After Marilu's firing, Piers and Lennox return to the suite alone, where their remaining teammate Carol is waiting for them along with Trace, Stephen, Tito, and Omarosa of Empresario. Now that the board room is over, Lennox freely admits that he was sleeping during the task, and even during the board room a little bit. Piers continues to push the issue, and Carol calls over, "Leave it in the board room." Piers vows that while Lennox may be good at getting out of trouble, Piers isn't going to let him get away with it. Go ahead, Piers, and dash yourself against the immovable wall that is Trump's naked admiration for Lennox Lewis.
Stephen gets his mom on the speakerphone to tell her about the second win for her cancer foundation. We also learn that her nickname for him is "The Flea," which cracks me up, only because Stephen appears to hate it. At first she thinks he's calling to remind her to send Trump a thank-you note for the check she got after Stephen's first win. But he's really calling to tell her about the $20,000 check he's sending to her. Stephen gloat-erviews about being the only two-time winning PM of the season, and how much he enjoys being in that position.
Trump, George, Ivanka, and some client types meet up with the Apprenti in the lobby of the new Hearst Building with an editor from Redbook magazine and a couple of execs from Dial Soap. The task is that the teams will each be putting together a four-page magazine ad spread for some new "Dial Nourishing Yogurt Body Wash." Yogurt body wash? That sounds...gross. While Trump is talking about PMs, Omarosa speaks up first, quietly saying to her teammates that she wants to be PM. But when Trump warns that PMs are in danger of getting fired, Omarosa quickly adds, "Unless somebody else does." Trump continues lecturing while Omarosa tries to get Tito to take it. He's just trying to ignore her and listen to the boss. Finally, Trump finishes talking, and Empresario agrees that Tito will be their PM this time. As for Hydra, Carol decides she has to step up as PM, since she's been on the cover of Redbook five times and she can't really duck this one. Although as she says it, she looks like she's about to have to eat something on Fear Factor. Trump says he doesn't want to look bad if he has to fire one of the only two remaining women, but Piers confidently says you don't get fired if you win. As usual, he's got a point. "It's going to be very interesting," Trump says. As usual, he is wrong.
Hydra meets with the clients about the "photo essay advertorial," in which they learn that the average Redbook reader is 37, and Piers asks how much sex they can put in it. Afterwards, Hydra has their own meeting in which they come up with the idea of four "moments" in a woman's life. Piers likes the idea, as long as they can sex up the last one as much as possible.
Empresario meets with the execs. The Dial executive talks about the Dial brand, and the editor talks about the magazine's connection to "the middle of the country," which means Trace's sweet spot. In the Empresario meeting afterward, they come up with the idea of sticking Trace in a bathtub with his cowboy hat, guitar, and boots with "chicks just squirtin' Dial yogurt all over ya." Well, the middle of the country should love that.
When Hydra arrives at the studio for the shoot, Piers gets the idea that Carol should be the model in the shoot, rather than using the twentyish models that have already been cast. Carol is concerned about being fired, especially if modeling makes it hard for her to be PM. Piers insists, and why wouldn't he? If they win, he's safe, and if they lose, he can blame the PM and the face of the campaign all at once. It's diabolically ingenious, really.
Hydra arrives at their shoot, and Omarosa interviews that Tito is going to need a lot of help to succeed as PM. They start by talking about their concept, which, oops, they don't have one. Stephen talks about some vague "country cowboy cowgirl" idea, mostly just to fill the silence. He basically ends up running the shoot, in the end. Omarosa interviews, "I'm going to let them continue to do what they usually do, which is win." Can't argue with that, except that since it's Omarosa saying it, she's going to turn out to be wrong. Stephen interviews about how awesome he is at this, and people are always telling him he could run a studio because of the way he thinks. I'm sure that's true, but "Stephen, you've got the brain of a studio head" may not be the compliment Stephen thinks it is. Stephen is particularly excited about one shot of a female model in a bathtub, with Trace mooning over her with guitar in hand.
Carol is looking for ways to not be in the entire Hydra shoot. Piers insists that she needs to be in the whole thing. Carol is already planning what to say to Trump when she ends up defending herself in the board room, which doesn't exactly strike me as a winning attitude.
After the ads, Omarosa and Stephen pitch a shirtless male models/shirtless Trace concept to Tito. Trace isn't into it. "I've got the tan of a vampire at this point," he interviews, but ends up in front of the camera anyway, hiding his belly behind the guitar while one of his songs plays n the soundtrack. Omarosa and the other women on the set start looking a bit flustered at all this male flesh on display.
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Ivanka comes in just as Trace is getting dressed again, and she does a double-take when she realizes the shirtless guy she just walked past is him. She doesn't commit to an opinion beyond saying that the visuals look good, and they'll see how the execs like it. Illuminating.
Hydra's shoot also goes smoothly, with Carol in front of the camera and Lennox acting as art director. Piers is impressed that Lennox has decided to bring his A-game this time around. The last shots of the session are of Carol in bed with a twentysomething male model, which gets a bit steamy. If you blink, you'll miss George, watching the proceedings stone-faced. Probably doesn't trust himself to speak.
Empresario does the photo editing part of the task, and Tito is having difficulty riding herd on Stephen and Omarosa, who each want to lead off with photos of the opposite sex. Omarosa insist that she's Redbook's target demographic (which, I don't remember seeing Redbook described as "the monthly magazine for sociopathic famewhores"), and she wants some shirtless Trace in there. Stephen thinks it's too much, and leans on Tito to play it safe. "If the other team goes wholesome and family, and they win, we were wrong." Yes, I'm sure the tabloid editor on Hydra will want to pull things back.
Hydra is the first team to present their campaign to Trump and the clients. Piers is quite smooth in the presentation, but the clients seem turned off by the final photo of the dude biting Carol's shoulder in the bed. And possibly the porny music on the soundtrack.
Empresario is . Omarosa starts their presentation well enough. But when Tito takes over, he stumbles over his words and the name of the product. Which the client always loves. Omarosa interviews that the shirtless shot of Trace didn't make it into the spread, so if they lose, Omarosa thinks it's going to be Tito's fault. They wrap it up, and I only saw three pages of their four-page spread, which should DQ them right there if you ask me.
Trump confers with the clients, and while they liked Hydra's overall message, they didn't like that last, Alt-ivorous photo. They also liked Empresario's photos, but thought it had a weaker message. But we'll have to wait until after the ads to find out which one they like better overall.
Board room. Trump gets right to the point, asking Tito how he thinks they did. Tito stutters something, and Trump dings him for being nervous during his presentation. Of course he does it in his typical fighter-worshipping mode. Carol feels confident that Hydra also did well. Trump reminds her that he warned her not to be PM. She says she would rather be fired than not step up. "That's a good line of crap," Trump says, impressed. Trump asks her about the biting shot at the end of the spread, and Carol defends it. Trump has Ivanka and George slide copies of each team's presentation across the table to the other, so they can all see what the other team did. Trump points out the last Hydra photo of Carol being eaten, and Tito says they had a shirtless shot of Trace that they didn't use, to keep from getting too risqué. Trump asks for Piers's opinion of Empresario's ad, and he calls it "boring, amateurish, and does not hit the right demographic." Thanks, Piers, for being rude, critical, and not using parallel structure. Trump asks Piers if they should have used Omarosa instead of Trace. "Only in a graveyard scene," Piers deadpans. Omarosa looks like she's about ready to give him one. Piers says he can't even read the small text in Empresario's ad, calling it "journalistic amateur hour" with Stephen repeatedly yelling at him with a fake British accent to "get yoah specs." But as Trump says, it's not up to him; the client likes Hydra's ad better, which means another win for Carol and the Tony Alt Foundation. Hope Stephen enjoyed his one-day run as the only two-time winning PM of the season.
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Back in the suite, Piers talks excitedly about his Dream Team, winning with only three people. And in the board room, Trump asks Empresario whether they should have had a female PM. Tito says that Omarosa pushed it off on him, and Omarosa denies it, totally dishonestly, and they end up in a pissing match over it. George calls Omarosa out for not using her marketing background to be the PM. In the suite, Piers is enjoying watching Omarosa being put on the spot, as she has to admit that her PM record is 0-2.
Back from the ads, Omarosa says that she tried to educate Tito on Redbook. George calls her on not focusing on the product as well. Omarosa there was no concept, and when Trump asks her whose fault that is, she says it was between Tito as the actual Project Manager and Stephen as the de facto PM. Trump calls Trace a "quiet star" (agreed -- dude's a stealth marketing genius) and asks him who he would fire. Trace sticks up for Omarosa, saying she made suggestions that nobody listened to. He says that Tito let things get away from him, and didn't listen to Omarosa's ideas. This goes around and around for a while, with everyone finally agreeing that Stephen was the one who insisted on leaving the shirtless shots out. Trump asks Tito who he most wants to keep. Tito says Omarosa worked the hardest. And without anyone leaving or coming back, Trump just goes ahead and fires Tito.
But he's giving him a $50,000 parting gift of his own money for Tito's charity, just because of how special Tito is. And add to Trump's list of crimes this one: he's putting me in the position of being pissed at him for giving money to a children's hospital. Trump's pro-fighter bias has been pathetically apparent throughout the season, and now that he basically has no choice but to fire one of them, he's also giving him a reward that amounts to two-and-a-half times what winning PMs have been getting for their charities. I mean, I'm all for Trump giving away as much to charity as he wants to (if not more), but if the concept of "competing for charity" is going to mean anything, you can't reward the losers more richly than the winners, just because you feel like it. And that's exactly what I'm going to tell the first pediatric cancer survivor I meet whose life was saved at St. Jude's, too.
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