent. The only hell I remember from last season is the one where Sean and Lee were the Final Two and I still had to watch that shit because it's my job. Tim is getting pretty sick-looking, which is sad. Trump indicates the overlook and says, "You hear behind me automobiles." He doesn't even seem to notice the shell-shocked Hollywood lesbian wandering through the woods toward Aunt Ruth's bungalow after narrowly missing her own murder thanks to a fender-bender with an elderly couple, about to start her journey into a nightmarish dreamscape of her own failed ambitions of stardom, not to mention sad sex with Naomi Watts, who she also somehow is. ["Silencio, dude." -- Joe R]
Sorry. "You hear behind me automobiles. This is LA. We have automobile on top of automobile, and people do everything in their automobiles, some of which I cannot mention, although if you win this task you might have to do these things with Hugh Hefner as a reward." There's lunatic, scary, Lynchian laughter at the concept of people fucking in cars, but maybe that's just fight/flight based on Trump even coming within a five-mile radius of sex in any location at all. One of the reasons -- finding a way to cram the world "automobile" in there a few more dozen times -- that LA something something is because of drive-through restaurants, such as El Pollo Loco. Angela looks really beautiful right now. Man. He introduces two executives from El Pavo Guapo, Steve and Karen, and we don't care about the executives this year I guess, even though they've been historically some of the best parts of any task. The task, Steve explains, is to create, promote, and sell a new version of their "signature item," the "Pollo Bowl." Heidi and Aaron, Trump reminds us, are the PMs until the boardroom, and there will be Sean there, but no Trumplings.
Cut to a nasty chicken carcass on a grill and the America's Test Kitchen of the teams trying to get it together. Aaron pronounces Stefani's bowl as having "too much cheese sauce," and she yips adorably that she's all set to change that, and Aaron wants some corn in there, and Frank says -- oh, Frank -- that they could possibly need some tortillllas, and he says "tortillllas" like it's a SNL sketch, because that's kind of what he is. It looks really good, what they come up with, and everybody does that sales thing I don't get where they lay themselves prostrate before the creation and promise it their firstborn, such is it mouthwatering, out-of-the-box creativity. Frank wolfs that shit down like he's in prison as Aaron interviews that they've christened it the "Chicken Tortilla Bowl," and that it has "good crunch" and is somehow "original." As Tim delights in the Chicken Tortilla Bowl, Stefani makes a ridiculously cute face at him, mugging like a vaudevillian: "It's good, huh?" I hope she and Aaron are the only Arrowers left standing, I really do. "...Oh, that's fantastic!" he goobers right back. I don't hate Arrow nearly as much as I feel like I should right now, but if there's one things these recaps have shown, it's that I am fickle.
Kinetic: Everybody speaking in one scary voice about how delicious their Bowl is, doing a synchronized water ballet of butt-sniffing around it like the Mexican-American Hat Dance of Fusion, and Kristine explains her horrible (but adorably Kristine) idea for putting mango and pineapple into the Standard El Pavo Guapo Bowl. Elsewhere, Derek and Marisa are doing the marketing -- as Heidi explains -- the graphics, marketing and promo materials: "All the things we need to market this new bowl." They discuss superimposing images of fruit over the bowl; I want a ghostly floating Statue of Liberty. That would be so tight. Aimee and the group, back at the ranch, talk about names and decide on the "Paradise Pollo Bowl," which is the right and correct name for what they've done here, and so of course everybody agrees on this, and they move on.
Team Derek and Marisa, where Marisa is saying the words "Bravado Bowl" one hundred times. Derek's like, "I get it, I get it, I get it? But the Almighty Powerful Heidi and Clan are done with that part?" Also, they are right. Now you and I know that Derek can do no wrong, but this is still the second of Heidi's many fuckups, and here's why. She sent Marisa out to do marketing because she can't stand Marisa, because Marisa is the grit in the gears that Arrow was saying about Michelle last week. They were wrong, but Marisa is the real deal. So in order to get her out of the way, Heidi has sent her off...to do the most important part of the task, beyond the creation of the bowl, which they've already fucked up and which in turn is the first of Heidi's many fuckups. So Heidi tells her the team has reached consensus about the Paradise Bowl, and Marisa tells them this is not original, and that "Bravado Bowl" is original, and that it is "where fruit and spice meet and dare to be different." The first part is to shut up, because it's been decided, and the second part is isomorphic to brainstorming and marketing, which is what she's supposed to be doing, but also sounds exactly like the ravings of a lunatic. Which ad copy often does, but ... "Where fruit and spice meet and dare to be different" is a really good way of making yourself completely obsolete. So while these are all Heidi's fuckups, look at it from a management perspective, which is to say: "How much of this crap do I have to listen to before I can write you off?" Marisa's got the moral upper-hand in theory, but this is not a theoretical world, and she's saying useless shit fifteen thousand times without breathing, so Heidi's right by being wrong to shut her down. Sadly, the question ("How much of this crap do I have to listen to?") has a correct answer of: Way more than you think, because Marisa is like a dog with a bone. A Bravado Bone.
Marisa: "Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado Bravado."
Derek: "Gotcha, but we are done with that part."
Marisa: "Here's the kind of person I am: I speak up. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah."
Derek: "I really admire that about you, but please get it together. You're right about being frozen out of the group, but wrong about trying to smash your way back in by acting like a nutsack."
Marisa: "I am being cockblocked. Just because the group has reached a consensus about my two ideas, I see no reason why I can't just bring them up again and again, in the hopes that they will change their minds. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. I am going to end up in a chicken suit shooting from a clock tower unless I get some validation soon. Oh! Brain wave! What if we called it the Bravado Bowl? Or had people in chicken suits? I wish everybody's short-term memory was as fucked up as my own."
Derek: "Hee, hee. You said cock."
Marisa interviews that she has "really great," "creative" ideas, and that she's being "suffocated by the group" at this point. You know what? Shut up. First of all, your ideas are neither creative nor all that great, and secondly, if the group is suffocating you, then you know that the problem is you. If you can keep your head when all others around you are losing theirs, the reason is that you are an asshole. Read the situation for what it is: you've presented enough of a problem to Heidi's leadership -- three wins, lady -- that she's elected to send you to the boonies with Derek as your nursemaid. That's what's going on here, and if you don't respond to that problem, instead responding to a completely other imaginary problem -- namely that your genius will die with you like Van Gogh and in fifty years your chicken suit will sell on an open auction at Christie's for one billion dollars -- you are proving her correct, correct, correct. Which I hate, because though I still really admire and like Heidi, this is her failure start to finish, so why you gonna prove her right for benching you?
And here's another scary thought: given the way this show treats women and minorities (and everybody else), did you ever think that Heidi's being set up for the worst fucking nosedive this show's ever seen? Every boardroom Trump calls her a queen and talks about how awesome and wonderful she is, and we only get the most smug, condescending looks edited into the boardrooms anyway, and she's being illustrated I think as an internet bubble that's about to pop. It won't happen soon and it won't warn you before it hits, but dollars to doughnuts she's going to take a faceplant in a pile of dog shit sometime in the ten weeks. Which suits this show's agenda just fuckin' fine.
Marisa calls Heidi AGAIN to "really quickly be quite honest" with Heidi about both splitting infinitives and demanding they name the bowl "Bravado." Heidi hangs up after a short no and rolls her eyes and is exasperated and awesome. And you know, it's not that Bravado is a terrible name for a bowl. It's a good name, but for a spicy man's-man meal, not this fruity yoga fusion thing. It's "Paradise" because that's what you call a thing with a bunch of tropical fruits in it. I didn't make that up, the Fifties did, when they discovered cheap island labor. It doesn't need to be original, it needs to be commercial and it needs to make sense. If they're going with this hellish concoction, call it what it is. "Bravado" is confusing and misleading. (Of course, with this editing, it could be that Marisa doesn't know they've even settled on the ingredients at this point. No wait, "fruit and spices meet and greet and become better gladiators" or whatever. So shut up some more, Marisa.)
Arrow: There are balloons all over, Aaron is getting his motivational on about how delicious is their bowl and how motivating it is to succeed and to be awesome, and how they're going from "outhouse to penthouse," and they do a hands-in and scream ARROW! Aaron interviews about how you have to "create that atmosphere of a special event," and how there are five dozen balloons all over, and how the signage creates a "buy now, party type of atmosphere." "Our signage popped!" he says gleefully. I am over being bored by Aaron. He's just like that guy I love every season, the Dan, who will backflip into team spirit and sales crap so fast you can't believe it. James stands on a corner with his signage popping, screaming at a bypassing car: "I'm waiting for you!" I fully believe that James's crazy and loud voice is stronger than the Doppler effect, and so there are cars all over the place, backed up, running through the drive through like California lives on tortillllas. Tim schmoozes sales on a lady and she's down, and Surya's working the window, selling. The total for one order is $5.40, remember that. Nicole sells as best she can, and Tim approaches Aaron with an idea to do a bulk sales run. Anybody else, I would say this is a bad idea, but Tim and Frank can totally do it, and do it well. Surya has a little obnoxious tut-tut seizure that nobody sees but us, and Aaron gives us the deal here: it's scary, with the lunch rush coming, to lose two team members -- since they're apparently running the restaurant all by themselves -- but the incredible risk of sending two of the best guys on the team out into the field is scary but happening. He's good at this game, he really is.
Kinetic: is completely abandoned. It looks sad and dead inside, like how sometimes you see a chicken place that's still shaped like a Taco Bell, or that weird haunted location in every strip mall that goes from baseball cards to smoothies to tax prep franchises every six months. Kristine tries to sell a foot traffic guy the Paradise Bowl, and because it is disgusting while quesadillas are delicious, he opts for a quesadilla. Aimee is on the window, telling the customer every single one of the thirteen thousand ingredients of the Paradise Bowl. The lady's like, "Grrrrrrross."
Speaking of, Sean arrives. Since they are completely devoid of all customers like The Day After, Heidi has to talk her team up in terms of how incredibly ready they are, for the customers that will never, ever arrive: the computers are go, the registers are go, the prep is done, everybody is in a state of extreme Heidi-like readiness. Meanwhile, Marisa and Derek are outside the restaurant, offering gross samples to everybody. First of all, don't talk about the ingredients, Aimee, because they are anti-marketing for a fast food crowd, and second of all, don't let them taste it first, for the same reason. The Paradise Bowl should be a big scary surprise. Marisa and Derek are very charming with this part, although Derek seems about as comfortable bugging people in a sales-type way as I would be. Marisa -- I could look at this girl all day long, seriously -- interviews...guess what she's saying? You'll never guess! They should have had two chicken suits on two busy corners doing their marketing, and instead it's her and Derek looking like the X-Files and bum-rushing hungry folks in a hurry with their gross samples. When you put it like that, it is kind of sad. Marisa calls it the closest thing they can be doing to pulling their weight, considering Heidi wishes they were still at the Loew's hotel doing nothing at all and staying out of her intense way.
Except that's not true, and this episode is more heavily edited than most, and nobody will really talk about this, but here are some things that this show might never tell us, and which I've only figured out by being sneaky and employing my intuition. The first thing is that there's a weird alliance going on with Kinetic that you can only put together by staring at them for hours: Heidi, Kristine, and Angela are the heads of it, Derek's in there because he's smart enough to see it happening and pretend to sip the Kool-Aid, and the three people who volunteered to leave (Marisa, Surya and Aimee) are on the periphery. Also Muna, given what happens later. I don't know if we're ever going to hear about this, but it's obvious if you have to watch it the way I have to. The second thing is that, again, the chicken suits are El Pavo Guapo standard, and also: Arrow used one, and we'll never see that. The third thing is that Kinetic did use a bulk sales strategy, going out on sales calls and giving the people fax order sheets, which they then fulfilled. According to Marisa, these calls resulted in three bulk orders: one for fifteen, one for seven, and one for ten. That equals 32 bulk orders offsite, which is another thing we're not supposed to know.
Arrow's of course crazy busy, and Surya's having window trouble in the chaos that's pretty loveable, and there are fake cars honking, such is the terrifying success of Arrow. He interviews that they need to be more efficient, because they are losing customers like with the go-go boys, and also bitches that with two of the sales force missing on their sales call, he puts their success at 1:5 or maybe 1:10. People who make up percentages like this really get on my nerves, but then I'm not a gambling man so maybe it's smart. He did it earlier, when talking about how probably he would have had a 5% chance of getting shuffled once Michelle left. He begs Aaron to get Frank back in the store, and Aaron tells him calmly that they need a big sale to overcome what he presumes is the amount of competition that they're getting from Kinetic. Aaron interviews that Surya is conservative, and that's great, but they need the bonus on top of their wildly successful in-store conversions. "No risk, no reward," he says pithily. OMG, he really is Dan. No wonder he's so cute.
Frank and Tim are off on their sales call with some dubious music, but within moments the music goes triumphant as the hands start shooting up and they get twelve of the people in the front of the car shop they're working, with another ten in back. Aaron's overjoyed about the 22 bulk sales, calling it "absolutely huge" and wondering both whether it's "too good to be true" and if this constitutes "some kind of record!" He's this close to doing backflips like a poodle in a circus. Of course, Surya is not happy about this, for whatever reason. Aaron welcomes Tim and Frank back with high-fives and liberal use of the phrase "good job" and calling them "dawg."
Commercial, then Trump mansion. I'm so happy that we got to see task this episode, although it's weird to think that in terms of trends, this was a wild amount of task we got to see. I hope the uptick continues. Everybody shows up in their El Pavo Guapo uniforms and visors except Marisa and the very nervous-looking Derek, of course. "Take your hats off," Trump grumps in another ill-planned attempt to be lovably grandpa-like, "You're inside! Take em off!" They do. Aaron of course talks about how he thinks they totally won, and Trump does some more hate-baiting with Heidi about "I don't know about that, huh?" because Heidi used to win all the time for the last sixty years of unbridled success and mind control. She says she's got a "team full of hard workers," each and every one of whom she's "honored to work with." Arrow acts trashy about how much they want into that house, and Frank babbles out of turn again, earning yet another dismissal from Trump, like, "Mm-hmm. Anyway..." I just looked, and did you know Frank is only 27 years old? I so thought he was forty. I mean, he's a grown man that needs some help with his life, but that makes me feel very differently about it, because that means it's not just bluster and overcompensation, but actual hyperactivity in play here, which is much easier to handle. I think I am out of hate for him at this point, honestly. His old-face threw me off. Thank God for Nicole, I guess.
Any phrase beginning with "My man Sean" will not end well. Sean calls Kinetic on their "limited marketing strategy" and the fact that they needed to push harder at POS. Agreed. They earned $313.54. Arrow's Chicken Tortillla Bowl earned -- thanks to Arrow's enormous spirit, great job running the restaurant, and "selling their hearts out," including their offsite sales to 22 people -- $418 and change, I think. Heidi's edited to look impressed at the 22-count bulk sale, by the way, in case you were wondering whether this show is bullshit. The totals cause Heidi and Muna to go into deep depression, and of course Arrow climbs all over each other like ferrets. Marisa nods sadly and thinks about chicken suits and the word bravado. Trump congratulates them on the end of their "long struggle," and calls Surya -- incorrectly on both -- either Arrow's "very talented" or "very lucky" charm.
Math!
1) Greater or Lesser: 37 or 22? (37: Kinetic did 15 units better on bulk sales.)
2) $418 divided by $5.40? (77: Arrow sold 77 bowls.)
3) $314 divided by (assuming no price difference) $5.40? (58: Kinetic sold 58 bowls, and therefore lost by 19 units.)
4) 37 times $5.40? ($200: Kinetic did $200 in bulk sales, but lost by $105.)
5) 22 times $5.40? ($119: Arrow did $119 in bulk sales -- $81 less than Kinetic -- but still won by $105.)
Which means that Kinetic lost on POS, which is primarily a marketing issue but also comes out of in-store sales. To what degree, who can say, but this is obviously a marketing failure, because they didn't have the foot traffic. And while Heidi was right to ignore Marisa, she shouldn't have slagged off Marisa by bumping her to marketing in the first place, because this was a marketing task. You send the best, not the worst, and this is a case where Heidi did it just because she doesn't like Marisa. We don't know enough about the members of the Hive Mind to know who's strongest with marketing, or face sales for that matter, although I'm guessing there are more creative types on the team than two of the lawyers, but in any case it all comes back to Heidi: bad product, no marketing we can see, and the crucial misuse of two members of the team, one of whom is clearly going to be obstructive no matter where you stick her. This is you getting shot in the foot with your own pettiness; I've said it before and I'll say it again. You have a teammate who's not good in the position you've put her in? You are the manager. It's your entire job to put her somewhere she can work better, and in Marisa's case that means keeping her close, so she feels like she's contributing, and it also means not benching her by putting her on the key part of the task, and finally it means: figuring out what she's actually good at, rather than patting yourself on the back for getting her out of the room with you. Turns out she can still cock-block you from even very far away, thanks to the magic of cell phones, and thanks to the fact that you put her in the most important position of any member of the team, with zero guidance, simply because she's irritating. This is Heidi's loss, and not even for good reasons.
The reward is a gaggle of trashy shit that would only appeal to Team "Arrow," and it's a long list and it goes like this: Malibu, dinner on the beach, a serenade from Andrea Bocelli, and a fireworks display. I couldn't sit through that. It's so Rachel Ray! Nicole and Frank, of course, come all over themselves, and Aimee and Heidi make hilarious "fuckin' great" faces. Angela is of course grossed out by everything. Trump takes a swipe at Derek's "fancy suit" on the way to telling them how they get to live in tents now, and makes one more hubris joke at the expense of Heidi's finally-ended winning streak. The collective old white man orgasm when Martha Stewart went down, that's where we're headed. I bet you everything I own.
Nicole screams, "Wassup!" You fucking know she does. Tim and Aaron get giggly and grabby with each other, and everybody packs up their stuff. Frank lies about how this has been "four weeks of hell," because he's in the Matrix of this lying show, and cheers that "tonight we take over the mansion!" He feels "reborn again" (?) and "very emotional" about it. Inside, Jenn's smiling about how they maybe needed a little "humble pie" to get back on their game. It would taste sweeter than anything if they immediately got back inside week. I would just die. Angela pragmatically says that the odds were in Arrow's favor, since Kinetic already won three times in a row. Logically that makes no sense, because of how excellence is not really a numbers game, but I hope it makes them feel better. Frank babbles and babbles, and Derek is incredibly, heart-wrenchingly sad, and Kristine's wearing a ten-gallon hat because she's awesome, and there's a really funny montage of Kinetic wrangling their clothes out to the yard. Like we're all going to forget that Have and Have Not is totally arbitrary in this game show, and it's not like Kinetic is a bunch of princesses that need to be punished any more than Arrow's trashiness comes from living in the yard and they're finally getting revenge, because obviously Arrow's trashiness comes from within. It's not like Kinetic is suddenly going to start shouting drunkenly about Cheese Doodles, you know? This show coasts so much on semiotics and bullshit, it's amazing. We're supposed to cheer because a team that earned that house three weeks in a row suddenly fell to the Have Nots. So stupid.
Nicole screams her stupid ass off about "now we know what we're fighting for," and I swear everything she says in that yard sounds like one of those movies like the Goonies where everybody throws a fist in the air and goes "YEAH!" and it's always fake and stupid. Aaron and Tim, predictably and enjoyably, immediately strip off and jump in the pool, the best idea they've had thus far, and Nicole continues to scream and scream and scream and beg for attention with all her might. Frank tries to throw Stefani in the pool -- this is what they are like, okay -- and she's giving him all the signals to cut it out, but it's Frank. He's excited and confused. Nicole: "Wow! We deserved this!"
Derek and Aimee discuss how filthy and gross Arrow are, and discuss tossing their nasty ruined campsite shit over the fence into the yard. Love that. Muna destroys two hundred years of suffrage by cleaning up the campsite all -- apparently -- on her own, in like a mammy kerchief, while tossing voodoo curses under her breath and generally doing the whole Clara's Heart cluck-cluck about it. And I know this wasn't her intention and I fully would have joined in, because you can't live like that, but it's pretty gross to watch this show do this for such a long stretch. Somebody -- Jenn? -- points out that she's really "making Jamaica proud" and Muna scoffs, making this part a bit more acceptable: "They're poor but they're clean! Please!" I do adore Muna. She interviews that this shit is going to be hella-temporary, and I hope she's right, and onscreen she cleans and hisses: "Disgusting!" She's not getting the most respect-me edit I've ever seen, but I sure do like her personality. She's like the only person we've seen to have one on this show, so far, which is stronger than the Calpurnia vibe the show's trying to shove off on her, so now even the show is right by being wrong.
A white piano, on the beach, and some cored pineapples serving as stemware with tiny cocktail umbrellas, and Andrea Bocelli, the poor man's Josh Groban, who is in turn the poor man's music. And he's not even singing that song Carmela likes, which would make this actually enjoyable to watch. Aaron, wearing yet another hilarious and sexy yachting costume, calls it "a moment to absorb," and Bocelli tells them it's great for them but also for him, because this is the first time he's played on the ocean before. And yes, it's a beautiful idea, and I wouldn't feel trashy having this experience because I bet it's hella, and maybe I'm just confused because it's Arrow, but there's something very "trappings of wealth" about having all of this happen at once. He starts to sing "Besame Mucho," a song that never fails to make me think of naked Gwenyth Paltrow and how much she loves taking her clothes off at every opportunity, and how it still never gets old for me personally when she does this, because I love her. Stefani looks lushly gorgeous. I swear I didn't think much of looking at her to start with, but each episode she gets more and more amazingly beautiful, to the point where: what if at some point she reaches critical mass and I start making big changes in the way I relate to things? The last time I worried about my junk this much it was Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair. I'm too old to question my sexuality, Stefani! Turn it down!
Frank interviews a very sad story, or possibly the plot of Moonstruck, about how every Sunday at dinna he pops in onadeeze CDs and he starts getting teary on the beach, and I don't know how long I can keep making fun of Frank, you guys. I kind of adore him right now. ["Sellout." -- Joe R] He can't wait to tell his motha about this because to be honest with you she's not gonna believe it. Everybody applauds Bocelli and he sings some other song, and then Stefani -- excited as ever -- wows about how they were just serenaded by one of the most beautiful voices in the world, and they laugh about their classy food and giggle and attempt to eat it without looking like buffoons and whatever, the usual. It's Arrow, what are you going to do?
Jenn's eating Cheese Nips. So sad. Marisa is funny and cute, spazzing about how she's starving and can't wait for the awful tent food; Arrow continues to act classy. Kristine and (I think) Aimee serve up depressing spaghetti at the camp; Marisa cries into it. Tim sits down at the piano and the ovulation begins. Nicole talks about how "a lotta things just don't" impress her, beyond like the concept of couture clothing or in-ground pools, but that Tim, she finds, is awesome on the piano. He is, but we already knew that, but just in case, we watch that go on for a while. James jokes about how Tim won't be single for long after this display of greatness, and Nicole -- I loved this, the way she said it, made me like her more -- softly and sternly goes, "Easy." She interviews about how "everybody" is saying there's "a connection there," like in homeroom they are reading a note she passed herself on this very subject, and how Tim's a nice guy, "but I don't know what's going on..." Which: we all do, which is that you've been all over his jock for four weeks, in front of cameras, forcing the issue. And succeeding, for which I give you all props. They toast -- Tim still looks rough, he needs a nap -- and their champagne glasses have fist-sized strawberries floating in them, so classy, and then they watch the fireworks, and geek out, but I'm not going to make fun of that part, because it's awesome. James either gets choked up or his vocal cords are finally ready to give him a piece of their mind.
Heidi worries, in the yard, where she looks a Waldo amount of out-of-place (Aimee and Angela look totally at peace, of course) that she's still gotta pull somebody into the BR, which is all strategic for her, except for the foregone conclusion that Marisa's going home in a minute and everybody including people who've never heard of this show knows that. Based on Sean's input about POS, she says, she has to bring one cashier and one marketing person.
Translation: "What I mean is Marisa, plus whoever among the cult is most expendable and/or can talk a good game in the BR without indicting me for my awful, horrible management this week. Now let's pretend to discuss it until you're all fooled into thinking you have a voice or opinions of her own."
Everybody Else: "Forgive me for speaking out of turn, mistress, but what about Marisa and Aimee?"
Heidi: "I suppose we'll have to. Thanks for your input, this was a really good meeting."
Heidi asks what they could have done better, and Derek mentions the chicken suit, says he's joking, but he's only half joking, and more than anything this is canny socially, because he's saying this true thing as a joke at Marisa's expense, because his main issue here is A) being with Marisa all day and thus part of the problem with marketing, and B) being with Marisa all day and thus not in the Cult and not privy to their sneaky cult behavior, of which he's shown he's totally aware. Heidi says ultimately they're pretending to run businesses, and that Marisa's the only one she has to manage, because everybody else does whatever she says. And until this week I would say that everybody wins, then, because Heidi's always right, but this week she was wrong about, like, every single thing. Aimee is still stuck in that movie about the gay dudes on the mountain, talking about how the Fellowship must remain strong in the face of Sauron's army and that the team -- which is temporary and meaningless and will -- she explained earlier -- fall apart as a matter of course. Heidi's like, "So what everybody's saying is that if we don't throw Piggy off the cliffside right now without benefit of boardroom, we're going to be homeless forever?" Nobody even picks up the conch at this one, just nods sadly. She's gotta go, they've all decided, with the powers of their own free will and not because Heidi is actually Hannibal the Cannibal.
Exec Steve tells Trump that Kinetic's problem was marketing, and we cut to Marisa and Derek entering the mansion with their luggage. Trump totally rushes Steve out the door about how really helpful their meeting has been and how it's a great honor to meet with El Pavo Guapo himself. Downstairs, Angela feels a little weird about Andie holding the door open for her, and won't look her in the eye. Trump meets them in the dungeon and he's wearing a wicked shiny gold tie this week. His first question, who created the Paradise Pollo Bowl, is answered quickly by Heidi and Kristine herself; he calls it "your concoction," which I love, and Kristine tells him it was actually fabulous. Not in a rude way, but in a way where he's not going to get her to admit failure on this point alone. Sean asks if it would appeal to anybody, and she says yes, and Trump wonders if California fusion cuisine can turn you gay like a bathing suit can.
Aaron says that they won on price and quantity, so maybe there was a price point difference after all that we don't know about. Sean complains at Jenn, Kristine, and Aimee for not pushing product hard enough, and Aimee whines at him that when he was there, there weren't any customers, so he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. Considering Kinetic lost by around 19 units, she's right. I'm so sure he was there for hours and hours getting his nasty grease all over everything. Trump says, out of his ass, that they didn't push the product enough, and Aimee almost yells that she did. Jenn points out the obvious fact that the problem was traffic, meaning marketing, meaning shut up about Sean's useless and incorrect viceroying, and they...do! Yay, Jenn! I like your hair now.
So the Marisa trap is set. The only way she's getting out of this is by shifting POS, delegation, and product over to Heidi. That's a hat trick but very possible. Unless you are Marisa, and then it's impossible, because you are crazy and suffering from extremely annoying logorrhea. Like so: "To be clear, Mr. Trump, I had a great idea, a thinking outside the box, big idea, which was ultimately shot down early on." (The "ultimately"/"early on" thing she did there is [sic], of course.) Play proceeds to the left.
Marisa: "Chicken suits, chicken suits, chicken suits."
Heidi: "Fuck your chicken suits."
Sean: "Arrow made it seem like a chicken party."
Marisa: "I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm going to, for the rest of this episode, between every word, like the biggest asshole to ever play this game."
Sean: "Your restaurant looked like every other day in a restaurant."
Heidi: "Right? That's called marketing."
Trump: "Marisa, Marisa, Marisa: Who shot you down?"
Marisa: "Everybody I've ever met in my entire life! I am a victim of a right-wing conspiracy! How can chicken suits be a problem when the brand already has the dignity inherent in being called THE CRAZY CHICKEN? How am I crapping on the brand with that?"
Jacob: "Good point, actually."
Derek: "Hee, hee."
Marisa: "They shot down my big idea! My grandiose idea!"
Heidi: Obnoxious face, sadly appropriate sense of superiority.
Muna: "I'm not in the cult so I don't know the party line, but here's the thing. Marisa is awesome and smart, no lie. She is unable to listen to anything. She has already interrupted both Trump and Sean several times. She also balks like a maniac when things don't go her way, which is all the time, because she is a font of bad ideas. All of them having to do with chicken suits and the word Bravado."
Trump: "I..."
Marisa: " Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump!"
Trump: "SHUT IT. I am defending you."
Muna: "She's not a great team player."
Marisa: "That's just because I stubbornly counteract every decision the group makes, am repetitive, have no conversational etiquette, and chicken suit chicken suit chicken suit chicken suit chicken suit chicken suit chicken suit!"
Trump, verbatim: "Marisa. Shut up."
Aaron says, in a friendly way, that Marisa seems to have a leg to stand on, "guys," and Heidi snorts gorgeously: "I don't think that we lost because we didn't have a chicken in front of our restaurant." (She's wrong by being right: it's exactly what they needed.) Marisa whines and bitches and moans, and Heidi finally snaps at her, pretty loudly, that she's lying about not having a forum to express her thoughts. Considering that's apparently all she did, I see Heidi's frustration. Heidi feigns a migraine and mentions that cell phones were invented for more than just saying the words "chicken suit" over and over, and then...Marisa says the words "chicken suit" over and over, causing her to laugh beautifully. Aimee and Kristine tell Trump that Marisa needs constant monitoring -- true, and if she didn't, she'd demand it anyway -- and that while her ideas are good, so are everybody else's, and at some point you need to chill. Derek -- still giggling -- says Marisa's out of there, and Aimee calls her a "distraction." Marisa interrupts everybody to say how she "wasn't a distraction last week," when I presume something happened, though I don't remember exactly what happened, and Heidi is long-suffering some more, but finally gets mad, as Marisa goes on, and on, and on, and on.
Aimee and Marisa shout at each other for a million years, and Marisa floats the idea that she's getting screwed by the Unofficial Alliance We Don't Talk About, and Muna shrieks, "What?" which means she's either in on it or paranoid about it. Marisa calls this BR an AMBUSH! And, not for nothing, but everybody else on the team freezes. Heidi names her two people, Marisa and Aimee, and Derek gets very wild-eyed, and Trump sends them back to camp, and they all look totally freaked out. Oh, you know what? This is their first boardroom, I didn't even think about that. That makes all of this make so much more sense. Did you think about that? Wow.
Outside, the three ladies are studiously not looking at each other, and inside, Sean is as usual making appeals to nowhere, talking about how he loves Marisa's "spirit" and she seems like a "strong person," and he "likes her passion." All the things, I guess, that attracted him to Tammy. HA! Trump's like, "But they really, really hate her!" and Aaron points out that, as a sales guy, he's wondering about the sales part: "I can't tell from Heidi who was in charge of sales." NINETEEN BOWLS, smartass. This isn't a sales failure, it's a management failure via the marketing failure, and the only reason Aimee's coming back at all is to shut Sean up. I get that you're a sales guy and I appreciate that about you, I always admire that ability and brainworks, but this isn't about you this time.
Back in, Trump talks about Marisa's spirit, and how Heidi was the loser PM this week. She points out their huge number of wins as well, being as unsmug as you can saying that stuff. He asks why Aimee is there, and she says it's because Aimee was at the window, and doesn't elaborate, smartly. She says if Sean's so into the sales portion, she would have brought all three register workers in but she didn't, and makes it very clear that Aimee was not "in charge" of sales per se. Which is jus brilliant, because it makes Aimee a plausible-deniability pawn: she's not blatantly there to screw Marisa over, but you can't point any specific fingers at her either. I really do like Heidi an awful lot. They talk about how Aimee is a good salesperson and how she's only there because Sean said it, but don't point out that his vapid ass only said that because he couldn't think of anything else to say, and because he was there at a useless time to actually be a Viceroy. Trump needles Aaron to say something, laughing that he's being too quiet, and Aaron's like, "What?" Heidi continues to laugh at Marisa with the chicken crap, and Marisa takes offense, even though she's asking for it at this point, and Trump points out that she's unanimously the team's pick to leave. She yells about chickens, and he fires her. That's how it goes. Heidi -- again, the "first boardroom" thing makes everything make more sense -- struggles to get her composure back as they leave, thanking Trump and ignoring Marisa altogether.
Trump says it wasn't easy, that it was tough, that he liked her spirit, some more, and Sean and Aaron -- this part was totally gross -- crawl all over each other to agree with him, even though the sum total of their input was about sales, which didn't signify, about how there was "no other choice," and "at the end of the day" and this kind of ass-licking nonsense, and Trump is satisfied: "I had no choice."
Aimee's scared to come down the stairs while Marisa's getting in car, and she and Heidi watch her leave. Marisa's sad, in the car, and finally Heidi and Marisa go home to the yard. Heidi's loss, totally, but I'm glad she didn't get cobra'd; the final way this show was right by being wrong. It's so fascinating. week: the Apprenti are menaced by killer bees. I'm not fucking kidding.
Limousine of Grief:
"I definitely think we would have won if they'd listened." True.
"El Pavo Guapo has a chicken mascot as part of their brand." True.
"If the chickens were there, coupled with Derek and I, and our aggressive street marketing campaign, we would have won." I...lost track of your statement before you finished the sentence. Let's say true.
"So unfortunately, that's the thing I'm most heartbroken about." Doubtful, unless you were raised in a plastic bubble. Take six months for some perspective, then do an interview with Roxanne demonstrating your continued lack of perspective.
What we learn from this is simple, but we've already talked about it a million times before. If you feel like you're getting frozen out of the proceedings, chances are that you are. The hard part, the bad news, is that you also have to understand that this is your fault, and that it's your responsibility to demonstrate flexibility and solve THAT problem, instead of continuing to behave the way that got you iced in the first place. This is a question without an answer, because anybody who's capable of being that logical or smart about it in the first place would already know this, so whatever. Don't be a dick, and if you are being a dick already, no amount of evidence has convinced you not to, so the chances of any of us having an effect are slim to none. At least try to be as beautiful as Marisa, because at this point all she's got are her smarts and her looks -- which is a hell of a lot to work with. The victim mentality and inability to change or work with people is the mango in the chicken of Marisa that makes it all so bleak. Find your mango and toss it out, please. It's only slowing you down.