Well, the sweet, funny, touching boardrooms couldn't last forever, I guess, but damn, that was a yucky, sad way to go out. Task: design a supplement for the L.A. Times about a new mouthwash. Heidi-led Kinetic of course takes the opportunity to dress up in costumes, while Arrow -- with Tim hanging on by his fingernails -- creates a confusing novella about people in bathrobes, with occasional science, which confuses even the executives. Kinetic's reward: Kristine's equally hot and futuristic French husband Ludo cooks for the other girls and their moms; Heidi and her mom reveal a much longer, harder history with the stuff they choose to gloss over. Suffice to say I now love Heidi Androl like a sister, rather than my secret TV girlfriend. Then right after the reward, everything goes to hell. I've gotten up on my soapbox about this show many a time, and taken it seriously more times than I should, so I want to be clear: this show made me very sad tonight. Not "sad for America" or even a "corporate weasels and Olympians please stop being afraid and learn to live" superiority thing, but like actual tummy-hurting "I really like these people, and this sucks ass" kind of sadness.
So. Having laid down with themselves, Arrow finally wakes up with fleas. James points fingers at Tim, for having the big idea that went south, and Frank, for pulling a James and wigging out about the concept at the last second. Everybody attacks Tim in the boardroom for his quasi-alliance with Nicole, not least because they're sick of hearing and/or worrying about it. Tim responds admirably for awhile, because he knows he's getting dogpiled, but then abruptly turns awful and the claws come out. Stefani stays the hell out of it, only speaking up to quietly defend Frank, and even James's slimy wordplay is no worse than usual, but Tim hurts Frank's feelings so bad and so often that the rest of it is just hateful from both sides. Not even Frankie comes off as bad as Tim, and it's so sad because Tim's not even actually trying to be a dick, it's just his whole point: I'm better than stupid Frank. Trump and Ivanka take the "we don't want to hear about Nicole drama" approach, which causes Tim to lose his mind. So Frank's frothing in one corner about how Tim is being a petty jerk, and Tim's bouncing up and down hatefully about how he's getting cornered, and they're both right, and everything's totally wrong, and then Tim cries in the limo after his cobra, I don't even wanna think about it. It was a regrettable bloodbath, and nobody won, and everybody loses, and week things get uglier: Six people left, with only one task before the Final Two. Do the math.
Immediately , Hanson shows up on Briefcase Or No Briefcase, a show that makes less sense every week. It seems to be about guessing numbers and random and then letting a guy with a spreadsheet dick with you and make you question your ability to guess numbers properly. It's not that I hate America, so much as find America really confusing sometimes.
Previously on this show, which makes all too much sense most of the time, Angela came and went with neither bang nor whisper, just a lot of dreams surrounding her that had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with Trump's feelings about, like, America. Which he finds really confusing most of the time, so he just makes things up. Angela couldn't think of a thing to say, as usual, and then Nicole thought she was so damn cute.
Back at camp, as the Kineticists come back without Angela, Tim's all yelling over the hedge about "Who's that? Who's that?" You see, his girlfriend is in danger even though he cheated and told her that James was gunning for her. Kristine and Heidi apologize for ousting Nicole, hilariously -- "She was an easy scapegoat" being the best line -- and he gasps dramatically, but then starts yelling like Leo in Gilbert Grape about how she's really there, guys. Heidi's like, "Nicole's little stunt in the boardroom, while idiotic, was also all about Tim. We don't... need Tim? For anything in particular? So that was kind of all about the Nicole show and, like, if he's loyal. If he really likes her." She laughs about how they're in high school, but she knows it is not that funny. Over the hedge, they give him the goose-eye view about how Trump wants him dead for being disloyal and how it was all Trump talked about. Which is hilarious, because you know Tim can't handle that. Kristine takes it up a notch, letting him know how Trump told Nicole to dump him. Tim's like, "Bastard! I have to prove myself! Again!" I think this is where Tim convinces himself that this is a movie about his life and not his actual life. It's the only way I can make sense of what we're about to see for the hour.
So James is disgusted in like all directions after Nicole's little display, and comes in huffin' and puffin' and telling everybody to take a seat. Tim's gone completely moronic, and he's all, "What happened? Can I be in the meeting?" And James is like, "Motherfucker, do you want to hear this?" Stupidly, he does; he nods his head like a golden retriever. James tells them all about how Nicole made an ass of herself and also Tim, acting as a sort of ass-proxy. James asks Tim if he and Nicole ever discussed that stupid concept which makes no sense and only goes to prove that these people have lost their minds. Tim is like, "Instead of pointing out that this question makes no sense, because of how simple long division works, I will talk about my deep love for Nicole, because it is all I know how to talk about, because I have lost my mind." He tells them that he is sad to be on a different team from Nicole, due to loneliness or some shit, and that he loves Arrow though too, so you see it's very complicated. (Tim: It is not actually complicated. You just sound nuts.) Tim points out how by doing nothing at all -- as far as his teammates know -- he has been marked as disloyal by both Nicole and Arrow, not to mention Donald Trump, the moral authority of the world. "That's fucked!" he says. He is not wrong. Then everybody suddenly starts screaming wildly about nothing at all.
Frank: "You should want her to go home! You should want her face to melt like in Lost Ark!"
James: "By saying that you don't want your pretend girlfriend to be ripped apart by dogs, you are saying that you want one of us on this team to go home!"
Tim: "NO! YES! I have lost respect from Trump, from my team... I don't know anything anymore! Love is a terrible fool's game! But I am so in love I cannot think straight! I have always given 110% even when my heterosexuality was not in play! As it is right now, so very violently! How can I cope?! I am like Orestes and you, Frank, are the Furies right now! When will you stop hounding me? I am being driven crazy by the predictable, natural consequences of my idiotic and transparent behavior!"
Stefani: "Your ass will go home if you don't give 110, so suck on that."
Frank, verbatim: "They are our enemy! HATE THEM!"
It's funny because this is what I've been praying for, for ten, eleven weeks? Everybody drunk or coked up, people drooling and screaming, insane stalking around the mansion at 2 AM, people almost crying or running off to cry, secret murderous thoughts, Stefani looking at Tim like she's going to kill him with her mind... except I really, really don't like it. It's gross and ugly and stupid, and this episode more than anything demonstrates why the very idea of going on a show like this should be considered a cry for help. This is what happens, inevitably. I normally think that extremity is revealing, but I think also that there's an element of mental torture here that goes beyond extremity, and into being a factor all its own that is very grody. Like if you weren't In The Shit you could talk about how maybe if you were just a little stronger, had just a little more constitution and you wouldn't give in, but the whole point of torture is that it evolves as you resist. And that's what this is: evolving torture, for the sake of drama. Little less sleep, little more beer, weirder mixed signals from production and Trump, Nicole stirring up shit, Kinetic stirring up different shit, James stirring up all the shit he can, and Tim suddenly with no idea what the hell is going on. Hmm.
James and Nicole answer the phones the morning, still asleep. The L.A. Times, if you didn't know, stopped sucking. I myself did not know about this until very recently, but it turns out not to have sucked for quite awhile. That's what you get for accepting people at their word instead of finding out for yourself. Andie, on the phone, is so not feeling them at all. Her amazing eyeshadow is the same deep blue as her shirt, but neither are quite so blue as her wan disinterest. Perhaps she is not going to Homecoming after all? Perhaps Jimmy is taking Sally to the 2 Live Crew concert, instead of Andie. Perhaps there are Mulholland walls that will tonight remain un-graffitoed, because Andie has too much damned AP French III homework to go out wilding with her girlz.
There's some kind of Copeland-adjacent beef song of the fourth estate ramping up to infinity as we see footage of the archaic newspaper industry: presses going, smart-mouthed sassy dames snapping their gum right in the EIC's face, sketchy dudes wearing fedoras with the little press card in the band. Calendar pages fly off right at your face as we travel back, back to a time of newspaper relevance, when trees literally covered the globe and any man could just reach out and pluck one, turn it into paper, and then produce a bit of news -- or "broadsheet," as they were called -- without stealing away his children's precious oxygen. The days of pre-consumer paper. The Apprenti assemble before Trump and Ivanka, and a man and a lady. Trump explains that the Times is (now) a very big and very powerful and not sucky newspaper; he can tell you that it is as rigid and impressive as any of his jets by how they sometimes write "bad stories" about him, and he subsequently goes through "hell." Thus, you see, the Times is very successful. (That was a Nicolish little logic proof, wasn't it?) They're going to be developing a Sunday supplement for a "wonderful product" which is having to do with breath freshening. Dr. Cohen is the President and CEO of the sponsor company in question, and Kevin Something is her VP Marketing. He doesn't talk a whole lot. They're going to design, photograph and create the actual thing, Ivanka explains one second later in almost exactly the same words her dad just used, but it's fine because she's wearing a cream suit and pale lipstick and looks amazing. James is the Arrow PM still, and Heidi's the Head Kineticist.
As Arrow's leaving, they bump into each other like little kids, like, while they're walking. As though they have the bends, or haven't slept in six weeks. Or both. Frank demands to smell everybody's breath as a control. I submit to you that this is not only unnecessary but a particular kind of unnecessary in which only Frankie excels. Tim's breath is not the freshest; Frank's breath smells, to Tim, like chicken. Don't smell other people's breath or ask them to smell yours. That's too weird. Stefani knocks back a cup of the stuff, and Frankie starts yelling at her about how he needed to smell her breath first, or how can they tell if it works; she giggles cutely with the stuff in her mouth and almost spits, and everybody is really cute for a second. I love how Stefani loves Frank because I think it's exactly the same reason I love Frank. Which will make the boardroom even uglier. Tim starts hopping around like Nicole was last week, and for the same reason: if he screams his great idea enough times, and if it is great enough, then he will be a hero and they'll stop looking at him funny. Since it's not the best idea, apparently, his idea will bring down Arrow just like Nicole's did Kinetic last week. He describes a white room, white walls, white floor, a group of ten or twelve people in their pajamas and all of them with morning breath. A second page detailing the science behind bad breath, down to the molecules themselves. Everybody just kind of stares at him screaming about molecules. James interviews for us, in case we can't tell, that Tim's under "a lot of stress" and is trying to give the appearance of "stepping up" but that it's kind of freaking everybody out. Tim continues to babble insanely about how after the science, the pajama people will be totally relaxed and smiling. Maybe he really is the same as Nicole and all he can think about is getting through this task so he can feel okay again, and that's why he's so into this. He interviews that this is, in fact, the case: it's "do or die," because if Trump gets even a whiff of that "disloyalty" he has yet to demonstrate, he's going, so they need to win. Or at the very least, he needs to act so incredibly insane that Arrow will forget what he's doing to himself and them with that Nicole shit.
Kinetic's strategy is to be cute. Heidi laughs as she's modeling and reminds us she's finally PM again. I'm glad, I was getting tired of the wheel-spinning she's been doing all season. She tells us how there's going to be one lady in her nightgown and one going "out on the town," and one in a business suit, but they will share one thing: terrible breath. And those ladies? Will be Kinetic. Kristine looks totally adorable in her lavender PJ's, Heidi of course looks like a million bucks, and of course, Nicole's the club-goer. Which I hate, because she looks best in formal attire, but you know the whole thing was her idea, so she's wearing exactly what you think Nicole would wear "out," and it's... I don't have any more adjectives. I don't know how to not be mean. She looks like those ladies that go to Happy Hour with the other ladies in their department and they don't have anything in common but loneliness and a secret sense that they were meant for something better, and they all squabble good-naturedly over like the one guy under fifty, even though he's not even really that cute, but they have this like imaginary need to get a guy that they have to fulfill, and he's just looking to get the cutest one he can actually bring down. Maybe they sleep together, maybe they don't, but either way it's not real, and it's stupid, and day the ladies laugh about how "fun" it was and how they have to do it again sometime soon and then they... do. And then they're forty and still have the hungry eyes and the claws around the drink and still don't understand why they're alone, but they keep going. That's how she looks. Tired.
Speaking of tired, Kristine spends most of the photo shoot yawning, or so I'm led to believe by the nightgown, but of course she's actually performing the act of having bad breath, which I only figure out once all three of them start doing it so cutely. This little mistake is key important! to the rest of the task and episode on both teams, and I have just performed it for you in real time. Nicole waxes poetic about how this is an opportunity to show Trump "not only" that they have "brains," but that "honestly," they "look good." "We're all hot chicks!" You know what pretty girls don't do? Tell you how pretty they are every five seconds. That's what pretty girls don't do.
And you know what real women do? Understand that "looking good" is not a substitute for excellence, but in fact a small fraction of being excellent. You don't earn anything by looking good that you weren't anyway: it's the cherry, not the sundae. Being pretty makes things easier: so does being competent, having the self-confidence that you so dreadfully lack, and talking like a fucking human being and not an animal. And finally, yes, this is Trump. He's impressed by weird shit. But why "looking cute for Trump" is on the list of objectives with this task, I don't know. Thinking about it makes me kind of angry, frankly, but the weirdest part is how she doesn't even look that good, so she's creating several problems and trying to solve those problems with each other â but they're all in her head. Trump telling you you're pretty is worth: what? Having an imaginary relationship on TV with somebody just as clueless as you are is worth: what? This isn't about proving you're pretty, just like dating shouldn't be about proving you don't deserve to be alone. Nobody deserves to be alone: if you are alone, it's either a choice you're making or a choice you refuse to admit you're making. This isn't about proving anything other than getting the results that will cause you to win. Everything else is on your side of the sucking, sick old desperation line. Just do a good job. Just win. How hard is that? How can you beg for so many other things and different kinds of worthless attention, while diverting all your energy away from the one thing that would actually prove your worth? How is that efficient? What's so scary about Team Nicole that you're the only person who refuses to join?
Anyway, sorry. There's nothing more awful to me than a woman with that many advantages buying that shit hook, line, and sinker like that. Seriously nothing. I have a host of issues with stupid men, as you may have noticed, but playing into the hands of the white male elite like that is just disgusting to me. Susan B. Anthony died for your sins, fucking earn it. And the kind of guy who would go for something so grasping and invalid and hungry? Come on. So all three of them are simply adorable, with their bad breath and their little costumes; Heidi interviews a sudden worry that this is going to present an unequal demographic: this isn't a woman's product, for everybody has a mouth. She hopes they made the right decision, and is lovely laughing at the pictures with the photographer, but the execs do not look happy. In contrast to the three hot chicks concept, which Nicole has now brought into for the second task in a row, Frank and Stefani hit a hot dog stand offering $250 to normal everyday people. As Stefani says, the demographic is everyone. This is actually a pretty good misdirection, as it seems really obvious that Arrow is correct. But only in the context of the edit, because if you step back, you realize it's more about packaging than something tiny like the kind of people in the ad, this week: all it has to do is differentiate itself from other ads, and be vibrant and interesting to look at. It's a print insert, not a billboard. So props to the editors this one tiny time, even if I am sure one factor in my own astray-leading had to do with not wanting to look at pictures of Nicole doing anything at all, and another being that Tim is clearly losing his fucking mind but I'm so used to rooting for him -- and to him winning the task for James every week -- that I kind of lost track.
Randoms in their pajamas, Frank running around adorably in his bathrobe, Arrow's all in pajamas, it's great. Of course, Frank is not really a leader, of which thing a director is a type, so the people are kind of milling around as he demonstrates different ways of standing in one spot and staring. Of course, the general cluelessness of a bunch of schmoes being led about by the one-eyed King of Schmoe is compounded again by editing: Tim telling us how uninspiring Frank is, as a director... and then stepping on in there and demonstrating for them possible ways of emoting bad breath. So now if you're counting, that's two crazies, running around breathing on strangers. The strangers, Tim, everybody, especially Frankie Suits, are totally adorable, but it's also kind of exhausting. As much as I enjoyed it, I was glad when the randoms finally left and went back to eat their hot dogs. Randomly, Frank calls a meeting of Arrow and the execs stare, wondering what he's got up his Suity sleeves.
Frank asks them -- now that the shoot is wrapped up -- if there's time to maybe try a few other things, because he's not sold on the pictures. And he's right, he interviews -- and I agree -- that the pictures aren't that clear. Turns out you can't emote a smell: it looks like they're yawning. Just like Kristine! I told you! Either way he's right, but it's also 7:40 in the evening, they've still got graphic and all that stuff to deal with. And Stefani's looking at her watch and worrying about it, and Frank's getting more and more upset because nobody really wants to deal with this right now, and then as Frankie's stomping around we cut to a goddamn interview with James going, "At the last minute? Say the idea wasn't good? That is not good. That throws the team off." Especially if by "the team" you mean "me, when I'm PM, and it's my ass." I kind of hated James already for being dumb and not covering his ass properly in the midst of covering his ass, but he did something really stupid last week in conversation that I can't even remember due to that episode being so boring, and now again: Dude. You got called out in front of Donald Trump for doing this same exact thing. That's the kind of thing even a brain-deadened person who has to watch this show is going to remember. So the disingenuous that you're being, which is icky, is plus like a factor of ten because behind your back your team has been saying this for weeks , even. Stefani tries the sane, not-prickish approach: "I... see what you're saying? But at 7:40? Really? Do you think it's physically possible to start over?" And Frankie, boy, he is just a man-child on the edge this whole episode. I wish I still hated him so it would be funny. Mm, it's still kind of funny. So Frankie goes stomping off in like a third direction now, all "Fine! time I'll keep it to myself!" Stefani calls up to the balcony he's just stomped away from: "Frankie! Frankie!" But he doesn't come back. Frankie Suits has had it.
Heidi interviews about how -- like with the Witch Car task -- she suddenly went crazy and needed to take a hundred thousand pictures of the product, tote bags, Saturn, a yeti, her hand, her hand the other way, this really cool old house, a potato chip that looks exactly like Angela Lansbury, some dump trucks, chromatographic electron microscope pictures of NaCl or what they call common table salt. Everything that reflects light, Heidi needs a picture of it. Of course she's right, because they need all this for the design thing to really fly, but it's funny to watch, like, this gorgeous intimidating woman trying to get just the right angle on a black vinyl tote bag. She sends the girls on to get started with the designer, and Nicole's got questions questions questions for her, and I guess since she's creative that's okay, except like there are three of them. It's not like she's going to get a Blue Letter for picking a circle over a square. Maybe I just didn't understand the question. Heidi's like, "I have to take fifty more pictures of some crap, so just go brainstorm with the one other person on our team about that no-doubt very important question, and maybe you guys can come up with, you know, something." Kristine and Nicole make faces at each other about this, and how Heidi's apparently covering her ass or something because "creative" isn't on the line if they lose. Now I am fully willing to say that this editing is monkeyed with, because Heidi's getting the Goddess Queen edit right now and surely Kristine and Nicole, one of whom I like a whole lot (and the other of whom has intelligence and energy of a scrappy sort, like a Dickens character or inner-city paperboy of the '30s) but like: photographs? Heidi. Actual design? Heidi, in a sec. Concept? Not sure; assuming Nicole, due to the usual confusion between herself and the product they're meant to be marketing.
All this task is, is creative: the Frankie/Stefani part, to use a horrible mean sick old metaphor, was eliminated when they decided to be the models themselves. So Heidi's covering her ass by bringing pictures up and expecting the girls to make some decisions about this group activity without her express signoff? Because she couldn't question it when she gets up there in a second, if she has a problem with it... just like she and Kristine did on the Muna Adultery task? No, I guess there's something else going on; I mean I honestly think that but I don't know what it is. So, right: because Heidi did her job, and now she's going to go up there and do all that stuff too, and for what? So Nicole can rasp out a presentation that will leave them gagging for some Drano? No way. So Heidi can give the presentation, too. That's what.
Bloody moon rising! Scary! What on Earth!? I was like, "This is going to be some howling in the yard type shit tonight," and then...boom, it's morning. Maybe that red moon is the world crying for Arrow. So everybody's doing design, Tim's yelling his ass off about everything still on his validation high, James is looking amazing on thirty minutes of sleep -- this might be the best he ever looked -- and James and the still-yakking Tim send Frank and Stefani, who needs a shower, to get ready for the presentation. Once they're gone, Tim realizes he doesn't have any clothes or shoes. In the van, Frank and Stefani don't have their phones; the pairing rule means Tim couldn't leave without James if he even had a car. James tells Tim a hundred times that Frank and Stefani will bring him some clothes, and Frank's hopping around like a monkey maniac in his shorts going "Hey, hey hey!" and it's very scary. At home, Stefani's under the impression that James and Tim are following them, but they never show up and the phones are still missing. She calls the office where they're working to ask if they're still there, getting annoyed...and the phone dies. Frank and Stefani stare at each other adorably with their mouths hanging open. Still cute. Everybody's still so cute.
James and Tim seemingly run to the presentation, and Tim is in his PJ's. I love the guy, I love him in a suit, I love him in the morning falling on his ass, I love him getting drunk and kissing people in the pool, I love him running down the hall in his PJ's. Having said that, this whole thing is stupid. James the whole time is saying how Stefani is going to bring clothes for him, which normally wouldn't even occur to me, except it's Stefani, and all we really know about her is that she's one step ahead if it has to do with your clothes or some strange detail, you know? Like memorizing everything that ever happened in Hollywood, or...well, that's like all she's ever done. But they always talk about how she's the clothes-bringer of all time type. And I believe it. They sit around in a green room of sorts and Tim -- still nuts, note -- is like, "Give me your suit jacket and you can just wear the shirt, and I can put on a tie, and then we'll be even and I won't look crazy. In a t-shirt, necktie, and no shoes." James is like, "T-shirts don't have collars? So you'll actually look even more nuts?" Good point, Tim allows. It's all looking very dire for like five seconds and them Stefani comes in with Tim's clothes. Thank goodness! And thank goodness Surya is not here! Because can you imagine Surya dealing with Tim in his PJ's? I cannot. I love to watch Tim getting dressed, is another thing. There he goes! Stefani does that thing she does where she asks you the thing she's actually telling you.
Stefani: "How much do you love me for bringing your clothes?"
Translation: "I brought you your clothes."
Tim: "I have no socks."
Tim's loafers: "It's true."
Arrow: [Laugh crazily, with their total lack of sleep or perspective, until they fall down, then roll around on the floor, still laughing, bumping into the walls, crazier than they have ever been.]
Arrow heads into their meeting with the execs, where James's oft-weird construction comes up again as he thanks them for letting him do this, or something. I'll have to watch it again to make sure it made sense, and there's no way I'm doing that, so let's give him this one. Stefani gives them the presentation, hitting over and over how the target consumer is everyone. There's a group of adorable normal people in bathrobes and pajamas and their mouths open wide, then an intense set of biological and molecular diagrams about all kinds of things because, as Stefani says hilariously, "The Smartness Is In The Science!" Thanks for the recap title, Stef. She explains how their product is going to revolutionize the mouthwash industry one skanky gob at a time, and then James holds up the last poster, which is the aforementioned sleepy people, now overwhelmed by joy and freshness. "After all," Stefani underlines, "[Revolutionary Mouthwash Product In Which The Smartness Can Be Found, Via The Science] is everyone!" We're finally getting to see these storied presentation skills indoors, and I'm telling you: it's worth it. She's dazzling. Charming, forthright, believable as an authority, all of it. She's great.
Kinetic comes in and like, here's the thing. I would let Heidi win every week. I don't care. I am not strong enough to resist the power of Heidi. I don't care what company I'm the VP Marketing of, I don't care how many Merv Griffin blowjobs get me to the top: Trump says I gotta make the call, call's gonna be Heidi. I can't be held responsible. So she plops down some copies of the L.A. Times, with the supplement already inside -- nice -- and when they pull them out, it's eerily like a Neutrogena ad, only die-cut to look like two bottles of science living in harmony with each other. The presentation is super stupid and rambling, and I can't tell if Heidi's nervous, or forgot to prepare this part, or is sipping on syrup or what, but it's bad. Chopped and screwed bad, and it takes forever. Meanwhile, as they let their minds drift away from the nonsense she's talking, they turn the pages of the supplement: Heidi, looking ravishing. Kristine, looking lovely and secretly devilish and funny as usual. Nicole, wearing a necklace. So adorable, this thing. Of course, what with Stefani going all "everybody has bad breath" all over the one, and then the edit from before, you think: they look totally stupid like they're playing dress-up. But get this: the idea of having hot chicks for models is actually brilliant, now that I'm thinking about it.
"Everybody has skanky gobs" as a marketing concept is flawed due to the unmistakable silent "... especially you" that's implicit with every hygiene and beauty product. It's not the fear tactic ("Well, if even Tim has bad breath, I'm fucked and I better assume I'm stinking up the joint") but the -- again -- Neutrogena thing of turning the problem inside out: If even Cutie-Pie Hayden Panettiere gets zits from time to time, and yet I cannot currently see them on my screen, I better use what she's using. It takes the awkwardness out of having to wonder if you have bad skin or breath or whatever. Obviously Heidi has never had bad breath in her life: look at her; therefore, use [Revolutionary Mouthwash Product] and you'll be pretty, or something. Some indefinable thing that is contained in three cute girls rocking out against halitosis: some thing you really want. Versus getting to look like the schmoes in Arrow's ad, which you already do. And the episode is edited so harshly the other way that you never even get a chance to think about it. So my notes at this point go, "Stop talking stop talking stop talking," and "Nicole so gross with that look she gets," and then some doodles, and then the frightful (but not by comparison) tagline: "Don't take another breath without it."
DON'T EVEN THINK IT!
Trump comes to the L.A. Times offices for the second time. I always wonder if they have to clear the building or lock everybody's doors or whatever. I don't even know if they do that for like the President of the United States, but I bet they do with Trump. "Don't speak above a low whisper until he's gone. Don't look his limo driver in the eye. No popping popcorn. No open-toed shoes. Mr. Trump dislikes the color orange, it reminds him of a particularly unhappy holiday when he was young. Therefore, you will be sent home for the remainder of the day, without pay. ... Then you should have thought twice before wearing orange. Especially with your complexion."
The executives -- finally, a pair with the balls to say it -- admit that overall, given the absurdly foreshortened timelines this show requires in order to turn a profit, the Apprenti did a really good job. The teams enter the room -- Kinetic in black suits, with turquoise tops inside, totally adorable; Arrow wearing clothes, so good on them -- and Trump hopes aloud that they liked at least one team. The execs say they're very happy with the results. Both Heidi and James think their teams won; James says particularly because their ideas were so original. Maybe too original: the male VP likes the diversity of the gobskanks, but wonders if they're meant to be yawning or what. See? Donald thinks they look bored, but I think somebody told him to say that or he's repeating what somebody else said, because if he really knew what that looked like? Also the science of the product doesn't flow with the supplement on either side so it's disjointed -- it's a story about boredom or yawning or gobskanked people, interrupted by a few minutes of molecules. Meanwhile, the sun comes out from behind a cloud as the execs fall in love with Kinetic's ad once more. Fake out! Kinetic totally wins! The "appeal of this shape," in particular, "Hit me immediately." Effusive? You don't even know effusive: "You open the L.A. Times and there it is: Wow!" CEO Lady takes it one step further: "Oh, you know what? We're totally right here at the L.A. Times! A newspaper that comes out on a daily basis! I'm just gonna walk this over and it'll be in this Sunday's paper!"
Heidi and her mom, whom we learn is a hospice nurse, walk around and take in the view. "She takes better care of other people on a daily basis than she does herself," Heidi says, getting as emotional as we've seen her. "She was single mom for a lot of years," Heidi explains, and she worked hard to give her kids what she could. Mom apologizes for not coming to visit earlier, and then fully gets OTF'd and interviews about how coming to see her daughter is a dream finally coming true. Aww! Heidi is winning this whole bitch, maybe. They talk about how proud mom is, and then Heidi finally cracks on the fly about how seeing her mom is more significant than winning, and there's a lot of sad, poor subtext in there that makes me love Heidi so, so much. I always felt like I was in a secret club with Sarah Michelle Gellar about this stuff, moms and opportunities and trying to keep everything together, and now Heidi can be in the club too. They look out over the valley and talk about how lovely LA is, but really they're talking about Heidi's life and how far she's gotten, and Heidi's like, "Pretty cool, huh?" So then I kind of cried a little bit, like maybe a single tear. Like a Heidi amount.
morning some fake newspapers are fake-delivered to some houses, including the mansion. Awesomely fake is how fake this is. Heidi brings in the paper, and their supplement is inside. I guess The Yard doesn't get a paper; that's probably best. Everybody yells about the tangible evidence of their awesomeness and Nicole's adorable mom is like, "This is a great supplement! I can see how you won!" Nicole interviews that this made her proud, and then on the couch she talks I'm guessing for the fifth hour in a row about the goddamn Tim situation, and her mom finally goes, "You know what? Worry about the task. This is not why you're here." Props to mom. Does it work? Hell no. Nicole interviews that having her mom there reminded her that "somebody" loves her and would never betray her or show disloyalty, and would do anything for her. Thus somehow proving Nicole's worth. So gross. Kristine interviews that the whole thing was a great recharge, and that she knocked boots with Ludo, and that it's none of your business, and everybody giggles about the awesomeness of the reward.
Arrow meanwhile is so very tired in the hot Sunday sun. Tim and Frank sleep while James and Stefani discuss which of them is going under the bus. They agree that James was a good PM, and that it comes down to which of the other two was "worse" this week -- remember how James simply cannot believe that Frank pulled a James -- and when I say they agree, I mean that James asserts these things and Stefani nods, because that's how she rolls. James interviews that he's afraid of getting fired, but he'll fight hard. Later, Tim and Frank join the conversation, which immediately stops, because that's how both James and Stefani roll. Frank just wants everybody to agree to be "honest" in the boardroom, and Stefani wonders if Frank will go home for second-guessing the project, for bugging James, and "getting on all of our nerves." Tim talks and everybody goes silent, because obviously Tim is going home. His OTF excuse is that it was his "big ideas" that the team has been using, and that the PM ultimately approved those ideas, just like Angela last week, but he's totally getting fired. Not until after he shows his ass big-time, though. Upstairs door, Trump asks the execs who the "really strong players" are on Arrow, and they say that James is "clearly a leader" and the team acknowledged his leadership; Stefani also was great, confident, well-spoken. He thanks them and they take off, but the whole thing is kind of lame because we just heard that a second ago, that it was going to be Tim and Frank on the hotseat, so it's kind of redundant. Not to mention that Frank did nothing wrong and never does, and deserves to go further than anybody might think, so Tim's going home. Why can't they just send him home now? The boardroom never needed to happen.
Andie seems wan today. I hope she did okay on her French final! I've been wondering. Perhaps it is Stefani's not-very-flattering pants. Inside, Heidi sits in her rightful place at Trump's right hand, and he is wearing his pink tie.
Trump: "So James, all these victories...and now a terrible loss!"
James: "We had a good run, but this task we didn't work well as a team. We had a big fight the night before."
Trump: "About what, pray tell?"
James: "Nicole and Tim and Tim's disloyalty, which you hate. Basically it was the three of us against Tim, and that's how this is going to go also."
Trump: "Where is your loyalty, Tim?"
Tim: [shakes his head]
Trump: "Not even I am stupid enough to believe what you're implying, which is that he would throw the competition or screw you over or want Nicole to win, just because he's in love -- or in like -- with her. We can all agree that Nicole would have more respect for him if he won."
Tim: "First thing is that Nicole doesn't understand the word 'respect' in any fashion. Second thing is that I am loyal to Nicole as a member of Arrow, and then the rest of Arrow, even though she's not on Arrow any more. I am saying this because I am out of my mind and it did not need to be said in any way, but my obsession with talking about Nicole at all times can't be tamed."
Trump: "Okay, I'll try again. Is your loyalty to Nicole, or the Arrow?"
Tim: "And again: I'm not able to answer that question properly, because I am a lunatic."
Ivanka: "Actually Tim, give him the answer he wants. Your loyalty cannot be divided between Nicole and the team, because if there's any ambiguity, even in their crazy heads, that they're not performing for our benefit, which they are, you're hurting the team."
Tim: "There is zero ambiguity on my part; the team would agree with this. Except they're ganging up on me to throw me under the bus and have decided to stick to the story where I am a cheating freak."
Trump: "The execs said you had bad ideas, right? Maybe James's problem was doing what you told him to, like he does every week."
Ivanka: "They look bored to me, those pajama people. See this look on my face? That's how they look to me."
Trump: "I think if these people were in a sleeping pill ad maybe it would work."
Ivanka: "Have you seen the other one? It's awesome."
Everybody: [slides brochures around the table really aggressively for some reason, for a weird amount of time.]
Trump: "So whose fault is it that you missed the mark so badly?"
Tim: "That was my fault. Also James's. But I'm not going to say that he should go because he's the PM and followed my dumb idea that I came up with in desperation. Nope, not me. I'd never say that. I'm a hero: I take credit for our wins, I'll take the blame for this."
Ivanka: "Did you just get tired? Or lazy? Not a lot of brain power went into this."
James: "I think we were distracted."
Trump: "By whom, pray tell?"
James: "People I'm willing to sell out this week include Tim and Frank."
Trump: "Frankie? Why Frankie?"
James: "He pulled a total James!"
Trump: "And wasn't he also the director?"
Frank: "I executed the vision of the team. I wasn't comfortable with the concept and I was upfront about that."
Heidi: "What's this science crap hanging out in the middle of your ad?"
Trump: "It's 'Too Much Information,' that's the thing. I just heard this phrase on The Suite Life Of Zach & Cody yesterday, and I'm trying it out."
Ivanka: "You can evoke the idea that this is associated with science, that it's where the smartness comes from, but I don't necessarily need a graph or some kind of fucked up molecular structure. You can just find a way to give the impression. The smartness is in the illusion of science."
Stefani: "I agree with that. Also, you should fire Tim. This isn't grade school, and he's being seriously annoying."
Trump: "Isn't Frankie also distracting too? With the constant gawking and screaming and the beer and stuff?"
Stefani: "Not like Tim, though. Tim's gotten really annoying, sir. Frank is the same amount of obnoxious as he was the day we met him."
Tim: "Let's talk about loyalty! They are not being loyal."
Trump: "Nicole told me she hates you."
Tim: "No she didn't, and also, she thinks of me as a loyal person."
Ivanka: "So Nicole thinks you're loyal? And the team doesn't. Do you realize you're giving us semantic ammunition even more quickly than you think you are?"
Tim: "Shut up, Ivanka. Stop interrupting me."
Everybody: "Bye, Tim!"
Trump: "You just told my daughter to shut up?"
Tim: "Sorry, I'm rude. But I feel attacked whenever people talk about my relationship that I keep bringing up and getting on everybody's nerves about it."
Trump: "Whatever. James is a good leader, and I can't fire him. Stefani, and I think you would agree, should not be fired."
Tim: "I agree with that."
Trump: "So it's you and Frank."
Tim: "Not so fast. I am awesome, I am more valuable on tasks than him, I have good ideas that rarely lose the task."
Frank: "More valuable? The fuck you say? Stefani and James, am I not awesome? Do I not do a billion things on every task that cause the win?"
Tim: "Sure, but Frank's not that smart. He doesn't have ideas or contribute anything."
Frank: "I'd rather have no ideas in my head than come up with some idea and yell until I get my way, like you do. At least I contribute actual effort."
Heidi: "James, can you honestly say that Tim's bullshit is so terribly distracting that it actually impeded your ability to design a brochure? Can you say that aloud for me?"
James: "Yeah, when you put it like that, this is an obvious setup. But I am committed to following through, because I don't want to get fired, and I'm banking on the fact that The Tim And Nicole Show is equally annoying and stupid for everyone in the room."
Us: "Everybody in the world, actually."
James: "Tim has ideas and yells at us sometimes."
Tim: "I'm your right-hand man every week. I have the big idea every week. You call yourself a 'creative' member of the team, but nobody really believes that."
James: "You are ruining everybody's lives."
Heidi: "So you guys kind of hate each other? Unlike our team, which works really well, and when it doesn't, we eradicate the person? Mr. Trump, I hear them screaming at night sometimes. It can get scary."
Trump: "I know! I'm so glad you brought up how they're arguing even though that's what they're supposed to be doing. It allows me to say something I say every fucking five seconds like it's interesting or relevant, about how people's true personalities come out when they lose, and everybody's true personality is to be a backbiting asshole, because I universalize my own experience of being sleazy, so watching people mid-loss is always great because it validates my lowest-common-denominator ethics and makes me feel like I'm in control because what they're fighting about is, in all honestly, me."
Frank and Tim: [Are so fucking mad it hurts my stomach. Yucky.]
Trump: "James, who do you like better?"
James: "Mr. Trump, going into the task, I must once again make a really long, disingenuously self-aggrandizing speech about how everybody on this team has one niche that they can handle, while I am a jack of all trades. I will also imply once again that Frank and Stefani are mildly retarded. There will be three of us going up against a very, very qualified team week, and I want a person that can follow direction, and complements Stefani and I. Since I'm representing myself as the better version of Tim anyway, we can agree that he's redundant, right? I have all the creativity of Tim, I just don't use it. What I don't like to do is work like a dog and get repeatedly insulted and abused, while taking most of the responsibility for the actual mechanics and logistics and reality of the task, rather than just the ideas. In essence, I am better than Tim, but Tim is better than Frank, but we don't need somebody better: I'm better already. What we need is a goat. That's Frankie Suits."
Frank: "Yeah!"
Tim: "Can I say something?"
Trump: "I think you'd better. James just did a masterful job of making all that shit coming out of his mouth seem appropriate, and I'm really susceptible to fast-talking snake oil salesmen like him."
Tim: "Let's be real. This show is supposedly about giving somebody a job, you want the best hire. Frank is great, we like each other, we'll be friends after this is over, but Mr. Trump, don't kid yourself. He's a moron. His skills are easy -- we let him do that stuff because we don't feel like it. He does things like set up tables and make banners. He carries heavy things."
Frank: "Do I set things up, or make them?"
Tim: "Um, you make them. I guess. That's not really what I was...did you not just hear me say about a million times that you should be fired because I'm smarter than you and I went to Harvard?"
Frank: "Obviously. The reason I'm frothing at the mouth is that I do understand that, but I can't think of a way to take you down for it, or make you sound as stupid as I feel right now, and my tongue is tied, so I'm disagreeing for its own sake, because this just got incredibly personal about stuff regarding which I'm demonstrably insecure, and have been since Day One."
James: "Frank and Stefani went to the hot dog stand and got regular people, while Tim was unable to locate his pants."
Tim: "Yeah! Another errand that Frank went on."
Frank: "The fuck?"
Stefani: "Wow, that was a dick move."
Frank: "Okay motherfucker, you know what? This is a job interview, and if you wanted to work for Trump you wouldn't be acting idiotic about some girl."
Tim: "No, that's just life! Sometimes it's crazy! Sometimes you're presented with the opportunity to mack on an ugly girl with a disgusting personality on TV, and you have to go with it, so the jocks will stop beating your piano-playing ass up! Even though that's backwards in history and no longer happens! Sometimes you just fall in fake love with a hundred cameras watching! Sometimes it doesn't matter who it is, and it could have been any other girl with no personality!"
Frank: "This isn't life, Tim, and neither is that, but that's your neurosis. This is a job interview, sir."
Trump: "So Tim, does it affect your game or not? Now you're saying this is life?"
Tim: "Whatever, I've done a good job. It's not interfering."
Ivanka: "THEN WHY THE FUCK CAN'T ANYBODY STOP TALKING ABOUT IT?"
Tim: "Nicole and I are a 'problem' because it makes me an easy target."
Ivanka: "No, come on."
Jacob: "Actually, Ivanka, that part's true. Obviously. James is being inordinately transparent about that."
Trump: "One time in this room I brought up this fake romance, you said 'Mr. Trump, it's inappropriate to bring that up.' You tried to get schooly on me. And now we're all talking about it, and you still can't wipe that motherfucking grin off your face about it. It's like Christmas morning for you, getting all this attention for dating some awful girl. It's creepy as shit, and also: if you get fired for this, are you going to think it's romantic? Like the final test of your loyalty? Is that why you keep giving those bad answers to the questions? Because you think...oh my God, you do!"
Tim: "But I also want a job! I'm not letting it interfere, they are!"
Trump: "And yet somehow we're STILL TALKING ABOUT IT. Plus, you told my kid to shut up, and you had a bad idea and you lost because of it."
Tim: "One bad idea after winning fifty weeks in a row? You let Nicole off last week for just this thing, and it was the first time she did anything."
Trump: "Shut UP. I was obviously building up to firing you, and your whining has ruined it. Fuck you, dude. So fired. Everybody else get the hell out of here, you did a lousy job too."
Trump, alone with Viceroys: "They lost because of him, so I'm good, right? Okay?"
Ivanka: "Sure."
Trump: "Heidi?"
Heidi: "Whatever."
So that sucks on like every level, because while Tim was right about being a better candidate than Frank, and basically for the reasons he said, you just don't do that. Dick move. Especially after the recent trend of the boardrooms being fun and light jokes at Trump's experience, it was way harsh to see him go down like that. He got carried away and didn't see the whole picture. To him, because he really is just another Nicole, the whole picture was about wriggling out of the box he thought he was in, and that meant attacking the logic of the situation, rather than the situation itself, which caused him to do some really unappealing, kind of unforgivable things. He was presented with the Angela choice: give me a reason to fire somebody else. But instead of relating it to business, or the task, or anything justifiable, he went straight to saying that Frank was stupid. James has been finessing the "Frank is stupid" angle every week for as far back as I can remember, but he lets it stay implicit. The different between implying a coworker is unqualified and actually saying out loud that he's an errand boy? That's huge. In one case, you're really only reflecting that back on yourself to make yourself look good: it stays in your yard. But to actually go over the fence into Frank's yard and start calling him stupid trash to his face? That reflects on you, too.
Not to mention that this is like the one thing you should never say in front of Frank, as a kind and considerate person, because it's obviously what he has nightmares about and his bluster from the very first tent task was an obvious and direct result of feeling like he was out of his league, that he was too tacky or trashy or stupid to compete, and everything he's done since then has only made that clearer. The fact that he's actually playing the game, unlike Stefani, and the fact that he's generally right about everything should be giving him some kind of validation, and Tim took that away too by making it seem like Frank is their pet. Which he kind of is, but he's also a person? And you have to be of a seriously warped show mindset to forget that the way Tim did, the same way the relationship with Nicole seems like such a big deal, and they're operating on no sleep, and all the other things this show does to you. Which is an explanation, not an excuse, because there's no excuse for that behavior. It was gross and tacky and I imagine there was a lot more of it that we didn't see, because Tim was cornered. He was willing to leverage Frank's basic humanity, just like he was willing to lie to the people at Universal about the other team, when there were easier and better ways to get it done. Plus: What kind of world do we live in where Nicole stays longer than Tim, honestly?
So in the limo Tim once again tells us that same stuff about how dumb he is for getting involved on the show, but that love is very crazy and he cannot control it, and then gets very Nicole about how he was a "blatant scapegoat" and that he's very loyal, and hates getting attacked for something like loyalty, because he's such a loyal guy. Just ask Frank!