Previously on Yes, I Know, She Said "Bread" And Not "Red," And Thank You For The 17,000 Emails To That Effect : When the teams were charged with running a restaurant for an evening, Chris gave a unique lesson in customer service in which he admitted that it's always helpful if you can forget that you hate the public. I tried to take it to heart. The women argued, especially Jennifer C. and Stacy, who were both contenders for the Obnoxious Bitch of the Century award in a race expected to end in a photo finish. Jen was like, "Munchkin!" Stacy was like, "Anti-Semite!" Over at Mosaic, things were not quite as tense as John engaged in a little strategic flirting. The women learned that black dresses are not actually appropriate for every occasion, especially if you hang out in a neighborhood Sars swears is mostly carpet stores. Mosaic took home the prize, and Apex was forced to return to the Boardroom. The women sat around the suite bitching about each other, getting into arguments, and changing their clothes every five minutes. In the boardroom, Jen could not avoid responsibility for having first done a weak job of managing, and then done a weak job of selecting people for the Boardroom. Carolyn was embarrassed to be a businesswoman. The rest of us were embarrassed to be women in general. And, in some cases, to be humans, actually. Maria recycled other people's already not-very-fresh clichés, and Stacy was obnoxious and rude, but in the end, it was Jen who took a walk into the history books as the first person to leave The Apprentice with one less job than she had when she got there. Fourteen are left. Who will be fired? I keep wanting to start every recap by saying at this point, "I certainly hope it will be Stacy!", but I fear that if I do that, it will never come true. You know what they say about witches. Er, "wishes."
Credits. I think you can tell a lot about a person from the fact that she has a creepy smile. And I'm not saying Stacy smiles like a gremlin, but if the grimace fits, you know.
New York skyline porn. Night. Muted trumpet. You assume from this that people up in the suite are totally doing it, but as it turns out it's just the Aspiring Corporate Weasel Death Watch. Of course, totally doing it would be one way to pass the time while they wait. It would beat talking to each other. The men are asking the first round of women to return what happened in the Boardroom. Remarkably, Ivana claims in an interview that Carolyn said she was embarrassed to be businesswoman because the women were losing. She apparently missed the part where Carolyn specifically said that the reason she was embarrassed to be a businesswoman is that the women could not get along and were fighting like eight-year-olds. Way to make sure you get the point of the lecture, Ivana. Back in the suite, Ivana reports that she needs a beer to get over the Boardroom experience. It's quite a coincidence, because I need a beer to get over the Ivana experience. Stacy and Elizabeth finally return to the suite. There's no particular reason for them to show you at this point that Wes is riding a stationary bike, but it's okay with me that they included it. I never said I wasn't a cheap date. Stacy enthusiastically says to the group, "The witch is dead!" You can tell that's going to cause confusion among the other people, all of whom are looking around thinking, "Oh, so you just came back to pack?" There is some asking of, "Which witch?" and all that, but they all know Jen's gone. Stacy reports in an interview that the entire team is "exhausted" and "fed up" and such. From her pleased little aura of superiority, it appears that she isn't aware that much of the exhaustion and fed-up-edness specifically relates to her. Remarkably, Stacy manages to complain in her interview about "stupid petty crap" among the team members. I half-expected her to open a little umbrella over her head at this point in a futile attempt to protect herself from the crushing Irony Boulders undoubtedly about to fall from the sky.
As if to make the point that there is plenty of stupid petty crap to go around, we listen in on an Apex meeting at which Elizabeth complains that Sandy was helping Jen C. say bad things about the rest of the team in the boardroom. Sandy bitches in reply about Elizabeth crying during the task. Oooh, burn. Andy watches in amazement as the women argue, and Pamela's jaw literally drops as she sees them go after each other. You can almost see Pamela mentally constructing a cross she can hold out in front of her if this team ever approaches her in a vampire-like fashion and tries to convince her to join. Oh, Pamela. She tells us in an interview that she is "a competitor first and a woman second." Inside the suite, she says that she fears having the women's bad attitude spread to her like cancer, while back on the interview circuit, she reminds us that her team is made up of men. She's not rooting for, as she puts it, "uteruses versus penises," she's rooting for her team to win. Apparently, Pamela missed the meeting where it was explained that the role of a woman on this show is to be twee and fussy, not to talk straightforwardly about competition. Buuuuurn her!
The phone rings in the suite, and Chris answers it. Ew, I don't know if I needed to see Chris's nipple ring. I admit he has a nicer chest than I would have expected, but I don't know about the jewelry. Nipple rings kind of freak me out. I always want to hang a tiny, tiny towel through them. Anyway, Rhona tells Chris that Trump wants to meet the group at UPS at 8 AM. I'm sorry, UPS? How...captivating. Maybe they're going to do something with packing tape. Maybe they have to ship Faberge eggs without breaking any of them. Chris explains in his interview that the men, as usual, chose their project manager at random, and it turned out to be him. So this is two leadership weeks in a row for Chris. I hope he still hates the public, because I find that's really the most inspiring quality a leader can have.
At UPS, a guy who works much harder than any of these fools ever will in their entire lives is moving boxes in a back room. Out front, in a warehouse-ish space, the candidates enter and stand in their traditional cantaloupe. Trump is sporting a yellow tie, so apparently, he's all out of pink. He greets the teams and points out that George has returned from his business trip, so Boyfriend Bill has been sent back to Chicago to attend parties and have his picture taken. Trump reminds the women that last week, they suffered from a lack of leadership. The last thing he wants to do is actually make any of them stop screwing around and show any leadership qualities, so he has a plan to make sure that those without leadership skills can continue...not having any. More specifically, he has the Hose Pamela plan. He orders her, by name, with no questions asked, to not only change teams from Mosaic to Apex, but to be the Apex project manager, even though she has already been the project manager and there are four women on the team who haven't. Coincidentally, just as Trump moves her to the other team, Pamela swallows a bug, or so her face suggests. She strolls over to Apex, waving goodbye to the men who don't like her as she goes to stand to the women who also don't like her. An inhospitable environment if ever there was one. Once she's over at Apex, she actually blows kisses to the members of Mosaic. Yeah, no one's buying. Trump points out that, as he undoubtedly prefers things to be, we are back down to men versus women. He tells Pamela, "We're going to see whether you can pull this mess together." Furthermore, he says to her, "It's not going to be easy." He tells her that everyone on the team hates each other, that they have a level of hatred that's "beyond belief," and so forth.
But enough hating. At least for them. Trump tells the teams that retailing has changed a great deal in recent years, and retailing assisted by electronic communications of various kinds is on the rise. That's what he hears from the kids who hang out on the internets, anyway. And who's the star of the task this week? QVC (Motto: "Bringing You Cheap Nonstick Cookware 22 1/2 Hours A Day"). Apparently, the tenuous link to UPS, which probably lost out on the opportunity to be the center of a task and had to be appeased in case Mark Burnett could never get anything delivered by Amazon.com again, is that UPS does all of the shipping for QVC. In fact, it ships four million packages for them every year. Trump calls this "unbelievable." It's also "really heavy."
The task itself will involve going to the headquarters of QVC, located in the rural outpost known as "Pennsylvania," where each team will select a product and then go live on QVC to sell it. The second oddball thing about this task, after the manipulative business with switching Pamela's team, is that the winner will be the team with the highest gross sales. Not profit, but gross sales. That makes the task rather odd, in that very few businesses would use that as a measure of success. Nevertheless, there you go. Trump reminds us that the losing team will be sent to the Boardroom, where someone will be fired. In case you forgot. Trump also reminds Raj that if his team should lose, he is exempt from being fired, because he was the project manager last week, when Mosaic won the restaurant task. Maria blinks repeatedly as Trump wishes the teams good luck. Of course, Maria blinks repeatedly while doing most things. Including sleeping. Maria doesn't engage in REM sleep, she engages in RREM sleep, and the first "R" is for "Really." Trump leaves with Carolyn and George. The first member of Apex to extend a hand to Pamela to welcome her is Elizabeth, so...she's initially slightly less awful than the rest of them, I think. How encouraging.
Two buses arrive that will be taking the teams to scenic, exotic, hick-like Pennsylvania, where there is no running water and the only entertainment is ham radio. Pamela sets the tone by standing aside to the door of the bus and allowing the other women to get on ahead of her, just as a teacher would when organizing a field trip. It may or may not be the right thing to do, setting herself up as the boss lady, but she certainly knows how to do it. Maria is blinky and twitchy as she interviews that they were told it would be a two- or two-and-a-half hour drive to Pennsylvania. I'm guessing she spent the whole time looking out the windows for giraffes and asking if she had to learn how to say "Would you like to buy one of my fine products?" in some other language. On the bus, Pamela cautions the women that the way she's going to do things will probably be different from the way they've been doing them. Hopefully, this will put a stop to some of the unrelenting losing. She asks them not to bring up the fact that she's doing things differently, because whatever they've been doing, it hasn't been working. Only she says it with more uses of the word "fuck." She also freely acknowledges that she will be bossy and bitchy for the day, but that it won't keep up after that. She should know far better than to think they're going to be able to process anything as sophisticated as the temporary suspension of politeness in the interests of winning. She hasn't been working with these women, you can tell. Pamela also tells them that she doesn't care about the personality conflicts, and she expects them to be put aside so they can get work done. HA HA HA HA HA HA...yeah. Good one.
Unsurprisingly, Maria is not happy with the way Pamela is treating them. She explains that the way Pamela acted was "condescending." I certainly hope so. Because they have lost three times in a row, and it's been because they suck, so I would certainly hope a person with three consecutive wins on her record would treat them with the appropriate level of disdain. Interestingly, Maria argues that they should not have been "lectured" by Pamela, in part because they have "been beaten down." In other words, because they've been losing, she should have been nicer. That kind of coddling is a great philosophy for a foot masseuse; not such a great one for a manager. Pamela tells the women that she wants them to give her an idea of what they feel comfortable doing, and what they think their skills are. Maria claims that "public speaking is [her] deal," while Stacy roots around in a cooler and apparently finds some booze, which she starts yammering about while everyone else is trying to discuss the task. This irritates Pamela a great deal, and in a voice that's entirely too much like a teacher, she tells them they're not going to do that again while someone else is talking. Stacy is in fact being very rude, which isn't surprising, but Pamela would have been a lot better off saying it in a far more diplomatic and less obnoxious way.
Pamela claims in an interview that she had to literally "whip them into shape," which really would be an entirely different show. Do people who like to use the word "literally" actually know what the word "literally" means? I often wonder. Because it doesn't just mean "[emphatic word]." As Stacy pouts, Pamela explains in her interview that she doesn't believe it's possible to turn a team around the way she needed to turn Apex around by "being Mr. Nice Guy." I get her point, but I don't think any well-thought-out management strategy has ever included the words "Mr. Nice Guy." Although can you imagine how awesome it would be if you actually worked for Mr. Nice Guy? He'd be like, "You're late." And you'd go, "What are you going to do about it? Write me up? You're Mr. Nice Guy." Pamela cautions Apex that if they don't win this time, they're going to look even worse than they already do. At which point they will be able to look up at the subway from where they will be situated in Trump's esteem.
This week's Trump white-lettered motto is "Price It Right." (Note to editing types: Please stop giving away the entire task result with the mottos. Thank you.) We see Donald Trump taking part in an incredibly fake-looking conversation he claims is with Boyfriend Bill, and then Trump interviews that the marketplace is so "brilliant" that pricing something even a small amount too high will keep people from buying it. On the other hand, if you price it a little low, people will come running. Oh, I get it. That must be why Trump became a discount retailer, like Target and Payless Shoes. The fake discussion with Boyfriend Bill on the phone ends when Trump tells him threateningly, "Your ass is grass." If it were real Boyfriend Bill and not imaginary Boyfriend Bill on the other end of the line, that would really tick me off.
As you undoubtedly know, the State of Pennsylvania is made up of nothing but country music festivals, which is apparently why the backwater music begins playing as the buses make their way toward the QVC headquarters. Mosaic talks about the fact that the task is very important, because if they lose, Trump will believe that the key to their success was Pamela. "We can't lose this one," Raj tells the team. See? Pamela is an inspiration.
Maria interviews that when they arrived at QVC, the first thing they had to do was select their product. We see the women in a conference room, where Elizabeth and Ivana are explaining that they have picked a 30-pack of sponges called It Works! Narrowly beating out a set of pens called It Smudges! Maria interviews that this magic sponge gets out all sorts of stains in the home. With the product chosen, Pamela asks who is interested in actually appearing on TV to do the pitch. Ivana advocates Maria for her "great presence," while Maria, in turn, pushes Jen, who she claims has a great capacity for BS as well. Pamela puts Maria and Jen on the on-air team, puts Sandy in charge of the sets, asks Elizabeth and Ivana to work on the script, and has Stacy take charge of a set of legal issues they have to get approval on before they can go on the air. (You would think choosing one of the lawyers for that task would be a good idea, but you would be wrong.) ["It's my understanding that Stacy passed the bar about ten minutes before taping began, and therefore is about as qualified to 'take charge of a set of legal issues' as she is to rock a WNBA tryout. Hate!" -- Sars] She also asks Stacy to please think about pricing.
In an interview, Ivana complains that Pamela tried to assign responsibility to everyone on the team besides herself (Pamela, not Ivana). She doesn't seem to realize that for a good manager, managing is a responsibility. Particularly when you're dealing with a bunch of women as difficult as these, just being in charge is its own set of headaches. Not that Ivana would know this, because when she was project manager, she avoided managing by pretending she was going to get consensus on everything instead. She also has the unfortunate habit, shared by many of the women on this team, of using the non-phrase "taking accountability," which really does not exist. There is no such thing as taking accountability. There is taking responsibility, but accountability simply is there or is not there. You can need accountability, or there can be accountability, but you do not take it or not take it. It's a great example, although far from the only one, of the way that people who spend too much time around certain kinds of business types start talking as if they're smart in a way that ultimately makes it clear that they're not. The only way you can tell is if you listen really carefully and figure out whether all of the words they're saying belong in sentences together.
And now, the discussion of price. Even though Stacy was asked to think about pricing, what she wants to do first is get Pamela to say whether she wants a high price, a low price, or a price in the middle. Of course, part of "thinking about pricing" would be recommending a high price, a low price, or a middle price, but as you may be figuring out, the one great skill Stacy has demonstrated so far is the ability to avoid responsibility. Ask yourself this: What has Stacy done over the course of this entire game of any significance, aside from being unpleasant, petty, and accusatory? What has she been responsible for that was so significant that if it had gone wrong, she would have taken responsibility for it? She has never been a project manager. She has never made an important decision. She has never made a call on her own. All she does is stand around and blame other people for everything that happens. Considering her endlessly flapping and lecturing yap, it's helpful to keep in mind that she is actually the biggest pussy on this entire team, and I actually don't mean that literally. She talks like she has all the answers, when in fact, she doesn't do anything. I wouldn't hire her to wash my floor, because she would stand there the entire time asking how I wanted it washed, how long I wanted to her to spend washing it, and exactly what steps I wanted her to go through. And if it was still dirty at the end, you'd better believe she would find a way that it was my fault for telling her how to do it the wrong way. The long and the short of it is that Stacy refuses to make a recommendation, except a sort of conditional one, in which she says that $19.99 would be fine if they want "an easy number that people seem to roll with." Now, had they chosen that price and it didn't work, you know Stacy would have gone into the boardroom and said that she took direction from Pamela about what kind of price she wanted, and she only recommended $19.99 because of the parameters that Pamela set. She would never have taken responsibility for that number, had they chosen it and it turned out to be wrong. Never.
Pamela, completely correctly, tells Stacy she's not looking for conditional recommendation. She's not looking for Stacy to pass off the ultimate decision about what type of price they should choose. She's asking Stacy to say, "I recommend that you price it at this." Apparently, Stacy doesn't want to. Pamela explains in an interview, entirely too haughtily, that because Stacy was unable to make a recommendation, she took the pricing task back from Stacy. It just makes both of them look so bad. But as I've said a number of times throughout my life, I'd rather lack heart than spine.
For some reason, we move from one team to another via transitional footage of trees. I suppose this is because...well, you know what they have in Pennsylvania? A lot of trees. Trees, and gutted steel mills. But mostly trees. Mosaic has selected a DeLonghi panini grill as its product, and Kelly is leading a heated discussion over the price. Kelly believes that the team should keep the price over $70 in order to maximize their revenue. Raj, on the other hand, believes that that price is too high. Kelly tries to tell Raj that's "it's basic supply and demand," to which Raj points out curtly that he's "familiar with this stuff." Ooh, things are getting tense over at the boys' table. Raj even says something about "price elasticity," meaning that he is now going to be the matinee idol of women everywhere who think conservative economists are sexy. All of whom can fit at one table at Burger King. As Kevin explains it, this argument came down to the fact that Raj believed that there was something psychological about $70 that meant they shouldn't go over that number. The interesting thing about this is that although the guys are disagreeing, they manage to do it in such a way that they're not attacking each other personally. Raj claims in an interview that, in fact, Kelly was "jockeying for the position of de facto leader of the team." It isn't clear whether this annoyed him, or whether he grudgingly respected it. Or, of course, both. There is a little more bickering over the price, but ultimately, it appears that Chris, the leader of the team, steps up and makes the choice that they're going to go with Kelly's recommendation of $71.25. Raj interviews that if he were the leader of the team, he would be concerned about having anyone else have as much power as Kelly has at this point. I'm not sure anyone worries about who has what power quite as much as Raj. I suspect he worries quite a bit about the Trilateral Commission.
We are inside a QVC studio. As the women prepare for their presentation, Pamela tells Ivana that she thinks they can push for a price of $30 for the sponge set. This prices out to one dollar per sponge, which she thinks is reasonable based on the prices of comparable items. Ivana claims that her concern about selling the sponges at that price is that people will get the sponges for one dollar per sponge and will say, "This blows." So, is she saying she's worried about...returns? That seems very strange. I don't entirely understand what she saying. That's not to mention the fact that if I were her, I wouldn't have selected this product unless I had tested it in advance and was relatively sure people wouldn't send it back saying, "This blows," particularly if the product was called "It Works." Ivana interviews, in her usual not-my-fault fashion, that the pricing decision was Pamela's, not hers. Of course, no one else on the team will be missing an opportunity to remind you of this, in order to take your mind off all of the things they themselves will be doing wrong over the course of the episode.
As Ivana and Pamela are talking, Stacy shows up with the QVC general counsel, Dave. Stacy thinks that Dave should watch the entire rehearsal of their demonstration. When she asks whether it's all right for Dave to watch, Pamela tells her that's fine. In an interview, however, Pamela is less happy. "Stacy's a lawyer. Through and through and through and through," she says. And at home, I'm all, "Yeah, AND?" Pamela adds that it was a "bad idea" to put Stacy on legal issues, because apparently, it's taking her forever. I do think having the legal guy watch the entire demonstration is probably excessive. It appears that one of Stacy's issues is covering up labels on other brand-name bottles in such a way that you can't tell what product they are. At least I think that's what she's doing. And it appears that rather than take advice from Dave about generally how to do it, she's insisting on having Dave review every individual bottle. That could get tedious. ["See my comments. A more experienced attorney wouldn't have fixated on the CYA aspect of the task. Shut up, Stacy." -- Sars] Pamela takes Stacy for a little walk, during which she tells her that it's not the object to be "legally thorough." I can certainly understand how that would upset Stacy, but I understand what Pamela is saying also, when she says that the point of Stacy's role here is to get the QVC attorney to a point where he's comfortable. Of course, even though Stacy has a point to some degree, she ruins it by conducting an interview in which she says that if Pamela didn't want someone who is going to do such a good job she should "ask the wedding planner to be the lawyer." She's just so snotty every time she opens her mouth. It absolutely drives me insane. I would rather have a person with ten points less competence whom I could actually stand to have in the room with me.
Trees! Were still out in the sticks. In "Pennsylvania." Backstage at QVC, we go down the hall and find a red light sign hanging from the ceiling that says, "QUIET PLEASE." I have to think that's someone's version of a shout-out, because otherwise, it's just too funny. Carolyn and George are watching the Apex run-through, which is being directed by Elizabeth from the control room. Pamela is in the control room, too. The rehearsal begins, and one thing becomes instantaneously clear. And what is it? Maria is not intended to be on television in this capacity. Or probably in any capacity. She's like her usual self, only six times as much so. As soon she starts to talk, she twitches and blinks even more than usual. She's the kind of person who is so atrocious on camera that I would actually spend the rest of the week telling people about the crazy woman I saw on QVC who looked like her arms were attached with rubber bands. Elizabeth makes a funny face as she realizes that Maria is decompensating as they do the run-through. Pamela also makes a very funny scrunchy face. Keep in mind that Maria is not someone they thrust in front of the camera against her will. This is someone who sold herself as a wonderful public speaker, who nonetheless looks like she is hosting a tic festival between her eyes. Pamela, interestingly, shows her lack of skill with word choice when she chooses to frustratedly refer to Maria as "gregarious." That is definitely not the word she's looking for. I'm not sure whether she's looking for something related to gyrating or what, but she's definitely not looking for the word "gregarious." Pamela hits the nail on the head, however, when she says that Maria "looks like she's having a seizure." See? No big words. Keep the description simple. "Like she's having a seizure." Or, as I would have said it, "like she needs sedation." On the other hand, Jen is very good in front of the camera. Pamela and Elizabeth decide that the person to run the presentation is obviously Jen, which means someone has to break some bad news to Maria. Even George shakes his head as the women's presentation finishes up. Maria? Horrible.
Elizabeth reiterates to Pamela they have "big problems." The two of them agree that Pamela will go and tell Maria that her presentation is not working, and that Jen's going to do it instead. Unfortunately, Elizabeth decides to communicate this to Ivana on the rehearsal floor over the walkie-talkie that Maria and Sandy, standing nearby, can easily hear. In fact, Stacy and Maria crack up when they hear Elizabeth say into the walkie-talkie that Maria should not be allowed to say anything, for the most part, and that she should let Jen run the show. Apparently, Elizabeth is not aware that Maria can hear everything she's saying. That must've been fairly mortifying when she saw it on television. Maria gripes in an interview about how "inappropriate" this was, but she has to, again, step on her own good point by arguing that you shouldn't be mean to people when they're about to have to go on TV and pretend to be happy. That has nothing to do with it. Elizabeth was tacky and rude, but you can't expect that people are going to treat you with velvet gloves because you agreed to be the person who plasters a grin on your face. "We can't upset her; in ten minutes, she has to smile!"
When we return to QVC, we are now visiting with Mosaic. John and Wes are preparing to do the presentation. John talks in an interview about how fast the time was going, because they only had 12 minutes to sell on television before their time ran out. As they agree to "sell some grills," John and Wes share a little fist bumping which is really…dopey, actually. The fist bump is not a good move for a guy. Particularly a guy who thinks it's a good move, if you get what I'm saying. Meanwhile, Andy is working in the control room, which he claims have a lot in common with a Las Vegas casino. Personally, I'm not seeing it. And why is he wearing a hardhat? Do things fall on you in the QVC control room? Is he staying out of the way of the keee-razy dropping prices? One of the women working in the control room shows Andy how to look at a monitor and see how many people are calling in second to second. What this does is allow the people doing the presentation to know that when they say certain things or emphasize certain things, it's causing people to call in. I find that completely creepy, that they could say to the host, "Every time you scratch your nose, we get six more calls from Nebraska. Scratch for Nebraska! Scratch for Nebraska!"
The men's presentation begins. John shows off the panini maker, on which he is creating a big sandwich. It does occur to me that I could make that on my George Foreman grill, which I got at Target for a lot less than $71.25. Now, we move to Trump's office, where he is watching the presentations from under his unusually yellow-looking hair. I wonder if he had it specially done for the occasion. Something about his look in this scene reminds me of Rip Taylor. But anyway, back in the control room, the woman shows Andy that for most part, no one is calling in a few minutes into the presentation. They have successfully brought QVC to a screeching halt. They have brought commerce to its knees. Andy compares the chart on the monitor to the 1929 stock market crash. Hee hee. Kelly gestures madly to the guys on the floor, trying to get them to up the energy level and move some grills before the time runs out. John takes the opportunity to show off how much melted cheese he's getting all over his fingers. There goes John, trying to get the dirty-bird vote again. Works for me. With four minutes remaining, something quite fateful happens. A woman calls in from somewhere in the heart of the country to report on how much she loves her DeLonghi panini grill. Andy reports that the only time they really had a jump in sales was when this lovely woman called and offered her personal testimonial. The presentation team thanks Patty from Oklahoma just as the segment ends. In an interview, Raj says that they learned that they had sold approximately 200 grills, when they were planning on selling 800. He shows off his mental calculated by saying they only did 25 percent of what they'd intended. He goes on to complain that he still believes the product was priced incorrectly. He is convinced that, had they lowered the price, they would have increased the volume enough to make up the difference. "The thing that sucks," Chris says to the other guys, "is that it's not even going to be close."
Time to head over to the women's presentation. Pamela and Sandy are stationed in the control room along with Elizabeth and Stacy, while Ivana is down on the floor with Jen and Maria. As Pamela explains, it took quite a while for the sales presentation to get moving, and at first, it appeared was going to be a challenge to sell anything. We watch Jen demonstrate the sponge on a wall to remove various marks, as finally, the calls begin to come in. Sandy compares the competition to "watching a horse race," and I'm going to refrain from making a "horse-face" joke here. But believe me, I could. Sandy reports that when the 12 minutes were up, she felt that the team had done as well as it could have. They left the booth knowing they had sold about 650 units. In an interview, Pamela says that she thinks the women really needed a different kind of leadership, and they needed to be led with more strength, which I agree with. That doesn't mean she didn't go overboard, but I do think that a butt-kicking was in order. And they probably should thank her. But obviously, they're not going to. Elizabeth even tells someone she had "so much fun" doing the task. And I mean, when was the last time any of the women were able to say that? Pamela says that she wanted "a blowout win" for the team. And it's interesting, because for all the heat she rightly took this week for being arrogant, part of that comes out of the fact that when she talks about the win, she talks about wanting the win for the other women on the team, and while that does have a boss-like quality or a condescending quality to it, I also think she believes it, and I think it's not meant in an unkind way. I do think she felt like she was made responsible for reforming them, because of what Trump said, and I don't fault her for feeling like she was in fact being asked to perform a rescue. Sunset.
Later that evening, the teams gather to hear the results of the task. They are addressed by Donald Trump, speaking from a large QVC screen. Trump claims to have watched both presentations live on QVC, and to have found them both very good. He asks George how the women did. George reports that the women sold 659 sponge sets, for gross sales of $17,944.57. Carolyn reports that the men's sold 252 units of the Panini grill, for a total of $17,955. So Mosaic has emerged victorious by $10. Now that is a close contest. Pamela looks disbelieving as the men hoot and high-five each other. Chris immediately tells Kelly that he credits that victory to Kelly pushing for the slightly higher price, which is obviously pretty flawed thinking in a way that Chris is not figuring out. Raj could still easily be right. In fact, Raj could easily be right in a way that Pamela is about to learn about. Trump congratulates the men, and tells them that up to this point they are "clobbering" the women. Pamela takes exception to this in a muttering sort of way, but obviously, I don't think that he means clobbering in this task. I think he means clobbering overall, and there's no denying that the women in general are being...well, clobbered. Trump then says unhappily that he thought it would help to put Pamela with the women but "that hasn't helped either." Right. With the exception of the fact that the women have been getting killed every week and hating each other and working poorly together, and now they turned a lot of that around. But, since they still lost by $10, apparently Pamela did nothing of value. This entire thing just smacks of unfairness. Anyway, Trump tells Mosaic that their reward will include meeting two people he knows personally -- Anna Kournikova and John McEnroe. Wes is obviously really excited about the prospect of hitting on...you know, John McEnroe. The women get to go to the Boardroom again. Well, that ought to be fun.
At the Arthur Ashe Stadium, Mosaic arrives for its tennis reward. Out on the court, John McEnroe is playing Anna Kournikova. He's making a great show of yelling at her, because that's what everyone expects. It's difficult when you become a caricature of yourself, because then people kind of expect you do it all the time. I wonder if he has days when he feels like being rational. If he does, it's probably very frustrating. As they all set up to play, Andy interviews that he loves tennis, and has had a picture of McEnroe on his wall for years. I knew there was something sketchy about Andy. Raj, on the other hand, knows what's really important, so he gets himself talking to Anna Kournikova. I'm fairly sure that in the extended version of the episode on Saturday, they showed that what Raj opens with is asking her if she's engaged. What we see here is just Anna asking him whether he's a gossip columnist or what. He tells her no, he's actually trying to ask her out a date. He tells her that he has a rule that when you meet a woman who's very beautiful, you have to at least try to ask her out. "Well, thank you for trying," she says. Hee hee. Raj tells us in an interview, "You must take a shot. At least at coffee. A totally harmless beverage." You know, I wouldn't like him, and I probably wouldn't talk to him, but I would totally go out with him. I could lie, but I know myself. If he said the "totally harmless beverage" thing to me? Yeah, that's...I'd go. But anyway. (I know. Don't get up. I'm fired. Sars is looking for a new recapper as we speak. ["On the contrary -- I kind of like Raj, actually. Besides, if I fire you for that, I have to fire myself for thinking Wes is hot. Yeah, I said it." -- Sars]) That's why I'm not Anna Kournikova. Well...it's actually one of many reasons. Raj continues to flirt with Anna, and you can tell that she likes it a little bit more than she thinks she's supposed to. She suggests some sort of a dare, which I have to think is an idea put in her ear by someone whose name rhymes with "Mark Burnett," but we'll pretend it's spontaneous. They eventually come up with a bet in which she will serve the ball five times, and if he returns one of them, then presumably, she would go out with him, I guess. If he loses, however, he will have to do a dare.
Whether on purpose or not, Raj comes nowhere particularly near returning any of Anna Kournikova's five serves. Moreover, he spends the entire time making a lame series of anti-Democrat jokes that go all the way back to Clinton, because apparently Raj didn't have any Kerry jokes handy at the time that this was filmed. Believe me, Raj, your Clinton "spin" jokes are not that funny. At any rate, because Raj misses all five serves, he has to do a dare, and the rest of the team gets together with Anna to decide that he should have to run around the stadium in his underwear once. My favorite part is that as he runs around up in the seats, the team decides to start whizzing tennis balls at him. So before you know it, there's Raj, running around having tennis balls popped in his direction by John McEnroe and Anna Kournikova. It's pretty funny, but you'd think if they were going to subject someone to physical punishment, they could've picked someone a little more deserving. Like, for instance, any of the women.
You will be shocked to hear that, back at the suite, all of the Apex women are sitting around having a divinely catty meeting to decide on whom they're going to gang up. Stacy is telling the rest of the women that Pamela was insisting that she be "shady legal," apparently by wanting Stacy to try to get the Formula 409 bottle approved or something. As we know, feigned moral outrage is Stacy's MO, for the most part. She's always up in arms about something. What I find hilarious is that Stacy now conducts an interview which she says that the reason Pamela should be fired is that "she doesn't listen to others." As opposed to Stacy, the cooperative, helpful, always-does-what-other-people-need soul that she is. She also calls Pamela "irreverent," of which, unless Stacy is running a church, I don't really see the relevance. Continuing down the road of employing language generally reserved for unfunny, jealous, bitter, used-up college professors, Stacy calls Pamela "flippant." I can't remember the last time I heard someone even remotely my age or younger use the word "flippant." Shut up, Stacy.
Sandy is to say that it's obvious to her why they lost -- the price. And what's great about that is that they can blame it on the person they don't like who happens not to be the meeting. It's miraculous how that worked out. Imagine if someone had concluded that the script was at least bad enough that they lost one sale because of it, making that just as much of a reason why they lost as the price. That would have been so awkward. Stacy gloats happily in an interview about the fact that she successfully pawned the pricing task off on Pamela. Of course, she couches this in terms of her great offense that Pamela wouldn't listen to her advice, but you can see how she really feels about it. She's pleased as punch that she has managed to avoid responsibility for anything that happens. Yet again. Ivana tells Stacy, Maria, Sandy, and Elizabeth that in the boardroom, it will come down to either ganging up on Pamela or risking that one of them will be fired instead. I'm not sure why they're unified when they all hate each other, but whatever. Stacy snippily says in an interview that Pamela is "not up for" being Trump's apprentice. She's the one who brought it up, so I'm allowing myself one short joke, which is to say, "She who is 'not up for' reaching the cookie jar when it's on the top shelf should not talk about other people, Stacy." Elizabeth closes the meeting of the Apex women by complaining that anyone who was any sort of leader could have gotten them the victory. Except Elizabeth, because she would have cried the whole time. But anyone else.
Inside, a lonely Pamela shoots hoops on the indoor court. In an interview, she explains that although it may be "self-involved," she genuinely believes that the women of Apex wanted strong leadership for this task. Apparently, Pamela is under the mistaken impression that the women want to win, as opposed to wanting to have more things to complain about. Which, come to think of it, would mean they actually would want strong leadership after all, because what's better to complain about than someone who does something you aren't capable of doing? She tells us that although she doesn't mean to be cocky, she doesn't think she will be fired. (Sound of nail being driven into coffin.) She says she just thinks that she knows herself and what she's capable of, and she believes she's more qualified than some of the other women on the team. (Nail.) As if that has anything to do with it. She expects them to "go under more heavy fire" than she will. "It's just the way it goes," she says. Oh, Pamela. (Nail.)
New York night porn. The elevator doors open, and the women walk toward the Boardroom. Inside, they meet up with Carolyn and George, and then Trump joins them. Remarkably, Trump is wearing a very tame striped tie. He's getting so corporate, Donald Trump. As soon as he comes in, Trump starts picking on Pamela. He brings up her education at Harvard and Wharton, and points out that this is another loss for her. "We tied," Pamela says. Oh, I suspect that is a misstep. Trump is not going to want to hear that. He insists that they did not tie, they lost by $10, though he admits that that isn't very much. He asked her what happened, and rather than answer the question, which is what she ought to do, she repeats that to her, it's not a loss. It's a tie. I don't think that was such a terrible thing to do the first time, because they're never going to see such a close result again, probably, but it's a very bad idea that she returns to it the second time. George jumps right in. He tells her in a very harsh tone that if you are bidding on a building, and he missed the bid by $10, they wouldn't get the building. So to him, it's ridiculous to say they tied. Of course, I would love to see the last bid that George lost by $10, but that's not really the point. I understand what he's saying, and she made a very bad decision by pushing it, but she's also right that for all intents and purposes, the teams performed the same. Stacy also smirks right here, which makes me want to hit her even more than usual, and makes me want to agree with Pamela.
Asked for her opinion, Jen says that she thinks they priced the item too high. She says she was uncomfortable going over $19.99. Trump asks who set the price, and Jen fingers Pamela. Asked whether she agrees that they ultimately prices the product too high, Pamela says no. In fact, she thinks that the price was too low. Interestingly, as the Eagle-Eyed Forum Posters have pointed out, if they had priced the sponges two or three cents higher, they would've won. It does seem unlikely that they would actually have lost any sales from a three-cent difference in price, so Pamela probably has an argument, if you keep it to a strictly within-the-game context. A disbelieving Carolyn, however, asks Pamela where she would have set the price if she believes that where they had it was too low. Pamela says she would have gone to one dollar per bar, which would have set it at $30. Carolyn insists that that's far too much, and if they had only priced the product correctly they would have "blown the men away." Of course, one could also argue that it's possible that had the men priced their product correctly, they would've blown the women away. Because I think Raj was probably right, and the men probably priced that product too high as well.
Ivana raises her hand wanting to make a point, or else because she needs to go to the potty. She launches into a critical bit about Pamela's leadership, and how Pamela is such an "independent" thinker. Of course, none of the rest of these women know what it would be like to be an independent thinker, because they're entirely too busy reading a bunch of magazines to see what shoes they should wear. If they were as tall as Pamela, they probably would've had their shins surgically removed by now so that they wouldn't stand out in the crowd. Maybe one of them could have sold her shins to Stacy as lifts. Okay, I made one more. Anyway, Ivana complains that Pamela didn't take enough "feedback" from the team. We've seen how well it works for this team when they give a lot of feedback, that's for sure. Trump offers Pamela the choice of two or three people to come to the final table with her. She says, just as she did in the first episode, that she's only going to take two. She's bringing Maria and Stacy. Trump says the rest of the women back up to the suite, and Maria, Pamela, and Stacy out to the lobby to wait.
While the women wait outside, Trump asks George and Carolyn what they think. George says he was "very impressed" with Pamela's leadership. He says that the team came together and operated cooperatively much more than they have in the past. He calls this in Pamela a "major, major quality," and it's clear that he's very impressed with her. ["I'd like to mention here that 1. I almost always agree with George, and 2. Trump almost never listens to him. Listen to George, Trump!" -- Sars] Trump is not so much on the strong women, however, and makes a remark that he thinks Pamela "could be too strong." That would be okay with me if he hadn't specifically singled her out and sent her over there with clear instructions to kick their asses, which is what he did. Carolyn says that she agrees about Pamela's leadership skills, but she insists again on focusing on this particular task, which she says they lost because of the price. What I don't understand about any of this is that they have made it clear in other cases that it's not only the person who loses this particular task who is in danger of leaving. Everyone agreed that Stacie J. was not the reason they lost that task, and yet there she was, going out the door, primarily on the say-so of the other women. Why it's taking so long for this concept to sink in with Trump and Carolyn is very confusing to me. If Maria and Elizabeth were not fired for the fact that they went over budget in the toothpaste task, I cannot understand any justification for firing Pamela for this task. I particularly cannot understand any justification for arguing, as Carolyn seems to here, that Pamela is the only person you can possibly fire, no matter how good she is and no matter how much the other people generally suck. I mean, there's Maria, sitting right there, and Maria already screwed up the toothpaste task. And she would have blown this task as well if Pamela hadn't known enough to pull her.
Trump has the last three women brought back in. Stacy, by the way, is carrying a sheaf of notes, which I wish Trump would make her drop. That's what he did with Troy last season, and I wish he would do it again. This is also probably as good a time as any to address the issue of the bizarre outfit Maria's wearing. She's wearing some sort of a black suit with silver rivets on it. Decorative rivets are really a very risky maneuver. I think Broadway musicals about the garment industry are probably the only context in which that's a good approach.
Trump asks Pamela why she brought Stacy into the Boardroom. Pamela tells Trump that the reason Stacy is there is that she "doesn't add one ounce of value." Ouch. As Stacy begins to protest, Pamela says that as a matter of fact, Stacy talks so much that she's actively a distraction. Stacy insists that this is "incorrect," which I don't think you really can, because you're not the person who says whether you add value or don't. You're especially not the person who says whether you talk so much that you're distracting. And I should know, because I talk so much that I'm distracting. When Trump asks her whether she's insulted by Pamela's comments, Stacy says she isn't insulted because Pamela is wrong. Nice try, but that is not a reason not to be insulted. That's actually a reason to be insulted. If the person is right about you, it's not that insulting. (See above, re: the fact that I talk so much that I'm distracting. That's not insulting, because it's kind of true.)
Stacy goes on to read directly from her notes, which not only should you not do in that Boardroom, but you should not do it in court either, so I don't know where she got this habit. She complains about how she was asked to do legal task, and then Pamela complains that she was being "too legal." Stacy claims not to know what this means. I know exactly what it means. It means a lawyer sitting around being proud of herself for nitpicking everything to death, rather than showing skills in choosing the correct issues that need attention, and going from there. Everyone who has any experience with lawyers knows what it means for them to be "too legal." If she truly doesn't know what it means, she doesn't have any experience. I suspect, however, that she knows exactly what it means. Stacy insists that Pamela asked her to think about the task more as a business person, but because Pamela had asked her to be the lawyer, she thought like the lawyer. The stupid thing about that is that if that's the case, then when Pamela asked her to think about it more as a business person, she would have thought about it more as a business person. At this point, she's just being a bitch to be a bitch, because that's what she does. As if I don't hate her quite enough yet, Stacy then uncorks, "I'm not going to act unethically. If you want another Enron on your hands, Mr. Trump, here's Pamela." Enron? ENRON? Because Pamela thought that Stacy was overdoing it double-checking the labels on the Ajax bottles, all of a sudden she's Enron? If Stacy truly cannot distinguish between the importance of those two things, then she is not only a very obnoxious person, but also a shitty lawyer. Because one of the things a good lawyer does for you is distinguish between what is Enron and what isn't. And that isn't.
George now asks Pamela why she brought Maria into the Boardroom. Entirely too self-satisfied, Maria grins tightly and says, "I'd like to know as well." Maria, George is not asking because he cannot understand why you were brought in. That's not what that means in this context. Pamela says that the reason Maria is in with her is that Maria identified herself as a good public speaker. Pamela relied on Maria's representations of her own abilities, and as Maria herself breaks in to say, the rest of the group also encouraged Pamela to put Maria on this task. And then...not so much. Asked by Carolyn why she then was not the person who did most of the presentation, Maria hedges tremendously in saying that when they did the rehearsal, they wound up feeling like her "rate of speech was not necessarily something that they would be able to identify with." Which is a nice way of saying that everyone who watched Maria speak on camera thought that she was on speed. Carolyn says she agrees that Maria's style was a problem. Trump asks Maria whether she thinks she's good on camera, and Maria insists that she's "great on camera." Maria could not be more wrong, I'll tell you that right now. Just something to chew on for later: is it worse to have a poor grasp of the abilities of someone who you just started working with that day, or to have a poor grasp of your own abilities and misrepresent them to your boss? I'll let you think on that one. Trump starts to blame Pamela for having taken Maria's word for it that she was a good public speaker, but Pamela protests that in person, Maria is in fact a good speaker with "a great presence." She says, however, that when they turned the camera on Maria, Maria completely freaked out. Which appeared to be exactly what happened. Pamela points out that she had to replace Maria 15 minutes before the presentation started.
Trump asks Stacy what she thinks of Maria, and Stacy of course turns it into a question about Pamela, saying that Maria is very good, and simply wasn't used properly by Pamela. Stacy insists that Pamela "doesn't want to take accountability." At this point, they're just going to have to take accountability for their own grammar and usage. Stacy makes the absolutely preposterous comment that she thinks Pamela did a poor job of "assessing [their] skill sets," when she made Maria a speaker because Maria said she was a speaker, and when she made Stacy the lawyer because Stacy said she was a lawyer. How can anyone make that argument with a straight face? Pamela explains how she went around and asked them what their skills were, and adds that, when what they wanted to do coincided with what they told her their skills were, that's what she assigned them to do. She finds it remarkable that now, those same people are claiming they weren't used properly in being actually given those roles. I agree. Trump starts in about how Pamela has to be willing to assess people for herself, but I don't understand how she could possibly have done that, having had only that one task to work with them.
Trump tells Pamela that he thinks she has a poor ability to assess people. This is where Trump starts to tell Pamela that she's very good, and very interesting, and you see it, but you don't really believe it. Or you don't really believe it if you're me. Trump tells Pamela that she's fired. Yes, that's right. He's keeping Stacy, and he's keeping Maria, because you never know when one of them might turn out to have some value in one of these tasks, even though so far, neither of them has. Well, that was a nice set-up. Force onto the team, force her to be the project manager, force her to work with a bunch of people you know are impossible, and then when it goes much better, but not quite well enough for you, kick her out the door. Asshole. For one thing, I hate this firing, because I know how happy it makes Stacy. And at this point, everything that makes Stacy happy makes me unhappy. Because she is my sworn enemy. The women get up and leave. George does not look happy at all, you should note. Stacy and Maria head up to the suite, while Pamela gets in the elevator down to, hopefully, a life where she will not have to deal with women like that ever again. Back in the Boardroom, Carolyn assures Trump that it was the right choice. I find that kind of gross, because I feel like Carolyn should have more sympathy for Pamela, or something, and she obviously doesn't. If this is still about that kid in the first episode with the bad haircut, it's time to let it go. Anyway. Goodbye, Pamela. At least you don't have to manage these evil wretches anymore.
In her exit interview, Pamela talks about how she isn't really cut out for politics. She just planned on trying to do a good job. She talks about how much she did not enjoy the "heavy political mudslinging," and I can certainly understand that. Sigh. I will miss her. At least she wasn't an idiot.
week: Time to design women's clothing! Something makes Carolyn laugh very, very hard. No, harder than that. It also looks like Ivana and Maria get into a fight, and if that's true, I can only hope it means one of them will finally get her ass shown to the door. The only better outcome? Yeah, Stacy. Sworn. Enemy.