What a boring episode! We've been spoiled! At least it wasn't totally offensive, so I guess it balances out. So Trump tells Arrow that they have to send a member to Kinetic, and perma-PM James is not wrong in pointing out that Frank and Stefani have clearly delineated areas of expertise, however surprising you might find that concept, but that he, Nicole and Tim are interchangeable. James can't go anywhere because he's the PM, so that leaves Tim and Nicole. I don't know how you'd answer the question, and you know how very unbiased I try to be, but there's a catch: kicking Nicole loose is an obvious move -- although she acquits herself well on both the task and most especially in the boardroom -- but also means inflicting her on Kinetic. Total sadness for those of us who persist in loving them for no reason. So that's what happens. Nicole, of course, goes with a minimum of grace or class and the maximum possible amount of bitching and trashiness, and continues to inflict it on anybody she can through the shrub. After a drunken rant or two, egged on by James, Tim goes crawling back and grovels to the extent of giving Nicole information about James's boardroom strategy. Frank, being in love with Nicole, is disgusted in every direction at once. The boring task -- sell overpriced Universal Theme Park ride tickets -- is enlivened somewhat when Arrow does their usual tacky shit, stealing as many customers to their kiosk from the girls of Kinetic (whom Nicole has placed on rollerskates, for reasons that are clear not even to PM Angela), causing Kinetic to throw massive fits about how tackiness shouldn't be allowed on this show. Ivanka is Viceroy on the scene, and quickly falls out of love with whining Angela. Arrow wins by a good 23% margin, because sales is all they know. Nicole continues to bitch and moan through the hedge, Tim continues to not know what the hell to do about it besides be grateful he has his first girlfriend, Angela continues to be really ineffective at all that post-loss pre-boardroom stuff, Frank continues to be right about everything, no matter how annoying or drunk he gets. Which is of course very, in both cases. In the boardroom, Nicole, as I said, is very quick and well-spoken, which is the opposite of what Angela is. The whole thing ends with Ivanka and her dad on their very knees begging Angela to give them one damn reason not to fire her, while James takes cheap potshots and Heidi resumes her boring, smug ways; Angela sadly can't think of or say anything of worth at all, and thus gets fired. Sigh. Jocks.
Last week, Kristine and Heidi got rid of both Muna and Jesus. They went back to the yard and were pissed about it, cutely. Meanwhile (?) in the boardroom, Ivanka and Trumpy crawled right up Heidi's ass about Muna asking Heidi if she was going to be the Apprentice. It was stupid. Meanwhile, Heidi and Kristine came back to camp (?). Kristine describes all of this as Arrow "shooting their point" into Kinetic. It's weird, imagery-wise. She wanted to be the Final Four and now she will not. Angela has a headache; Heidi suggests an Aleve while Kristine suggests a beer. Angela's like, "Beer is medicinal? Cool." She's very out of it, thanks to the headache; it's fairly adorable. Kristine tells us she's happy to not be fired, and toasts her sisters in "what's left of Kinetic."
Down at the pool, Tim and Nicole are still waiting for somebody to care. Frank volunteers and fruits on over to them with a weird hip-shaking saunter and the ubiquitous beer and cigar-chomping. My God with Frank's idea of the High Life already. Tim's like, "Hey buddy," but of course Nicole is making a face about the interruption of her love maneuvers. Tim and Frank chill out by the pool, and Nicole cuddles up grossly between them, talking the most idiotic nonsense: "You know, it would be like the perfect Final Three with us, that would be like an insane competition, because I could totally look at you, Frank, like, 'Frankie, you're going down, man.' And you could be like, 'Bitch, you're going down.' You know? Like, we would totally trash-talk each other, you know what I mean? But like, with respect. You know? Like, we would know we would be joking." I mean verbatim she says this. Even Tim's embarrassed for her. Everybody giggles stupidly, because what can you do? This is Arrow. That's all we've got, is talk like that. Although my obsession with Frank's secret crush on Nicole is so totally validated through this whole episode. If this show were the Gossip Girl books -- which I fully represent, they're like the only books I've ever actually read -- there would be a scene in this episode where Frank walks in on Nicole in the shower and then can't look away, just like when Aaron wouldn't stop staring at Blair Waldorf in flagrante with Miles in St. Bart's, even though she's his stepsister and even though you can so obviously tell that Serena ven der Woodsen's into him.
The phone rings, and Trump tells James that, Kinetic being "decimated," Trump wants one of the Arrow kids to move to Kinetic. Trump's wondering if James can "handle that" for him, and James is wondering how to be shady as possible. He asks for volunteers and nobody volunteers, and finally Trump gets bored and hangs up on him for being a baby about it. James tells them that Trump was freaking out and being very dramatic about how it has to happen right now, even though he pretty much wasn't, just being pissed that James was stalling and trying to game everything all the time. "He told me to just pick one," James says, which isn't exactly true but I guess that's the obvious implication. "I'm not sending Frankie, I need him for his... hands." Frank's not impressed with this kind of insulting approbation of his only skills that matter: carpentry, construction, running around like a five-year-old that has to pee. "Stefani has organizational skills, that's something I don't have." Along with awesomeness, of course. However, James can't really understand the difference between Tim and Nicole, he says. Which is just so sad, and at this point so true, that it made me bite right through my teacup: "You're both... creative? And it... blends together? ... But I can't lose them," he says, indicating Stefani and Frank.
Time the hell out. Couch it however you like, as a build-a-team workshop if that's how you want, but what you're actually indicating is that you have a serious social problem that has to do with arrogance and poor management.
What James Says: "I'm not sending Frankie, I need him for his... hands." "Stefani has organizational skills, that's something I don't have."
What James Means: "There are two kinds of people: leaders and followers. Followers aren't as smart as leaders, or as creative, but they have easily defined skills. Which are beneath me, because I'm a high-level thinker and they're... not stupid, but definitely useful."
What James Says: "You're both... creative? And it... blends together? ... But I can't lose them."
What James Means: "In this two-class system I've devised in my own gross head, we the Eloi are indistinguishable from each other, in that the two of you are good at things, and I'm good at complaining, which is the same as being good at things, only lazy and cruddy. Meanwhile, these the Morlocks are my property. Since neither of them have a chance in hell of winning, I need to get rid of some of the cooks in this kitchen, while retaining custody of our slightly retarded helper candidates that don't count."
At The End Of The Day: "Tim and Nicole, you're clearly the best players on this team, since the only thing Stefani loves more than makeup is FUTR. Since I'm super great, that means there's literally no difference between the three of us, because I'm actually a moron and kind of a dickwad. I've managed to insult all of us standing here today."
I didn't ever think he was trustworthy, but I didn't realize he was sneaky and deluded and not terribly competent and socially ungifted. That's like the most horrible combination! I call it the Perfect Nicole. Starring Swoozie Kurtz as her aunt Sissy, the town madame, and as "The girls": Tara Reid, Jamie Pressley, Lindsay Lohan, and Taryn Manning, who each contribute their own whorely skills to create a "perfect Nicole" who wins the guy, gets married, gets a fabulous job from Fronald Frump, and eventually somebody takes her to Prom. But that movie is only a fantasy: the reality is so much grosser. James picks Nicole, and Tim is "bummed," and Nicole is piiiiiiiiissed. She stares nastily at him for the wrongest, stupidest, gayest reasons, and everybody is silent for a hundred years until he apologizes, which is what she was waiting for so she and her panty lines could make a dramatic exit and cut him off. Disgusting.
You know how much I used to hate Nicole? And then it went away for five seconds? Here's the thing about moments of extremity: they are revealing. Etiquette and common courtesy are for the worst days, not the best ones: you don't get to wait around until everything's perfect before you start trying to be a good person. You start writing yourself that pass on a jellyfish bite, thing you know you're standing in your Blahniks and Wendy's is out of ketchup, and therefore you get to be a bitch to a person who makes $5.15 an hour. The fact is that James is very clear and upfront about his -- while personally troubling, managerially it is the right call -- decision, and Nicole not only completely ignores the actual words coming out of his mouth but then reloads the resulting silence with a bunch of martyrrific hoo-hah. It's like she's being handed the opportunity to be an asshole, so she takes it. And the thing that really stings is that -- as her reasons for freaking out change dramatically like three times throughout the episode -- it really just comes down to Tim, and that's gross in a whole other way.
James drunkenly interviews that it was the right decision (it was) and that you have to think about business before people's feelings (you do, kind of) which ties into the theme of the entire episode, which is itself that it's okay to write yourself the pass to be an asshole as long as it's something Trump would say is okay. Which is rampantly bullshit, but that's obvious anyway. Trump has no moral compass, he has money and the authority it brings with it instead. But you're dealing with a group of people who mostly aren't interested in doing what they should do, but in fact whatever they can do, so it would be asking a lot of them to even suggest that maybe having some kind of honor or interest in people other than themselves might be something to look into. Frank and Stef are like, "Whoa," and everybody stares at the floor and won't look at James's eyes. If they could, they'd see his intense need to get this validated for him, but they're all too busy with their own intense need for validation. James has to remind Tim to go "spend alone time" with Nicole, and he's like, "Right, right. Yeah." He dumbly claps her on the shoulder; she ignores him while she packs, silently rehearsing her retarded exit speech. Downstairs, James paces nervously, wondering what will happen if nobody tells him he did the right thing before tomorrow morning, when Trump will surely tell him he did the right thing. Or, but what if he doesn't?
Tim and Nicole hug awkwardly, and he tells her she's going to be the "last person standing" over on Kinetic: "It's going to be you and me, Nicole." What he's implying is that she's a virus that is going to take down her teammates one by one through losing, but that's not what he means. He interviews his constantly shifting take on the Tim/Nicole situation, which is suddenly that to now, she has been a helpmeet and given him succor, and now he will be lonely, because normally people's judgment and priorities get in the way of having a fake relationship on a reality show, so he's really lucky that he didn't go that way this time. Nicole is like, "We can talk through the hedge all the time!" like they're in high school and she's going to call his house eighteen million times until his mom yells, and he's like "Awesome." She gets flirty/obnoxious about "Don't you try to kiss me through the bushes, now!" (What Nicole Means: "Try to kiss me through the bushes! I'm pathetically out of my league here!")
James apologizes to the even-less-acceptable angry face of Nicole, so she'll stop making that face and sending the milk sour and all the groceries and fresh-cut flowers to rot. And of course, she starts screaming at him, her little rehearsed bullshit speech squeezing out in weird ways and making very little sense. Which paradoxically allows the actual things she is saying to come through loud and clear. "I don't wanna hear about it!" she shouts, as though she isn't interested in having a conversation about it. Which is half-true, in that she doesn't want a conversation but a monologue, hers, and she doesn't want to talk about the management decision, James's, but in fact about how put upon and sad her life is and how everybody should feel sorry for her all the time. "Bad things happen!" This is not a "bad thing," it's a "thing." People get shuffled, it happens. It's neither bad nor good. You're not here for speed-dating or for acting like the dumbest girl in the sorority, you're here to excel, and to win. You can do that on any team, because the only team you should be on is Team Nicole, a team you haven't even fucking heard of. "It stinks! You know, a lot of bad things have happened to me in my life... " Again: wow. Just wow. I don't know what those things are because I have not ever lived in the intellectual squalor I'm willing to posit about her people, though I have some ideas from watching COPS and Little House On The Prairie, but: if they were truly "bad"? Like if they actually qualified as "bad"? Then you do those events and yourself a disservice by bringing them into this conversation, because you're equating them to being moved from one team on Win, Lose Or Draw to the other team, which would be trashy. Except by even making the comparison, you've demonstrated you don't have a clear concept of what "bad" is, and therefore can't be trusted to make the comparison now. I hope to God the worst thing that ever happened to you is eclipsed by this, in all honesty.
"... And each time I stand up, and I stand up stronger!" When she said this, I thought about... you know that picture where there's the monkey, and then the very hairy man, and eventually a business suit and like a briefcase? That's what that made me think of. "I think I was a very strong player on this team," totally true, that's totally true, "And I guarantee: you think I was a strong player on this team? I'm not only going to remain a strong player, I'm going to step up!" AAAAAAND there we go. Winning is not an end in itself, or the natural result of doing your best work, but a way to flip off James Sun, a man who is so terrified of the boardroom and getting yelled at by people with actual authority that it's all he is thinking about right now. Even in the middle of your rant. Who shuffled you to Kinetic for the right reasons, all of which have zero to do with your incredible drama, your idiotic love affair, or your strangely off-putting belief in yourself. You go, girl! I mean, how hard is it to grow up and realize that your life is not contingent on other people's intangible bullshit? The last thing that matters in the world is James's opinion of Nicole, whether or not it signifies -- and it does not, in this case -- in the decision. On any average random day, it doesn't matter. Today of all days, you're turning an advantage and an opportunity into yet more nastiness and begging for attention and validation. The woman turns my stomach, I'm sorry. She goes on and on at length about how she now has "every reason in the world" to win this week -- except the actual reasons -- and that she would "lose an arm" to win it. And don't you think her ass would love that. "I lost my arm! Please feel sorry for me! I was just trying to make people respect me without doing anything respectable and while making an ass of myself, and now I'm armless! Do you love me yet?"
James: "It was obviously not personal."
Nicole: "I have no concept of that because I am desperation personified."
James: "Seriously, your enthusiasm and skill set are admirable but they overlap with Tim's."
Nicole: "This is because you think I'm not as pretty as Stefani!"
James: "Fucking what?"
Nicole: "This is because you think I'm weak! But I am not weak! I will rise like a phoenix from the flames! To gain your approval and/or score some nasty imaginary point! And then you will feel quite small!"
James: "Nicole, I am literally telling you to your stupid horse face that you and Tim have won the last eighteen tasks for us. I am literally giving you credit for that, out loud, in front of everybody. Why are you being a jerk?"
Nicole: "Stop saying I'm useless!"
James: "Nicole, please get reality or go sit at the kids' table."
Nicole: "That's fine, that's fine, there's no point in talking about it."
James: "Um, I know. You're the one talking about it."
Nicole: "Stop trying to break up me and my boyfriend!"
Nicole, in interview: "James must think I'm weak in some point [sic and the hell?] and I wanna win, and just prove to James, 'You made the biggest mistake you've ever made in your entire life, just watch, and James, you'll be fired on the one for firing me. You made a dumb mistake.'" Way to, um, make that point. "Trump's going to destroy you for not doing anything to me personally, because I am such a martyr that I will it so!" I mean... This is why you have to take really good care of your daughters. This is a woman whose entire sense of self is based on questionable things, in that anybody on this show has some issues there, but also on the fact that she seems unable to express herself without lying about everything, changing her inner monologue around as she sees new ground to pity herself about, and depends on literally every man in the room to tell her who and where she is. Maybe nothing very bad has happened to her, in that she's never even had to go looking for Nicole, or maybe that's the bad thing happening and it's her whole life. I don't know. I know I want to stay far away from her.
Grauman's Theatre: Trump's limo pulls up with majestic music, tourists take pictures of him and Ivanka, which makes me sad about America five different ways. Ivanka's somehow wearing a sheath dress and a sailor suit, both at once. She's like the living embodiment of Billy Budd. Down in the seats, Trump welcomes the teams to "week" "ten," and they nod and nod and nod. James will stay Arrow PM, Angela -- we'll see -- becomes Kinetic PM. I hope she does well, but I doubt it: in James's ugly little classification, she's more of a useful Morlock than even Stefani is. "I see you've chosen Nicole... or given up Nicole. Which is it?" What it was, James sleazes, was a "tough decision," because the team wanted to stay together, but "at the end of the day," he sent Nicole. It was nothing personal.
What Trump Says: "Nicole, did you wanna go?"
What Trump Means: "Your answer means nothing to me."
What Nicole Hears: "Nicole, has anyone ever been mean to you in any way? I only ask because pity is just the same thing as respect, as you've always believed."
What Nicole Says: "Yes! I didn't want to leave! My boyfriend! Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, I have a boyfriend! We're split apart like Romeo and Juliet! It's so sad! Feeling sorry for me is the same thing as thinking I'm a good person! This is good TV!"
What Trump Says: "So, they must hate you and think you're the weak link?"
What Trump Means: "So, they must hate you and think you're the weak link?"
What Nicole Hears: "So, they must hate you and think you're the weak link?"
Nicole: "That's what I thought too. We are both retarded the same way."
Trump: "So, Tim, how'd you feel about losing Nicole?"
Tim: "I feel... like she's sitting right over there?"
Nicole laughs ruefully about losing Tim forever to the team sitting five yards to her right and agrees with Tim that this is not ideal. Trump gets bored and starts talking about the Grauman's Theatre forever. Now, I have never been to L.A. But I was lucky enough to go last night to see Grindhouse at the Paramount in Austin, and there are fifty identical shoutouts to Austin in that movie, and it's everything I fucking hate about Austin at that, and every fucking time anybody said the word "Austin" or "Guero's" or "Chili Parlor" or the word "lake" or toked a joint or drove by anything whatsoever in a car, on the streets, and the buildings alongside, the screaming would start. And OMG with the Rollergirls, which if you don't know what those are, picture if Nicole had a self-hating androgynous baby with a stupid haircut and a deep desire to please men by becoming one, while still hating them. And of course they were screaming the whole goddamn time and stepping on the people's lines, and I was like, "This is completely how Austin actually is. Thanks for ruining everything, Tarantino." Goes to figure he'd be into fucking every single one of those godawful aspects of life here. And it's like, how long do you have to live here before you cut that shit out? Before the word "Austin" stops being about you and starts being just another word that does not cause you to scream and act the fool? Like "equity," or "anapestic foot," or "actuary." When was the last time somebody said "equity" in a movie and you shit yourself drunkenly while screaming "WOO!" because you were so proud of, like, that you heard that word and knew what it meant? I feel like I've lived here a billion years and yet I don't remember ever being particularly excited about the prospect of somebody admitting the existence of Hippy Hollow. So that's what Grauman's makes me think of, sorry: Like how embarrassing to think about living in L.A., and having to deal with the tourist idea of L.A., and then having to look at it again and go, "No, the tourists are actually kind of right. That makes me gross."
Trump tells the Apprenti about how he doesn't have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, because he's a bigger star even than Ryan Seacrest, and that he has the number one show on TV. Which wasn't even true when he said it, last summer. Not the bizarre lie that it is now, watching him say it, but still a blatant untruth at the time. The only thing awesomer is Ivanka's adoring gaze on her crazy old dad. It's the sweetest thing I've ever seen, like ever, or on this show at the very least. It's so loving it makes me feel more warmly towards him. I actually rewound that part, because it's just this brilliant, indulgent smile, like, "You are so crazy! I love my daddy!" I would totally do this job if I were her, travel around in his company and watch him do this crap he does. If you were related to him, it would be like being related to any other racist misogynist homophobe, you know? And probably we are, and hopefully we still love whoever it is, and it would be easier than having to only see what he wants us to see, which is a really poorly prioritized portrait of all the things he thinks are going to impress us.
Task: The "largest movie studio... theme park," in the world. I love that little ellipsis in there, like they're in Hollywood and they're not going to have an actual film-related task, you know? (Spoiler people: Am I wrong? They gotta have at least like a Zenthura or something, right?) The theme park, or Hollywood, or possibly Trump himself, is the "entertainment capital of L.A.," which is like saying some random something is the "political capital of D.C.," to my ears, and he tells us that eight million people go to Universal every year. Why? Is that... I have this vague memory from childhood of a commercial with like a shark coming out of the water or Frankenstein maybe. ... Possibly that was a dream, actually. Which explains why Frankenstein was like, "You have to find Jane Seymour and show her your new shirt!" and why everybody I've ever met was there. Although the latter, Trump would say, is the reality of Universal Studios. Not only do Universal make "amazing" movies, and buy amazing websites, and pay my rent, they also once built a spectacular theme park, to which Trump has been "many times." Why? Theme parks, I don't understand them. Ivanka finally explains the task part of the task, working the crowd at USH to sell special passes with some kind of special system that makes you look like RoboCop. (If, of course, RoboCop hadn't been made by Orion and then sold to MGM in '97, so I guess it's more like... Florence Lawrence.) The most money wins, using this dazzling gargoyle technology that will scare children and make you feel like you're in Tron (Buena Vista!), and Ivanka will be watching you. Then somebody will be fired. The music is like, "This is going to be good!" As they file out, Nicole giggles and pretends to hit Frank in the face; it's pretty cute.
Know your media conglomerates! Arm yourself with knowledge! The NBC Universal logos of the ages morph past and turn into the giant globe that's apparently outside the theme park. Also beside the globe are rides having to do with Jurassic Park and Waterworld. Man, remember robot dinosaurs? They used to be everywhere! The mall, the museum, everywhere good. I miss those guys. I wonder why they went away. I bet they still have them in those scary broken-down places on the side of the road like the REPTILE HOUSE that's on every segment of every highway in the country. My friend Sarah always had a love of dumptrucks and Caterpillars because they reminded her of dinosaurs; I used to love dinosaurs because they reminded me of dumptrucks and Caterpillars. Man, I love robot dinosaurs. I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the day. Where did they go?
Into the Kinetic war room at Universal, with that silly forward-motion logo. Heidi briefly speaks about ideas; Angela assigns timelines to Kristine, now that Muna's gone; Kristine and Jesus try to get a walk-on role in the Universal Pictures film, but Angela's a better PM and doesn't make way for the crazy like some of them do. Angela... interviews and makes me sad, calling this an opportunity to say, "Mr. Trump! I can be a leader too!" Another great way to say that: by leading. It gets worse: "I just need the opportunity!" Um, it's called every single day? "Put me in charge of a team, and I can lead them to victory!" I got an idea where that can happen: volunteer to be Project Manager sometime in the first ten tasks. I like Angela, but I kind of hate that she's using the "gimme" construction of a Nicole or Stefani: it's not just randomly that these things happen to you. It's in your hands. Heidi brings up the concept of signage, flyers and such, but worries that these will generate business for the other team just as well. Angela agrees that they need to distinguish themselves. Smart kids. James and Frank will bring this up in a second, but it's important to note that this is the first time they're in the same territory. Up 'til now, almost every PM Viceroy has made it clear that until judging, they had no idea what the other team was up to. Put that together with this whole idea of having exactly the same task, and you already know what Nicole knows James knows: the team with the biggest kiosk will win. Props to Nicole for figuring this out, and I'm glad she gets credit for it, but that doesn't mean James is wrong, either.
Arrow: Tim and James agree that the biggest kiosk will win, and that they have to be right up front, so that they can get the incoming; Tim points out that this is a nil sum task on marketing, because the people are already sold on tossing their money away on these tickets: it's a question of how they get those tickets. Arrow notes also the importance of looking real, solid and sponsored and legit -- very important. These are going to be, turns out, really high-ticket sales, like $1000 a family high, and you're not going to do that with any old Florence Lawrence, are you? For the same reason every online seller has to write you ten thousand little note on engraved stationary promising that, just this once, you can buy something on the internet without having your identity stolen and your family kidnapped by Sandra Bullock. James interviews that the people, the seething mass of maddened crowd, needs to see the station itself, and the big sign advertising DISCOUNT PRICES. Not to mention, he adds, they don't have to hit every person like Depth Of A Salesman Arrow normally does.
MULTIPLE CHOICE: Who already won this task that hasn't even started yet?
Nicole dances around like an organ grinder monkey, begging Kinetic to pay attention to her, and no matter how much attention they pay, it's not enough, so she spirals out into craziness trying to hype her idea. The effect is Surya-esque, plus the monkey aspect. "This is perfect for Angela!" What is it? "So we need to differentiate, right?" Sure, what is it? "Be different from Arrow, right?" Yeah, totally, so what's the idea? "This is such a great idea!" Okay, what is the idea? "I'm telling you guys, it's really great!" Okay, stop with the bouncing and spit it the fuck out. I realize that on a team of men, especially the Arrow kind of men, you have to make sure that they're listening, because your entire life is one long Math Is Hard nightmare that the '70s were supposed to have eradicated, but like: what is the idea? "Arrow is thinking signs, big setup... " Right, which is how they are going to win. "Meanwhile, we're four cute girls... " Everybody starts laughing, and I'm not so terribly mean as to speculate as to why. "Angela! What about roller stakes?" Heidi and Angela laugh and love the idea. "How funny would that be? Honestly?" Honestly? We just told you we liked it. "But how great is my idea, huh? HUH?" Um, we like it. She interviews that, of course, Arrow will be staying stationary while the bajillion people with money stuffed to overflowing in their pockets come to them, yes. So why not flit about like four small mayflies too small for the human eye, weaving in and out of the crowds attracted by Arrow's signage? This is hard for me, because on the one hand I am proud of Nicole for her confidence about figuring it out, but on the other hand: They're not doing this because of Nicole's psychic powers, they're doing it because that's how they will win. So she's wrong by being right about being wrong, or something. Kristine calls for rollerskates, and that's the end of Angela.
Frank is drunker than hell, interviewing in bed. I loooove the "In Bed With Frank" interview concept, and we get two of them tonight which makes me think they might become permanent. I hope so, it's just so awesome. He's like the Sanjaya of the Bronx, this guy. I literally cannot get enough of him. Go see his website; it's remarkably Frankie. He calls this an "all-out war," and James notes how they're finally converging on the same turf.
James addresses Arrow with a TRUE OR FALSE:
1. Can Frank beat Heidi?
2. Can Tim beat Nicole?
3. Can James beat Angela?
4. Can Stefani beat Kristine?
1. FALSE (At gawking, guffawing, and thrift, perhaps.)
2. NOOOO COMMENT
3. TRUE (At lying, creeping, and sneaking, and at being a fuckwad, yes. As we will most certainly see in just a moment.)
4. NO IDEA (I still have zero grasp of Kristine beyond adoring her; in other news, did you know that Frankie started in event planning? That's just so...Frankie Suits is like a character out of a Robert Kiyosaki anecdote. "At the age of 14, Frankie Suits created an events planning company, and within a week, he was hiring migrant workers at fifteen different plants across the world. And here's what he told me, that my dipshit dad never would... ")
Frank and Tim reminisce about the love of their lives, how they just know that she's getting Kinetic "all riled up" and telling them how awesome the selling power of Arrow really is. Which she is. It's a different spin than they think, and frankly than I was worried about, but she's essentially filling Kinetic in on their strengths and weaknesses. The one thing I like best about Arrow is that they can sell anything, in bulk, and work it out. I like Tim regardless, but that's really Frank and James's coolest quality. Tim interviews that he misses her like so bad, but on the other hand, they're both very competitive people, and the idea of her laughing in his face about winning their own personal competition makes him want to smash her face in, and he tells Arrow that he is going to fight dirty tomorrow. Everybody's heart grows three sizes from how romantic that is. Frank drinks a beer and looks at Tim. "I don't care how we win," Tim says. "I really don't."
Duh. And what's funny is that their concept was good enough that they would have won anyway, so the creepiness with which they go about selling, and the more important creepiness with which they have to continually justify this to themselves instead of just doing it, is like a grody cherry on a wonderful dessert. As Arrow's setting up, James is already stressing because he doesn't know what Kinetic's doing. His eyes, already shifty due to his ponderous sneakiness, dart around like a shellshocked vet as he wonders what they'll be doing: something stupid? Something crazy? Or something really good? (All three, but mostly #1.) Stefani, helping him carry a sign as he says this, says the first of two hilariously tart things: "It's too late to change our minds now." As though he's going to try that shit after last week. Well, I'm sure he's still covering his ass every way he can think of, but he'll have to be subtle now that they've caught him at it. I don't know what's going on with Stefani. I wish she'd be PM again one day, but that means losing and then winning, so that's at least two weeks from now, and I despair for her staying that long because of the increasingly invisible and increasingly bitchy edit she's getting lately. If she starts praying, we're dead in the water.
Arrow set up their kiosk, and it looks great, and we finally get a look at the RoboCop suit. It's like... imagine a Teletubby? Or the Shirt-Tails, if you remember them. My favorite one was Pamie the Panda, for reasons I'll go ahead and disclose at a later time. So you're a Teletubby, but in like a military dystopia? Instead of emotions, or drug visions, you project "multimedia video" (i.e., commercials) from the screen on you. MAN I wish I had one of those, and that they did not look so ridiculous. I have a lot of things to say, you guys, and I love dressing up in things, and technology. I want to be Luke Ad-Walker. I want to walk into a store and have the people read my shirt that says, "Please do not bug me, because you remind me of this guy I knew in high school and I would kill myself before giving you a commission, but it's nothing personal." Or whatever. "Please refrain from spitting until you've exited the bus, Jethro." "That shirt is really cute on you but it's too bad how you're obviously crazy, and I hope you don't have kids." You know what, actually I do not need one of those devices, upon reflection. Turns out I'm kind of judgmental sometimes? In addition to the ads, you are also a walking credit card machine. Dude, if they sold these in Vegas. "That one thing showing right now on my chest? That's fifty extra, and I need ten minutes to warm up." Frank totally compares himself to RoboCop! I love him! Even the bored dude dressing them in the awful things is like, "Awesome." Frank interviews: "We're strong, we're confident, and we're coming for you, Kinetic!" The thing I hate most about this show is being put in the position of clearly loving Frank the most, like in a way where I can't even hide it. I will never forgive this show for that.
Tim laughs at the babes on rollerskates, Frank screams "Rollergirls!" which we just talked about a second ago. And yeah, Kinetic does look totally cute. Angela and Nicole come skating up, and Angela goes, cutely, "Woo!" Not to be outdone, Nicole shrieks, "What's up now?" Dude, quit. Just quit it. She won't: she goes off on a long OTF rant about how they need to "flaunt everything we have," and says the phrase "sex sells" like fifty times, or once but it hurt like times fifty, and how they're "four attractive women." "We're idiots, and Trump should fire us if we didn't use our assets." Whatever. Nothing I haven't said before, or even just in this recap, but... this isn't that task. I don't know how you got the idea that this was the Vagina Chocolates task. That's later. This is the Giant Kiosk task. You know that. You used your psychic powers to deduce that, and you were right, and you decided to go another way anyway. The "assets" that you should be using are the ones where you can dress professionally -- I've seen you do it -- and differentiate yourself from the crowds, not look like shot girls in a particularly egregious bar. This is not the I'm A Helpless Cute Girl task, it's the I Know More Than You, Give Me Your Credit Card task. They are opposites. The only person -- as we'll see -- who could manage to be as terrifyingly professional on rollerskates as you need to be this week is Heidi. Nicole, I don't buy her authority because she's giving it away, I wouldn't buy it if she were wearing a catcher's helmet and carrying a machete. Kristine, possibly. Angela is a jock and needs to be behind a desk or table so you can't see how weird she looks in a skirt -- she's the only one that's actually better off on the rollerskates, because her hotness is a very specific thing that blooms under certain conditions, like being on rollerskates in short-shorts. It's an outdoorsy dog-walking nature-loving emotion-processing kind of hotness, and that's still not what's called for.
Tim and James compare the girls to a swarm. You'd think after fifty years of recapping Battlestar I would be able to make the appropriate fighter-plane analogy but nothing's coming. It's possible that if you have two large lines forming, four hot chicks on skates could conceivably run enough interference between the people and the RoboCops, but I don't know a better word for it. James is like, "So we have to start telling lies." Jumps from A to L, just immediately. "We have to get on our bullhorns and start talking about how the women on rollerskates are known criminals. We have to make the customers understand that they are fugitives from an identity-thieving ring." Tim agrees that they need to work on optimizing their tables, because speaking as somebody who likes girls, especially hot ones, in such a violent way that he can't even think logically when presented with the option, he'd totally buy anything from a cute girl on skates without even asking the price. But then he'd get bashful and not ask for her number, though. Tim arrives at the correct solution, which is that you need to have clearly delineated lines for people to crowd into without even wondering what they're for. It's not because I like Tim so much when I say that he should win this thing. He's the only one they ever show having good ideas, practically, and he says at least one very good thing every week. James starts offering the people (And hey, when I say "theme park," what kind of Americans do you imagine? With the flip flops and the lazy shouty parenting and the supersized drink in their hands and that rolling kind of pregnant gait? I'm not going to say that you are wrong) free bottles of water, and it's the summer, and he makes it clear that the rollerskate girls obviously don't have free water. They barely have pockets. Kristine and Angela are like, "Fuck."
James interviews that "Sales is proactive," and we cut to him stepping in on Kristine's transaction ranting at the people about water, and she's like, "I'll fucking rollerskate over there and buy you some water. I'll bring you back a fucking deep-fried turkey leg if you want. Do not give this man money." She interviews that Arrow is "slimy," like used car salesmen. And that's true. And I love it because it gets results, and because as I say every week I don't know how you do what they do without literally erasing your own existence in the weirdness and awkwardness. But I do think there's a line, and I feel like Arrow crosses it here. It's hard to explain the concept of inner-directed morality to people resistant to the concept, but basically: doing what you can possibly do is not the same as doing what you should do. In fact, there is a tiny little Jiminy in each of us that tells you when you're being tacky. And if you have to start making speeches to shut that Jiminy up, if you have to appeal to some vague "rules" or something, or say it's all-out, or just a game, or whatever, that solves the logical problem, but it doesn't solve the problem that you're not able to make those calls by yourself, from within yourself, and that scares me to death. If you find yourself resorting to some kind of consensus or conventional wisdom about whether something you just did was shady? It was shady. Case closed.
Tim tells one of Nicole's people that it's cheaper up front, and she turns right around and lies to the guy as well, telling him the skate-girls have a better promotion. Which, there goes Nicole's high ground, not that she ever had it, but in terms of the horribleness of Nicole, is instructive and foreshadowing at the same time. Cut immediately to Nicole interviewing all about "Why come over and lie?" Um, because there's literally no difference between what he did and what you did in response? Could you possibly take responsibility for one fucking thing, like, ever? She yells nastily at Frank about how the fellow they both just lied to told her that Tim was such a jerk that he totally bought from her. Is it true? Does it matter? This is dumb. "Tell Tim thanks for my thousand dollar deal!" Was it really a thousand? Does it matter? This is dumb. But what makes it all okay is Frank running off, like fully running, toward the kiosks like a kid in a football helmet, all, "Hey, Tim!"
week: Frank carries notes back and forth from Tim and Nicole, and drinks his pain away nightly. Oh wait, that's every week.
Ivanka asks Angela how it is, being so close to Arrow and their cooties; Angela responds that she's "disappointed" by the other team, because they're selling things? But in this unctuous, creepy way where she's like, "I would never suggest that they are breaking some kind of rules in this game, or that they deserve to be beaten to death with baseball bats, and I'm certainly not implying that they are pederasts, so don't think that I'm asking for special treatment based on the fact that I'm an Olympic athlete with gold, silver and bronze medals, or that I'm being a big baby about this, but if, just if possibly, they were breaking the rules, that is fine, because we're not breaking the rules, and I feel good about that, but mostly it's just kind of sad that they are being like this, but I'm not trying to start trouble," like the entire Ontario Shuffle, which I really cannot handle from an American, especially a woman, especially an American woman who could benchpress my entire family; and which additionally makes Ivanka want to punch her in her giant face. "You're not even Canadian!" Boom! Heidi gets into it with James and then Frankie in that scary way she has where the same smile she's giving the customers -- "I am the prettiest thing, aren't I? Would you like to be best friends?" -- and her competitors -- "Victory is never sweeter than with your blood on my hands" -- is the same but spookily different. I've been trying to think of a way to describe this for a couple weeks, and I'm not done, but it's like one of those crappy holograms they used to put on everything in grade school. Turn it one way and it's some kind of superhero, turn it the other way: Darkseid. I don't know how she's doing it, I think the secret is in the eye area, like with Tyra Banks, but I have to keep analyzing it. It's scary as hell. I wish that Ivanka and Heidi would fall in love, because right now the suckiness of Angela is kind of breaking Ivanka's heart, and that's sad. Heidi explains with her hologram smile that what's happening to the customers is that they are getting dicked around in a cheesy maneuver that has nothing to do with them, and that isn't she pretty though. She skates away, bitching, and interviews that they have "no shame." Angela and Nicole are similarly whiny/correct; Nicole talks about smashing their "faces in the dirt."
The show's gotta do an end-run around the whole thing in order to justify the fact that Trump and Ivanka are going to sign off on this behavior later, so that starts now, with Frank interviewing about how you can't even think about the other team or how they feel or what they're doing, because if you blink, you're going to lose. Which is true to an extent, and I agree that Arrow won this task hardcore. But I also think they got carried away with the excitement of being gross, which is... gross. The only point Angela can make in the boardroom is that they didn't represent Universal well, and that's a good point, but it has nothing to do with inter-team politics, which is why and how people got fired. So none of this is on the table, and I see no reason it should be, but on the other hand it's kind of important not to lose sight of your own worth, like as a human being? Which is kind of what their behavior is about.
The slippery slope of Nicole thinking that victory on Kinetic means James made a bad decision, to Tim thinking that winning at any price is somehow romantic or connected to their relationship, to all of Arrow talking themselves into acting tacky, to all of Arrow actually convincing themselves that acting tacky is the point. It's the last thing that worries me. It's like... okay, speaking of pederasts, this is like the To Catch A Predator thing. Somebody that fucks kids, we get the pass to do almost anything to them, either in words or deeds. Two Minutes' Hate. Nobody's going to be like, Chill out with hating on pedophiles, you're being tacky. And yeah, they're sick and they need to be fixed or locked up, but at what point does it stop being about justice or cultural expressions of disgust, and start being secretly delighted that you've found something to be angry about that nobody can tell you to chill about it? Kid-touchers get killed in prison: is this because felons are vigilante heroes, or because they have the option of expressing their rage in a way that's socially acceptable to the point of murder? Because the least important person in that scenario is the pedophile himself. It's about getting away with whatever you think you can get away with, instead of doing the right thing. If you offload all the power in the scenario to the pedophile, if you say that your actions were determined by their predilections to touching kids, you're being really weak. Pedophile's still an asshole whether or not you beat them up or humiliate them on TV, but we're not talking about the pedophile, we're talking about you and your choices, on this side of the line. He's gonna continue to be an asshole regardless of your actions -- the question is whether you're going to join him.
And the more contingent or creepy it is, the more you're going to get this repetitive "we weren't breaking any rules, we weren't breaking any rules" bullshit. One more repetition for each factor of shadiness they know damn well they're being. Now, they weren't breaking any rules, as far as the game's concerned, and these were not moral extremes that they were going to -- especially since Trump is the arbiter and he has zero moral sense whatsoever -- but it's still pretty yucky, and over the line. It shouldn't come up in the BR, and it shouldn't be brought up by the losing team, at this point, at all, because it's whining and nothing but, but I'm not a member of Kinetic, and I don't have anything riding on it, and I don't even mind Arrow that much anymore, but I do think it's a weak, immature call, and a bunch of gross decisions led to that behavior. Once you start in with the "We're going to do whatever it takes," you've got to be pretty strong and pretty adaptable to be able to monitor what that level of "whatever" actually equals. And those are not words that describe Arrow, or very many Americans, or anybody ever associated with this show, so I'm talking to myself again.
James manages to come off creepy and sleazy even while at rest; Angela stares at Arrow with full-on hate still raging. Which is kind of the problem here, because we're now in a position where everybody is like a full step away from the truth: Kinetic gets the imaginary high ground, because they lost with honor or whatever, and Arrow gets the imaginary high ground because they didn't do anything Trump wouldn't do. Which is becoming more and more of a theme this season: think like Trump. Get grosser so you can win. I mean, that's always been the point -- Get Rich With Trump! -- but now it's becoming the actual explicit theme, to the point where we're being told to put down the Bible and pick up a Trump book. You know? But as much fun as that is to think about, the fact remains that Kinetic lost, and they lost hard, and they lost before they got started, and this smokescreen of moral outrage -- maybe I was wrong and Surya and Angela really would have gotten along, had they met for more than five minutes -- is doing nothing but damaging Angela's case. And if she doesn't even know that, the most basic thing about Trump you can know, then she deserves to go home.
James sets the seanthusiasm bar super fucking high with his "we won" speech, all, "Our team did excellent [sic]! Stefani, Frank, and Tim all contributed so much! I definitely feel we won!" Urp. Angela does her best to follow his lead, and it's even more fake and greasy sounding: "Mr. Trump [check], I've been a member of many great teams in my life -- gold medal [check] teams -- this is one of the strongest!" Whatever, use what you got, I mean the man has no bullshit detector installed and he loves this kind of crap, because the world is his... what's the guy that comes out at the restaurant and is all, "Our chef de cuisine has created a sumptuous treat just for you, it's a stacked amuse-bouche with a layer of rosemary polenta, a layer of seared whatever, some other enticing and expensive stuff, and topped with a macerated raspberry decoction from a special recipe from Sophia Loren's uncle, and sprinkles of chocolate from the land of rainbows," what's that guy's name? The whole world is like that for Donald Trump at all times. And that's interesting to think about, for me, because no matter how cute that guy is -- and he always is -- there's still that secret impulse as you're nodding and smiling and waiting for him to get to the end of the speech, to punch him in the box for being fake, like, you and I both know that the chef doesn't love me all that much, so cut the crap. It's that sales allergy again. But if you do it, do it. And James can do it, because he has no soul and no sense of shame.
Trump: "I was shocked that you jettisoned Nicole!"
Nicole: "I agree! It's shocking! I don't know what that word means!"
Trump: "I kind of hope you lose, James. That'll show you that you made the wrong impossible choice! And then I'll have my all-white cast I've been wanting for five years."
Tim: "Yeah, because like every fucking week you go on and on about how awesome Kinetic are, no matter how many times we beat them? So that wouldn't be that interesting, actually. For you to root for them. See how you're boring and make no sense all the time?"
Trump: "... Time for results!"
Ivanka: "This was an all-out sales war! It was bloody, and it was tacky, and there were crying lesbians on rollerskates, just like my sixth-grade birthday party."
Trump: "That was a great party!"
Ivanka: "You've never been to any of my birthday parties, Dad. How old am I right now?"
Trump: "... How did Kinetic do?"
Ivanka: "Kinetic strapped on their rollerblades, dropped any semblance of dignity or desire to win, and 'hit the pavement.' Mostly with their tears of frustration. Their sales totaled $24,440.37."
Nicole: "That's a lot of money! Especially for luxuries most lower-class fat white Americans can't really afford! I am so glad we screwed them out of that money! Meanwhile our entire country's in the pocket of the insurance lobbies, ensuring that when the impossible aspirational lifestyle we're selling them finally proves illusory and they give in to heart disease and cancer, there won't be any way for them to save themselves! And they'll have spent all that money on an Old West Themed Stunt Show!"
Ivanka: "Meanwhile Arrow didn't use any gimmicks, such as vaginas. They just worked really hard, because that's all they know how to do: beg for money without shame or any ethics whatsoever. They made $31,366.65."
Trump: "That is a difference of... huge."
Stefani: "See, we're hardworking salespeople? Who win every task?"
Tim: "Maybe it's time to shmeer shmee shpedoodle shmunk!"
Trump: "Maybe you're right! Sorry, Heidi -- perhaps they are the superstars now."
Heidi: "WHAT. EVER. You have told me I've fallen from grace the last fifteen boardrooms. Are you really that senile? Do you understand that we have this conversation every week? Am I meant to imply that, upon walking in here, I am actually a superstar every week, right until you tell me I'm not? Does that make sense to you?"
Ivanka: "Arrow, you were more competitive and ruthless, and that's how you win."
Arrow: "Awesome! Winning a game show by acting like pricks was great, but somehow getting ethical validation for it is so much better!"
Angela: "Except they made NBC/Universal look shady and creepy? Because of how they are all kind of intrinsically shady and creepy, and then were acting like that on top of it?"
Trump: "... Mmm, not getting it."
Angela: "If this were a qualitative task, Universal would have preferred our representation of the brand."
EVERYBODY: "Not relevant. ?"
Trump: "Just so we're all clear, I'm going to say this eighteen more times: what they did was neither illegal nor immoral. If I keep saying this, it will become true. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Hold yourself to the lowest possible standard, so that you can have more money in your pocket."
Nicole: "But Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, you shouldn't tell lies! That's bad!"
Trump: "Ethics, especially in business, are complex. We all hate that, being forced to think, but I have discovered a loophole: I just say it's not a problem, and then it's not a problem. On paper that's fine, right?"
Tim: "That's more than fine, it is excellent."
Stefani: "I'm glad to be out of the yard, because that's like my entire personality, but I don't like being called a liar. I realize that my teammates crossed it, but I also know that in the context of this game show nobody's going to bring it up, because it literally does not matter."
James: "This conversation doesn't even make sense to me."
Trump tells Arrow their reward: a helicopter ride over L.A. That's awesome. I would actually love that. Is this the first reward this season that's been good? I feel like a couple other ones were pretty good but all I can remember right now is golf and that tacky dinner on the beach. Back in the yard, Nicole's sad and points out the hilarity that I hadn't even noticed: she got sent out to the yard last night, and then her team won again, so thanks to James, she gets nothing, and they get everything. It's not that hilarious, it's sad, but at least you know she'll weather the yard better than her new teammates. She talks about "sitting there in so much shock she could barely talk" as her horrible idea and whining teammates went down for the eighteenth week in a row. She crawls into a tent bed, a giant "N" embroidered across her ass. Sigh. She starts talking about -- now that Trump's put the idea in her head -- how suddenly hurt she is that Tim didn't stand up for her when she got sent over. It apparently "hurt more than anything has hurt in the entire process" of being on this shitty show. (If you're keeping score, that means she is no longer hurting about being sent over there in the first place, since that Greatest Hurt Ever has now been eclipsed.) What hurts me more than anything is the giant "N" on her stupid tacky ass. She talks at length about how she "loved" Arrow and feels betrayed.
MULTIPLE CHOICE: Arrow Apocalypse!
1. What the fuck was James supposed to do?
A. Send Tim? No, because she'd be twice the bitch she's being about it.
B. Send Frank? No, and he explained admirably well why that is.
C. Send Stefani? No, see B.
D. Send Tim? No, because Tim's the only creative one in the bunch; everybody else is either "useful" (Frank and Stef) or "unclassifiable" (James and Nicole) -- and only one of those two is PM right now.
E. Exactly what he did.
2. What the fuck was Tim supposed to do?
A. Throw a big stupid hissy fit at the time? Like Nicole?
B. Throw a big stupid hissy fit during the task? For no reason?
C. Throw a big stupid hissy fit in front of Donald Trump? And get cobra'd?
D. Join Kinetic of his own accord? Like a maroon?
E. Exactly what he did? Minus the drunk bitching and pathetic groveling he's about to do.
3. What should Nicole be doing right the fuck now?
A. Getting real. This isn't about your personal feelings or who your friends are.
B. Getting real. You've got probably what -- three tasks, that's twelve days -- less than two weeks, assuming you don't get cut earlier than that: if you can't do a max of twelve days through a hedge, how the hell are you going to do Chicago/L.A.? Use your head please madam.
C. Realizing that she can figure out her strengths on her own, without James's or Trump's validation. The fact is she's a power player on Arrow, and will be a power player on either team, because she's smart, fast, and has boundless energy. James doesn't count. Tim doesn't count. Trump doesn't count. The only person who counts is Nicole, and that's who she's ignoring, and it makes me want to slap her.
D. WINNING. Fucking A, Nicole.
Tim drinks and drinks and drinks and stares into space and tells us about their "understanding," and how Nicole and Tim (unlike every Bachelor and Bachelorette, unlike Brigitte and Flav, unlike everybody on everyReal Worldever, unlike Corey Feldman and whatever the fuck happened there, unlike Danny Bonaduce, unlike Tom and Nicole, unlike Julia and Keifer, unlike my darling Amy and Nick, unlike anybody who ever got together in public because they were stupid and had something to prove to the universe, just like Nicole and Tim) are "stronger than this whole thing," due to knowing each other now in totally fucked up circumstances that are in no way like real life for the last month. He does point out that no part of this is in any way surprising, the shuffle or the rest of it, but then doesn't ask what could possibly be so dreadfully wrong with Nicole that she doesn't see it that way, and little does he know that she's preparing the most godawful snit about it, assuming that she is rational or cool. He reiterates once again that dating during a reality show is so very, very stupid that he can't help but do it, because whatever it is that he's getting out of macking on some girl he barely knows on TV outweighs the bad. Frank drags him drunkenly to the hedge, all, "Your boyfriend can't live without you!" and now that I've made up my mind that Frankie is actually in love with Nicole, that's awesome but sad. She bitches at them for a while through the bushes, then focuses entirely on Tim. Kristine and Heidi have her back, because they love drama and think it's funny to wind up the monkey and let her go. Tim's like, "So I volunteer to leave instead? You'd be pissed about that because it's 'disloyal.'" He's like: what concrete solution would have made this easier? And since there is none, because there's no "easier," because the only problem here is the one that Nicole is creating for herself and everyone else, she has no answers. Kristine and Heidi are like, "You should have thrown a big stupid hissy fit so then she wouldn't be bugging us." Tim calls this in poor team spirit, but doesn't point out that A) it would have been stupid, or B) Kristine and Heidi are only doing this to egg Nicole on, because they are Mean Girls with a nose for the truly awesomely awesome spectacle. Love.
Nicole: "... I don't wanna talk about it, honestly."
Jacob: "OH MY GOD YOU DID NOT. HOW OLD ARE YOU? Seriously, starting shit like that and then getting hit in the face with a brick of logic that you can't whine your way around? So you call the whole thing off? Gross me out. Gross me out to the power of one thousand."
Nicole, interviewing: "What I wanted him to do was throw a big pointless hissy fit, damaging his rep within the team and ruining his relationship with sneaky-ass James, who doesn't trust either of us as it is, in the most unprofessional manner possible, for no real reason -- just like I did. But since he didn't -- and Tim doesn't even get why this is making me act so disgustingly -- I'm very upset. If you won't get in the sandbox with me... well, I won't dump you, because I'm too needy to ever dump a guy, but I will definitely make you wish you were dead. And I know you won't dump me, thanks to the fact that you've never had a girlfriend, and we're barely dating, and that would introduce even more pointless drama to this already nightmarishly unprofessional mess we've managed to shove in everybody's faces. So the long and short of it is: that's what the screaming's about."
Tim: "Um, it happened. Get over it. Gross me out. Nothing horrible is happening, you're not dying, I'm not going to tell the team to go fuck itself, I wouldn't do that ever, and I know that she represents herself as a person that wouldn't do that, whatever her actual behavior indicates. It's one of the things we love about each other: our made-up personas that have nothing to do with reality."
James: "We have to decimate her now, don't you think? She's acting crazy. Just remember that now she's on Kinetic, we hate her. I'm like your only friend left in the entire world. Besides Frank and the people in the real world, also. Hey did you notice that Frank and Stefani and I have a whole alliance that is completely obvious, and that you created by forming an obvious team-breaker of an alliance with Nicole, that she just put on blast in five different locations on both sides of the hedge? No? Good, let's talk more about your girlfriend troubles with your fake imaginary relationship. The important stuff."
The highways of L.A. are so amazing and grody; the helicopter pilot is so funny and nerdy. They wait around without A/C for like a million years (Frank: "Are we off the ground right now?" Stefani: "NO." Ha!) and James interviews the huge lie that Trump personally designed the tour they're going on, "to show us how great life can be." Stefani asks "How awesome is this?" so many times I start to think she's actually wondering if it's enjoyable or merely another awful Apprentice reward. She points out Griffith's Observatory without mentioning either Rebel Without A Cause or Paula Abdul's "Rush, Rush" video. My two favorite things in the entire universe. Bad form, Stefani. Either of them would have been fine, both would be a home run, but just pointing at the huge observatory and going, "Observatory"? Total Frankie Suits move right there. They fly through downtown, or so it appears, and I'm so totally jealous I'm freaking out. Stefani asks "how beautiful" everything is. Stefani! Stand by your convictions! She interviews that now that Nicole's gone, they feel like a family, and a particular kind of scary family that "annihilates" people together, such as Kinetic. Finally, she hopes, Trump will remember that it's not eight tasks ago and they're not still two down out of two. Which honestly that seems to be what he thinks, in line with the whole "every day is another chance to tell Heidi she's not a star" issue. Frankie goes: "Ahhhh, the lifestyle of Mr. Trump! Definitely rich and famous." It's an "amazing feeling" and the "whole experience" is getting "better and better": first a jet, now a helicopter. What's ? I dunno, Frank. Like a lap dance? They fly past the Hollywood sign and Frankie reads it to them: "Victory!" Oh, Frank.
Angela comes mumbling up to Kristine all sneaky and dour, and of course Kristine assumes that she's bringing her back. Angela's like, "Duh, I'm totally going after Nicole. Since I can't explain or support that decision at all, because this is not Nicole's loss, and I can't defend myself in any way based on the fact that this was all my fault, I've decided to combine the two problems in the hopes of a 'two wrongs make a right' kind of thing saving my chiseled ass." Angela explains, ad infinitum, that Nicole's bad idea and her total enthusiasm and drawn-out hyping of the idea cast a mysterious spell on Kinetic or caused them to fall into some kind of hypnotic state where they could no longer tell down from up, or good from bad. "See, the fact that they won by a trillion billion dollars proves that Nicole has mind control powers. That's way too much money to be lost by simple Project Management: this is the work of a sorceress or mesmerist, right? I mean, obviously." Kristine's like, "Whatever you think will work." Angela's like, "Plus James implied that she was the weakest link, or so Trump said, and since that's not true but Trump's version of things always wins, I can totally go there." Kristine's like, "FYI, I don't care, just get Nicole out of here." Angela interviews that she knows from experience that Heidi and Kristine are good business people, but she has no way of knowing that about Nicole. Since Nicole persists in putting only her grossest foot forward, I can't really blame Angela for that. When all I know is that your big idea was rollerskates, your natural voice is a rasping whine like an alcoholic baby, and you have a giant "N" on your ass...
This part's edited all to hell, and the people who come off best are Nicole and Frank. So you see the quandary. Tim whispers through the hedge to Nicole, who is of course pretending to be asleep. Do I really have to recap this part? Finally she deigns to answer him: "Yo, you were mad last night." He's like, "Yep." He interviews some more about some unrelated "I can't believe I'm so fakely in love at such a convenient time" stuff, and he asks if she's over it yet, and she interviews a bunch of fairly salient points: 1) She's going in to the boardroom tonight, so stop bugging her, 2) She's not going to stop being angry just because it's the morning, because her anger came from deep-seated emotional insecurity and not beer, and 3) She knows damn well he's not going anywhere, so he can fuck around all he wants. Frank and James are talking about how James totally has to go after Nicole in the boardroom because Heidi's untouchable and Kristine is -- for all they know -- awesome. Stefani's like, "Totally, take Nicole out." I love this. See how reality can still be something in your life? Tim whines and mules around about it, and James is like: "Frank and Stef are right. We have to take Nicole down, because of the rollerblades." Tim's like, "Sounds cool, guys... Hey! Look over there! A pimp chalice!" or whatever Arrow thinks is classy and worth having... and then slimes on over the hedge and tells Nicole everything. That's hilarious. I don't actually mind that. I do mind the idea that anybody on Arrow, ever, thinks they're allowed to pull moral rank. Tim's of course propping himself up with how "disloyal" they're being -- and once he starts with the hedge-talking that's "disloyalty" too -- while the other three are giving each other props for not being unbusinesslike or getting personal -- which is exactly what they're doing. I love this show so, so much. Frank screams about Tim's mysterious doings ("THIS IS BS! COME ON!"), and Tim slides back into the kitchen all, "Hey guys, what's up? I totally didn't just tell Nicole your strategy. But if I did, that would be okay, because at least I'm being loyal. At my own discretion, void at any time, with no rhyme or reason." Frank, SO drunk, in bed, lights low: "You're jumping around the kitchen about a girl you met two weeks ago? This is bullshit, are you kidding me? We don't know what they're up to. You wanna blow this whole competition? For HER?"
Frank, in the kitchen: "Are you KIDDING ME?"
He's so wise for being so young. And so unwise.
Into the BR! Andie's dressed like a crazy yet boring soccer mom, speaking brightly. As they enter, Kinetic isn't happy, and I'm pleased to report that James is still indefinably gross. Angela looks for Ivanka's usually sultry glance and finds only a cold hard stone, which causes her to cry and process yet more emotions. Don't blink, don't whine, and don't run from a Trump. That's death.
Trump: "Angela, you went to Harvard, won gold medals in the Olympics, and yet you keep losing. What's the problem? Why can't you apply those unrelated skills to the nonexistent skillset that this show is about? You've got a minimal amount of personality, like any jock, and that's good... but what about the rest of it?"
Angela: "Mr. Trump, we lost by $7,000. I don't want to say that the supernatural is involved... "
Trump: "You lost by 23%! That's the same number, but expressed as parts-to-one-hundred using a fraction in which we divide the other team's total as the denominator into your own team's total as the numerator, then multiply it by a hundred!"
Angela: "Mr. Trump, exactly. I didn't take Calculus, but you're right: that is a much bigger loss than I understood before. My theory is that Nicole gave us a losing concept, then tied me up and put me in a broom closet on the grounds of Universal Studios for the remainder of the task. I think that she did this because she is crazy."
Trump: "So you're blaming Nicole for the loss?"
Angela: "One of her personalities, yes."
Nicole: "My ideas were awesome, I was able to say exactly what the other team was going to do, and I have boundless energy. I'm like a psychic Chihuahua."
Angela: "The problem was that we had to chase customers, while James just had to sit there."
Trump: "But isn't that how rollerskates work? Or, you know, tables? Isn't their function implied in their use?"
Angela: "She's simply too powerful. When that voice gets going, you would do anything to stop it. Anything. Put on short shorts and a bulletproof TV vest from the future and start rollerblading, whine to Ivanka about the concept of 'selling things' and how it's harmful to children and other living things... "
Nicole: "Well, exactly. James, I'm a kick-ass salesperson, right? Mostly due to my charm, but also due to my incredibly painful voice which controls people's minds?"
Angela: "James, if she's so awesome and has magic powers, why send her to us?"
James: "Because our team dynamic... um, hang on. I memorized this earlier. There are three other people... We have four people and three of them are so strong... Whoa, that didn't come out right."
Trump: "Better than Nicole?"
James: "... Yeah, fuck it. Too hard to explain one more time."
Nicole: "If only I hadn't questioned him about it for a thousand years, refusing to hear what he was saying, he might have the energy to explain it just one more time right now! What have I done?!"
Trump: "Nicole, do you think Tim is in love with you?"
Nicole: "Mr. Trump! God!"
Jacob: "Seriously, Donald. Give it a rest already. Poor girl. This isn't her entire personality."
Nicole: "Don't speak so fast, Jacob! I love talking about Tim, don't get me wrong!"
Trump: "So you're saying you wanna talk about Tim?"
Nicole: "Even before I started begging you to, I knew you were going to do this to me!"
Ivanka: "Think about how I feel. 'Getting married any time soon?' 'What about that nice Hilton cousin, he loves you!' 'You have to grow your hair out and wear a dress to be on the show.' 'Because ladies don't play professional golf. Only women Trump thinks of as men can play professional golf.' It's a fucking nightmare. He only sees you five minutes every task, girlfriend."
Trump: "That Tim, he's smart and he's smitten. So why didn't he stop James from making the correct managerial choice?"
Nicole's face: [So sad.]
Trump: "OMG this is hilarious. You totally think I know what I'm talking about. Let's see...I don't think you can be with somebody and not defend her. I think he hates you. Or does he love you?"
Nicole: "We've known each other for five minutes. I think that's clear."
Trump: "Okay, well, if he'd stupidly and pointlessly fought for you I would have made fun of him, but since he didn't I can totally be all like, 'he's a dick.' So if you don't start secret cutting about it right this second, I say keep him hanging. Make him suffer! Make him cry! He deserves it! He showed 'disloyalty' in a way only you and I understand! And five minutes from now I might just disavow agreeing with you about that too! It's awesome not knowing what you're talking about!"
Nicole: "Totally!"
Trump: "Nicole, how was Angela as leader?"
Nicole: "Mr. Trump, if you were asking about Surya I would say that he micromanaged, because that's what the men told me to say. But on this new team, I only have my personal grudges to go on. And the fact is, Angela came after me vaguely a second ago. So my answer is that we had no leadership at all."
Angela: "Um, okay, except that the problem wasn't me telling you what to do, the problem was me doing what you told me to do. As a Project Manager. So see..."
Ivanka: "The thing is that the kiosk and everything gave the task and franchise and theme park a desperately needed sense of legitimacy? Whereas cute girls in short shorts is great, who doesn't love that, but you needed to be Kinetic on this task, and you went totally Arrow."
James: "Exactly. We're trash, and you should have known that. And knowing that, you should have done exactly what we did. Also, you aren't scary slimy salespeople and didn't creep anybody out."
Jacob: "...True. Angela, please stop making me side with creepy James."
Angela: "I cannot! I was from the Olympics one time!"
Trump: "Yeah, Angela, about that. Ivanka tells me you pissed your pants about the sales tactics. Was that like a joke or something?"
Angela: "Totally wasn't. This is how weak my position is, and the fact that I knew we'd lost so early on is why I whined to your daughter in the first place."
James: "So basically now instead of sorcery, you missed out by $7K because Tim is mean?"
Angela: "Kind of, yeah."
James: "So I'm an idiot? Then why did you lose?"
Angela: "No, no! You were great! You did exactly what we should have done! But for some reason that I cannot articulate, we didn't do that!"
Trump: "You know what I commend is, I commend how he spanked you. There's nothing immoral about winning. The fact that you won makes you moral people, James. Money is even better a measure of personal worth than doing the right thing, or -- Nicole -- being a victim of forces."
Lots And Lots Of Americans With Too Much Money: "WHEW!"
Trump: "Kristine, is she a leader?"
Kristine: "She who? Angela? Sorry, I'm kind of baked. Um, it depends on if I'm getting fired or not."
Trump: "Is she a leadah?"
Trump: [laughs uproariously]
Everybody: [laughs wildly from inside his rectum]
Trump: "Sorry, sometimes I pretend I'm from Brooklyn and I earned my money myself!"
Everybody in the BR: [So funny!]
Ivanka: "Um, everybody knows I'm awesome, right? Trust fund mentality only lasts two generations?"
Everybody period: "Totally, babe. You're golden. Zero beef. We'll throw in the brother for free."
Kristine: "Angela's a great team player...she can carry heavy stuff and she's a godsend at Home Depot every week. On the other hand, if you are looking for a micromanaging anal retentive mindless robot like Surya? Then no. Up to you. Angela would be the best choice, but your choosing process is really fucked up, and no matter how many Trump Bibles I read, I can't get a handle on it, because I'm not fucking nuts."
Trump: "Angela, are you a leader?"
Angela: "Yeah."
Trump: "Heidi? If you were me..."
Heidi: "Oh my God, Mr. Trump. You do this to me every week."
Jacob: "Along with everybody else, darling. Answer the question."
Heidi: "Christ with this question you always ask everybody else that's different from that Muna bullshit last week yet is still bothering me. Um. The whole idea was fucked, and that came from Nicole, but why would you trust her? She's sad. So: Angela?"
Nicole: "Angela. Gone."
Angela: "Duh."
Kristine: "This was a fuckup so massive that you have to choose Angela to fire. Like remember -- sorry, of course you don't -- remember how last week was my fault because I put somebody with no camera experience in front of the camera who had an impenetrable accent, and then I ran off to buy lipstick? Because that was a good idea, but a bad effort on everybody's part. Nobody could say what the prob was there. But since I undersold by one thousand percent this week, I'm guessing, because this was a sales task and I'm a competent salesperson but not a retard sales savant like James and Frank, and I'm gorgeous but nobody's gorgeous standing to Heidi, I'm guessing it was the idea, and not my fault for not selling. Much like last week."
Trump: "Yep."
Jacob: "Yep, frankly. I hate sales tasks because I stop caring five seconds in because it's like watching Extreme Snow Sports or whatever: I don't know if you're good, bad or indifferent, but I do owe you a lap dance for getting out there at all. You're like Christiane Amanpour or Johnny Knoxville or Jane Espenson: good at something I have no desire to do. There has been like one customer survey all season, it's killing me."
Trump: "How do I fire an Olympian? Let's watch."
Angela: "Let's not!"
That's literally all she says.
Trump: "Even though every time this season there's been a consensus I have gone along with it, I need you to understand my dick still works."
Angela: "That matters to me less than literally...um, you're the boss, dude."
Ivanka: "More importantly, sack up. Can you make a stronger case for yourself? Or any case for yourself at all? Pretend you're sitting across from counsel, and this is what you got?"
Trump: "On an irrelevant note, I want to keep you, as a great American, which I am."
Jacob: "Only the best."
Angela: "That is literally as weak as my case is, actually."
Trump: "Yet I also need you to make a better case for yourself, now that my beautiful and brilliant daughter has pointed that out."
Angela: "That's where we part company."
Angela: "We work flawlessly together, except for how we keep losing, and we agreed on the concept, which was awful. But at least the whole group agreed!"
Trump: "This is literally the most caring and considerate I've ever been in my life. Please God tell me you've got something in your pocket."
Angela: "I cannot."
Trump: "Pretend that those $7000 are points in a hockey game against the destroyed Soviet Socialist Republics."
Angela: "That makes no sense."
Trump: "What year is it right now, in women's hockey?"
Angela: "It's 2007, Mr. Trump."
Trump: "I had no idea. So anyway, pretend you're playing hockey against Russia..."
Ungodly amounts of hours later, Trump: "If you're the PM and you go in a stupid direction, you're still fallible."
My friend Andrea: "They always fire the Project Manager!"
Jacob: "Okay, but why? For this. That's like the only thing this show gets right. Have you ever had a boss?"
Andrea: "Yes."
Jacob: "Have you ever had a retarded boss."
Andrea: "Yes."
Jacob: "Have you ever had a department-saving idea, or a special interest in your boss's livelihood, where you got cock-blocked and either you or your boss got fired?"
Andrea: "Who hasn't?"
Jacob: "This is what I'm saying. Because the flipside of this is that if Nicole had a better idea, which she's totally capable of because she's smart, and Angela hadn't followed it?"
Andrea: "Cobra."
Jacob: "Right, so this would be Angela's fault..."
Andrea: "...Even if they'd won. You're so brilliant."
Jacob: "No, actually the opposite. This show burnt out my actual brain long ago like a cigarette to a Thai prostitute's frontal lobe years ago."
Andrea: "I noticed."
Angela: "So I take the fall for them?"
Trump: "Yes."
Angela: "My whole team signed on to this bad idea, though?"
Trump: "They shouldn't be looking to their leader?"
Jacob: "NICE!"
Ivanka: "My darling, my sweetness, my secret Atlantic Starr love affair, please in the name of Sandra Bernhard and Our Ladies Of The Indigo, give him a reason to fire somebody else. And then a piggyback ride."
Angela: "I cannot talk! I am a MUTE!"
Trump: "Look, for real. I cannot fire Heidi: she didn't do anything wrong. Can't fire Nicole, she's awesome. Can't fire Kristine, although she's obviously. So?"
Angela: "What, so I take the blame? Just because I led a team to fuckuppery?"
Trump: "Basically."
Trump: "You're fired. I love you, I can't wait for you to marry one of my children that is not Ivanka, but you're not the Apprentice."
Angela: "Since I have total class and professionalism, since I am tired of this charade, since I've made the point that I am awesome and nobody can stop that being true, I thank you for everything."
Jacob: "As much as I loved Jenn and Derek's ousters as total class, I mean, that was total class."
Nicole: "And yet."
Gossipgirl.net
SUP!
Saw T and N canoodling in some tacky mansion only minutes before J got rid of her for legit reasons and A got rid of her for legit by not being legit reasons, and N's subsequent bullshit. Saw N at Chez Trump not getting how nearly she didn't go home this week. Poor girl.
You know you love me,
J
Nicole: "Mr. Trump Mr. Trump Mr Trump can I say something?"
Trump, verbatim: "Why are you so stupid to talk now?"
Nicole: "I know, but it's not the thing that just happened, because who cares about that? Even though I put myself through fucking hell because of it and will continue to do so, the fact is I'm not fired this week, so flooooop I forget it ever happened, and I want to talk to you about Tim."
After, Trump is like, "Angela's great, I think that for no real reason because I never actually saw her be awesome, which she was but I don't know that for sure."
Ivanka: "Christ, it was like we were literally asking her for a single reason to fire somebody else, and she wouldn't do it. Um, actually, that's literally what we were doing and she couldn't do it. Not that success lies upon scapegoating somebody else, but she failed the 'I'm Awesome' test, and she failed the 'somebody else is not awesome' test, and those were the tests we gave her, so like..."
Outside, Angela processes her emotions into tears, and Kristine is crying too, and I believe it, in part because Heidi is not crying, and everybody hugs everybody else, including Nicole, and in the limo with her gorgeous smile she says the word "Olympics" one hundred times, because he's spent the last ten "weeks" forcing her to believe that's what she is, when the truth is -- beyond being a winner, which you can learn to be just as easily through a million other non-jock ways -- that being an athlete has nothing to do with this, so really, it's like he was telling her all along that she was going to lose, because the thing he was praising her for is like 10% of what it takes to win this game. And the really sad part is that this thing is like 1% or less of what Angela is, and all he did was tell her that wasn't true. And all she did was believe him. "As an Olympic gold medalist, and silver, and bronze medalist, it always hurts to lose." You didn't lose. Michelle can fix this. But the rest I actually really love and agree with: "Tonight I didn't win. But I learned so much in this process, and I know that when you lose, you actually learn more about yourself." I think this is very true, but I also think people that say it out loud are missing the point. It's a 20/20 hindsight thing: if somebody says this to you, in any context, assume they're halfway there and could possibly be crazy still; also probably they are a lesbian. "I won a gold medal, but I learned and grew more when I won a silver and bronze medal." Awesome, I'm really glad she said that because it's less formulaic and more awesome. She tells us she's okay with the fact that she lost tonight, and hopes that she'll "take from it" and "hopefully grow."
Which, in terms of lessons learned, puts us in a weird place. Because if you say that, you're not going to, because of how changing works. Maybe it's better we're in Cali, this season, because I've seen more of that in CA than anywhere else: if you say it's a growing experience, it doesn't hurt. Now, I don't think losing on this gaywad game show should be a "hurtful" experience, but on the other hand if you're going to call it that, fucking get hurt. Those words are like a crucifix in a vampire movie: "Everything happens for a reason," "God has a plan for everybody." They're the opposite of feeling it. Sometimes you are better off not feeling it, like when people start saying that shit to you because you have cancer or miscarry: at that point, who you need to get pissed at today is God. The plan is for tomorrow, and the day after that. But today, hurt. Change feels like dying because it is. You hung your hopes on something stupid: everybody does that every day, Angela. Please claim something from this experience besides some deferred lesbian Everything Happens -- you deserve better than that. The fact is that the whole process fucked you up, and you realized you weren't as comfortable with people as you thought, and you weren't the salesperson you thought, and you weren't the bloodhound you thought. Those are awesome things to be and not be. One thing you didn't need to be is somebody other than Angela, and it kills me, because it seems like everybody here, even Frankie, even people not that egregious, have this idea that they're going to get legit, or stop being a jock or a princess or a basket case or whatever, change as a result of being on this show. Honey, you were going to do that anyway. Just get there.