Usually when a Project Manager wanders around like an outpatient, staring into space, licking cement, talking to nobody, and absent-mindedly scratching his or her ass -- as both Aaron and Aimee apparently did for the entirety of this task -- it upsets me. But this week? They both get the pass. I spent most of the episode doing the same thing. In a series of unrelated tasks, mistakes, narrative dead ends, and bizarre non sequiturs, the team have to...accomplish something. The steps that they must take to accomplish this thing, whatever it might be, include: wearing space suits, getting stung by bees, taking a field trip to a factory and a Ralph's, and possibly pouring honey on themselves like Ivana of the Undies.
While both teams are in the weeds the entire sales part of the task, a couple of last-minute maneuvers -- Derek in a beekeeper costume and Angela finally trading on her Olympic prowess as it, I guess, relates to bees -- put Kinetic over the top for no real reason. The music would have you believe it's a triumph. I'm just glad Kinetic is getting back in the house, because Arrow deserves nothing.
The mysterious prep, cryptic task, and uncategorizable reward all take exactly 23 of the show's 42 minutes total, so the rest is boardroom. Normally that would be good and ugly, but this week...it's more of the same: weird, bland, unending, pointless. Surya is brought back to the BR (for being kind of sucky and whiny), and is joined by Nicole (for indulging Tim's weird/moronic attempt to repeat their "bulk sales" success from last week by trying to sell jars of honey to gas station attendants) but eventually it's PM Aaron who gets the boot -- because he didn't speak up enough last week in the boardroom. Or something. I'm honestly at a loss here, guys. I know some things happened, because I laughed and pointed at the screen a lot, but it's all kind of a blur.
Stars this week include Stefani, whose apiphobia stops her from doing absolutely nothing, Aaron, who went home rightly but for the wrong reason, Donald Trump, who is out of his goddamn mind, and Derek, who managed once again to turn a few seconds of screentime, a couple of bee stings, and a Pillsbury Doughboy reference into box office gold. The guy could not love being on reality TV more if this show were still actually relevant. week: Tim kisses Nicole; everybody barfs; somebody probably gets fired.
Previously, Arrow finally won with Surya and Aaron's leadership; Aaron and Tim got shirtless and frolicked in the mansion pool; Viceroy Aaron didn't talk in the boardroom, and Heidi was pretty some more.
Derek stands in the yard lookin' great with Jen and Muna, and possibly his buddy Kristine, discussing Heidi's chances of making it out alive from last week's boardroom; he thinks she'll have a tough time pinning the loss on Marisa, unless she can convince Trump and the Viceroys that they lost due to Marisa's chicken-suiting madness. Angela nods. I really like her. Kristine worries that if Heidi doesn't come back, they'll be stuck with Aimee and Marisa, and Derek agrees that would suck. They wait and wait, and in the boardroom Trump says that all of Kinetic wants Marisa gone, so she's gone. In this revised version of events from last week, Marisa takes this news quietly -- just like she didn't, in reality. Aimee comes into the yard and Kinetic pretends to be excited, but then once Heidi comes around the corner everybody shrieks and surrounds her like she's Tippi Hedren. Heidi interviews how intense it was to be in the boardroom as a loser, and reiterates that Marisa is nobody she'd hire in real life, then tells her team that she's probably grown "like seventy gray hairs" during the grueling process of listening to Marisa and Aimee bitch at each other with tiny little canary feathers peeking from her lovely, smug little mouth. She notes that Aaron said nothing the entire time, as Trump pointed out a few times.
Kinetic then overhears Arrow cheering Aaron's return from the boardroom, and they yell back and forth over the hedge. That part was pretty cute. Heidi was like, "Doesn't being Viceroy suck? Aren't these rules stupid?" and then apologizes for interrupting Arrow's dinner and wine, and tells them to get back to it. Aaron talks at length about how the boardroom went down, focusing on Trump's complaints that he was too quiet, so that's three times in two minutes we're hearing about it, so the whole rest of this episode just made itself wildly clear. "You just don't wanna put your neck on the line for anything," he says, which is clearly the final nail in his coffin. Credits.
So, um, Aaron's going to get fired this week for not talking last week, I don't know if you got that memo. I can see that -- the whole yucky fusion bowl issue was really just collateral to Heidi's fuck-up, and that's how Arrow really won. And even on their side, all the good ideas were Tim and Stefani. But I like him, a lot. However much "there" is there, and I don't think it's a huge amount, he's very nice and a smart guy, and he is pretty okay to look at. And compared to the rest of Arrow, I mean...
Everybody heads to the Trump Mansion door in their cute summer clothes. Upstairs, there's a fake moment where Trump fakely informs Viceroy Sean (I was promised Ivanka this season, people!) that he's going out of town on fake business and Sean should take care of things. Sean wiggles all over and sniffs some ass, and then they go downstairs, where Trump addresses the teams. He starts out by mentioning how Aaron didn't speak last night in the boardroom, so that's FOUR, and Aaron tries desperately to spin it, with a huge smile. "I tried to let you take the lead, sir," he says, and Trump indicates in his toadlike way that this was a bad choice and even worse explanation, then moves on to the task talk. It goes like this. California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, which is crazy because it's a state and not even a country, and one of the things California produces is honey. Derek makes a great "Oh...yeah?" face to this. One of the biggest "honeymakers" is Sue Bee, who honeys up forty million pounds a year. So the task is that they are going to harvest some Sue Bee honey, bottle it, and then sell it at Ralph's, lemonade-stand style. There is literally no reason for the harvesting part, and only tenuously is there a reason for the bottling part, but whatever: the task's going to be over in about ten minutes anyway. Derek and Stefani are not happy about the bee part of this plan. Trump stomps off on fake business; Sean's horrible face is right there on the front of his head where it always is.
Bees! Team Arrow drives to the apiary in their van; Nicole stares gape-mouthed out the window, while Stefani freaks out completely. She interviews cutely that she's scared out of her wits: "We're about to go and harvest honey from the bee farm and um...I'm going to get into a spacesuit and pray to god they don't sting me to death!" You can tell she's actually scared to death, but she's still just so charming. They tape her into her beekeeper suit and she talks about how scared she is of bees, and how horrible it is to contemplate being on the other side of a thin white sheet of plastic from a billion swarming, stinging bees. Dude, I hate bees. We went to Shady Creek once and sat outside, and this bee got obsessed with the ketchup bottle and we were getting weird about it and the waitress was like, "What's up?" And we said, "Scary bee, make it go away somehow," and she smiled this shit-eating grin and goes, "Beeeeee careful!" And I almost kicked her.
As the team heads into the bee habitat -- which looks like a bunch of filing cabinets in the middle of the desert, crawling with bees -- even the camera has a beekeeper's veil over it. The bee-wrangler guy tells Arrow that bees can smell fear and that they will go kill-crazy if they detect it, so everybody should not be afraid. Frank keeps going, "Are you noticing how more and more bees are showing up for every second we stand here?" And Stefani, adorably, says under her breath, "Shut up, Frankie." Frank's growing on me little by little, but dude I love Stefani. The bee man explains about how they should get smoke up in their little bee grills, and I always wondered about that, so we get to learn something, which is that the smoke makes the bees think there's a fire, which causes them to "start gorging on honey," which keeps them distracted. Which is kind of...horrible, in terms of yelling "fire" in a crowded apiary and sending the bees into a panic. But you know what else is abusive, is how bees will totally sting you for no fucking reason. ["Even after they're dead, which the bottom of my foot and I can tell you from resentful experience." -- Sars] Advantage bees, but not by much. Of course, Stefani is right up at the head of the line dealing with the bees, because she is awesome, cracking the box open, smoking the hives out, doing it all without even like a pronounced shake. She interviews that the bees are "absolutely insane" but that she's just going to her happy place. Frank interviews that she was magnificent and awesome, like a beekeeping unicorn early in the morning mist, and then they all leave. Stefani's adrenaline continues to babble on her behalf even as Arrow's bouncing: "Not a problem. Bees are my friends." Man, if bees were your friends for real, you'd be like the most powerful person. Imagine that!
Arrow heads to the Sue Bee factory, where Surya makes a total effing nuisance of himself almost immediately, lecturing the team about how we do branding and marketing. "Who is the honey consumer?" Surya asks. "What is the household penetration of honey?" Surya asks. He interviews -- at LENGTH -- about how this is literally his job, packaging and branding, and how he has to attend packaging meetings every Friday morning, and how this is what he does for a living. And while I'm sure that's true, did you know you are surrounded by adults that have their own interesting lives and areas of expertise? And that maybe from your little life perspective, nobody but you knows about packaging, but if you were able to de-dorkify yourself for three seconds you'd stop being such a prig about it? I hate that "this is what I do for a living!" mentality so, so much. You're just putting a big X over everybody's mouth at that point: establishing the rules of the conversation such that nobody else is allowed to voice an opinion, because you're the expert. That's the only reason people say that shit, and because they find themselves utterly fascinating, but that's not how grownups work. Particularly if what follows is not completely genius. Which in this case, it's not. "It's called a First Moment Of Truth, the first minute that somebody sees something they'll form an immediate impression," Surya explains. "I think it needs to incorporate versatility somehow," Surya also explains. Sean gets more and more bored, and more and more hostile, as this goes on.
Surya is...basically reading from a New Management Techniques three-ring binder he got at some seminar, that's all he's doing. All these buzzwords and whatever. It's nice to be able to retrieve that information, and display it, but that is not the task. But since it feels good to say these words, and he can convince himself that he's actually adding value to the conversation, he's never going to stop. Add to this the fact that he's already established that he's the only one with the authority to do this, and you have the truth: Surya is now de facto in charge of marketing on this task, even if it's really just a Congressional filibuster in the guise of brainstorming, but what it really is, is ego. Which is how every task in the history of this show is lost, because this is what happens when you put business people (type-A achievers) and reality TV people (showoffs, attention-cravers and the desperately needy) into a Venn diagram: too much tell, not enough show.
"There are Benefits...Under Benefits, you have 'RTBs': Reasons To Believe." IN HONEY? You want to show the versatility of HONEY? He's literally just reading this back from the three-ring binder of his mind. It's so stupid and obnoxious. "Reasons To Believe, yeah, I mean, there are two barriers to purchase: we get the versatility angle, and the product benefits for this..." Aaron rolls his eyes. I have no idea what the hell Surya's talking about. The barriers to purchase are as follows: nobody eats that much honey, so everybody's got a three-year-old bottle of honey in their house, and are not looking to buy more. The only Reason To Believe in play here is the one about needing a Reason To Believe that the surplus honey already in your house is somehow not enough honey. There is no Reason To Believe that. Similarly, the Versatility Angle on honey is nonexistent: honey has no reason to be versatile, because honey is very good at what it does, which is being honey, which everyone knows how to operate properly (you eat it, with your mouth) and which doesn't leave a lot of room for either error or versatility. Honey's not good for anything other than what you're using it for. Now, if you can sell me that honey is good for other purposes, like pouring all over Jenn Hoffman's face, maybe that's a Reason To Believe that the amount of surplus honey in my house is not a good enough amount of honey. However, in my personal case that is not going to happen, because there is already a perfect amount of honey in my house, that perfect amount being ZERO, because I hate honey and I think it tastes gross, and it comes out of animals I similarly hate, and I don't want to support their lifestyle of stinging me whenever they feel like it.
Oh, Surya's still talking. Well, "talking," I guess. "You've got RTBs: it's solid. What channels are they sold in? Is it direct-to-consumer? Is it internet?" I don't know what the hell he's talking about. James clears his throat: "What relevance does that have with our task?" Surya explains that asking irrelevant questions and talking out of your ass for hours and hours is relevant because it "helps us form our, like, Unique Selling Proposition." James stares at Surya and watches this filth coming out of his mouth. I got a Unique Selling Proposition for you right here: It goes, "Wanna buy some honey? Please buy some honey because I'm on a game show."
James interviews that Surya is a dumb-dumb who is overcomplicating everything to feed the horrible beast inside him that desperately needs to show off and snow everybody on the team with a hailstorm of pointless and meaningless jargon into thinking that he knows what he's talking about. And to beeeeee fair, half of Arrow is probably that stupid. Aaron starts wandering around like an outpatient, and James finally goes, "To me? It's like, making some honey, and go sell it, and make as much money as we can." Surya doesn't even skip a beat: "That's revenue maximization." I wanted to punch him so bad right then, but James has it covered: "...You mean making money?"
Kinetic. At the factory, Aimee and Jen are working on marketing while the rest of the team harvests their batch of honey. The bees go after Derek hardcore because he's so sweet, and he hops around and gets stung and is very funny about it. Five seconds later, they drive back to the factory, where Aimee and Jenn have apparently done nothing whatsoever. Muna and Derek discuss signage in the van, and Derek interviews about how confused the team was to come back to the PM to learn that she had done absolutely nothing whatsoever while they were very far away getting stung by bees. As they walk in, Aimee immediately goes, "We had to hold off on marketing because we needed to name the honey, and...that's kind of where we're at." This would be the part where you knock her down and take the conch, you know? Angela makes this awesome face that goes, "Are you fucking kidding me with this?" Kristine interviews that the entire beekeeper escapade took four hours. Four hours! "You're the PM, step up!" They should have stayed in contact with Aimee while they were gone, I guess. She says some dumb names for honey and they all agree on a name I really like: BEE MORE. You can see the brand stuff they're going for here, and even though the show doesn't really let us in, I'm guessing everything that happens later arises from this concept, like having Angela hawking it as a superior athlete and whatever, but the way it's edited, you get no sense of the branding by either team, which is supposed to be the entire point of the task itself, but what, I'm going to bitch because this show is suddenly stupid? Kristine interviews some more about how Aimee did NOTHING, after they were expecting a full marketing campaign when they got back, and makes the faces of trepidation: "It's a complete disaster."
Arrow at the factory, where they belong, are on an assembly line: Surya is Maintaining The Bottles' Vertical Alignment, Frank is the QA Manager on Labeling/Mucilage Stickiness And Integrity, and Tim is doing Honey Implementation and Product/Bottle Integration. I don't know what Stefani is doing and I'm damn sure Aaron's wandering around stupidly, and then Nicole is wearing a hairnet and looking like hell some more. Tim keeps fucking up somehow and the honey is going all over the place rather than in the bottles, and Frank's awkwardly giving him hell about it, and interviews that "There was definitely no honey-bottling class at Harvard," so I guess he's still insecure about that, and they yell at each other for a million years and the Sue Bee workers stare at them in wonderment, and Nicole laughs stupidly and desperately tries to involve herself in the scuffle, and they scream and jump around and push each other and Nicole interviews about how it was "so cute" and Aaron stares blankly as they show off for the cameras in a stupid and giddy -- but marginally appealing -- fashion. Nicole swears that this is probably the funniest thing she's ever seen, which whatever, and she says maybe that instead of being a gross mismanagement of time and lapse in maturity, really what it does is prove that Arrow Corporation "can have a good time no matter what the situation is" and that it "just shows that we're happy people in general." No, what it shows is that you're all emotional retards that are never going to be invited to my honey factory because you cannot be trusted. Surya stands around smiling and feeling left out and looking desperately needy, and the yelling goes on and on, and then Tim says something about how Frank is stupid and ugly, for real, and I think his feelings get hurt.
Commercial, in which Trump asks which of these five people should be fired or whatever, except four of them are on Arrow, which is blatantly stupid in terms of telegraphing Arrow's loss, which is how Aaron's firing is going to have to happen, so we already knew that anyway, but thanks for making it even more obvious, show.
Kinetic heads to Ralph's, and Muna immediately starts trying to figure out how to get the merchandise on the floor. Angela worries about the lack of posters or sales tables, and Heidi complains that there's no visible pricing, so nobody's going to know how much the honey costs, which, in a system like ours where you exchange money for goods or services, is always a nice touch. ["If you have to ask how much the honey costs, you can't afford it." -- Sars] Derek interviews that they have no direction and that Aimee is delegating nothing.
Cut to Aimee and Jenn wandering the store like they're on Robitussin. Aimee looks completely nuts, like a homeless grifter or the person sent out from the meth lab to bring back snacks.
Derek tells Muna they've gotta get their shit together.
Aimee and Jenn wander around pointlessly. Jenn breaks off and wanders away and Aimee murmurs, "...I'm gonna watch the cart..." It's like watching someone deal with GHB. In a supermarket, which always makes me feel like I'm on drugs anyway.
Muna shifts into hyper-Muna mode and yells about how "If the honey is still in a box downstairs how are you going to sell the honey?"
Aimee stares into space and plays with her hair, which is getting matted and crazier-looking by the second.
Outside, Heidi and Angela are hanging up a big poster that says TODAY IS HONEY DAY! Which is just adorable for some reason.
Aimee yawns and heads back the way she just came.
Derek and Muna load out the honey from the trucks in the back, while Muna screams about "What is the priority?!"
Aimee approaches the team finally stacking their honey in a big hutch or end cap, and says blearily, "...I gotta take care of...making some coffee?"
Derek and Kristine laugh hysterically once she's gone, and Kristine whispers the very salient and scary fact that if God forbid they win, Aimee stays PM. Derek chuckles and is like, "I didn't even think about that!"
Arrow heads to Ralph's with their honey; Stefani immediately starts doing her whole patter thing like on the bus tour, just completely charming people left and right. Elsewhere, James and Frank do their usual great selling, although Frank hugs a person, which I don't think I would enjoy having happen to me. Stefani interviews that they were moving the bottles three at a time, and all the customers were happy, and she was having a fun time and doing what she does best...until Surya salted her game! About halfway through the sales period, he wanders into her little area and starts interrupting and trying to take control. "Stefani, tell her about your experience with the honey!" and shit like that. Man, I've never hit hate this fast on this show. I mean, I thought he was boring and pointless, but he's really aggressively annoying this week. So she's like, "He was kind of messing with my flow," and we watch him mess with her flow for a good long while, and she's just standing there like, "Dude."
Since Tim added value last week with the bulk Pavo Guapo sales, he decides to try that again. Nicole offers to go with him, of course, and complains the entire way out of the store that her makeup isn't fresh and she wanted it to be fresh for the sales call. And I'm sorry, but the makeup is not the problem, and also stop fishing for compliments. Tim interviews that she is great and attractive and whatever, they work well together. How well? They take a box full of jars of honey to a bunch of gas stations. Counterintuitive doesn't even cover it. I have no idea what the hell Tim is thinking here.
The first guy tells them to leave or he's going to shoot them in their stupid faces, but admits that if her makeup had been fresher, he would have totally bought honey for his gas station. The second guy begs them to leave because he's not empowered to make those decisions, and the third place -- a bakery, which actually does make sense -- tells them no way. Tim raises Aaron on the walkie and tells him that they're striking out. Meaning that of everyone, Tim and Nicole took a vacation to Stupidland and contributed nothing. Remember last week when the bulk sales trip was a "gamble" and Aaron was scared to death that giving up manpower on a sales task was a bad idea? Are these people's attention spans that short? Really?
Back at the Arrow Ralph's, Aaron wanders around in a very Aimee way, and finally Stefani just hands him a tray of fruit and honey samples and tells him to go sell some honey and stop gawping: "You've got the face for it." I wish I knew why Aaron and Aimee are so egregiously useless this week? I know it's not editing, because both in real time and in the interviews they're blowing everybody's minds. It's like they're being poisoned or something, I swear. Mercury in their food, or something. They're just completely out of it. And if you told me that was going on, I'd name Aaron as the first suspect, but he's one of the victims, so who knows what's going on. I'd say low-level anaphylactic shock from the bees, except I don't think Aaron went to the apiary and I know Aimee didn't, because she was too busy already acting like this at that time. And also: duh. Aaron's got the face for ANYTHING. I would buy ANYTHING from that face. Get your ass on the floor and start selling.
Aaron whines about how he hates sales, and Stefani's like, "You are IN sales," and he says that's why he's bitching: "I do it every day!" Cobra, right then. The fuck you say? Stefani interviews that basically she had to manage Aaron. "What was he doing? I don't know..." Elsewhere, Sean is grilling the normally vociferous James about Aaron's "management style," and James tries to figure out how to say "hang loose, dude" in a way that flatters Aaron. It's incredibly awkward when he says "...laid...back?" and Sean looks at him like an insect. Hilarious act-out on Aaron, standing in front of an empty table, staring into space, shuffling first one direction and then the other, and then wandering abruptly in a different direction. It's like when you're watching local news and they cut to a field anchor or the weatherman and he doesn't know it. Only the empty green-screen with nothing on it is Aaron's mind.
Aimee drunkenly offers some customers honey; Angela whispers about how scary she's acting, Kristine gets frightened because there's no traffic and all their stations are dead, and...Derek for the win! He straps himself into that lumpy beekeeper suit and wanders around the store with a basket of honey, talking about the Pillsbury Dough Boy and giggling and doing little dance moves. Dude, if I wasn't already crushin', this would have been it for me. It takes some kind of awesome to strap yourself into a getup that violently unflattering and attempt to put your sales foot forward. Love it. He sells a billion bottles of honey, shows one couple where he got stung, it's cute, another kid buys a bottle or three just because of the hilarious bee suit. I totally wish raves still existed; I would get a beekeeper outfit so fast! Meanwhile, Angela is also rocking out, sitting at a table that says BEE MORE and mentioning her Gold Medalist status. Angela is my boyfriend secondary to Derek, I can't wait to see her face-front. A cute girl in a Mohawk buys Olympic honey, and Derek interviews how "despite the fact that Aimee was a crappy manager," they pulled it out. He's not sure if their sad start will pull them back too much to win, but he knows they went out with a bang. Kinetic does a hands-in; Aimee can barely stand.
Into the boardroom! Kinetic's in t-shirts; Derek's still wearing his bee suit. Sean calls Trump on the phone, where he's fakely delivering a speech to Minnesota or something about how "if you don't love what you do, you'll never ever be successful," which is just so insightful, and there's cheering, and a sign that says, "Trump For President," which is enough to send me into a dystopic coma, and when he answers his phone, all of Minneapolis screams, "SEAN!" Or maybe they don't, because this is stupid. He tells Sean that they're on the phone with 20,000 people in Minnesota, and "we're doing this together." He explains to Minnesota about the bee stuff, calling them "killer" bees for some reason, and gets the totals from Sean. Arrow sold 217 bottles for a total of $775.48 (unit price around $3.50) and Kinetic wins: 345 bottles (for a dollar less) totaling $836.58. Kinetic cheers, Minnesota cheers, Aaron looks gassy, Derek giggles some more. Trump gives Minnesota some love and the camera lingers on the "Trump For President" sign way too long. Is that serious? Is this a serious edit thing? That would be so fucking marvelous if he ran for president again. Man.
"Kinetic, let me tell you about another winning team: the L.A. Lakers." He fudges that they've won 14 NBA championships, "more than anybody else," but weren't a lot of those when they were on a different team, in another state? And was that state not Minnesota? And isn't mentioning them -- and co-opting their championships -- kind of gauche to do in Minnesota? I don't even know what sport they play, I think the "beeeeeee" in "NBA" stands probably for "basketball"; that's my educated guess. I don't know anything about sports, who knows what the etiquette is. You could tell me literally anything under the sun about sports, I'd believe you. "Jacob, did you know that in hockey, at halftime, they line up and do a dance in their skates, on the ice, and that lots of highly regarded players are actually not that great at hockey, but command huge salaries anyway just for the flash they add to that twinkling, magical halftime show?" I'd be like, "See, this is why I have questions about Canada." So anyway, they're going to go to the Lakers training center and play some sport or another with the Lakers, and Kinetic is getting back into the mansion, and Aimee is now the PM and Viceroy in perpetuity, and Aaron's getting fired, which we already knew. He makes a face like he's having a stroke or something that has rendered him a moron.
Arrow packs up, leaving the house FILTHY as usual, and Frank sings a dumb song about the campsite, and Tim and Nicole whatever, and Frank interviews that it was like they'd just rented a hotel for the night, basically. And Nicole comes ever closer to explaining exactly why I so violently hate her: "It makes me hate camp so much more knowing what the other team gets! Knowing the luxuries on the other side, and we're living like dogs over here! Seriously, it's not even funny anymore! It's got to end. We have to win! ARGH!" She's so obsessed with bitching about this instead of manning up and dealing with it, but there's a little message behind it when she talks that has to do with the confusion she seems to have about how to excel. Like, whether or not they live in the house, it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with her team's performance on the task, or her own performance on the task: it's just like something that happens to them at random. Which is a kind of addict way to be. I'm not saying she's an addict -- or anything so interesting, by any stretch -- but I just have a deep mistrust of people who demonstrate a pattern of thinking this way. "I hate it outside because I am jealous of the other team! My jealousy is a stronger goad to perform well than any kind of innate need to excel! I am motivated by pettiness and too stupid to keep quiet about it!"
Meanwhile these "Lakers" have to do with somebody named Phil Jackson, and a man whose name is James, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who I didn't know was a real person. I thought he was just, like, Slimer or something. A fictional player of sports that showed up in cartoons or on Gilligan's Island. Oh MAN! Are the Harlem Globetrotters real? Do they still exist? I so want to go see them play sports or do whatever they do. Do they sing? I'm not clear on what they do. Sometimes it involves basketball, sometimes they travel through time and space. Whatever it is, I am in.
Sorry, so the Lakers and Laker Girls, who I remember from before and also Paula Abdul, clap for them, and there are some other people, players, two assistant coaches, and Phil Jackson gives a speech about teamwork, and then they dribble and pass the basketball, and those are all the words I know from basketball, there are hoops and squeaking on the floor, and some lady watches them play against the Lakers, or rather, "some Lakers and some other people," and I don't know if they're doing well, but I imagine that they are not. How do you keep your eye on the ball when it moves so fast? Sports, wow. Aimee picks her head up off the ground long enough to tell us how "amazing" it was to play the sports with the sports players, and how they had almost forgotten how to win after the last two tasks, but now they remember that it is: good.
At the Routine Fireside, Tim is lying on Nicole's ass, and Surya is telling everybody about how he's such a huge Lakers fan, it's like his career, so nobody else can love the Lakers as much as he does, don't even try it. No, wait, that was Tim talking, so whatever. Lose the Surya joke. Or keep it, actually, because he sucks. Stefani welcomes him to "the wonderful world of boardroom anticipation," and he drinks deeply of his personal drama. I cannot effing wait until his ass gets canned.
There's a weird echo on the crow of the cock as morning dawns; Frank cooks as James explains to him how he's going to have to "think about a lot today," because tonight he'll be fighting for his life. Aaron is...boring. James tells us how the boardroom is kill or be killed, you have to "go in fighting" and be "fierce" and "proactive" and Aaron's going to have to "go for the kill" and he also, per James, needs to kill the kill-kill killer kill of killing. Aaron and Tim look unbearably hot through this whole part, I should say. Aaron tells Tim that at least Surya is coming back for sure, because of the whole "I'm all about branding" part of his behavior. And I completely agree. By setting himself up as the expert and then refusing to say anything of worth, Surya has created a lose/lose situation for everybody, because he's going to feel like his ideas were unheard (when what they were, were not ideas) and thus he was not responsible for anything, while Aaron correctly feels like Surya claimed ownership of that part of the task, and then didn't perform. Now, this is all inside the box of Aaron's poor management, but it's a more even choice than they have been. Both Aaron and Surya deserve to be fired this week.
Actually, you know what? No. Frankly, Tim and Nicole screwed them. It was a sales task and they ran off. They meant to help, it didn't end up helping, but either way they lost manpower. Marketing was not at issue here: once you're in the store, your marketing is restricted to traffic, basically, barring outside signage (which we don't know if they had that) or off-site marketing (which neither team did, as far as we know) -- it becomes about salesmanship at that point. And now, again, this is inside the box of Aaron's poor leadership. So Aaron deserves to go home, which we already know he's going to, but for the wrong reason -- his quietness in the BR last week -- which pisses me off, especially since on the purely surface level we're losing someone who is AWESOME to look at in favor somebody that grows more annoying with each passing second, and whom even the show seems to kind of hate.
Nicole horses around about how it's Surya's first boardroom, like he needs the encouragement to dwell in the drama, and he interviews that it's a "complete unknown," which is not really true, and Nicole thinks that she, Tim, and Surya are under the heaviest fire. Which she's right about, and which is also correct as to the assignment of blame. Surya immediately starts complaining about how Aaron did such a shitty job and that while he's charismatic, he has a lack of leadership, and basically winding himself up into a self-aggrandizing tizzy, which is so ugly to watch a person do. He interviews the good old "popularity contest" defense, that they're going to gang up on him because they gel as a group and he's an outsider -- which is not only not a problem, and pertains to the actual real world as a fact you need to get right with, but is also in this case entirely his doing -- and explains this worry to Derek. "You think they're going to sell you out?" Well, that and the fact that you sabotaged the task and wasted a bunch of time showing off in the mistaken delusion that people would be impressed. "It was Aaron's fault!" he insists, and sends Derek over to tell Aimee about the impending possible team-up. Which is like, I hate any conversation or concept that goes through that many filters, because it's really loss-y, especially when Surya has a vested interest in his own blamelessness. So basically we're three or four neurotic layers away from whatever actually happened, but everybody's going to behave as though their personal understanding of it were correct, which is going to lead Surya to act like a complete jackass crybaby, and Aimee to act like a dickwad in front of God and everybody. "I will be fair, but I won't let them ambush him because they're tight as a team," she says distractedly: "I will not let him go down." A laudable sentiment, to be sure, but why is she addressing it to a half-full glass of fruit juice on which she's drawn a crude representation of a human face?
Trump goes irrelevant with a quickness about how much the team loved Surya last week (they didn't) and thought he was the reason they won (they didn't), but now all of a sudden (it isn't), they're turning on him. "I see this so often with life: when you win, everybody loves everybody, but when you lose..." Eh, shut up. You're going to the well and the well is dry this week, old man. Aimee says Surya's done phenomenally with marketing tasks in the past (this was only nominally a marketing task, by the way) and that she's bucking for him, because she's seen what he can accomplish. Which we spent the last two weeks seeing firsthand, and it was not pretty. Trump points out to Aaron how Aimee is being "so tough," and I think Aaron kind of drastically misreads the situation, because he responds in a quasi-prurient way, which is not where Trump's at for the first time in history.
What Trump's Saying: "She has bigger balls than you. I am going to fire you in a second."
What Aaron's Hearing: "It's kinda sexy when women boss you around, no?"
He immediately recovers and simply says he can respect that approach, which is awesome of him, because it puts in place the point he never gets to make, which is that being a dick is just one of many ways of getting things done. Aimee talks a bunch more about how she's trying to be fair but just wants some answers and that she may well be "blunt" or "direct," but this is the price of dealing with Aimee. She is kind of making a fool of herself, but in a way where she looks good. Nicole pronounces this "respectable," and all of Arrow kind of collectively sighs and decides Aimee's not so bad. They did not see her wandering Ralph's in her pajamas, though. Nicole tells Trump that "based on what you're saying," and the obvious ribbing and complaining about Aaron that Trump's been doing since yesterday, she supposes that Aaron's the problem here. Again: so stupid that you say this out loud? "Well, I'm a spineless retard, but I know which way the wind's blowing, and without any factual basis I guess I'll just openly admit that I will do or say anything you want me to." Even Trump calls bullshit on this, but reminds everybody about how last week Aaron didn't say anything in the boardroom, one more time, and Aaron's finally like, "Look. I had no idea what you wanted from me, I didn't know how to navigate the scary fucking minefield of your, Trump's, sense of self and masculinity and authority, such that stepping all over your lines and barking orders is a very different proposition when a young, good-looking guy like myself does it, rather than this woman who seems to have drunk an entire bottle of cough syrup, because you secretly hate young, good-looking men like myself and less-secretly think all women are just a little stupid and below the radar of your broken American manhood issues. So, like, should I have done that, and gotten axed tonight, or should I have said nothing like a pussy -- like Sean has been doing since birth -- and just hoping not to get Catch-22'd by this new stupid rule?"
Sean nods sagely, disappointed by this stance: "Just to be yourself. Just be yourself, that's all we wanted." BARF! I hate him so much! "We" don't want anything! You're a PROP! A British sleazeball prop with a face like a cat's anus. You are not anything to Trump, you have no authority in this room or any other room, and every word you say underlines your total pathos. Trump's like, "Yeah, 'we' wanted that. You don't have to be a total hard-ass like Aimee -- who by the way needs to chill the hell out considering last boardroom her ass came close to getting fired -- but you needed to man up." Aimee's whole vibe goes clattering to the floor, and he apologizes; she assures him that she sees where he's coming from. Really what he just did was say, "I need you to do and be both everything and nothing at once, okay? That's not too much to ask? Because you know, Aaron here, that was too much to ask: that he simultaneously speak and be silent, that he be impartial and totally biased, that he be quiet and loud at the same time, that he neither detract from my own masculinity nor fall to the obsequious depths of this jackass to me. That's not too much, right? How ya feeling?" This is just like Grand Guignol of the kind of mind games he's gotta be playing on his people constantly, it's so gross.
Stefani names Surya for two reasons, the marketing stuff and the fact that he kept wandering into her area and salting her game instead of running his own. Tim sadly has to finger Aaron on this one, because of the lack of foot traffic and the no marketing strategy. For which he was not present, because he was off on a fool's errand with a sow's ear. Frank giggles like a hick and tells Trump to tease Tim and Nicole about their unholy mutual crush, so Trump does, and this goes on for a million years and it's stupid, and Trump totally tells Tim that he might become the Apprentice if he's "nailing" her, and everybody laughs, but NOBODY laughs louder than Sean. Yeah.
They engage in a bunch of lies about how banging Nicole would be enjoyable or titillating in any way, and she laughs stupidly, and Frank screams for Trump's attention, and Trump is like, "I want help from one of my compatriots, I want help from a smart guy from the Bronx!" In lieu of one of those, Frank uses a lot of words that don't make sense together to indict Surya, but then can't actually at the end of the day say it out loud, and the hedging pisses Trump off, so Frank finally says Surya, with a sad face. I don't know if all of Frank's sad faces are actual sadness or what; maybe he's got a touch of the schiz or something because he gets that sad affect at some weird times. Aaron says he's bringing back Surya and Nicole, with the proviso that Nicole shouldn't be fired, and is only coming back because on paper she is worthless. I mean for the task, she and Tim didn't add anything. That blows Trump's mind a little bit, and he has a cute moment with Stefani about how much she hates living in the tents, and dismisses them. I love that girl.
There's no Viceroy discussion at all this week, which makes me wonder why the fuck we had to struggle through having Sean around period, and is also stupid, and then back into the boardroom. This is going to be quick, because of a list of people in the room that I will now give you:
People Currently In The Boardroom:
Donald Trump
Sean
Aimee
Aaron
Nicole
Surya
That's who's having a conversation in there. Do you really wanna be there for that? The five most boring, pointless people in television history, and the only thing to look at is Aaron, and just when you're getting into a groove with that...BOOM! SEAN!
Surya helps Nicole pull out the chair she already pulled out, and they discuss that Nicole is there for no reason, and Trump tells her about how Tim is smitten with her and how she better be careful and not break him or whatever, he's talking out his toupee again, and then Aaron didn't sell and was a poor leader, and Trump makes that same joke about "other than that he was excellent, right?" which they never EVER get the first time he says it. So that's awkward, and it keeps going.
Surya: "Aimee! Tell him I never do anything wrong."
Aimee: "He doesn't."
Trump: "Isn't it weird how Arrow sucks so much more than Kinetic?"
Surya: "I know, right?"
Nicole: "Surya!"
Aaron: "It's clear he hates us and we hate him back, mostly because he's patronizing and wrong about everything he thinks is important."
Aimee: "I have noticed that too."
Trump: "Surya, which team is better?"
Surya: "I refuse to answer that question."
Trump: "ANSWER THAT QUESTION!"
Surya: "You are putting me in an impossible situation and you know it, you gross old bird."
Aaron: "See, he can't make a decision!"
Surya: [More of those horrible laughs; put-upon fake posturing scorn]
Aaron: "At least I do things, and have opinions, and create results."
Surya: "But do you delegate well?"
Aaron: "You mean like when I delegated marketing to you, Surya? And you later blacked that out entirely?"
Surya: "I guess I do, since I have no idea what you're talking about!"
Aaron: "And remember how you rode Stefani's coattails and salted her adorable game?"
Surya, verbatim: "Absurd! Absurd! That is absurd!"
Nicole: [Could stop a clock]
Trump: "Nicole, did you see Surya sell anything or do anything at any point?"
Surya: "Aimee! Tell them I'm awesome!"
Trump: "Hold it! Nicole?"
Nicole: "I wasn't there but I don't think there was a lot of planning overall."
Aaron: [Hangs head; looks scrumptious]
Trump: "So is that Aaron or Surya?"
Nicole: "I already told you! Aaron! For no reason I can explain, because I'm worthless!"
Aaron: "Nicole, are you in reality a moron?"
Surya: "Aimee! Tell them I can sell things!"
Aaron: "Um, Aimee hasn't seen anybody else on the team do anything, so that's not really relevant considering three of us are sitting here."
Jacob: "Good point, actually."
Aimee: "Aaron, did you sell on this task?"
Aaron: "Eventually!"
Aimee: "By profession you are..."
Aaron: "A salesperson."
Aimee: "So you could have helped?"
Aaron: "Remember how being a Project Manager works? You wander around staring at things and playing Jesus to the lepers in your head and acting like you've just dropped acid, for hours at a time? Those unicorns aren't going to pet themselves, and as you know the rainbow crop is very susceptible to frowny-face this time of year."
Aimee: "True that."
Sean: "Aaron, you should have been working the traffic throughout the store -- and there was no outdoor signage. Is that you, or Surya?"
Aaron: "Me, via Surya. Aimee, though, if I should have been selling then Surya should have been doing marketing, since that's his profession."
Aimee: "I was a PM and I know how hard that is. How the Grumblies and the Wickerflims play pranks on each other if you're not there to keep order. How the petalfairies will always drink too much dew from the morning blossoms and then their stomachs will be upset, if you're not there to watch. How you can sooth a petalfairy's rumbling tummy with just a quick hug and the light from a peppermint star. But we're also both salespeople, and that's what we're best at. Above delegating or anything else related to Project Management, is truly Sales."
Jacob: "That...has nothing to do with anything. What are you talking about?"
Trump: "Sales! Were very weak."
Aaron: "We lost by like seventy bucks?"
Trump: "LOST!"
Aaron: "After winning twice, you old fuck!"
Jacob: "Touché!"
Surya: "Except how one of those wins was against a team that imploded, Mr. Trump!"
Jacob: "Fuckin'...as opposed to all those wins that were so much more valid by taking place with an opponent that's a robot? What on earth?"
Trump: "Unrelated to any of this, I decided to fire you last week, so I'm going to. The rest of this has just been to psych everybody out and put them in impossible mental Chinese handcuffs and watch them twist, because I am gross. Aaron, you're fired."
Surya: "Mr. Trump, can I blah blah blah blah blah..."
Trump: "Fuckin' no, kid. Leave now. I'm so going to fire you week anyway. Or maybe Aimee, depending."
Jacob: "When is Stefani going to join Kinetic? That's gotta happen."
Trump: "Aaron was a nice guy but way too pretty for me personally. I'm a fucked-up old geezer."
Sean: "Aaron was a nice guy but relied on the rest of the team far too much."
Jacob: "Valid."
Outside, Surya yells at Nicole for a million years about nothing, and she completely ignores him, and in the limo Aaron points out that Aimee was acting like an asshole but doesn't connect the dots on how Trump spent the entire time pulling Jenga out of her position until she literally had no options at all, and did the same thing to Aaron, who is now going home, because Trump's idea of a good time is kind of like Saw sometimes, and there's no way out but death, and then back to Surya, still bitching, helping Nicole with her luggage that she didn't need help with, talking talking about how Aaron was totally lying, which he wasn't, and how Surya was in a state of willing readiness to help when called upon, which he was NOT, and Nicole isn't even listening, because God forbid she actually pay attention when he's handing her his eviction week if she could hear it, but she's too dumb to listen, and they walk out of sight, and he's still bitching.
week: Tim and Nicole are disgusting; Aimee, presumably, gets fired.