Pretty much the only recognizably Apprentice episode of this entire season: smart, fast-paced, interesting, not too cartoonish or silly, lame only in the way of real business. The Final Four go to "dinner" -- which in this case means cocktails in an abandoned warehouse -- with four of the most boring people in the universe. It's the prior Apprenti! Minus Bill! They say a lot of boring things to each other and pretend that they're famous for awhile, and then Kelly gives the two teams (Stefani/James and Frank/Nicole, naturally) thirty seconds to come up with their chosen cobra'd sequesterees. Stefani and James choose Aaron and Angela, for reasons they cannot explain. Nicole chooses Tim immediately, and then she and Frank pick...Surya! Also for reasons they can't explain. Even Surya thinks it's weird.
The task: create a "mini-movie" for air freshener. Team James/Stefani decide to focus on some kind of a crime scene or something -- they put a dog on trial? Or use air freshener to destroy evidence, or something. Whatever. Stefani gets irritated by James's meandering OCD, showing him up pretty much all over the place. Aaron is there to be looked at; Angela is invisible throughout. James pushes Stefani around the same way Frank does Nicole, for the same reason, and hyperfocusing on anything he can, resulting in a Lynchian masterpiece of banal weirdness. Team Frank/Nicole decide on a grim story about hurt kids and homeless jokes. Nicole works the execs, brilliantly, which Frank finds confusing; Surya does nothing too terrible or too interesting; Frank is a great director but outpaced overall; and Tim is just kinda there. Frank makes a huge ass of himself for no reason, fighting Nicole on every single point so she looks like a controlling jerk, which she's not; she's actually the coolest person in the entire episode -- though her editing choices are totally surreal and Mentos-esque, the commercial is an audience hit.
The execs love James and Stefani, but sell out Nicole in Frank's unsavory favor; Surya makes no sense as usual and seems to think Frank would not be out of place at MIT; Aaron adorably plants the seeds for a James/Stefani double-hire, and then...Trump makes no decision at all and sends everybody home. What? The task itself wasn't that exciting, but the strange conclusion will make for a really exciting finale. week might be a four-way bloodbath, but this week was really pleasant. See you there.
The weird part is, I made up my mind last week to let Nicole off easy this week no matter what, because it's really tiresome to bitch and moan and complain about the same thing every week, not to mention the fact that everybody has their entire lives edited down to these tiny little nubbins of a personality. Nicole's mom is awesome, and all her teammates really respect her... so is she really the Fourth Horseman? Doubtful. Now, I don't feel bad about the actual hatred, because the Nicole nubbin they created is A) completely calculated to make me lose my friggin' mind -- I mean just a checklist of the disappointing things about people that make me most angry -- in much the same way as the Heidi nubbin is pretty much everything I like in a person, and what they both say about me, good and bad. But also, B) it's not like those things are fictional or untrue, about Nicole. The letters A-M, while not representing the entire alphabet, are still verifiably letters in the alphabet. We can talk about the evil of Donald Trump all day, but if he were a relative of yours, that slightly embarrassing, grandiose, clueless, racist, misogynist homophobe uncle, or your dad even, you'd see past it. If we can admit that, then we can admit that Nicole's probably pretty fun, a good and caring friend, and a savvy business person -- that's not what this show's ever been about.
The facts of life, as I am given to understand them, are that you take the good and you take the bad. This show doesn't give us much of either: just a narrowly defined "type" that suits the story they can tell. Nicole's a reasonably complex person, and even a very simple person, even Frankie Suits himself, can't be perfect. So I think with Nicole it's an issue where we don't have a lot in common, just as adult people: We both think Tim is awesome, and we both have no idea how bad the jellyfish sting hurts until we know how much it hurt other people, and that's all there is, to the two of us. One is a small thing, the other is huge to me, but then if they shaved off everything in her complexity that I would have found redeeming... because it is an asshole, this show. And the precise way in which this show is an asshole means that I have too many options to be outraged by. Is Nicole painted down to the bare-assed insecurity we've all come to know, does this happen because she's a woman? Because she's gotta look trashy so Arrow all fits together in one big trashy mess? In order to bring about the most shark-jumpiest possible Final Four? Is it so that the women of this season that made it through to the end are immediately discernable from each other? So many different ways to be offended by this show, it's choice paralysis (though at this very second, I'm thinking it's mostly the last option). That's what watching TV is like. That's the point of TV, in my opinion: taking it apart and taking yourself apart in the process, and putting both things back together better than they were. Either way, Nicole's not actually the worst thing in the world, as I may have led you to believe. She's a person. She doesn't need to be redeemed, she just needs to be Nicole. She's working on it. We all are. So what's interesting is how enchanting I found her in this episode, because like I said: I was already planning on being nice. Which is a good thing, because if I was still looking for reasons to insult her, this episode would have been crazy frustrating.
Which it is, but not because of Nicole: it's because this particular episode is nuts. It's the only episode this season that felt much like The Apprentice, which made me kinda misty, but: the task is violently lame, and the conclusion is nonexistent. Even The Hair is outshone by Don Jr.'s horrific coif. Going into the LIVE FINALE should be totally fucking exciting, but the end of the episode is like... not even a whimper. It ends with a whuuuuh. I wanted the last recapped Apprentice ever to rock out so hardcore that your eyes would bleed, but... it's Arrow. That was never going to happen, I guess. Anyway, previously, Trump finally came to his senses and dropped that whole Tent City moronathon conceit, and the Final Six became three teams, from which Kinetic was finally purged for good. As he tells us, Heidi and Kristine's "terrible performances" meant they had to go; as we saw with our own fucking eyes, despite Satan's entire crew of story editors, this wasn't remotely the case. Some other things that didn't so much happen at all were: Trump's even, considered, mature tone telling Kristine one thousand times that she was fired; the pants-pissing fit she threw in response; the suicidal ideation in which she engaged once he'd finally defeated her with his superior intellect and authoritative air. God, I hate this fuckin' show.
Back home, James interviews how he's so proud of himself (of course) and Stefani (of course), and also Frankie and Nicole. In the way that you're proud of a dog for figuring out there's no mouse. Stefani's in the kitchen celebrating that the Final Four are all Arrow, and I think Nicole took her "I'm With Kinetic Now" thing even further than we saw, because Stefani looks at her and sweetly/firmly tells Nicole to shut it: "We're all Arrow, I don't care what you say." That's so mommish and awesome: "I love you, dickwad." Nicole smiles kind of tenderly and ducks her head. "We're all Arrow." All of this makes me very happy. I mean, I still hate Arrow, but you know what I mean. That's cool. Nicole tells James and Stefani how she's "surprised" they did so well, then yanks her foot back out of her mouth while the three of them chat.
Out of a primordial darkness, creatures prowl, skulking behind walls of the Arrow Mansion, scratching and breathing hotly, hungry. At the smallest touch of a gilt candelabra, a secret passageway is revealed. A gold-framed portrait of your momma slides soundlessly out, away. Creatures come edging out slowly into the light. But what are they? What blind and bloody dawn birthed these shambling monstrosities? What unlucky sun will reveal them? Ah! It is the dread Trump, and his son! From out of the nameless terrors that haunt all McMansions, they come, slumping; with toad-set jaw and palpating mouth, with hair like sweating moss, with eyes like the moon on unholy stones, they come. Into the forty-five-watt glow of temporary and meaningless victory, they come. They come!
Stefani's like, "I loved the Vegas task because I don't give an eff about the creepy executives shadowing us, I just want to talk to Trump -- and on the Vegas task, the creepy executives shadowing us were the Trumps!" A moment of silence and then, "I WANT MY GOLDEN ARM!" the Trumps scream, jumping out into the kitchen and Stefani and Frankie scream, because the call is coming from inside the house, and finally Nicole pulls everybody together. "I'm afraid we don't have your golden arm, Mr. Trump, but would you like some dinner? I'll make you some dinner. We got Hungry Man, Cheetos, we got that cheese you squirt out of the can, I've been drinking Red Bull & Vodkas, Frank actually left some chips around here somewhere. You like hotdogs? We got a microwave. Oh! I could make Frito Pie! Do you know what that is?" Don's hair is like: "I am 35% Frito Pie and 15% wheat glutens." Trump tells them all how awesome they are and gives Frank props for making Heidi look stupid, which really helped with Trump's plan to make Heidi look stupid. Nicole laughs about how Frank, like herpes, doesn't go away no matter what Trump throws at him; again, it's a lot like she's saying something insulting while not actually trying to do so. The task is to repeat a task, basically, making the Lexus task the official Final Task of this season, even though it took place weeks ago. They have to make a 60-second commercial for [some room deodorizing agent], just like the scrubbing bubbles task. (The real Kinetic would be like: "Odors... of a whorehouse!" and then Muna would cry.) Trump talks for one billion years about how there's "no loser" here, because they're all winners, and OMG if he actually hires two Apprenti this year I'm calling Rebecca and Randal both, and we're taking his rich ass out once and for all.
The Reward Of Sorts for the win last week is a cocktail party with the Five Crown Apprenti, Randal and Bill and the other ones I don't know. I remember how I was so convinced at the beginning of this season that Stefani was going to be the Tana, and how I always meant to say that but couldn't remember who Tana was or what season she was on. Isn't that weird now, though? Now that I remember her name, it's hilarious to compare that to Stefani, who's more like the -- I dunno, the Dixie Carter? The Truvy Jones! -- and not really a type we've seen on the show before. Trump declares his love for the Apprenti Assembled -- he's really expansive tonight, no? -- and cautions the kids that they have some "really tough weeks" ahead of them. A statement which seems simple enough, but contains so many different dimensions of false witness that it's almost shocking: this task is lame and easy, "weeks" is a lie every time he says it in any context, and they're being blatantly lied to about what's going to actually happen. On a scale of crawling right up Trump's ass as he's leaving, Nicole is on one end and Frank's on the other, which is surprising. I thought James was the permanent Manager of that Project, but Nicole gives him a run for his money -- and for Frank to be more invisible than Stefani, especially with Trump around, is quite confusing. Especially since Nicole's completely in the right to be up there, and the others should have joined her. After Trump and Son crawl back into the air ducts, to harass some other poor souls elsewhere, Nicole screams her face off about the Five Apprenti, who are only allowed out of their dungeon once every fiscal quarter, and Frank babbles at us about it at length. No matter how much they scream and babble, though, it's like meeting Ken Jennings or any other barely famous game show winner: funny to tell at a party, but not something that in and of itself makes you awesome, as they seem to think. Unless it's Wonderful Jim, and then I'm like in love with you through the transitive property. But he's not going to be at this party, so I'm allowed to think it's lame.
Over to Reg Bev Wil, where a fully unctuous individual helps them out of the car. Inside, Randal and the man they call Kelly are comparing dick size about their personal and team records. Now, either this is hilarious because they've not given that shit a second thought since they were able to escape the hellish Skinner Box of this show... or it's hilarious because they still think it matters. I was forgetting one of them through this whole part, I was like, there's going to be Kelly I never saw before, and Kendra or whoever that I won't recognize, and Randal, and the presumably terrified Bill. And that's all of them! Oh, how quickly we forget. Sean's Face right up in this hizzy. Never fails to freak me out. As our kids enter, the Crown Apprenti begin to clap, and through the magic of television, their tiny applause sounds like a Superbowl crowd. The room is spare, so even though this "party" is taking place in the sumptuous Reg Bev Wil, there's no defined space or anything, so it gives this echoing parking-garage impression of being the most boring drug deal gone wrong in the history of narcotics. I mean, who've you got? The howler monkeys of Arrow, in a space so large there's nothing for them to break or climb around on, facing off against the four people in the world judged so boring -- by even the exacting standards of this Procrustean show -- that they managed to win. That's like giving a fevered six-year-old Robitussin and then sitting them down for My Dinner With Andre. And there's going to be a quiz at the end. This cocktail party, in other words, constitutes child abuse.
Frank interviews that Bill -- surely the champion, even among these purebreds -- had a last minute meeting and couldn't make the painfully awkward cocktail party. I'm so sure, I bet at even the prospect of meeting in a room with these eight people kicked his paranoia in hardcore. God, just the idea of Frank dealing with Bill in this informal setting makes me want to wash my hands over and over and over. I can't imagine how scary that would be for poor Bill, whom last we saw still believes his life to be in danger. Frank gives us a concentrated blast of what lay in store for Brilliant Bill, had he not begged off, as he screams at length about how THIS is what it is to be an Apprentice: working 24/7, working until you are a husk of a person, working until your soul comes off on the ledger books. Of course, what Frank doesn't know -- and we do -- is that his ass will never be winning this thing, because he's the least procrusted person I've ever seen. His rough edges have rough edges. The rough in which his diamond can be found is bigger than the sandtraps at all Trump's golf courses combined. He's a blue-collar needle in a haystack of excellent crazy: he exists to make Trump feel like a populist, and that's it.
Kelly says that not only is this a hideously awkward and stupid idea, and they've all moved on with the probable exception of Sean, but also it's awesome, because the four of them have never taken questions together. Only separately, on their sad little trips through the media alimentary canal. They all offer meaningless, content-free advice (The Girl One: "It's now or never! It's time to find out what you're really about!") and all eight of them attempt to manufacture some soundbites about how incredibly fascinating and important the Final Four really is, so that the total letdown of the end of this episode won't seem quite so brutal. Randal manages to totally upstage everybody about how when he was in the Final Four, all he could think about was winning his eighteenth straight task as PM or whatever the hell. Sean gives an unrelated, tic-like, characteristic OMG!!!!!!! about nothing in particular. Sigh. Kelly raises a toast to the Final Four and throws out as many clichés as he can think of, and everybody sips their champagne, and it's still highly uncomfortable. Frank interviews that these four people, plus Bill, plus (... five times four less five is?) fifteen other people who are not there, only those twenty people know what this feels like. To be in the Final Four of The Apprentice! My goodness! What an exclusive club! Fifty people die of Creutzfeld-Jacob spongiform encephalopathy in the UK each year, so this is like 40% more exclusive than that. You know, what would have been awesome is a party made up of Final Four people. We would have gotten to see Amy and Nick! That would have been so awesome! Roxanne! My darling Rebecca! Alla! We could have had ALLA! We could have seen Alla and Frank interact! Tell me that's not like seeing a unicorn. Instead: eight people staring at the floor scouring to see if there are any identifiable personality characteristics left that they could be shedding right this second.
So Kelly's kind of raging sexy for just like this one millisecond as he looks at them sneakily: "So you know what's gonna happen?" They're confused, and then scared. "There's only one more task." He tells the teams -- Stefani/James, by decree, and Nicole/Frank, by default -- to choose their returnee "employees" carefully... and they have thirty seconds. While this is only just an empty threat, it still got exciting for a second. They retire to corners -- the Randal/Rebecca iteration of this is still the coolest ever -- and their conversations are hilariously well-edited.
Nicole: "Okay, Tim and somebody."
Frank: "Agreed."
James: "How about Angela?"
Stefani: "Who?"
Nicole: "Who else is a male person we can look to for authority, even though we're the bosses here?"
Frank: "Oooh, Aaron?"
Everybody: "Carey?"
Everybody: "Heh."
Everybody: "Michelle?"
Everybody: "HA!"
Stefani: "Not Surya. I beg of you."
James: "Fucking seriously."
Frank: "Ooooh! Surya!"
Nicole: "Excellent!"
Frank: "Kelly! We finished! Yay! We got done first! Does that mean we win?"
Nicole: "That's entirely possible."
Jacob: "... Yeah. It is. This season is awful."
Kelly: "I don't know who any of you are because I figured out the joke of this show a while back, but whatever. Who do you pick?"
Nicole: "Tim!"
Everybody: [gasps, dies of shock]
James: "Aaron! He's... pretty!"
Frank: "Surya! He's... we don't know why!"
Stefani: "Angela! For the same reason!"
Kelly: "What's really cute is how you all think you're total wheeler-dealers. I remember being caught in the total craziness of this show too. It's adorable, really. Please use your inside voices, though."
Nicole: "I'm not being rude or anything, like I've accidentally been every time I've spoken in this episode, but like, Angela? Really? Because don't you remember how she didn't do anything but then cried because she hates our ethics? And how like James is ethically challenged? And that's the total nubbin of them both? And also you've never actually met?"
Nicole, in interview: "Total bluff. God knows I couldn't pick Aaron out of a lineup."
Randal: "Meanwhile, though: Surya? For real?"
Nicole and Frank: [babble intensely; I still don't get it personally]
Stefani interviews sardonically about how Surya totally bugged them to death, drove the rest of Arrow to distraction, caused the meanest onscreen behavior from Stefani herself, made Frank drink beers, made Nicole roll her eyes, and "drove Tim to insanity" -- so now they're putting the two of them together on a team. Which also includes themselves, so it's not even like a nasty joke they're playing on Tim. Now, it seems obvious that Tim never had the issue with Surya that Frank and James -- and to a certain extent Stefani -- had with him, so take this with a grain of salt. On the other hand: it's fucking Surya. Not a pretty picture. Stefani outlines the possible strategies as follows: either Nicole and Frank recognize their lack of "organizational skills" -- or what I call "the ability to keep it the fuck together for more than five minutes at a go" -- or else they've lost their minds. Those are the options, as she sees them. I think it's charitable enough to say that Option A could possibly be stated in less insulting ways, and that it's entirely possible that Frank and Nicole are smart enough to get a Stefani substitute on this task, to hold down the "chalkboard master" position, as Stefani puts it.
I think you've gotta try on some moccasins to get there, though, because subjectively, it's not that they NEED that to compensate for their own perceived lacks -- they don't know what the problem is with them, collectively or singly -- but that they don't FEEL LIKE doing that stuff, because it's boring. Those are two different ways of saying the same thing, because that's how people work. We have the advantage of being objective and seeing which one's closer to the truth, but nobody ever did anything against their own interests, and this is not an ego sacrifice to say they want somebody to handle the boring parts. You don't like your racist uncle because he drinks, but that also makes him a fun babysitter, for example. Or maybe they've lost their minds and Stefani's doubly right. In any case, Frank issues a lecture to the Four about how "this is it" and whatever, task pumping up and whatnot. Frank awkwardly tosses a champagne arm around Nicole with his insides all fizzy: "You ready, kid?" He is so very much in love with her. I swear it.
Hollywood, Wax Museum, tourist stuff, etc etc. In the KiNOTic war room, Stefani and James are going over their basic idea, wherein a "nerdy odor expert" is unable to find "evidence of odor." James loves it. Aaron and Angela say nothing. I could literally end this recap with those two sentences eighty-seven times in a row and you'd get not just the gist but the entire enchilada. So it's a courtroom scene, where the man of the family is charged with stinking up his home, but then thanks to [the deodorizing product, which we're going to call... what's something I like that deserves this kind of hype? Friday Night Lights], is proven not guilty. So if your target audience is women who enjoy being lied to by their husbands, you're Turning Gold. James will be directing, Stefani will be doing everything else; Aaron and Angela are in charge of staring into space and not speaking.
Anyway, sorry, the bum is smokin' hot. Everybody laughs as the terrible young actor points at the bum, grossed out, indicating that his hospital room requires Friday Night Lights. Surya interviews how, just as with every task, this is basically his entire job: "I've been on many different commercial sets," he tells us, but he has never before seen "this much footage" captured in this amount of time. "Amazing!" he says. So I think that what just happened was that Surya's vast experience of commercials and their filming has taught him that the amount of footage one shoots is directly proportional to the quality of the finished product. Or in other words, "Kelly! We're done! Did we win yet?" Then Nicole spots the executives in the back of the room, and finally becomes awesome.
"Cut! Time out, let's put the product in the background for recognition." Frank, not getting it as usual, is irritated and impatient and asking needless questions to intimidate her into backing off his task; she's too busy getting the prop in the shot and then shaking hands with the execs in a stage whisper. Good show, Nicole. That was awesome. And of course, Frank is like, "Um, we didn't need to do that, but it's so cute that Nicole thinks you should try to make an impression on the client. Girls are adorable." Meanwhile, Nicole's informing the room that this is a key shot, meaning that it's essential that "our" product be showcased. I mean... the sales gene, you know? No shame in that game. And honestly, it's the move Frankie Suits would have made if he'd thought of it. But instead he's gotta piss on it. They cut in a shot of Tim looking bemused, but I highly doubt that's genuinely what's going on there. There are two execs: the attractive female one is from [Friday Night Lights], while the nebbishy-cute other guy is with the advertising firm. They are adorable, separately and together. And man, boy howdy, do they like Nicole's sudden ojigi overload: "Big brownie points for that," the lady chuckles. Nicole heads back to the monitor to giggle and queer it up with Tim, and Frank's like, "As usual, I'm working terribly hard, and Tim and Nicole are in what I refer to privately as 'La-La Land.'" Whatever, Frank. Over it. "It's time to show I'm ready to be the Apprentice." And what's most disappointing about all that is how he's precisely the opposite of correct: the sadness of this season is that the show is finally ready for Frank to be the Apprentice.
James and Stefani are setting up lights and engaging in this business we call show when Don Jr.'s hair once again freaks you out from the location of his head, on which there is another set of hair which is slightly grosser-looking, and so on, into infinity. An asymmetrical part not unlike that which manifests itself on the blighted head of Simon Cowell gives him that insouciant but deeply compromised look one sees on the scarred mean men at the bus stop late in the evening. And what is going on in this room? Something deeply compromised, to be certain. The lady playing the attorney -- and I mean to say that the actors in both these commercials comprise a pool of talent truly remarkable in its mediocrity; they could be anyone, save a person familiar with the art of acting, or even playing pretend -- shouts at the witness about how the defendant did something, or something. The husband who lied about stinking up the house, but then covered it up, but somehow the lied-to wife knew that he had caused a problem and then fixed the problem, so she put him on trial, because James is just so goddamned creative. This goes on for awhile, and the executives come in, and either this is true or it is not, but what's presented to us as fact is that this is the precise moment that James goes completely crazy. I wonder if that really happened in reaction to the executives or what. He's like, "Cut! Cut! Cut!" and keeps repeating the lines and telling the woman things that wouldn't be helpful to an actual actor, much less this woman who I guess was just walking by or whatever. Shouldn't the final task have a budget? Or some kind of awesomeness? This is so jank.
James: "Interesting."
Lady: "Interesting."
James: "Interesting!"
Lady: "Interesting!"
James: "Interesting."
Lady: "Interesting."
James: "Intresting."
Lady: "Intresting."
James: "Interesting..."
Lady: "Interesting..."
James: "Interesting."
Lady: "Interesting."
James: "Interesting?"
Lady: "Interesting?"
James: "Interesting."
Lady: "Interesting."
Ironically enough, it's not that interesting. James hops on the Surya train of how what really matters is how much film they tape (tape they film?) and not whether any of it is worthwhile or whether the quality of it ever rises above "mildly embarrassing." They took "a ton" of tickled takes -- to create "that drama effect" -- he says proudly. He's such a fucking tool, you guys. I don't know how you end up like this. It started slow and subtle and he's just gotten more ridiculous every week. Just like every winner of this show, except for Randal, whose grandma died instead. Stefani's finally like: "We gotta fuckin' bounce, Scorsese." James gets uppity with her about how actually, they're almost done, and she presents it back to him on a lovely platter of STFU: "Um, actually, we're not. We still have a whole other set to get shots on? The living room? Where the crime took place?" She interviews that, in case we haven't yet figured it out, they're on a deadline, and that without a film crew -- who is now leaving in 45 minutes -- they won't be able to get the footage they need in order to film a coherent story, and then they're screwed. Now, I have seen the final product, and trust me. Why do none of them understand the difference between quality and quantity? Or quantity and lack, for that matter? They're so far in over their heads with this, all of them, and it's a stupid task anyhow, AND they already did this on a bigger scale, AND it wasn't this shitty... whatever. Whatever, this show sucks. So James keeps cutting, cutting, cutting, every second he's yelling "Cut!" and Stefani's very, very pretty. And very, very scared.
Meanwhile, Team Frank and Nicole are in an editing bay, or rather, Nicole is in the editing bay and Frank is crouched on the coffee table, hooting and laughing like a baboon at the hilarious homeless guy, with his stinky self. Nicole interviews excitedly about how much fun it is to take a bunch of material and then edit it down to make a story. Which last week showed in excruciating detail is not something that Frank understands. Last week was like a whole novel about how Frank's not feeling that concept, because he has low standards for excellence, plus his face looks like that. So you can kind of see where this is going. Frank gets itchy because Nicole's appearing to be in charge for a second, for the very strange reason that she is in charge for a second, because she actually knows what she is doing, to a certain extent. (And I mean, the resulting commercial is terrible, but it's not Nicole's job to make commercials, so whatever. Frankly, that's one more reason this task sucks; at least last year there was a tenuous connection to the kind of work an Apprentice can expect, but you want the final task to have something to do with something.) At the least we can say conservatively Nicole knows 859% more about this, and most things, than Frankie Suits. Which he cannot be having, so he keeps trying to take over and shout instructions at the editing fellow, and whatever stupid suggestion he makes, Nicole's like, "No, because this and that and this." Valid things, smart things -- where has Nicole been hiding? Why hide that pretty face behind all that hair, you know? Why'd the show give her personality those unflattering bangs?
But so Frank like cannot control himself, and he keeps making dumb suggestions, and I'm sorry but again: Frank is middle management. Fiddling with things in order to have fiddled with them. That's the reason I hate the corporate world so much: that's not about excellence, it's about fiddling. And in this case, being kind of an ass while doing it. Nicole continues to explain patiently why Frank's stupid ideas are not going to fly, one by one, and she and the editing guy team up on Frank to tell him that his suggestions are very interesting and valid, but that there's a process and a protocol here that he's not picking up on. But you cannot indicate that to a person who, like Frank did last week, cannot admit the existence of protocols in which he is too dumb or inexperienced to understand. You have to be a certain distance up the ladder before you realize there's more ladder, and even more before you realize there's always more ladder, and Frank is like ... trying to locate the ladder. Tim interviews about how Nicole's doing a thing at which she is demonstrably good. It's a proven fact, due to the unfortunate truth that this final task is identical to one from weeks ago and not just Tim propaganda about Nicole's awesomeness. Tim then explains how Frank is also doing something at which he shines: sucking. Insisting on having input about something he knows less than nothing about, which is also a demonstrated fact. And this, okay, this after he practically laughed in Nicole's face for interrupting his fucking masterpiece of filming as many feet of tape as possible while Surya looked on, amazed at the absurd amount of tape, without anybody caring what was on it.
Nicole gets a headache. Frank and Surya start brainstorming. I would walk. I would get up and walk the fuck out of that room if they started this shit. This is not teamwork behavior, this is Frank being sleazy and thinking about the boardroom, in a season where the most pleasant thing about any of them is how seldom they do that. But now he's decided that, instead of working as a team and winning as a team and having the final decision made on the merits, he's going to go ahead and take over. Understandable human impulse, but now is not the time for understandable human impulses. This is the time for being the best that you can be, not the worst. Frank gets really off-putting and hisses at her that she's been talking too much lately and now she is going to listen to him. Dude, fuck off. Don't tell somebody it's their turn to listen, that's so fucking disrespectful. Especially when he's holding up the job in order to make this idiotic point that he should be in charge of everything, even things he doesn't understand and never will. He's almost a better fit for this fuckin' show than James is. Nicole interviews about how this is something she believes herself to be fantastic at, and then to his order to let him speak, she's like, "Um, Go. Tell me what you're trying to say." His response? Whining. "Since you don't understand what's going on here," she tries to explain again, "Why don't you write down all of your little suggestions on a piece of paper, instead of stopping us every time you get some stupid ADD idea and making us take time out to either tell you it's a dumb idea or actually do it and show you why it's a dumb idea? And then I will throw those in the garbage, where you belong?" He agrees to this. Frank is yucky. He is not a good man.
James and Stefani are looking at footage but it's not really that interesting because Aaron is lolling about sleepily on the couch, in his pajamas. They could have had a ten minute conversation about literally anything at all before I started paying attention again, it's distracting. He notifies them about how shitty the acting is, and they're like, "Really?" He then interviews how James still didn't get all the footage they needed, and he had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that they have screwed up. Aaron needs a hug, you guys. ["I'm on it." -- Joe R] James interviews that it's "all [his] fault," that he "took too much time to get what [he] wanted"... and then get a load of this shit right here: The problem is not that he was totally in the weeds and micromanaging the actors because he's a tool, no. The problem is that "Stefani is not a creative person," so he has to "take that burden" on himself. Okay? Did you get all that? The problem is not that he's terrible at it, the problem is that Stefani is not, so somehow once again, James has to carry that gigantic burden of "creativity" for the rest of the world to keep spinning. The unmitigated... fuckin', like... bullshittiness of that. Even though it was Tim every week that came up with the idea, and then James would creatively relate it to the rest of the team as though it were his idea, and then last week Stefani came up with the idea and he creatively related it back to her word for word, apparently somewhere in that tangled mess of assholes this results in him saying the word "interesting" at that woman for ten minutes, like a fuckwad with Tourette's, and forgetting the shots from an entire separate set, and filming the same scene for ten hours and the rest of them in half an hour. Apparently that's Stefani's fault. They really complement each other.
What's even less interesting than editing video is watching some motherfuck edit video. Aaron and Angela are crashed out on the couch, looking very blonde and muscled. James gives himself another fucking OTF pep talk about how amazing it is that he not only has no idea what he's doing, but is so very intense that he required no sleep at all. "Who knows if it'll work?" he asks, but it's so fucking rhetorical. If you can convince yourself that the "creativity" you take from outside your body and then regurgitate verbatim is coming from your actual person, that's like so offensive to me, okay, but if you can convince yourself of that, you're not the kind of person who wonders whether your shit-ass commercial is going to "work" or not. No matter what you see, you're going to feel like you're Turning Gold, and that's how morons work. Stefani just stares at James lecturing literally nobody about how he's so intense and into this and blahblah and fiddling unendingly with the horrible, awful, stupid footage, assembling an ever-stupider commercial and taking this whole franchise to hell with him.
Entering [the very branded movie theatre] are the teams, the execs, and some tourists carrying well-branded movie food products. Like giant cups with the logo, giant buckets of popcorn with the logo, all of it. It's a sea of this particular movie theatre onscreen as they take their seats. Stefani gets her presentation mojo happening and calls [the deodorizer] a "household name for decades." (Oh, man. I blanked on the whole beginning part where Trump goes, "... one of my mother's favorite products; beside me... are two executives." Thanks, Karen. Somehow the idea of Trump's mother being passionately devoted to an air freshener is neither as surprising nor as interesting as one might prefer.) The tourists all applaud boredly and then things get stupid. The ad is totally cheesy, there are like sneaky lawyers, sketchy jurors, all the actors look like meth heads, there's bad acting coming at you full force, there's these weird fade edits every couple seconds for no reason like they didn't pan the cameras at any point in the filming, but just shot every angle and then more bad acting happened. The executives are edited to look as though they are laughing at the stupid ad, and the lawyer asks the "odor expert" if he found any evidence of odors, and he says no, but he did find [Friday Night Lights], and everybody falls asleep in the entire theatre, and then they're like, "He's gui... not guilty!" Because he used the spray to take the smell out of the house, I guess because he has a goddamn time machine, which creates a paradox in which this trial should not be happening because he used the product to keep this trial from happening. The screen goes black and all "But is he?" WTF? Is he guilty of stinking up the living room? We're meant to presume yes. Is the living room currently stinky? We're meant to presume no. I will grant you -- barring the wife having a psychic sense of smell -- his guilt or innocence is something of an existential dilemma at most. But it still doesn't explain why in the last moments the whole thing takes a sharp left turn into Lynch: the last shot is of him and his wife hugging at the kitchen table, grinning like lunatics. THANKS FOR BEING SO CREATIVE, JAMES.
After a bit of interview where James fills us in some more on how flawless his performance continues to be, exec lady in the audience is like -- kind of exhaustedly -- "Here come Frank and Nicole... " Frank does more of that Talking Good he's been working on lately, but then you notice he keeps flicking his eyes down to his hand, on which he... has written his 30-second introductory speech. This is like watching Our Gang. He's always like watching Our Gang, of course, but this ... remember when Mike Seaver learned history by writing it on his shoes, only to have that bite him in the ass when his hubris led him to prop his cheating shoes up on the desk? Remember how that was a sit-com, as in, ostensibly comedy? And this is not comedy, insofar as the show itself still doesn't seem to get the joke. And neither of them are actually that funny, although I will admit that the constant potshots at Tracey Gold's weight every week on Growing Pains have aged quite nicely. Frank states dubiously that his commercial will be demonstrating "how [Friday Night Lights] is important in your everyday life," and honestly, if a room deodorizer is that important in your everyday life, you need to seriously interrogate where the unfreshness is coming from. The answer might surprise you, Frank.
So this woman is on her way to some kind of lawyer thing or business thing, but she's running late, but she has the folder hidden in her massive purse because she's the kind of woman who is prepared and "powerful"; but then her friend is like, "The smell is coming from your jacket" and the lady is like, "I knew Nicole was a smoker!" and she sprays [Friday Night Lights] all over her jacket and her friend is like, "I thought that was just for the air!" and she says, "No, it's also for my stinking self." And you think, wow, that wasn't so bad, right? They left out the bum, and the kid and the hospital... everything awful, they left it out, and just made it once again about Nicole's insecurities, which is a winning combination, and I don't mean that in a shitty way, I mean that Nicole is a control group for the target audience. She says this is what the ladies are worried about, go for it. It's not like Frankie Suits will ever know the touch of a woman, much less understand what goes on in her head.
But so then instead of ending, the commercial goes insane again! Just like the other one! The two ladies, neither of them stinking, one of whom is schlepping a huge bottle of deodorizer everywhere she goes, head out the door and then there's a blasted strange edit and they're coming back in from the other direction laughing. It's like having a seizure. So they're like, "That was so fun! We really gotta rip open time and space more often!" and then the phone rings, and suddenly we're in a whole other commercial where the guy's friend calls to say he's in the hospital and then in the hospital the 38-year-old kid has a football in his lap and he's all, "If my ankle doesn't kill me, I would like it to be more like home," and points his stupid motherfucking finger over at the stinky bum, who just kind of rolls around still being totally sexy. So up in the audience, the execs are laughing like crazy, but like: maybe not right then? Maybe at some other point? Maybe during the feature that I hope followed this dual catastrophe? Because I like the execs, and more than that, I like the idea of them being edited to look like assholes who are complicit in the Stinky Bum Thing, so they can be like, "We hate Trump now" like everybody else does. Frank's in the corner doing some intense overbiting, like, "OMG so funny, right? Stinky Bum?" and then it actually does get pretty funny when the son is goes, "Wow! The odor is eliminated! And now it smells like home!" I don't know why, but that's like, so fucking funny to me. Wow! The odor is eliminated! He says it just like that, too. It's awesome.
So after much clapping, Frank interviews that they "hit the mark" and that the audience got "a kick" out of it. So if the audience and the execs are happy, Frank posits, then Mr. Trump should be happy. Because Trump is allll about logic and good business, not -- for example -- making a complete ass of himself by attacking America's Lesbian Sweetheart, or shaving that wrestling person's head on TV or whatever happened there, or any of the other embarrassing and stupid mistakes he's been making every month like clockwork as long as I have been alive (29 times 12 plus one is how many?). If everybody says it's good, and Frank's not making that up too, then Trump's gotta love it, right? He wouldn't string Team Overbite along like this just for TV, would he? Surely Frank's there as a contender, right, because he's got merit? It's like Frank's never seen the show!
At the Mansion, Frankie says "Yo!" They discuss how James and Stefani did a "courtroom drama," and once again Nicole's like "Called it!" And I get why that's exciting, but Nicole, you're neither on Arrow or off it, at this point. There is no Arrow. So your psychic Arrow powers? Are really more about James. And since, contrary to what you might have heard, James is not that creative? What you're really showing an affinity for is the lowest common denominator, at this point. Just a thought. Nicole interviews... What I just said, actually, from the other side: that Stefani and James, their professional demeanor, the way they complement each other and don't sabotage each other in front of the client like eight-year-olds (more like 30-year-olds), all these things prove that James and Stefani are boring. Which, sure. I think there's a lot more to Stefani than meets the eye, but I've given up hope of ever knowing about it. But I do think she's not quite as wild as Nicole would like. Where I cannot go with Nicole, though, is to the place, where she explains to us that the way she and Frank interact is "where great ideas come from." I cannot support that statement in any way. I see the comparisons she's drawing, and we've been drawing these comparisons for precisely thirteen weeks now, but no matter what, Nicole's seemingly determined to be on the Arrow side of any Kinetic/Arrow split there could ever be. Coke/Pepsi? She'll have the Pepsi. Diet, she'll have. With a lemon. Chess Club/Phi Delt? Come on. Vienna/Vegas. Wine/beer. Reading/hollering.
Stefani: [explains their courtroom drama in detail]
Everybody: [swiftly and profoundly bored, including Stefani]
Stefani, trailing off: "Um, do you want to talk about yours?"
Nicole: "It's... about a day? In the... life?"
Frank: "Life... a day in the life?"
Stefani: "... What?"
Nicole throws all the brainstorming at her about the "powerful" executive woman in her shitty office constantly spraying everything with room deodorizer, and then the random change of venue and the homeless man, and she gets all elbows acting it out, and it's pretty funny. They should have just had Nicole telling this story like it happened to her. Sixty seconds of Nicole being like, "And then it's like, ugh! Whoosh! And she goes vrooooom! Swish!" with jazz hands everywhere. A day in the life of Nicole, and all the hobo impersonations you could ever want. James interviews, fake-horrified, about how shitty their commercial was, and his points are valid but then you have to think about how his commercial went, and how it went was bad, so it kind of takes the kick out of his critique. However: again, a child injured and in the hospital is a mom's worst nightmare. A mom-type person is the target audience of this product, because nothing smells quite so much or in such varied ways as the life of a mommy -- except I guess a homeless person -- and then once you get over how you don't really ever want to think about your kids getting hurt, the -to-last thing the mom is going to think about is spraying everything down with air freshener. What James doesn't know is the Heidi-powered coke binge the lady went on at the beginning of the commercial about how she's in love with the room deodorizer in the first place and likes to spray it on everything she owns, and that's why she carries an industrial-sized spray bottle of the stuff everywhere she goes in her enormous purse, just in case there are smells where she finds herself. James doesn't know about that, and it's really key to the whole concept here.
Trump asks the execs how Stefani and James did, and they are very encouraging about them. James was "terrific," he did most of the directing of the awful acting, and "made the actors feel great" about the shitty job they were doing, and that's in a way very good, because it's good to keep your team motivated and feeling appreciated, even when they're doing an amateurish, lackluster job, I guess. The execs and Trump agree that James has "a lot of energy," which is the only thing Trump knows about James, because his skills are in that indefinable creative place where Tim and Nicole's expertise also lies, if you'll remember. I still have no idea what James's skills are, beyond being nebulous and faintly irritating. Stefani was, however, "behind the scenes," "running the show" and keeping James on track with timelines.
Ivanka: "Interesting."
Execs: "No, like this: Innnnnteresting."
They call it an interesting dynamic, working as a team to get the best results. Somewhere Randal Pinkett is like, "Don't say another fucking word." Trump calls her a "sleeper" and very smart. About Nicole and Frank, everyone's a lot less verbose -- making up for the vast cosmic imbalance created by these recaps, which to say the least do not scrimp on talking about Nicole and Frank. The execs note Nicole's "energy" and "enthusiasm," and everyone nods forcefully about how smart Nicole is. A lot smarter than she lets herself be, is the only problem I've ever had there. Trump says she's got a "great way" about her, and they agree with that too. I'm so confused I don't even know anymore. They explain that because they were only at the shoot and not the editing, and then Frank did the shitty presentation off his hand at the movie theatre, Nicole gave the illusion of being less than fully engaged. Which kind of pisses me off, because I worry that that is going to come up in the boardroom week, but more than that: we never got to see her working either, until this week, so it's a simple and easy mistake to make, but while with the execs that's not really anybody's fault, for us as viewers we have been categorically denied every week knowing anything about what makes her a good businesswoman, and that's got an agenda behind it.
Trump bugs the ad guy to say something to justify Trump hiring James/Stefani live on Sunday, and he finally gives up the goods, saying that Frank and Nicole each are lacking in some areas. Which I am not going to try and deny this late in the day, but I don't think fucking James deserves anything, really, and I would like to see Stefani win because she's the best of the four, but she won't win on her own, because: Trump. Frank is dead to me because he's a Bumfights-watching, Korean-hating yokel all of a sudden. And that leaves... Nicole. Who deserves to win not only because she's the only one of the Final Four that knows what she's doing, but also because she's the only one who actually cares about any of this. Stefani, Aaron, Derek, Jenn: nobody really cares about winning, except for Nicole. And yeah, I'm not in love with the reasons for that, but it would mean more to her than anybody left at this point, no matter how lame the actual job you get turned out to be. So I am rooting for Nicole. That's what this season has done to me.
Other good things about Frankie Suits include phrases like "tough cookie" and "can-do attitude," which are pretty much euphemisms for the thing that's been obvious about Frank since before the season even started. The advertising guy kind of glances off an interesting point somewhere in here that, though Frank and Nicole have these lacks, had they worked together as a team they could have compensated for them. Which is like the definition of a team? But I don't think anybody ever on this show understands the actual meaning of that word. Except for like Tim, who was only being that way to impress Nicole anyway, and whose cognitive dissonance about all of it caused him to just sort of uproot the entire concept of this show and toss it out the window at some point. Trump mentions Frank's accent again, and he and the lady exec talk about how they're from New York, so... something. Some kind of prideful thing I don't really get about how, though neither of them has the uneducated Bronx accent and never did, they still feel solidarity for his stupid ass. I don't know. These are probably my favorite execs I've ever seen on this show. I really, really liked that total bitch from the hockey task (Lee), but I don't know that we could be close friends. These two, I want them to get married so we can all have dinner parties and double-date and play doubles tennis with me and Derek. Awww. Too bad this season sucks so bad. They deserved better.
Tonight, Andie is dressed as somebody's mom, right before the third pomegranate martini at happy hour. She makes this weird gesture and is like, "You can just head on in tonight," like she's making a point but nobody knows what the point is. I hope he keeps Andie around, she's radically cool. I never understood the cult of Robin, like, "Did you see Robin's earrings?" but I think I get it now, because Andie's soooo mysterious and soooo cute and soooooo... what does she do all day? What do any of these people do all day? All eight of them enter the boardroom at first, and Nicole is wearing a grey suit so of course she looks ten times better than normal, because the girl can wear a suit; Ivanka looks way prettier tonight than usual, even at rest; Stefani's hair is big 'n pretty; Aaron and Tim look like commodities as usual; Surya and Frank are unhelpable; Angela's... where's Angela? Holding a camera or something. Oh, there she is. Behind Frank's enormous head. On the stage-right side of the table, it goes Nicole, Frank, Surya, Tim. Which, I guess the actual candidates should be in the middle, but I also think it's probably best that Tim and Nicole keep themselves as far apart from each other as possible, due to Trump's entire Dog With A Bone disorder. He'd be like, "Nicole, you're fired! For sitting!"
Trump's wearing a black suit, white shirt, red tie; that's my favorite thing in the world. That is hotter to me than a tuxedo. I mean, not Trump, Trump could wear the pink bathing suit or Trump could wear a burqa, he'd still be the same precise zero amount of hotness. But in general, that's a very favorite look of mine. Trump asks if the task was at all exciting or whatever, the deafening "NO!" from my household drowned out whatever inane answers their ass-kissing... asses... came up with. James says it was a hard task because of all the moving parts, and how the last time they did this exact same fucking task, there were the exact same fucking number of people on the team as there were this time, only the task was harder. So dumb. This is so dumb. Trump asks James who on the team was particularly awesome. "Apart from myself? Everybody! I stand out in a crowd, you see." Angela sees things from "a different angle," whatever the holy hell that means, while Aaron sees "the big picture." I want a gigantic picture of Aaron hanging in my kitchen and I will talk to it every morning while I eat breakfast. Trump and James agree that Stefani is awesome, but you can tell Trump's fudging so he looks like he remembers which one she is. Stefani offers the idea that they "nailed it," and preregisters her surprise, should they lose.
Nicole gets very Jamesian about how this was a "Dream Team" for this particular task we've already been through once. She points out how balanced they were: Frank led the raw materials and directing, Nicole edited, "everybody stepped up." Trump asks her to sell Frank out, and she obliges with her usual backhanded compliment, how he's "passionate" and though he comes across as "loud and extreme" (and crass, and ignorant, and impolite... ), he at least gives his all. Frank tries to one-up her about how they "hit the mark" and how their skills complement each other somehow, and I guess seeing the two of them in isolation, they are opposites in a lot of ways, not identical like I thought. That's cool. Surya... sigh. Surya babbles at length and calls Frank a "master" of "putting together scenes," and then manages to chow down on his own foot harder than Nicole an hour ago, about how Frank really should have been a mechanical engineer at NASA. If only the dynastic wealth-propagation machine known as higher education had been available to Frank, perhaps that would be true, but instead it exists to keep as much money as possible in the hands of the already rich, while denying nearly everybody else the knowledge and opportunities that most Americans deserve. So Frank's version of NASA, because his dad doesn't have a lot of money either, is a business he started when he was fourteen, with his bare hands. Like a beast. Also, Surya adds, Nicole was very good in the editing room. You know? Maybe it was the actual editor that sucked, and not the ideas of how the editing should go. There's something interesting to think about. Then Trump and everybody else takes a deep breath before continuing on to Tim. Tim calls them both "team players" that accept and deal with all team input; he then graciously reminds everybody, including himself, that this is all about them. Trump asks if they lost, and Tim shakes his head with a great deal of certainty, reiterating that this was a Dream Team.
Angela admits, w/r/t James and Stefani, that she has no idea who they are and has not met them. She jokes that, what with the hedge between them and the enforced periods of silence with the occasional crying fight about ethics, she didn't know what she was getting into. Instead of flapjacking into how their employee hires this season were particularly nonsensical and boring, which would have been interesting, Trump starts talking about the fucking hedge again, and Tim and Nicole, and blah blah blah, but quickly bores even himself. Aaron once again goes completely over the top about everything, in the most delightful way, talking about how probably he has never been on a team, never heard about a team, can scarcely even imagine a team that was made up of such simply synergistic complementarities. Like the tannins and oak notes of Angela are the perfect note to finish off the tart but light flakiness of James or whatever, it's awesome. "James is a perfectionist in his trade, perusing every aspect of this commercial and getting the absolutely perfect shot... " Aaron said "perusing" for no reason. Love it. Stefani, meanwhile, kept him on track and they combined into a 100% total success. Ivanka is like, "Listen, kid. Who do you like best?" And Aaron says he would like to see them both hired. Elsewhere, Rebecca Jarvis snaps a pencil in half, and doesn't even know why.
Trump sends all the cobrees out so that he can deliver the killing blow to one of the teams, but first he goes into the exact same speech from the beginning of the episode, like word for word, about how they're all winners and whatever. I like the part where he told them they were exceptional and outstanding people. That's true enough, I think. It's a nice thing to say to a person. Frank hugs everybody, Stefani hugs everybody, everybody hugs everybody, you can tell they're all very tired and very much okay with each other's company. Nicole takes a while to find her seat, for some reason, and then everybody look expectantly at Trump to get on with it, like that dog listening to the Victrola, and finally he speaks. And gives that same speech again. We could be here all night. The camera lingers on Stefani as he speaks at length about the "grueling time" he put them all through at Mark Burnett's creepy whim, how they "lived like hell," under quote "terrible conditions," in "soggy, disgusting tents" with quote "wet, horrible grounds"... but they also lived in a beautiful mansion. See? He's teaching them like some kind of Eastern mystic Kill Bill shit. It's not Fear Factor at all! It's totally deep! You can tell by how happy and enlightened he is! He congratulates them for suffering and for achieving "something few people will have the opportunity to achieve." A fourteen-week golden shower from the most embarrassing captain of industry America has ever produced? Yeah, first of all, big whoop. And second of all, the pool of people Trump has pissed on and degraded is not quite as exclusive as he needs them to believe.
Now, he threatens, there's going to be something different. Isn't that so scary? Because the show and this season have been so consistent up to this point? Like how he constantly lies about what's going to happen and then five people randomly get fired, or like last week, or this shit right here with this being the final task. He tells them to go to the mansion and pack: "Your bags and gear and dresses and clothing." (Sometimes I love him.) Then... they go home. He won't see the four of them again until "week," which for us really is "week," where in front of a live audience he will humiliate them and dick around for an hour, without even... there won't be task footage. No rained-out cliffhanger, nothing. Just Trump, live, in front of all two people still watching this show. Doing whatever the fuck he wants. For an hour.
The show kind of queasily reverses all the storylines it busily set up over the last forty minutes as the candidates wave to the sweetly smiling Ivanka and take off, hugging and squealing and picking each other up off the ground and doing all that Arrow stuff they do. Frank says "What a feeling" approximately six times. Stefani packs one hundred bags and Frank, itchy and excited, gads around bugging her about it. "How much clothes do you have?!" She's like, "Yes, Frankie. I've got a lot of clothes." It's adorable. He's like literally hopping from foot to foot while everybody else is getting it together. "How much clothes do you have?" I couldn't make that shit up.
James interviews something boring about how this is sad, but also awesome, but also he had fun, but also it was hard, but also it was super easy, but also he made friends, but also he threw them under busses, but also one hundred and twenty-two clichés. Stefani gets all high-maintenance about needing some help with her bags, and they all careen out back into the real world, and pile into their separate black SUVs, and kiss and hug and blow kisses and wave, still with minds blown that the Final Four are all from Arrow. It's just a symptom, it's not their fault. This show is so effin' over.
But when did it happen? Help me here. So last year was who? Sean? And the year before that was Randal. Let's start there. Toral was kind of a freak show, and Markus was... not outwith the realm of possibility. You've met guys like that. He's not as unbelievable as the majority of the candidates this season, for example. Think HARD about that. Who else... Clay, but he was viable too. Alla? Alla might be a clue. She dressed like Flash Gordon most of the time, had a checkered black-widow stripper past, and used the powers of mind control on her teammates. Perhaps she broke the show. Without Alla, would we have gotten to know my dear Andrea? Or fucking Lenny? Or the crowning glory of this show, Brent Michael Buckman? Because one Omarosa is okay, and an Omarosa combined with an Ivana is still barely crazy, and even that I AM NOT GAY dude, the cute chubby blonde one, that was fine. And that girl who got thrown off for using a Magic Eight Ball to consult with the occult? That's... a little questionable, actually. That was before my time but I remember that episode. And Omarosa was on the first season, so... where did this idea come from that the show had that much shark to even jump? I want All-Stars. That's the only thing that will fix this show. And not Crazy Ass All-Stars, either, I mean legitimate contenders for the title of The Apprentice, meeting on a serious playing field, and bringing their game. I'm talking Charmaine, Rebecca, Roxanne, Allie, Andrea, Kristine, Tarek, Heidi, Alla, Wee Brian, Josh, Chris V., Dan, Tim. You know? Or whoever you want, I'm sure you hate most of those people and think I'm an idiot for naming them off the top of my head. I'm just saying this capricious and bizarre -- and increasingly unenjoyable -- game always goes to somebody I don't really care about one way or the other. Wouldn't it be fun to watch this show if it had a point?