So the awful aftertaste of last week's boardroom is wiped out -- briefly -- by the SmartMouth of REVOLUTION. The Smartness is in the removal of all the stupid gimmicks of this season! Arrow heads into the mansion, the teams are dissolved, everybody shuffles down into three teams of two, and the tents are gone forever. It starts looking like the show again, finally. No more Haves, no more Have Nots: just good fun competition all around, right, which lasts for about three seconds until Nicole starts acting up and getting in drunk fights with Frank about nothing whatsoever. The re-teaming goes smoothly, mostly: Team James/Stefani is a foregone conclusion, but Kristine makes the surprise jump from Heidi to Team Nicole, after her disappointment with Heidi last week, leaving Heidi with Frank! My two favorite cast members! What ON EARTH could go wrong? Oh, just like everything. In the world. The three teams create marketing campaigns for a new Trump Tower being built in Vegas, and after a lot of yelling and freaking out and weird fugues and narcolepsies, everyone convenes in the BR with Trump and Don Jr. and their hair. James and Stefani's presentation is, of course, magical and perfect, and contains in itself a secret land mine second awesome presentation. The other two teams start crying at this point. Then Nicole's dumb girl act finally bites her in the ass after she can't get Powerpoint going, and the brochure Kristine put together while Nicole was snoring like a boar contains the wrong phone number. Frank and Heidi are the worst: she totally chokes, and they stare at Trump for hours before mutely pointing to a lame video of cabinetry and flooring. It's not even close! What follows is a fight between Heidi and Frank that is, if anything, even worse than the fight last week between Frank and Tim; again, Frank is right about all of it because he's too dumb to lie, and Heidi is a bastion of truthiness who tries to leverage his stupidity against her own serious missteps. It's really hard to watch. Trump fires Heidi, after letting the hideous fight go on too long, then Kristine as an afterthought, finally ridding the world of Kinetic forever and making our Final Four: James, Nicole, Frank and Stefani. Arrow Forever! The only bright spot in the episode's latter half is a decent and pretty sweet limo moment between Heidi and Kristine: Heidi takes responsibility for the loss and feels Kristine shouldn't be leaving with her, and Kristine admits that she screwed up their obvious re-team because she wanted to take Heidi out, then they giggle and vow revenge on each other. Altogether depressing as last week, but at least it ended on a nice note. Two more episodes and then we'll never have to talk about this show again!
This is maybe the most interesting episode of this show that I've ever seen, but explaining why becomes something of a process story, so buckle in. You know how I'm always talking about fighting your TV and not taking your entertainment at face value? Especially the more accessible or nutrition-free or disposable it all is? So then I give you these 20-page speeches about how if you don't agree with me, it's because you're lazy? I got a heaping helping of that this week. It's been educational. First I learned that Tony Bennett is a sacrosanct American icon and cannot be discussed in rational terms without every old white guy in America coming after you, having gotten confused about who you're talking about. I learned that no matter how clear you try to be, you can't expect the Ideal Reader who ruminates over every single thing you write. Especially given how accessible and disposable and lunch-hour my medium here is. Drawing a parallel between a given show and Brecht's use of the audience's preconceptions against them is bad; mimicking that within the text of the piece itself is way too much, no matter how storied the literary technique of using form and function in unison to make a point.
So the process story comes in with the recaplet, above: I was utterly convinced by the episode, and not even really invested enough to care. We'd seen Tim go down a path of yuckiness the week before, and Heidi seeming to do a similar thing struck a very disappointing, very disheartening chord; Kristine's been sidelined throughout the season, so her firing as an afterthought didn't register. I thought about digging a little deeper, but couldn't justify it: my love of Heidi and Kristine isn't something I've kept quiet about, and I know you're expecting some kind of feminist blow-hole spout whenever a woman gets fired, all about how Trump is evil and white men are evil and dumb and I have daddy issues and I want all men over 45 exterminated, et cetera et cetera. So could I justify it? No. I have a sort of pact with you that whenever I step over a personal line to make a point ("Tim is being gay about how he's not actually gay"), I have to give you something of equal or greater value ("As a child I dressed as a Pussycat Doll and was the recipient of wooing from furries") in order to level the vulnerability playing field. Earn it with some "give," instead of taking all the time.
So if I went looking for reasons that Heidi and Kristine are totally blameless while Trump, Frank, and Don are worthless bastards, I'd have to come up with something that earned back my credibility to that degree, as part of our agreement, and there's nothing short of that brief flirtation with male prostitution back in the '80s that could do that, because to suggest that means that not only the show and myself, but also you, are fools. Not going there. Which is kind of a relief, because I get to write a different kind of recap, and look at the whole "the day Smug Superstar Heidi gets fired is the day a bunch of men cream their pants like Martha Stewart and Oprah just got discredited while in bed together" situation from another angle for once. To be surprised by this show, even about its ugliness, is remarkable. But when I went back to the episode and viewed it a second time, to create the transcript and notes for this episode (this show is so dialogue-intensive and emotion/dynamic-oriented that it takes twice as long to do notes for as any other show I've ever recapped, which is rather hellish if you think about it), there was a sinking feeling that only got more and more intense: that's exactly the fucking recap I have to write. And the reasons for it have to do with Dostoevsky and Tony Bennett, or as we'll be calling them in this recap, "Heidi" and "Donald J. Trump." Or "Kinetic" and "Arrow."
Previously Tim was "wet behind the ears, young man" for tying himself up with a girl of sorts, but that was "life." Trump agreed, but sort of didn't, and we've been edited to think that he was completely fired because he let Nicole get in the way of...something. The reason for the edit is that this episode is all about how she's heartless and whatever, women are sickening, so it has to look like Tim went down with the ship with love in his heart, while she's a heartless ball-buster who doesn't give a crap -- which is all women in business could ever be, which is why you have to fire Carolyn once she's officially more likeable than you in the media. See: Kristine watches -- lofting a yooge goblet of Nicole Antidote, or what they call "Syrah" in Napa -- as Nicole snorts through Tim's goodbye note. It's poetic: "I wasn't about to force myself to feel or not feel something because in my mind you and I were stronger than all of this... " Nicole snorts through an interview about how he passed her a note through the hedge which contained "all his feeeelings in a nuuuuutshell." If you can fit your feelings in a nutshell, beware: you're probably dating the first person you can find, because you're on TV.
Tim's Note: "I'm completely crazy about you! Even if you drive me completely insane!"
Kristine: [drains her entire goblet of Antidote, still gets cooties]
Nicole Interview: "That's sooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuuute!!!LOL1L!!!"
Back in the boardroom, Trump's yelling at Tim like last week about how Tim chastened him, had the gall to insult a piece of Americana, the unmitigated cheek to suggest that giggling and farting around paternalistically about a showmance was even grosser than the thing itself, while NOW, Trump says -- and I don't remember us getting to hear this line last week -- "Now it's okay to be kissing your little Nicole?" Gross, fucking gross. What part of this is okay? Either this is a funhouse mirror on what business is actually like, or the state of our country makes a shitload more sense. You be the judge. We remember Tim trying once more to explain how you can either be "disloyal" by causing drama on Nicole's behalf, or "disloyal" by not causing drama on Nicole's behalf, but you can't be guilty of both, because that's CRAZY. And honestly neither are true, which is why I hate what happened to Tim, and what he did . But Tim didn't just spit it out, and got riled by the constant interruptions, and refused to get to the point in the milliseconds between Trump's wild ravings, and he paid the price. "She's a distraction, and I don't care what you say. Tim, you're fired." Catch that? "I've decided how reality is going to go, and I don't care what you say." So when I say that Trump pulls that exact same shit -- not once, but any number of times -- in this episode, it's not knee-jerk feminism or ageism, it's Trump-jerk reality. In case you get confused.
Heidi comes into the mansion crazed, just out of it and over the moon, and Nicole can immediately tell that Tim's gone. Heidi cuts loose with the "distracted" label, and Nicole screeches horrifically; Heidi revels in telling Kinetic about Frank's (pretty gorgeous and a little bit shocking) "wet behind the ears" speech, but before she can get to the part where Nicole's a bad risk based on any rubric imaginable, we cut to the Yard. Where James is telling Frank that Nicole is a worthless whore who should be tossing herself off the mansion's balconies, and if she doesn't, she deserves to be stoned to death for "heartlessness." Which means that A) he doesn't get Nicole, B) he doesn't get Tim, and C) he doesn't get this show, relationships, or much about women and men, and how they're equally able to separate their emotions from the task at hand, being of equal intellectual ability. Unless they're Nicole, so maybe he has a point, but I sincerely doubt if it had gone the other way he'd be sitting out here in the dark speculating as to Tim's heartlessness in the context of a shitty television game show. Frank spots a mouse, and everybody freaks out before anybody can contradict or otherwise interrogate this brainless conversation. No, what I mean to say is that we're only given one contextless line of James's no-doubt way less ugly speech, because we're telling a story here, not watching an actual conversation with flow or sequence.
"Start the fire! Immediately!" screams Frank wonderfully, and everybody jumps into action and yells about the mouse, and Stefani squeals and jumps up on a box. "Camp has become dilapidated, disgusting, dirty, and difficult to live in!" says Stefani, proving once again that alliteration is something all good orators, which she is, have at the ready. "I'm tired of living outside!" she newsflashes, then lists all the creatures, hilariously, with which she has had to deal: wasps, the current mouse, lizards, a spider in her bed! It's the fact that she's standing regally, up on a box, in night vision, with perfect hair, screaming out the names of the beasts in her most lovely voice, like she's announcing the guests at a garden party for the queen. "Lord and Lady Wasp! The Viscount of All Mice! The Lizards of Huntington Moor! A Spider In My Bed, Esq.!" With, like, a trumpet with a flag hanging down. Frank leaves her stranded to go put on his Sleepy Suit and forget about the creature party, and Stefani does the Hot Lava Tarantella after him. Cute. Some time later, the phones ring. Kinetic are all like, "Honestly?"
How Heidi Answers: "Hello, this is Heidi."
How Stefani Answers: "Hello, this is Arrow."
Winner Of This Round: Stefani, via Trump, and thus how we're meant to view this show: never you, always the team, meaning always him.
But Arrow and Kinetic are: Pretend. Whereas Heidi and Stefani are not.
Andie's wearing a low-cut light blue number and grey eyeshadow, and takes time out of her busy schedule, which this week includes: polishing her shiny knives, thinking about the trade deficit, and worrying about Matt Saracen. (Believe me when I say you must be vigilant, lest that last become a full-time preoccupation. It nearly happened to me!) She puts on a gorgeous smile and relates the following pieces of news to Heidi and "Arrow": Four (4) members of Arrow moving into the house, hence the last scene; zero (0) tents ever again in this stupid season, now that the Yard has taken out most of the contenders and my beloved Derek; one (1) short pause while Stefani hops three (3) feet in the air and says "Awesome!"; one (1) reshuffle into three (3) teams of two (2) candidates; and complete and total PM-less anarchy from here on out. The Final Six are now leaderless: will they step up and lead themselves to victory? Or will they lead Trump into such complicated webs of logic that he shorts out and craps on them for no reason? Only time will tell. Twenty minutes from now.
Heidi's like, "Hide the breakables and put down slipcovers! Arrow's on their way in!" Kristine's like, "I literally could not care less. Nicole's been here a 'week' already, so that weird Salisbury steak smell was here to stay either way." Heidi tells Kristine and Nicole the rest of the news, and they're all pretty Ivanka about it. Meanwhile, outside, several disturbing things are happening.
James: "The hardest part is this, now: We're not going to be Arrow anymore!"
Jacob: "You never were! Get out of the crazy!"
Drunk Frank: "I hate to live inside! I want to stay outside forever in my Sleepy Suit! Inside is stupid! We have beer and a fire, what else do we need?! I'm going to go pee in the perennials one more time before we go. God!"
Then: [He starts to cry. I'm not kidding.]
They all toast their imaginary team that never existed and say they're friends for life. "Forever!" says Stefani, but I think what she meant to say was, "How forever are we?", because in this case, her usual up-speaking girly-talk confusion about declaratives/interrogatives would actually be closer to the truth. Inside, Kristine's like, "Fuck it. I'm not even standing up when their dirty asses come in here." Nicole furrows her brow and growl-screeches, "Me neither!" For no reason! Why are you like this, Nicole? Frank enters, singing off-key, as you knew he would, then shouting and bellying up to the table and annoying the girls, as you knew he would, then trying to take command of the quote "sit down," as you knew he would, and then getting roundly ignored by everybody. And you know what, I'm not going to lie. Coming inside did wonders for him, he looks better than he's looked this whole time. Almost there. I'm not going to say anything that could indict me, but I will say: almost there. Shocking. But you know what they say about the biggest room in the world. James immediately decides to cast the having of alliances as a sign of character, like, "I say we just put our cards on the table. I have always known, and not gone to much effort to show, that I would fuck anybody over in this game except Stefani, who I will easily beat in the final. So it's me stepping up and being more forthright than all of you to say, once again, that I choose Stefani for my partner."
Nicole, Basically: "Okay, wow, like, all I did was rave horribly at you the last time we were in this house, perform at a consistent acceptable-to-mediocre level, and get kicked off your team once already, so you can see how I'm blindsided by this choice."
Or Maybe: "Okay, wow, like, I didn't realize 'choose a team' meant I'd actually have to consider other people or use my brain at all. Can't we warm up first or something?"
Or Possibly: "Okay, wow, like, I've done my best to alienate everyone left in one way or another, and I'm inordinately threatened by women, but the only guy left is Frank, and he's in awkward love with me. Which would be good because he'll do all the work, but bad because we're the two weakest people in this game and have the exact same skill set, not to mention that an alliance of our yokel overbites would most likely tip L.A. into the ocean for good."
Or Actually, Most Probably: "Okay, wow, I can't believe everybody gets to live in the mansion now. That makes it, like, worthless to me."
Stefani asks Kristine who she'd choose, and Kristine's got her thinking cap on, naming Heidi and Nicole and stopping there. Stefani asks who Frankie would choose, and Frankie drunkenly looks at Nicole for awhile. "What are you looking at?" she spits. Of course, she's gonna go ballistic about something, because she's now the center of attention for three whole seconds, so the only question is: what will she bitch about? James and Heidi both agree that it would be interesting to hear Nicole's side of things, and while I admire that idea in theory...
Nicole immediately starts screaming. Not about the task at hand, which is forming a new partnership, but about how she's a victim and needs some more attention.
Question: "With whom would you like to be partnered on the second-to-last task of what you've repeatedly stated is the most important experience of your professional career, after outlasting a total of ten people, most of whom were not only more qualified than yourself, but also better people, qualitatively speaking, in both a non-business and professional setting?"
Answer: "I was frustrated with things that happened in the boardroom, I was bothered. I wasn't there, but I heard a very simplified version that mentioned me, which immediately sparked my interest as you can imagine, and I heard that you told Tim we were idiots for dating on this show. Which is a personal attack on me! By you! I told [Kinetic] a little story earlier -- they love my little stories that are all about me, because they love to feel sorry for me more than anything -- I said to them, 'They're going to think I'm bothered because Tim isn't here, but it's not that. It's some other reason I won't be able to properly explain, because it doesn't exist! I'm so totally in over my head here, but my beauty is accessible at best, which makes me a better choice for Apprentice than those bitches Heidi and Kristine, who are intimidating and professional. And then I will fucking freak out to prove how emotionally stable and not overly invested in Tim I am.' And then they gave me hugs and told me I was pretty, in my imagination, because I have at some unseen point proven myself to have skills, of some ill-defined sort. And now we see! It is all happening, just as I predicted! As though by magic!"
Frank gets bored two words in -- a major factor in this episode, and a trait he shares with the decision-makers on this show -- and tries to dick with her in a way that only makes sense if you've ever been drunk. "Are you bothered that Tim's not here?" Nicole answers -- quite well, I was impressed -- that it's disappointing that Tim is gone, being a strong player who got fired for a stupid reason. "Are you emotionally hurt?" Nicole answers -- again, brilliantly -- that there's no shame in mourning a fallen comrade; Kristine cried real tears when Angela left, and Heidi did whatever she does instead of crying. Frank -- making the drunk point that people who are drunk try to make, which only exists in their heads -- yells that she's "beating around the bush" by only answering his questions, and not confirming...whatever point it is that he's trying to make. (Note this for later: drunk or sober, if Frank doesn't understand your answer, or if it's not what he wants/expects to hear, basically that makes you: a liar.) So anyway: is Nicole emotionally hurt. (You mean like, right this second?)
Nicole: "Are you asking me if I'm going to cry?"
Frank: "Yes."
Nicole: "Are you kidding me?"
Frank: "I...am the most literal person in the universe. You could plane furniture on my intellectual flexibility."
Nicole: "Like, do I feel like I lost a part of myself?"
Frank: "I am drunk, so... Sure?"
Nicole: "Are you retarded?"
Frank: "Retarded in love with you, maybe!"
Nicole: "That's what you wanted to know, eh? That's what you kept asking me over and over about and I kept playing coy so I didn't have to answer your stupid question? Whether or not the fact that my boyfriend just saw his dreams crushed, does that bother me."
Frank: "Yep."
Nicole: "I am shocked that you would ask me that. Now! Ask me again! All eyes on me! Right here!"
James: "See? Women are worthless liars and have no souls, just like I keep saying anytime The Tim And Nicole Show foists itself upon us."
Frank: [Divorced from the ugliness he and his teammates are pulling off right now, I hasten to preface, is nonetheless possibly the most adorable he's ever been in his life. It's the fucking weirdest thing, this episode.]
Heidi finally reins them all in and reminds them about THE SHIT THAT IS ACTUALLY GOING DOWN IN REALITY, NOT IN NICOLE'S HEAD OR FRANK'S BOOZY GLOW, asking Kristine who she'd like to partner with. Kristine interviews that yeah, of course Heidi thinks they're going to fight together, being the last of the pureblood Kinetic women. Of course she'd want to assemble a willing and able team...but that's not how this is going down, for some reason. She's irritated by Heidi's lack of effort last time, and scared (as she should be) about Heidi's penchant for biffing presentations, but she's thinking clearly and at least has a game plan, and it's a great one, actually. I wish we'd ever seen Kristine before, so we'd know how well her brain has worked on tasks! If Heidi's team wins, that's another win for Superstar Heidi. If Heidi's team loses, Heidi's gone and won't be in the F2 where she belongs. If you're on Heidi's winning team, it's a null sum; but if you're anywhere but Heidi's losing team, you're already in a better position. Even if that ends up being with Nicole, who will sink you in a heartbeat even though you're on the same team, because she's sucky and stupid and more interested in assigning blame than she is actually using her head to win, because she prefers her victim status to anything remotely approaching power or respectability.
Now, first of all, it would never occur to me to be anywhere but Heidi's side, defending her from attackers and bringing her snacks, because she is the love of my life, and second of all, Kristine is brilliant, because that's honestly really good math. The only part she's missing is how, because of how this show works, because of the Martha Stewart Principle, Heidi's only shot at winning this thing would have been to become vastly uglier the second Trump pronounced her a Superstar, or managed to find some other impossible way to compensate for the fact that for women, to get anywhere on this show (and let's be honest, in a lot of the business world) have to walk an impossible balance: to be both everything Trump wants and everything Trump wants to be, while simultaneously being just a little impossible bit less than those things, or invisible in his presence.
Frank and Heidi! Are the other team! My two favorites! Somehow! He's like, we started this, we're going to end it. She throws up everything she's ever eaten, seen or smelled, but her smile as she does so is simply dazzling.
Billboard for an unrelated Trump thing going on somewhere. Called a "Real Estate Wealth Expo," which... You know that means you get to stay poor, right? You buy a three-ring binder and then nothing in your life changes in any way? We've discussed this before? Anyway, hi, Trump in the sky. FYI: This entire episode is the biggest commercial ever. Stefani's wearing a lacy shell underneath her jacket, so we're back to Brockovich with her again, and Don Jr. has a severely demented part in his hair and looks like a scary monster. At first Trump's surprised by the teams that are chosen, but then -- as his creepy little mind gerbil starts running -- decides that this is awesome. I love how he hates the idea of Kinetic so much, he literally has to remove them from the world, like a blot on his vision. He mentions that L.A. is a "great place for tourists," but opines that perhaps it is not the "only" popular tourist destination in the country. For example, he shares with them a secret place: "There's also a place called Las Vegas?" Oh my God just hearing Donald Trump say the words "Las Vegas" makes my syphilis flare up. Too much grossness in one place. Did you know Donald Trump built the tallest building in Las Vegas? Neither did I. Is it even true? I couldn't give less of a fuck, but I'm assuming it's not. I am also assuming that when he says these things, regardless of their truth or falsity, he has no way of knowing whether or not they're true: somebody told him this so that he would like them, because they wanted money. I guarantee you that's how shit goes down. So we can laugh at his total lying about having the number one show on TV, or we can reflect on probably he's just working with what he's got to work with. Which is better? I can't say.
Anyway, this "tallest" building is something that Don Jr. was associated with in some way we don't hear about, and that it's "totally sold out," so now he's building a second building. James gives the fakest, cheesiest, smarmiest, weirdest huge grin and nod at this -- or does he? -- and goes, "Wow!" So Trump is going to fly them to Vegas (this is the part where you cover your ears, because you know exactly what's going to happen ) on his private jet, which causes Nicole to scream idiotically and make a stupid grin face that is not fake, just really gross. "WHAT?" Like she's not fooling around: this is actually the greatest thing in the world. I guess they were setting this up last week when Frank was all, "Helicopters, free beer, a giraffe, what's !?" I was thinking lap dance, but an assload of classy luxury in a giant flying penis is like so close to that. Really: getting a hep-laced lap dance in Vegas from a hand job specialist is exactly as appealing as flying anywhere in anything that says "Trump" on it. And if you don't agree, or if you agree on the upside, I don't know that we have a lot to talk about, you and I.
Task: To design an advertising and promotional campaign for Tower II, using a giant budget and a "digital artist," and then give the pitch to Don and Daddy, who will decide which team of two gets fired. Key points: ad campaign. That means internal. Not an ad, but a marketing campaign. The fact that only one team of the three will end up producing this -- the other two will basically create ads with talking -- should give us pause, but by the time we get there, things will already be so stupid that it won't matter. "Say hello to everybody in Vegas," Trump says, and orders them to "come back with some real good answers."
LAX. My notes say "Trump het porn," but I think I meant "jet porn," although I'm not sure we can definitively say there's a difference at this point. God knows Trump still hasn't figured it out. The jet porn goes on for one hundred years with wistful music, sliding up one side of the tumescent black monstrosity, stroking down the other. It's so gross. The, um, that thing where the stairs come out from the bottom so you can get inside? The gangway? Did I just make up that word? Whatever it's called, all you can think is, "Here comes the lipstick!" The camera is a stripper's hand in the champagne room; the throbbing jet is jutting like a proud warrior, out into a fertile field. Imagine what will happen when Heidi gets fired! Jet fuel everywhere. So you know who's impressed by all this? Nicole. You know why? Grossness.
Nicole: "Are you kidding me right now? Mr. Trump doesn't mess around!" They talk about how "gorgeous" and "unbelievable" everything is. And here's what we've got. Wood paneling. Abstract paintings in gilt frames. Actually, I was going to make a whole list, but there it is, like a diamond in pig slop: "Abstract paintings in gilt frames," on an airplane. Nicole: "Mr. Trump, I am impressed." He's not even around. She's just addressing the air in front of her regrettable face. It's like praying. "Mr. Trump's jet is like, awesome! Total reminder for why I'm here! This is the life! Mr. Trump is the high life! That's what you're working so hard towards! Is to be a part of Mr. Trump's life!" You know those pictures in Highlights where it's like, there's a tree, and a tire swing, and a cat asleep, but in the other picture, the cat has a black spot and the tire is Goodyear and not Firestone? And you got one minute to count them all? Listening to Nicole talk about what "life" is all about is just like that, only to it, there's reality.
And yet Frank, I give a pass. I don't know why. I think Nicole is capable of better, so she pisses me off, but I think Frank is doing awesome with what he's got to work with. It's not about different or double standards quite so much as the fact that I love oranges, but have never cared for apples. Frank: "This is insane! This is sick!" I agree with the letter, if not the spirit, of his comments. Stefani agrees it's pretty cool. Frank stares at everything, all the shiny things, all the bullshit luxury. Heidi works. Kristine is like, what's Trump about? Covering things in tacky gold, and thrusting up toward the heavens, because he's confused about the location of his manhood. "Gold has never...been so high?" Nicole's like, "I love it!" I hate it. What does that even mean? Gold Has Never Been So High. Whatever, sales confuses me always. Nicole "explains" that "Anything Trump touches 'ultimately' turns to gold. The man loves gold! We have to stick to a concept surrounded by gold!" So very Arrow: a concept, surrounded by gold. (It's a palindrome!) No, actually, sadly: Trump is a concept, surrounded by gold. Nothing behind it. Weak and dumb and afraid, but surrounded by gold. This is like some kind of fairy tale where Ivanka turns out to be made of snow or something. Nicole is not wrong to call attention to the mythic proportions of the Trump issue.
Stefani and James agree that the brochure is the most important part -- it's not, but they're the only ones this episode with their act together in any way, and we're going to edit how the brochure doesn't matter out of the episode anyway -- and James yells across the plane about how Frankie's a "development man" and thus cannot embarrass himself by failing at this task. Because what neither Frank nor Nicole seems to understand is that "designing a promotional campaign" has verrrry little to do with selling or constructing buildings, although the wide difference and skill set between the two activities does seem self-evident. "Product knowledge" is important, but it's not a catch-all. Frank is adorable some more; it's weird. James shrieks at him about how "no pressure, buddy!" and "isn't this the most amazing plane you have ever seen?" and whatever, "look at the shiny thing!" -- and the only person who gets what he's doing, which is in-your-face sabotage, is Heidi. "Frank, focus. Don't get distracted by him!" By the time she finishes saying this, Frank is out on the wing of the jet doing the watusi and playing Scrabble with the dirty pigeons. He literally runs from one end of the jet to the other, touching everything and saying random words. He's like the microcephalics at the beginning of that movie Freaks. He's like Irene's Lyme disease. Heidi: "He's FIVE." He runs around explaining everything to his teddy bear and doing jumping jacks and showing James how far he can jump and how he can do ten pull-ups, maybe more, and James is loving it, and over in the corner, Heidi is slowly...losing...her...mind.
Then a TRUMP that goes on for TRUMP TRUMPS about TRUMP and all its TRUMP, and how they're going to the Sales office and to visit two model units. (But there are three teams?!? What if there's casual racism as a result of this oversight?) Then this part is awesome.
James: "What should our theme be?"
Stefani: "What do you think?"
James: "I'm profoundly uncreative. What does Trump make you think of?"
Stefani: "Grossness. But also...The Height Of Luxury."
Jacob: "So you just answered question one, not question two, but James is so far up his own asshole that he thinks you're still brainstorming."
James interview: "My mind told me, 'That makes sense, The Height Of Luxury, because Trump's all about luxury!'"
Jacob: "Um, my mind just told me to tell your mind to let you know you're a tool. She didn't give you the raw tools to come up with the theme, she gave you the theme. If this is how you actually operate, if you're honestly this inclusive and sucky, no wonder you thought you were this huge creative force on Arrow: everybody's ideas getting reshaped by you into the exact same shape they already were? That's so middle management it's like post-Dilbert. It's Ziggy, is how pathetic that is. Tell your mind that you deserve to win this awful game show."
The execs at Trump Vegas are terrifying in a multidimensional way. They're scary in the Old Vegas Man way of maybe they'll kill you; they're scary in the way where they're one hundred years old and are so soul-dead that they're willing to be associated with Donald Trump; they're scary because I've always been afraid of Statler & Waldorf, whom they strongly resemble; and most importantly, one of them looks like the scariest person ever captured on film, Lash Canino from The Big Sleep, about whom I still have like one nightmare a year. He's so scary-looking in that movie! James gets to suckin' immediately about how amazing it is to sit in a room with totally gross, decrepit murdering gangsters and talk about how the biggest penis in Vegas is not enough, because for Trump, the new goal is two giant penises. That's how in over his head Donald Trump is: two penises' worth. James refers to them as the "twin towers," which is something of a misstep in my opinion, and then asks then what the "inspiration" was for the two giant towers. They're like, "Really? Because it's Donald Trump. I mean... did you not know about how he has this issue with himself?" Then they totally lie about how Trump was even the architect on them, in some ill-defined way, and I get tired of this.
Meanwhile Kristine is asking the builders at Tower II all manner of questions about materials, numbers, dollar amounts, product knowledge. While this is happening, Nicole stares stupidly into space with that stupid hardhat on and too much mascara, sucking on her cheeks. Kristine's like, "Bwuh? So she's apparently such an expert that she is just going to stand in one place and feel the answers to these questions? I don't want to go home, but Nicole's brand of 'winging it' on tasks does tend to take out better players each week, with like unerring accuracy." Kristine points out how this is the last task for them both, because the losing team will be sent home, and if they don't, fourteen minus twelve still means there's going to be a Final Four and then the finale, unless four people get fired this week. As they actually should, but whatever. Kristine laughs to the builder man and tries to get through to Nicole; no dice.
Kristine: "Builder man, I am so sorry about all the questions and product knowledge, but we learned from Mr. Trump! He never stops asking questions!" (Emphasis hers, vector Nicole.)
Nicole: "... "
Builder Man: "I acknowledge and respect your desire to know the product you'll be marketing."
Nicole: "... "
Kristine: "Oh, we're not marketing it or creating a campaign or anything, we're just creating a strange lack of video and an almost impenetrable oral presentation."
Builder Man: "Really? Because from what I heard... "
Nicole: "OH MY GOD! Remember when Tim kissed me in the pool and then I threw a fit and was rude to everyone on Arrow for hours, but then acted hurt when they didn't care I was gone!? And remember when we were on that, like, totally awesome jet?! If I ever have a baby I'm going to dip it in gold! Tim and I will have one hundred babies! I think I'm getting some split ends. I'm gonna take a nap. Do you have a buck for like a sandwich? If I throw myself down a flight of stairs, will you come sit by me in my coma? Would you cry if I died? Please say yes."
Kristine: "Wait, what were you saying?"
Builder Man: "Never mind. Get her out of here. My God."
James and Stefani hit the model unit with a videographer and photographer, and take endless pictures of the Twin Towers model and the rooms and the fixtures and the whatever. Frank's doing the same thing in what you think is a different model unit, but quickly realize is the same one. Tension! Everybody knows you can't take pictures of an object with two cameras simultaneously! That's crazy talk! You'll go blind! Frank takes his photographer guy aside and explains that James and Stefani are "the bad guys," and orders him smarmily that "we don't speak to them." James comes in and they glad-hand and basically, once again, act skeezy and unprofessional for no reason other than that they are addicted to their sickness and/or (this is closer to the truth) have somehow received the wisdom that this is how they are supposed to act, when in fact adults actively avoid acting sketchy, rather than seeking it out and taking part it in joyfully, as these two seem to be doing. I say, why wait for events to cosign for your being an asshole, so you can jump in joyfully and take the opportunity? If you're that weak and stupid and intellectually lazy, Go For It. See Nicole? She doesn't wait around for circumstances to give her the go-ahead: she's an asshole right out the gate, and look at her go! Final Four! Congratulations! Frankie ups the asshole ante by first interviewing, Nicole-esquely, that "James and Stefani are going to have some look on their faces" when he and Heidi win, because -- you sic -- "They are very two cocky individuals. When we win, I'm going to turn to them and smile." And ordinarily I'd go off on a thing about how others losing is a regrettable side effect and not a primary goal of winning, except just then is when Frank says, in re: James Sun, the following: "That kid, the little Chinee with the black spiky hair." COBRA. Are you fucking kidding me with that? Why do people invariably act like the clichés they are? I don't even have the energy to...you're on TV, you stupid motherfucker. I fervently wanted to like you. I felt bad about things I said about you, and this? Your Korean partner in Surya-poking? Deserves this?
When the jet gets back to LA we're treated to a looooong, sloooooow sliiiiding of it into the warm lovely space between the other, lesser jets, and everybody's really tired, and feeling really trashy about being on this show, except for Frank, who is trash on a level yet undiscovered. Kristine -- and the skin issue is looking really painful, to the point that I feel bad about joking around about it, because that looks like hell to deal with and still look that good all the time -- explains the task some more, I assume under the assumption that we just spent the entire commercial break cursing Frank's stupid racist ass. Nicole screeches at her about how she has the "whole presentation in [her] head" and so the inside of her head, "that's the presentation," which is, of course, the most "huge" part of the deal for them. Kristine's like, "But see, that's why I am curious about what the presentation is. Because it's huge and important." Nicole honks and squeals and growls and barks and co-co-co-rico about how the video doesn't matter, the plan and theme don't matter, all that matters is selling, the presentation, how "you have to YELL." The irony.
The irony that the one thing that makes all people in the world ignore her stupid ass results not only in her yelling even louder, but that she thinks it's some kind of hidden judo magic skill that makes people buy things. SCREAMING LIKE AN IDIOT IS NOT A SALES TACTIC. IT IS SALES TERRORISM. Nicole interviews that if she just "says everything" and "really shows passion," that that's what it will come down to: if she puts the focus on SCREAMING HER STUPID ASS OFF ABOUT NOTHING, then Kristine -- the bitch -- can do whatever the hell she wants, such as actually working. She starts with the pitch at Kristine in the van, who's slowly pooling sideways against the glass in the attempt to get away from the horrid sound: "Who doesn't want money in their pocket?" So you're selling shitty "luxury" condos to Donald Trump, is your strategy. Don't they get like a big fat folder or something, maybe a brief -- didn't we used to see those every season? That explains the fucking task in super crazy detail? Do they not get those anymore? Or am I confused about the task itself?
Anyway. So if you're listening, what Nicole has just told you is that she has already done all the work for this task that she needs to do, merely by existing. I'm not exaggerating like normal because I hate Nicole: this is the real shit. Her part of the promotional campaign is to stand at the front of the room and scream. About whatever pops into her head, of which Kristine does not need to be notified ahead of time. That's the part she's tasked herself with: to stand, and to scream, and to do this so very well that it will equal the part where Kristine's doing all the work, by Nicole's own admission. I want to write down on a piece of scratch paper everything that you've seen with your own eyeballs Nicole doing. I remember her screaming about the roller skates, and I remember her wearing a bathing suit, chillingly enough, and I remember her running around like a cartoon overbite. There was a hairnet one time, I remember that. She followed Tim to sell honey at gas stations and screamed at him about their love while standing near a toilet, with rose petals. I don't think she's stupid and I don't think she's particularly lazy -- in the task sense -- but I'm having trouble remembering anything that happened period, Nicole-related or not, so I'm asking you: my memory is faulty. Can you fill in the blanks here? Because what she just said is: "My part of this task will be that I am magic."
James and the designer -- to Stefani's very focused approval -- get together a poster with "360 degrees of marketing" on it, which will turn out to be their secret weapon, rather than the part they forgot to do like the other teams. James informs us that he and Stefani "know how Trump thinks," which I don't doubt, and that what Trump wants is "something solid he can stand by," not "some kind of gimmick." Which is blatantly bullshit, generally speaking, but in this case is true. This isn't a sales-gimmick task, because it's not a fucking sales task. And it pisses me off that James is involved in the only team to figure that out, and that at some point it stops mattering. The only way this episode should have ended is with Stefani and James as the Final Two, but Trump's hatred of the Kinetic Idea About Ladies, I guess, so outweighs his sense of logic that we gotta sit through an entire all-Arrow episode. Without even Heidi's scorching hot ass rolling around in a bikini every few minutes as a bribe. Design even one degree of marketing around that hellish concept, I'll give you five bucks.
Kristine works on the "Las Vegas is turning gold" video (that's their theme now) and explains it hilariously in depth to the designer guy: "See, because now that there's another tower, we're turning Las Vegas gold." She looks over her shapely shoulder at the wrinkled mess of Nicole, sweating in her sleep on the couch and snoring like a hairy old boar from the primeval forest. Gross me the fuck out. They already told you sleeping on tasks wasn't going to fly! Kristine's headache is now this big, according to a little meter on the bottom of the screen. She explains to us about how Nicole is actually more magic the more she sleeps, and since that's all Nicole can contribute to this or any other task, it's in everybody's best interest that she put that vile voice to bed. Who knew the sleeping noises were just as horrific as the awake ones? Not Kristine, who looks like she's about this close to putting a pillow over little Nicole's scrunched-up, Amish-looking face once and for good. "She wanted to lay down for twenty minutes, I was like: why not forever?"
They finish on the video and start to get the brochure together, Kristine and the graphics guy. Kristine's look of disgust at a particularly adenoidal expostulation is so piercing that it half wakes the sleeping beastie, and she giggles and shoots finger-guns at Kristine: "Gonna laugh at my bees again and I'm gonna destroy you!" Kristine shoots regular old fingers at the JC Penney's tag sticking out of Nicole's slacks: "Honey, go back to your dream. I don't know what you're talking about." Instructions on the brochure: Put the email address, the phone number, and end with the Trump logo at the bottom. Somebody's fingers type in (702), and that's all we see -- designer asks if she's happy, and she nearly weeps angrily with how not-happy she's ever going to be until her ass is off this awful show. Now, I did some intense detective work this week, and pulled a bunch of sweater threads trying to find the Rivers Cuomo in there that would make Heidi's firing make sense to my heart. And what I found was a shark, eternally jumping and being jumped. This is where that starts.
You know this show well enough to know that they always edit in whatever they have to, in order to build a convincing and interesting story that logically ends in Trump's wild-ass decisions. So the fact that this (702) number is typed in by an unknown personage is interesting: in order to support the ending of the episode -- considering how off-the-wall absurd it is -- you can bet your ass they'd use any footage they had of Kristine putting those numbers in herself. They didn't. I presume then that this was the graphic designer putting them in, firstly. Secondly, NICOLE is SLEEPING. Of the people in the final boardroom, the only one besides us that knows what really happened -- and we're just guessing, but we don't really have an agenda, which is more than we can say about Nicole -- is Kristine. So I went to the Trump Vegas website and two clicks in, there's a Contact Us link which lists two numbers: the TILV Sales Office (877) and the offices of Trump International's PR firm, The Firm. The latter is a (702) number, which I called, and you'll never guess who answered: Trump's Vegas PR firm, The Firm. Duh. But here, see, this is how the automated system answers: "Thank you for calling The Firm public relations... " Now, if you were to cunningly edit out the company name from that soundbite, you'd get: "Thank you for calling [slight pause] Public Relations... " Which just might give you the viewer the wrong idea about where they were calling, when in fact it's one of only two contact numbers, on the website, for a building that doesn't yet exist. Do you understand what I'm saying? And we're not even halfway down the rabbit hole yet, with this bullshit episode. This is like the graduate-level application of all that stuff I lecture you about every week, not trusting Burger King or freaking out about gay black dick or whatever it is. And I failed it! So then who am I? Just a humble man. Who hates Nicole.
The sun comes up on a Latino gardener mowing a California lawn; elsewhere, Frank's editing video with an ridiculously hipster youth of the sort you see in movies about middle-aged men getting edged out of the business world. Meanwhile, Heidi's working on the brochure part, pulling together all the possible text: available amenities, structural details and facts and figures, descriptive paragraphs of all kinds. She's sitting in the middle of a wild tangle of paper, all sizes and shapes and colors, desperately trying to pull together some copy, reading it aloud to herself, trying to chop words out of everything and get it all into a manageable pile. As one does, when creating copy. Now, Frank is literate. I'm not saying the bitch can't read. He can't read well, but I'm not saying that either. What I am saying is that all jobs have skills and protocols, and all parts of a task require you to perform those jobs according to some sort of protocol. I will now make a startling admission to you, as a friend: I can be wordy. I am a wordy writer.
Still here? Here's how I look at it. We're tackling some pretty complicated shit here, and complicated shit calls for complicated thoughts, and paths of logical development, trains of thought from A to B to usually Z, and with me, on into that weird Apple-Apple-Mario alphabet. Complicated thoughts mean one of two things: economy of words, or serious editing. I choose my words very carefully, and I have very kind editors, and in any case, I'm not writing copy. When I'm writing copy, or proposals, or anything in which complex thoughts are not only not the goal but in fact counter to it, I do exactly what Heidi, and every other copy writer or person called upon to write copy, does: assemble everything at once and then combine the most necessary and clearest examples with the other elements of design. The last thing you want is a bunch of useless language when the point is simple, because people will get bored: you have to integrate these things organically. Throwing some poorly spelled words at the problem, typing some random copy into a Word document, is fine if you're the type to, say, use quotation marks for emphasis, as a certain trashy racist of our acquaintance has been known to do.
But in this case, there is no problem with Frank; not really. Because he is looking at Heidi surrounded by ingredients -- she's stirring a roux with her toes, chopping tomatoes with a piercing gaze, tenderizing the flank with her forehead, while juggling the other ten ingredients, some of them living, one-handed -- and wondering where the cheeseburger is, because for him it's as simple as that. And I don't imagine you have to be Proust to run a successful construction company. That's not elitism speaking: different jobs call for different skills. Writing well is not a skill or pursuit that Frank needs in his life. It's like, I grew up in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. I can't ice skate. Watching a person ice skate, I can't tell if they're doing well or doing poorly, unless they really go one extreme way or the other. And to a normal human being -- that is, one not engaged in the act of writing -- what Heidi is doing looks crazy. She looks like the kind of bitch that would take out Tony Bennett, is what I'm saying. And he can't be blamed for not getting that, any more than she could understand how the same jumpy energy that made him so unbearable on the jet is what makes him one of the best, most charismatic, most dynamic salesmen this show has ever seen. Say it with me: The Thing That Makes You Awesome Is The Thing That Makes You Suck. Always. And Heidi is going to ride that pony right into a brick wall in a sec.
So Frank's screaming at Heidi to focus, and she keeps the tomato, the eggplant, saffron, chicken breast, flying through the air around her head, talking talking talking, as he standing at the computer, still advising the designer on the video, yelling at her that if she doesn't start typing, they're dead. She continues to read the words in front of her face like a Torah portion, no tonality or feeling, trying different combinations in different orders like a safecracker, and he's not getting why any of this is going down, because it's Frank: he'll get the gist. But that's all he'll get, and that's why he doesn't believe that there's anything other than the gist to be gotten. Is Heidi fucking up? Massively. Because she's written Frank off the exact same way he's writing her off now: it's not worth explaining to him how writing works, because she's too busy writing. And for Frank it's not worth it, period, because she's gone off the deep end and can't commit to anything until she's in front of the computer, with a picture of Tower II and the Trump Logo nestled on the cover of the brochure, and font sizes can be examined, and this sentence can be trimmed or moved to that tiny paragraph, until reading the thing is like slipping into water, it's so easy and buzz-filled and enthusiastic you don't even know you're reading. And meanwhile he can't understand -- as he's standing between her and the computer -- why she's not typing it into a Word document that they can slide into the brochure like an oven-fresh pizza. She finally yells back at him to get away from her; he interviews that she should have knocked this out in three or four hours. And you know, he's right. At some point you just adapt. Frank's monopolizing the designer? Go for shorter blurbs, take the amenities paragraph apart and make three of them, so they're modular, so you can click them in Lego-style. Draw out a mockup on some paper and estimate sizes and fonts. Bullet-point everything you've got so you can toss it like a salad if you need to, without losing meaning. And I think she's doing that, but she's not doing it enough and she's not doing it early enough. She's choking, and should be fired. But not like it happens.
Presentation day. Heidi's talking animatedly to herself, pretending to do her presentation. She's beautiful as ever, but it's a little eerie to see that face come alive -- so friendly, so open and charismatic -- and realize there's nobody there. She's being friendly to an invisible person. Yikes. James does the same, pacing about the house. Kristine is outdoors, presenting to her reflection. She looks very lovely. Stefani sits inside, giving her usual pitch-perfect error-free presentation to James, whose hands are alive in the air with the beautiful rhythm of her speech. I really do love watching her do this. The only people I can think of that were anywhere near this good were Marshawn, Allie and Roxanne, and -- maybe -- Dan, when he was on, which he often was not. (How many of those names did you remember? I didn't know I knew them until I said them! Give yourself a bonus five points for each name you can put with a face!) I just want to sit quietly and think about Dan for awhile, but James is so rude, you know, he insists on giving an interview. It's actually kind of interesting, especially if you superimpose -- over James and his oily smile and crazy Corporate Manson Lamp eyeballs of love about Trump -- Dan in a tux, with a kitten on his shoulder, okay, and that thing is hypoallergenic. So Imaginary Dan talks about how this task -- what with the multiple taskettes, the TRUMPery, the pathetic selling directly to/kissing the ass of Trump, and generally shameful amount of desperation and bathos -- "encapsulates" what this experience is all about. I know, right? He talks about how Trump loves charisma, which he does unless it scares him, and how you just have to hold his attention. It's all about sales, and gaining the respect of your audience. Which -- even if you do look like Dan in a tux right now -- you lost a shitload long time ago, Mr. Obvious Apprentice James Sun. Frank and James dap each other on the way to Trump Mansion, and somehow Frank manages not to cut loose with any other racial slurs.
James bends right over for Trump the first second he can about how "grateful" and whatever they are to have the opportunity to kiss his ass some more, in the crazy funhouse hell ride of TRUMP where these things have relative value. Trump asks James about his "partner," Stefani. Maybe he asks Stefani what she thinks about James, maybe he doesn't -- I know there was a whole part somewhere in here where Stefani was very vocal and insightful, that we didn't see for whatever scary reason yet to come -- but either way, watch for Trump's use of James throughout. If you were wondering, James LOVED working with Stefani. They had a good time, and she's a hard worker. Trump moves on to Nicole, same question, and Nicole answers honestly and smartly and well: she and Kristine have differing focus, but it ended up being beneficial to the task. Kristine's not so easy-breezy: Nicole has "amazing" energy, but often needs to be reined in and focused. And Heidi's partner? Frank's a "ball of energy," Heidi says ruefully/smugly/nastily, depending on if you understand why she's irritated with Frank above and beyond the usual amount of irritation it's natural to have with Frank. Which is to say, this isn't the James/Tim kind of "well, we all know Frank's a moron" smile, but a "man, did he ride my ass" smile. Frank needs focus at times, Heidi continues, and his cute little face is sad. And Frank? (So we've asked everybody but Stefani how their partners worked; either A: James is above reproach, B: Stefani's beneath asking, or we didn't get to see it, because A+B) Frank found Heidi "great to work with as a team member." Frank thinks they did an "excellent job" and that Trump will be very impressed.
Two things here: the first is the kind of heartbreaking, lovable way Frank "talks good" when he remembers to. It's like watching somebody fake an accent, and his brow is quite furrowed. That's not a slam on him: racist or not, I do think he's a total trouper. Not to say I respect him, but I do feel for him. And the second thing is actually quite awesome, if only in that it provides an amazing comparison for Nicole's behavior in a few minutes: he's scared to death of Crazy Heidi, he knows she doesn't have much respect for him or his skills, he knows she's irritated at the time he took for the video, he knows she thinks he's dumb and a child, but: class act. He's working for the good of the team, because he remembers that this is (supposedly) a team do-or-die, and he's not going to blame Heidi for a loss that hasn't happened yet just because he can't trust her. Not to say that Kristine's in the wrong -- I can't be half that civil about Nicole talking to you now, and she's only tangential to my job performance -- but that Nicole and Frank are kind of in the same boat. Both of them are the Arrows in an Arrow/Kinetic split, both of them have been called idiots more than once in this room, and both of them are scared shitless. And Frank can only say, at this point, good things about Heidi. Which I would really like even if Nicole didn't act like a two-year-old coming up. Although I admit I would have clapped louder if he weren't, you know, a gross-ass racist.
TEAM HOLLYWOOD CHICKEN BOWL. James and Stefani put up huge posters on either side of the video screen and Stefani puts her game face on. She interviews to us that Trump is all about big ideas, big buildings, but the outfit they OTF'd her in, all you can think is, "... big giant boobs... " Stefani begins to beguile with her public speech ways, giving facts and talking up "height" and "girth" and whatever Trump likes. She does manage to mangle the jump point to the video, about how Tower II will "most certainly be the most beautiful among the Vegas skyline," but compared to what's coming, that is like Shakespeare. It's just noticeable because of her performance. She continues to give the speech as music plays which is both amazing and amazed, and we dive down ever further into the TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP, as we sit and watch almost the entire goddamn commercial that they've created. (Also, the website at NBC tells us, you can now watch them online. Okay?) So it's just great, great stuff. Even before you see what they're up against, it's great. And then, they pull down the posters, revealing a SECONDARY SECRET SET of posters outlining the marketing plan (i.e. the part only they managed to do, a.k.a. the point of the task), and do that whole spiel. Frank is: terrified. Heidi is: perturbed. Kristine is: so very sleepy. Nicole is: insensate, making a list of all the people she'll show her Birkin bag to when she's rich like Trump so they can never call her trash again. Heidi: "Fuckin' WHAT? That was AWESOME!" Trump and the whole world too: "For REAL!"
TEAM FAIRLY MIDDLIN'. Silly goofball music that sounds like Season One The O.C. plays as Kristine sets up their posters and starts Turning Vegas Gold; Nicole gets their presentation ready on the laptop. And continues to do so. And commences giggling stupidly like a dull girl one-third her age, while still trying to get it going. Trump starts heckling her; Kristine nods into space like a beautiful California bobblehead, starting to get embarrassed. And you know, I get freezing up, here. I get why they get tongue-tied, I get why they're so nervous, and it's not entirely about kissing ass. It's not just about approval. It's also because really smart people spent buttloads of money to make sure that Donald Trump is terrifying. All that Iacocca shit about sliding the salt shaker across the table and encroaching on the other guy's space so they feel backed into a corner? All that weird voodoo? Trump lives in a weird voodoo world. It's the reason you always have to wait at job interviews. It's the reason they always have to wait in the boardroom for him to appear. It's the reason Carolyn's so scary, and it's the reason the walls are the height they are in there, and the cameras come in the way they do, and the reason the table is the size and dimensions it is, and the reason the doors are as wide as they are, and the reason he stares at them blankly when he should be asking questions and why he asks questions when he should be listening to the answers. So yeah, I get it. I'm not in love with Nicole's response to the pressure -- or Heidi's, for Pete's sake -- but the pressure itself is real. Which means Stefani is even cooler than we thought.
So this goes on for hours. Nicole giggles goofily, Trump calls her an idiot, Kristine mumbles half an apology that Trump cuts off, ad nauseam. Nicole offers stupid non-excuses ("this isn't the screen I was shown when we practiced!") that make nobody look good, least of all her. Trump finally sends -- see this? -- James over to help them. Maybe nothing, maybe something, who knows. But Nicole continues to shrug and hand-jive and chuckle and get all elbows and knees about it, puts her hair behind her ear so many times you start counting ears, and it's like: Deal. With. It. Kristine interviews: "Come on, Nicole. I did everything else." And ordinarily on this show, or anywhere really, that's such a laughable overstatement that we're trained to sneer at it, but it occurred to me just now that Kristine actually did everything. She's not lying about that. Nicole's whole job was to turn on the whatever it is that makes her worthwhile, that thing not even Arrow could properly describe, and Kristine did everything else. That's the deal, right? Kristine looks amazing as she introduces the stuff and the gold and the whatever. She makes a quick misstep about how their plan focuses on overall luxury -- "they don't wanna hear about the faucets" -- and Trump looks up from the brochure: "Um, they totally do? It's a condo?" She covers brilliantly that she's talking about creating an event, a tease, a hype -- it's a 24-hour event that will give them all the opportunities in the world to notice the faucets. Of course, as she's executing this maneuver, Nicole's shrieking everything she says about 1.5 seconds after she says it, so they go down flaming. Frank laughs uproariously in his OTF about how much bad they're bombing. Honey, you don't know from bombing. Nicole screaming screaming screaming, something in there where she says "to the best of the abilities," which is a dubious little phrase in any context. Especially coming out of her mouth.
Nicole abruptly stutters out a command and then cuts to the video, which is still refusing to work right. Trump shakes his head sadly, calling it a "broken-down technical thing," the worst he's ever seen. Heidi stares at the video, which goes on and on and on, it's like tacky off-brand Sims running around being boring. There's an awesome cut to Trump looking more bored than ten Ivankas, and then he notices something: Hollywood Chicken Bowl and Fairly Middlin', their brochures list different numbers. I have made a list of why this is not worth mentioning.
1) This is a mockup, not a sales product. It's regrettable but not cobra-worthy to have a random number on there. Frankly, they both should have had (800) 555-0000 on there for this precise reason.
2) Neither number is wrong, as discussed previously.
3) We just saw a very shitty presentation and no attempt at a marketing plan. Their presentation, from what we saw, didn't even focus on this "event" to any great extent.
4) Team Hollywood Chicken Bowl ALREADY WON.
But no, because Trump shows up for these things and then goes away again, they gotta deal with the footage they have, which is him having a massive pants-pissing brain attack about the two numbers, because he's happiest when he thinks he's got something to bitch about. Instead of checking into 1-4 above, he sends James (James) out to check the numbers, then sends Nicole after him so he can ask Kristine to stoolie out on her. Kristine obliges. This is not disloyalty, this is a soul crying out for retribution: Nicole literally slept through the "working" portion of the task, with the excuse that prep work was beneath her! Beneath her ART! Are you KIDDING me? Trump says he likes the brochure, but the presentation -- the magic -- was crappy. He asks what Nicole did wrong, and Kristine answers honestly -- and pretty value-neutrally -- that Nicole "takes for granted" that she's a great salesperson. Which I have no doubt about. The Sales gene and the gene for Shame are mutually exclusive, as we've discussed many times before.
Outside, Nicole's assuming, as we all did, that one (877) is the main number and the other (702) is a local number. They call the first one, and it's the Sales office (the first number available on the website). They call the second one, and a most amusing form of wool is pulled over our eyes: "Thank you for calling [slight pause] public relations... " Nicole and James look at each other, and hang up. Except it was not the wrong number, and if they knew the company at all they'd know that The Firm was representing the thing they're selling, and we're not allowed to hear the company name for either normal (legal) reasons or nefarious ones, but either way we're seeing a vastly different reality represented than what happened. Which is how reality TV goes, I acknowledge that, and we've gotta pull a story together around these disparate events to the best of our abilities (especially if we wanna be denied basic rights!), but the problem I've had with the editing all season presents itself again: there are a million ways to play this out. You're going for maximum damage (Heidi The Liar, Kristine The Incompetent) in order to shore up the firings. Which were CORRECT. I want to be very clear that everybody but James and Stefani deserve to be fired here. I've not got illusions about that: two impressively shitty presentations, you're all four out of there. My problem is the needless nastiness and total fantasyland bullshit way in which it was related. You're being shady when no shadiness was required.
Nicole makes her awful martyr faces and screams at the camera about how this is all Kristine's fault, if she goes home, and meanwhile inside, Kristine admits that she left Nicole sleeping because she's an asshole, and when Trump asks if she did the brochure, she cops to it. And the video. And everything. Because that was the deal, and Nicole's was the magic. And just then, who comes sweeping into the room with the most malicious, victimized, whiny screaming but Nicole. "Well, it's not ours!" she shrieks. Like Trump is going to cosset her for failure. Fucked-up priorities. This is what I was talking about with Frank before: you haven't lost yet, bint, stop making excuses and blame-shifting when your team is still in the running. It's more important to her to somehow "take down" Kristine for the number than it is for her to win. It's more important for her to be victimized somehow than it is for her to be victorious. "It's not a even a Trump affiliate, to be honest with you," she huffs and harrumphs and bitches, as she sits. Cobra. First of all: not true, moron. Second of all: not the point, and you should be backtracking like hell to point out that the phone number is meaningless. Nicole offers Trump the opinion (she was sleeping, so it's not a verifiable fact) that Kristine herself mistyped the number that is not actually a wrong number. Trump can only repeat himself in the face of all this nasty neediness: "I liked the brochure, but the presentation sucked."
TEAM GOOFUS & GALLANT. Trump pretends he and Frank have something in common: "Show me a man from the Bronx can present!" he yells, and then Heidi shows him that a girl from Michigan cannot. Like reeeeeeally cannot. I won't even call shenanigans, because you can't manufacture this. It's like watching Nate Fisher go down in a ten-minute NARM. She tells weird random lie-facts that Trump corrects, throwing her off even more ("the ground was broken on Tower I a year ago, I stand corrected"), with a scary, scared smile. Um, cobra. Why prolong it? She suddenly does the same thing as Nicole, tossing it to Frank with a wicked out-of-the-blue right hook: "We have somewhat of a pitch [ouch] for you; Frank has prepared a presentation... " Frank's eyes go very very wide, and then very very shifty, as he realizes that Heidi has, for some reason, fucked him into week.
"HOLY SHIT! What is going on over here? It's a two-minute presentation, then the video. There is none of this: Hi, and here's our video. I thought she might choke and fold under pressure, and she did!" I can't disagree with him. But part of being a team is working like a team. Maybe she caught something off Trump's glare that made it clear she needed to engage him more and show him his beautiful things, maybe she honestly choked, maybe she realized her Playboy stuff might come out if she won the show, maybe she hates Frank, maybe she realized that most of her speech was actually recapitulation of the video, who knows. She dicked it up, though, and you can tell she knows it. So if you're on a team, you act like you're on a team, and show the video, and that's what he does, without a break of any consequence (that we see) before kicking it to the video. WHICH IS AWFUL. There's a whole bit deleted from the boardroom where Trump and Don rake his ass over the coals about the shitty video: the shaking camera, the crappy lighting, the unprofessional everything in what Frank charmingly calls their "visual tour." But we're telling a story. This is writing: you assemble everything and then whittle, right? So they've got four days of nearly 24-hour footage to make 42 minutes out of, they gotta leave stuff out. But if all the stuff you leave out is the same stuff every time, that's an agenda, even if you don't know it. Especially if what you do have time for is an accumulated ten minutes of "visual tour" of Trump's amazing penis in gold-covered building and sky-violating jet formats. Women suck, Trump's rock hard and huge. Connection?
Kristine interviews about Frank and Heidi's total lack of concept, and how they suck even more than Fairly Middlin'. We watch unending, Blair Witch-quality video of the cabinetry and faucets (see?) and whatever, Frank's lost the "good talking" thing and he's like, "Mistah Tromp, everything you touch turns ta gold!" And whatever. Then it gets interesting.
Trump: "So what's your theme?"
Heidi: "Right, our campaign is about world class luxury, and what we --"
Trump: "You got a brochure?"
Frank yells out randomly (and damagingly) that "Trump Tower Sells Itself!" Which is not only ignorant but stupid as well. Trump's like, "The fuck you say." He investigates their brochure, and his face is such, you wonder if it's like scratch-and-sniff or something. "It's black, but not really a shiny black... " he says, and Don laughs that there's not even a picture of the building. Heidi admits that there was one planned for the brochure, that didn't make it in. This is so Liberty Island, come to think of it. Ah, back when the only person I felt competent to diagnose this harshly -- besides Brent Michael Buckman -- was my darling Andrea Lake, who ended up being probably my favorite person in three seasons. But look at me now! Trump notices the WILD AMOUNT OF WRITTEN MATTER covering every solitary inch of the brochure, and bitches that if he wants to read a book, he's going to go out and get a novel. Heidi jumps into the breach to fix it, to give the presentation or to explain why the brochure sucks and cover her ass, I don't know which. "Siddown," he growls, and warns them four people might get fired. GOOD. They should be. RIGHT NOW, before this becomes a fucking farce. Trump informs Heidi that the presentation -- which he's now interrupted and finally just put to death -- was a disaster, and she's stifled into silence as usual, and hating it, and: commercial.
Trump: "Stefani and James, you are awesome and safe. Kristine, stop looking like you're going to throw up. I think I should fire both of the other teams, but since this is the rational thing to do, I'm instead going to randomly fire somebody from each team. Now, everybody that was on that team of beautiful, intelligent women, what was it called? Kinetic. Everybody from Kinetic, raise your hands."
James: "Team Fairly Middlin' was pretty good, the brochure was awesome. It was supposedly missing the right number, though it wasn't, and that doesn't matter anyway... "
Trump: "I know, right? That's terrible. Right, Nicole?"
Nicole: "The reason I'm grinning in a sickening fashion is that having once again gotten everything I wanted without any fucking accountability at all, I get to blame somebody else for something. Kristine put that number on there: I was asleep all night, doing nothing on the task."
Trump: "And yet Nicole, Kristine thinks that's shitty! I agree it's weird, to expect you to do any real work on a task, but let's ask her."
Kristine: "She didn't focus on the task at hand, and in fact she vocally made that her entire part of the task: ignoring me, the job at hand, and anything I said or did, which is everything, with no sleep or support. Including the brochure you liked until a second ago."
Nicole, nastily: "I don't think that's an issue, to be completely honest."
Kristine: "You weren't in the game. You were asleep on a couch. I could tell that you weren't the same Nicole I'd been working with, because you weren't unceasingly squawking and honking about Tim and roller skates and how fucking gorgeous you are."
Trump: "Your brochure is way better than Heidi's, and your video is better. But there was a wrong number that was neither wrong nor necessary, and we've decided that even still, it's the ultimate sin, but it's 100% better-looking."
Heidi: "Yeah, it totally is. By the way, I'm going to try things Nicole's way by talking down my own team in way that makes me look weak, which as a woman is my only source of strength. I will try this shit once and only once, because it makes me feel like I've soiled myself."
Trump: "... Mmmmyou lost me. ... So, having made no point and gone around and around in logical circles for awhile, I've become bored with dicking Kristine around. Heidi, whose fault is this disaster?"
Heidi: "This is a question with a complex answer, because life is complex even if you are not. Instead of working with that fact, I'm going to try to say the complex thought over and over again, each time you interrupt me. This is because I'm totally freaked out."
Trump: "... Mmmmyou lost me."
Heidi: "Frank gets very excited, and probably...Frank, I'm being honest here. I'm just trying to be honest, not to --"
Frank: "Go right ahead, Heidi. I'm not interrupting, I haven't said a word yet."
Heidi: "Right, I'm... Where was I? Frank, I'm being honest in that Frank gets very excited, and --"
Trump: "Why do you keep saying how honest you are? You know what honest girls don't do? Talk about how honest they are. Ask beautiful Nicole!"
Heidi: "Okay, the second half of that complex sentence that could use some editing is this: I want Frank to know I'm not saying this because I'm in the same situation you put me in every week, where you dick me around mercilessly because you know you could never possess me no matter how many times I fucked you or how much you paid me, which is zero in both cases because you don't even know how much ladder there is between you and me. I'm saying it because we share responsibility for this massive fuckup, but the reasons have to do with cheeseburgers and Proust and Dostoyevsky and literacy levels in the average American mindset, all of which --"
Trump: "... .Mmmmyou lost me."
Heidi: "Frank needs a lot of direction and focus. He gets off task easily. His portion of a task is not the thinking-doing part, but the doing-doing part. We should have been an awesome team."
Trump: "Who did this brochure?"
Heidi: "If you're asking who fucked it up, the answer is Frank, via me. What you're looking at was completed fifteen minutes before showtime, because he --"
Trump: "Who did this brochure?"
Heidi: "Again, if you're asking who fucked it up, both of us. If you're asking who jury-rigged the design, I'm more than happy to claim --"
Frank: "So wait, I did the brochure and the video?"
Heidi: "No, if you're asking who planned the campaign itself, which was the task, then I did everything prior to the actual finished product, which is shoddy, thanks to both of us. If you're asking who hogged the goddamn computer all night working on the video while shrieking at me to finish the brochure, then the answer is --"
Frank: "HEIDI. Who designed the BROCHURE?"
Heidi: "WE DID IT TOGETHER, YOU UNBELIEVABLE CLOD."
Don: "Who approved this novel of text?"
Heidi, wordlessly: "That motherfucker right there who made me copy/paste it at quarter of?"
Frank: "Where am I? What are you talking about? Are you my mommy?"
Heidi: "Frank pushed it on the designer this morning, because he was antsy and we didn't have any time to deal with it, because he was unable to complete the three-minute video in under ten hours. I wanted to slow down and edit it and create something of worth --"
Frank: "I pushed it? Who cares? Who wrote it?"
Heidi: "If you're asking who wrote the copy, nobody did, because this isn't copy, which you still can't understand somehow even though we went around and around on this for twelve hours. If you're asking who pulled all the facts together, that's me. But if you're asking if we collaborated on it, rather than going our separate ways like Kristine and Nicole, I'm not fucking going down that way."
Don: "Either way it's still a crazy diatribe of facts and madness."
Heidi: "Either way that's not the point, but fucking fine. I wrote down the words that eventually had to go into the brochure, because we both managed our time poorly. If that's really the point, if Kristine being the one to type the numbers she didn't type, if the physical act of writing is the problem here, then yes."
Frank: "You just told him I wrote it! A second ago, when you said nothing of the sort!"
Heidi: "No, I fucking didn't. Are you playing stupid at this point?"
Trump: "Frank's ham-fisted emergent linguistic structures are working their magic. Women are liars. He's painting you as a liar and you're too smart to come down and tell us why you're not lying. It's not working. I think you're lying. I think you're lying and he's the salt of the earth."
Trump: "I will say this. I was very impressed with the fight Frank put up. I especially like how he took his basic misunderstanding of the task and your place in it, and twisted that into an accusation that's going to stain your professional reputation for all time, simply because he thinks you're putting the target on him. I like that."
Frank: "... .Mmmmyou lost me."
Trump: "But I don't know that Frank has the sophistication for... You know, my world is a very complex world. You can do construction, but do you have the polish? For example, could you be trusted to make an ass of yourself in front of the entire world by bitching about Rosie O'Donnell, or hanging out with the World Wrestling Federation? Are you classy enough for that?"
Frank: "I am 100% as classy as you are, Mr. Trump. And I can make buildings."
Trump: "Your presentation kind of went south once you forgot to talk all nice."
Frank: "I am the best salesman in the world, and intrinsically charismatic, against all reason."
Trump: "Yeah, I know. It's fucked up. James?"
James: "Fire the person who created the theme she tried to tell you about eleven times in order to start the presentation, and you kept interrupting her and finally made her sit down."
Trump and Don: "Ha ha! What theme? She didn't tell us the theme."
Heidi: "World Class Amenities, pigfucker."
Trump: "But ya didn't say it!"
Heidi: "You're right, I was too busy staring at you playing with yourself as you interrupted me over and over and watched me twist. I screwed up the presentation."
Frank: "And what's so sad? What's so terribly sad about that? Is that we had a great presentation mapped out. Just for you. It was like a hard, thrusting, gold-covered thank-you gift, for being such a great guy. And because somebody screwed up, you'll never get to see it. Or the pony we bought you. Or the third mail-order bride."
Heidi: "Um, yeah, except Trump could see me trying to get the presentation together after the video, to make up for it, and told me to sit down after fucking around for awhile. Actually, I think we discussed that last night, as one possibility: giving the rest of the presentation after the visuals."
Frank: "YOU'RE GOING TO LIE IN FRONT OF DONALD TRUMP? LIKE A LIAR? LIKE A LYING WOMAN?"
Heidi: "Um, I thought you could roll with it. I kicked it to you, you played the video, I didn't get to deliver it. I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm saying don't kick me under the bus because Trump got ADD at a bad time."
Frank: "NOBODY INTERRUPTED YOU. YOU DID NOTHING."
Heidi: "It's a loss leader. You touched on the points in the video and there was only so much left to say. I'm not going to argue this with you, it's too hard to think dumb."
Frank: "YOU DIDN'T DO THE PRESENTATION!"
Trump: "Whose fault is the shitty presentation?"
Frank: "One sec. You're gonna like this."
Frank: "So Heidi. What were you doing while I was working?"
Heidi: "Are you an idiot? I was writing the content for the eventual brochure."
Frank: "Finally! The truth!"
Heidi: "Fucking whatever. Look, Trump. I wanted to start the presentation earlier, and give you a nice folder with the brochure and everything. I mean, remember the SmartMouth campaign? I'm good at this. It's something I'm demonstrably good at. I won last week with it. Why would I suddenly fuck that up?"
Don: "So then why didn't you? Why are you lying?"
Heidi: "I didn't have access to the tools I needed, because Frank couldn't focus and get the video done, and ignored my responsibilities because he misunderstands the way the brochure needed to be done."
Don: "But if he was doing the video, shouldn't you have been doing this?"
Heidi: "Am I not speaking loudly enough? What is going on here? The graphic designer was tied up, and I didn't have access to the tools I needed, because Frank couldn't focus and get the video done, and ignored my responsibilities because he misunderstands the way the brochure needed to be done."
Frank: "All you have to do is type it in! Punch it in! On the keybox!"
Heidi: "Um, this screaming? This is how he acts. He gets distracted, he doesn't understand the parts of the task that aren't tasked to him --"
Frank: "Distracted! What was I doing, cartwheels?"
Trump: "HO! Good one! You have distracted me! We are the same, and thus have no idea what she's talking about!"
Heidi: "Brochures are sales objects. They are designed from a number of elements, including text. The presentation of a sales object is not just about text, no matter how many times Frank screams that it is. We needed to work with the designer on the brochure."
Frank: "How much 'formatting' do you need? You type it in on a Word document! Whatever pops into your head!"
Heidi: "Are you fucking kidding me? All I wanted to do was a couple hours to convey our message and theme to the graphic designer, and make basic decisions about copy and the elements of design."
Frank: "I mean, your story is different every minute!"
Heidi: "Saying that doesnât make it true. How is it different every time?"
Don: "Sometimes just saying it makes it true. At least, it now seems to me like you're contradicting yourself, simply because we haven't let you finish a goddamn sentence since this hellride started."
Heidi: "I am...so screwed."
Trump: "Yeah, isn't it hot? I'm getting a boner right now! I mean, uh, I'm worried about your standing here, Heidi."
Heidi: "You want honesty? This task has been probably one of the worst in my career as a professional. I am being wooed by the Chipmunks as we speak, on this task."
Frank: "Finally, you're admitting I'm blameless."
Heidi: "No. I am admitting that this is an embarrassment."
Trump: "And is that due to you, or Frank?"
Heidi: "For the hundredth time, I blame both of us. You fucking prune-assed old bitch."
Frank: "You blame me for not being able to give the presentation right now?
Heidi: "Frank, I blame you for taking ten hours on the video and needing constant supervision so that I can't think. I blame you for ganging up with these two douchebags to corner me so that I can't get a word in edgewise. I blame you for taking male privilege and beating me over the head with it in order to protect yourself. I blame you for needing to get revenge on me for not being Nicole, and on Nicole for not being your girlfriend, and on all women for not being your mommy. I blame you for seeing this disgusting, shady opportunity to use the Boys' Club to your advantage, and not avoiding it with grace and class, because you're desperate. I blame you because you will always be Arrow, and I will always be Kinetic, and there's nothing either of us can do to communicate across that gap. I blame you, because you have no incentive to do so."
Trump, Don, Frank: "... .Mmmmyou lost me."
Frank: "Do you blame me for choking at the beginning of the presentation with no way of knowing that Trump was going to cut you off later?"
Heidi: "Yeah, I fucked that up. Totally. I hate it."
Heidi: "Look, Mr. Trump, I have been accused of some really shitty stuff, for some really shitty reasons, that may haunt the rest of my professional career, because Mr. Integrity over here wants to win a trashy game show. For this reason alone -- since it's clear I'm not going to win this bitch -- I want to clear the air. No matter how many times you say it, Frank says it, no matter how firmly you believe it, I am not a liar. I want to be fired for legitimate reasons. Please. I am begging you. Give me the dignity of an honest cobra. Don't take the way out that you always do, and this show always does, by portraying women as self-hating manipulative bitches. Just cut me loose for fucking up. I've done awesome to this point and you know it. Please."
Frank: "EXCEPT YOU KEEP LYING!"
Heidi: "For GOD'S SAKE, FRANK. What did I lie about? One thing."
Don: "I can't think of any, but I know I had this suspicion you were contradicting yourself. A little voice in my head, sounded like Jersey trash."
Frank: "Like when you said I wrote the brochure and then I didn't write the brochure, and how you said I wanted to do the video first, but then I didn't want to do the video first."
Heidi: "Frank. To say that we were equally responsible for the shittiness of the brochure is not a falsehood. Nor does it countermand the fact that you didn't write the brochure. You didn't write it, but you definitely contributed to the shittiness of it."
Frank: "How? I didn't write it! Stop saying I did! You keep double-talking yourself the whole night!"
Heidi: "... .Mmmmyou lost me. We're done here."
Heidi, with the hardest eyes: "Mr. Trump. You know what, this task? This awful task? I am 100% embarrassed. And if you wanted to fire me solely based on this task, and not listen to a word I'm saying, and not look at my history in this game, and not look at the bullshit I had to contend with, currently still going on in the chair to me, if you wanted to make that much of an ass of yourself and everyone here, I would 100% completely agree with you."
Trump: "Heidi, I was going to do that anyway. You're fired."
Heidi: "This show is a kind of violating experience. At least at Playboy they gave us lunch."
Trump: "KRISTINE YOU'RE FIRED! OH SNAP!"
Kristine: "Fuckin' what? Did I nod off again? I didn't even get to defend myself or anything. Did something happen when I was asleep?"
Trump: "You admitted the wrong number was your fault!"
Kristine: "No I didn't! Are you high? Am I asleep right now?"
Trump: "This is all too real."
Kristine: "Am I gonna get like, I don't know, an opportunity to...defend myself? Have a fucking conversation? Be involved in this process at all? Are you going to ask Nicole what the fuck she did on the task?"
Trump: "... .Mmmmyou lost me. FIRED! EVERYBODY OUT! I AM SCARY AND AUTHORITATIVE! SEE WHAT I DID JUST NOW! I AM ZEUS! I STRIKE WITHOUT WARNING!"
Trump: "That was a rough session!"
Don: "I don't even remember those two bitches' names, but I sure do think I need to say something about how great Frank is at working hard, so we don't look like total assholes."
Trump: "Yeah, and he's a fighter too. I don't like girls talking back but I like a guy who fights. Who fights women, I should say. That made me happy."
Kristine and Heidi are ever so gracious to their driver, and they lock eyes as they're driving away: Dude, that was so retarded. Frank's still sweating it; we're treated to the unholy sight of an Arrow Final Four. Over the music, Nicole's moronic grin and the spastic spring in her step give you an instant sound of "dur-dee-dur-dee-doo," and then that too is gone. "I think that Mr. Trump fired the right person, in my case," admits Heidi with a gorgeous smile. "I will be 'completely honest': I fumbled the presentation." She shrugs. "I'm not quite sure why he did fire Kristine, though. Frank and I should be in this vehicle right now." Kristine leans back and smiles guiltily. "I thought I could take Heidi down by running game on Nicole, and I wouldn't have to face her in the Final Two. But honestly, that is the best Final Two, so I screwed us both by splitting us up, and now we're both gone before the Final Four." She closes her eyes with a smile: "I'm sorry, honey." Heidi daps her knee without looking: "It's okay. I'll get you back." But you know she won't. They're Kinetic: She's just kidding.