Three-quarters of Hydra -- Omarosa, Carol, and Lennox -- celebrate another victory, while Piers sits stone-faced, pissed that he has to be on the same planet with Omarosa. For Omarosa's part, she interviews that Trump must like her, since he moved her away from Piers. Empresario makes its entrance slowly, one person at a time, to maximize the drama -- Trace, then Marilu, then Tito, with Stephen showing up last and announcing that for the first time in history, Trump didn't fire anyone. Stephen certainly is a scholar of the show, isn't he? Piers says he's glad that Omarosa is being traded off his team for Marilu, and swears that he never wants to speak to Omarosa again. We can all hope.
After the credits, Piers get to have a restorative phone call with the representative of his charity, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. He promises that this has reminded him what it's all about. So we can look forward to a kinder, gentler Piers from now on, right?
The Apprenti meet Trump and the Trumplets at a heliport, where Trump tells them that they're being flown via chopper to the headquarters of home shopping channel QVC in Pennsylvania, where each team will put on a ten-minute sequence selling some useless crap to gullible shut-ins on live TV. ["Copying tasks from Martha, Trump?" -- Joe R] The team making the most money wins, plus n extra $20,000 for the winning team's PM. Stephen steps up to be Empresario's PM, and Marilu is going to be PM for Hydra. Trump tries to stir up some Omarosa crap, but Piers says, "That was yesterday," ostentatiously over it.
The two teams' choppers deliver them to the QVC office. Piers says they need to pimp Lewis out again, despite Trump having told him to knock it off a few weeks ago. Lennox has his own ambitions: to direct, and also maybe be a little less hung over. Piers refers to the former heavyweight champ as "Sleepy-Boy." As for Sleepy-Boy himself, he interviews, in all seriousness, "What I really want to do is direct."
The two teams meet in a cavernous studio with a couple of QVC execs to introduce the six new products they get to pick from. There's a magnifying mirror, a utility tool kit, an epically boring bamboo storage drawer with little compartments, an electric frying pan, a rechargeable electric sweeper, and a combination folding ladder/hand truck. So the teams split up to discuss which products they want. Both teams love the ladder/cart, so let's sit back and wait for the sparks to fly.
So they flip a coin, and Marilu and Carol win the ladder/cart for Hydra instead of Stephen and Tito for Empresario, End of sparks. Empresario quickly decides on the sweeper as their second choice.
Carol and Marilu both have QVC experience (surprise!), but they end up picking Marilu to be the on-air pitchwoman, and she gets right to work rehearsing. Lots of people have different rehearsal styles, and I should probably mention that "rehearse" for Marilu means "audition for Dancing with the Stars using the ladder as a partner while jabbering like a cokehead having an aneurysm."
Empresario, meanwhile, decides to go in the opposite direction by putting mellow, laid-back Trace on the air for their team. They're also going to have him partner with a regular QVC co-host, named Lisa -- who, like Trace, is from Tennessee. They get along so well right off the bat that the fan fiction starts writing itself.
Hydra, meanwhile, is going to put Marilu on the air with a co-host named Rick. Marilu wants to try out a demonstration where she tries to cart Rick around on the handcart, and ends up dropping him on his ass. If they end up in the board room, someone could probably point to their first mistake: "breaking the co-host." Rick pretends to limp away, but I think maybe he's kidding on the square.
At Empresario, Omarosa wants to have some rehearsal, but Stephen's feeling that they need to be spontaneous. Don't make me agree with Omarosa, Stephen. Also, fix your tie so the back isn't longer than the front anymore.
Don, Jr. arrives in the Trumpicopter and meets with Empresario. He thinks Trace is probably the right guy to pitch. He's also impressed with Hydra's organization, but voices concerns about how much Marilu is talking.
Empresario meets with a QVC marketing consultant, who has to visibly swallow his distaste of Stephen as he explains the "Easy Pay" system, which allows people who can't afford a sixty-dollar sweeper today to make five twelve-dollar payments for it over time. Maybe those people need to have QVC deleted from their channel menu, hey?
Lennox assigns himself as Hydra's director, and takes over the control room. Carol is an on-set grip, or something, and Piers monitors the sales in real time. With seconds to go, the voice link between Piers and the onscreen talent breaks down for a few moments of manufactured suspense, but it's back up before they go on. Just in time. I'd hate for there to be less talking on this show.
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Trump and Ivanka watch from his office back in New York as Marilu jabbers happily about the product. Someone calls in, and Rick asks the customer why she thinks she'll like it, and Marilu talks over the caller and everything. Because she's not on TV enough that she can cede five seconds of airtime to some woman from Muncie who is trying to have her fifteen seconds of fame right now. Trump and Ivanka wonder if the negative of Marilu's uncontrollable yammering outweighs the positivity of her energy. Once Hydra is off the air, they're feeling good about it. In fact, Piers thinks the only way they could have lost is if it's the wrong product.
With Empresario getting ready to go on the air, Trace is a little nervous. Seeing Trace on TV, Trump and Ivanka find Trace a curious but probably strong choice, with the voice and the laid-back attitude and all. They're also impressed with the demonstration using nuts and bolts. Tito watches the real-time sales display as the easy-pay thing is mentioned, but the results are inconclusive. In the end, Trump can't make his mind up whether it was a good presentation or a great one. What, he's not an expert on QVC? He doesn't watch this channel all the time? I find that hard to believe, after what we've seen of his apartment. Empresario is also happy with how things went, as Omarosa congratulates Trace on a job well done and Stephen congratulates himself on his instincts.
Board room. Marilu and Piers agree that Hydra probably won. Trump turns to Empresario, and Tito says that Trace was the star of this particular task. There's a little lip service about how Omarosa got along better with this team than she did with Piers, who is just sitting there with his lips pursed, wishing he'd thought to have a big sign made up to hang over his head reading "NOT GETTING INTO IT WITH OMAROSA.". Trump asks if Stephen was worried about selling a higher-priced product, and Stephen explains the Easy Pay thing again. Easy Pay is totally going to go off in the third act, y'all.
Time for the results. Don, Jr. reports that Empresario sold 716 units, earning $43,000. Whereas Hydra sold 703 units, for a total of $35,145. And that's the second win for Empresario this season, .and the second big check for the Carol Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund. Trump dismisses Empresario, and they head off to the suite so they can celebrate the win and Stephen can thank Jesus.
After the ads, Trump asks Piers whom he blames for the loss. Piers refuses to blame Marilu, because he appreciated her passion and enthusiasm too much. Marilu admits that she didn't know about the Easy Pay thing. Carol denies any knowledge of it as well, despite all the times she's been on QVC. Clearly not very hands-on during her time there. Even Don, Jr. knows about Easy Pay. I suspect it's how he bought the fuchsia tie he's wearing today. Trump again asks Piers to point fingers, and Piers points to "Sleepy-Boy" Lennox to him. Bad move; Lewis-worshipper Trump immediately comes to Lennox's defense, and Lennox lets him. Piers still doesn't want to blame Marilu, but Trump thinks that Marilu overdid it on the air, with the talking and the talking, and in between that, the talking. Trump asks Lennox what he thinks, and Lennox puts it on the PM, as does Carol. Empresario watches from the suite as Piers continue to back up Marilu, and they start to think he's the one who's going. Trump asks Marilu who she would fire, and she doesn't help herself by talking some more instead of answering. Trump gets bored, and Marilu finally says that the one she isn't bringing back to the board room is...Carol. The five-year QVC veteran who wasn't clued in on Easy Pay. Out in the lobby, Carol takes her leave of the other three. "Fight!" she mouths at Marilu before going into the suite.
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In the board room, Trump and the Trumplets agree that it's not looking good for Marilu as the PM, and keeping Carol safe wasn't the best move either. Out in the lobby, Piers and Lennox tell Marilu that Carol should have known about and brought up Easy Pay despite having worked at QVC for five years, so it's really Carol's fault. Now they tell her.
When Marilu, Piers, and Lennox return, Trump's first question to Marilu is why he should fire Piers instead of Marilu, and why Lennox was brought back in favor of Carol. I think the biggest lesson from this episode is not to ask Trump to blame Lennox for anything, ever. Still, Marilu backs up Piers on Lennox's lethargy for part of the day. Piers chimes in that he thinks Carol should be in the board room. Instead of engaging that point, Trump notices that Piers is sweating, although he incorrectly claims that it's the first time. Marilu talks some more, trying to blame Lennox. Which gets her fired. At least Trump feels bad about it. Marilu heads down to the limo while Piers and Lennox return to the suite. "Sleepy-Boy is back," Lennox announces.
In the limo, Marilu says it was fun, she's always been a fan of the show, and now she feels like a member of the Trump family. Surprisingly, she means that last bit as a good thing.
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