Previously on Operators Are Standing By, Holding Their Noses: The Apexiennes were getting their asses kicked, so Trump sent Pamela over on cleanup duty and forced her to be the PM. She successfully got the women working together competently, but when she overpriced a bunch of sponges, Trump decided that was more important than the weeks and weeks of screwing up of which some of her compatriots were guilty, and he sent her home. Can't have the tall, intimidating women using all that estrogen and trying to wear pants and own property and scaring the old boys right out of the club, can you? In other developments, Apex decided that it might be better if their QVC presentation didn't actually cause children to have nightmares about being chased by an enormous monster called The Blinker, so they relegated Maria to a less prominent on-camera role. Stacy made a ridiculous and hyperbolic Enron reference worthy of...well, Donald Trump, actually, while Kelly and Raj clashed over the price of a panini grill in a showdown that might have actually meant something had the men not squeaked out the win by ten dollars. Thirteen vainglorious suck-ups are left -- who will go home this week?
Credits. Nothing personal. Just business. It's just like when they hose the mud off of you at a day spa.
The moon shyly hides behind a skyscraper in this week's installment of Buildings Gettin' Busy With Other Buildings. A taxi decides at the last minute not to run over a lady pushing a shopping cart. Inside the suite, the Aspiring Corporate Weasel Death Watch is in full swing, and John is taking the opportunity to share his wisdom, which is that if the women at the final table gang up on Pamela, Trump will just think they're afraid of her. You know, like the men are. He adds that "Trump likes her a lot." Raj looks queasy, and then in an interview, he says that Trump has viewed Pamela as the strongest woman in the group, but the rest of the team has ganged up on her, and he personally believes she's the one who should go. Back at the Death Watch, Stacy and Maria bounce into the suite, and Stacy chirps, "What's for dinner?", all self-satisfied and smirky. What's sad is that you can tell she worked on that -- "What's for dinner?" -- for, like, ten minutes. Exactly how to say it, how surprised and thrilled everyone would be...she had mental rehearsals. You can tell. When she unveils Maria and the rest of the group realizes that Pamela was fired, there is lots of squeeing and excitement. As usual, however, none of this is positive energy -- nobody likes Maria or Stacy, either, they're just glad Pamela was fired. Wes and Andy share a particularly unbecoming low-five, which, together with Andy's early "hit her with a shovel" comment, just smacks of a couple of dickweeds who can't get the women who are smarter than they are -- and wouldn't even consider sleeping with them -- out of the game soon enough. "You did yourselves a favor; you did us a favor," Wes opines. And gee, Wes, thanks for that. "Ding dong, the ice queen is dead," Raj says. I find it uproariously funny, in a spit-on-the-floor-in-disgust kind of way, that in this particular suite, any woman could be criticized for being an "ice queen." Is that all there is, really? Just ice queen and drama queen? ["Grammar queen. Oh, wait, that's taken. BY ME. Shut up, Raj." -- Sars] Are there no other openings in the Great Women's Monarchy? Raj interviews about the "outburst of excitement" at Pamela's non-return, and he can just feel his penis growing in size the entire time.
I really can barely stand to recap Stacy's excited, self-congratulatory, obnoxious retelling of her "Enron" comment, but the one consolation is that this moment, more than any other, makes it entirely clear that she has absolutely no idea how hateful she is, how contemptible her behavior has been, or how badly she's going to come off. The smugness she is showing in this scene resonates nicely in light of how shocked she probably is right now to find herself so thoroughly reviled. Whatever she obviously was certain would seem adorable and feisty about her is, needless to say, not working. Ah, well, Stacy, enjoy your five minutes on the C-list before you're demoted to the F-list, where you will find such past luminaries as Heidi, Tammy, and Katrina. If you're lucky, six months from now, you'll show up on the Fug Blog at a Kate Spade purse showing, holding a martini glass and sporting an ill-advised pink outfit that makes you look like a walking Bonne Bell Lip Smacker.
Aaaanyway, after everyone gets through congratulating Stacy on her Enron comment (which she pretty much coerces them to do by telling it with such relish and satisfaction -- it's not like they can say, "Well, that sounds kind of ass, really, is that all you said?"), Kevin interviews that having Pamela leave caused the women's team to "gel." Which makes sense, because people this obnoxious and lacking in merit of their own aren't really capable of bonding over anything except the bad things that happen to others. Kevin says that obviously, the women pulling it together is bad for Mosaic, but he's not worried. "I don't think anybody on the guys' team is afraid of seeing the A-game from the women." I don't think the Miami Dolphins are afraid of seeing the A-game from the women. (And...have you seen the Miami Dolphins recently? Apex could beat them. At football.)
In the suite, Mosaic has a team meeting in which John talks about his plans to do a great job delegating, because as it turns out, John has been drawn by lot as their PM for the task. He interviews that you never know what to expect from the tasks, but he felt like he "had a lot of support." In the meeting, Raj says somberly, "When you're delegating tomorrow, give me something...good." There is some chuckling over this, and John tells us in an interview that he likes Raj. Going off to bed, Raj shakes John's hand and says, "Oh Captain, I will give you my allegiance tomorrow." As we sail away on, you know, the Dreadnaught. Raj is the kind of guy who will one day be beaten to a bloody pulp by a large man in a John Deere hat who yells, "How do ya like that, ya pipe-smokin' dipshit?" the entire time.
In one of the bedrooms, some of the women are sitting around and Elizabeth is wondering whether there's anything they should be talking about. Maria interviews smugly that "the team is burned out with Elizabeth wasting their time." Because, see, Maria doesn't just sit around wasting time. She actively detracts from the team's performance. Because, see, the enemy of productivity isn't counterproductivity -- it's being boring. Maria complains that Elizabeth has a need to "talk in concepts," and...is it not "talking in concepts" to talk about someone else needing to "talk in concepts"? Could you not be a little more concrete, there, Skinner? Anyway, her own dopey talk doesn't stop Maria from bitching about how the PM will have to "control Elizabeth." Have you noticed how this entire team, at any given moment, can tell you exactly whose fault all of its problems are? First, Stacie was the cause of all their problems. Then Jenn was the cause of all their problems. Then Pamela was the cause of all their problems. Now Elizabeth is the cause of all their problems. And somehow, the booting of the people who cause all their problems doesn't seem to make them any better. Moreover, Maria, who was so useless in the last task that she had to be demoted to silent mannequin with 15 minutes to air, talks airily about how they'll have to "nip [Elizabeth] in the bud" while still making her think that she's doing something of significance. Incidentally, Maria is wearing a very ugly tank top that looks like it's made from curtains. Ironic? Oh, yes. I think so.
Do you think little enough of the women yet? No? Well, let's return to the bedroom, where Maria is declaring how they'll be all about winning (after, you know, four consecutive losses), and Stacy says, "We're ready to be hard-core! I mean, we've been hard-core, but let's be harder-core!" Wow. If there is anything more hysterically demonstrative of a total lack of self-knowledge than a pre-attorney who looks like she's nine years old talking to a twitching buffoon in a camouflage tank top about how they're going to go and be "hard-core," I certainly have never seen it.
The moon hovers over Sixth Avenue, and then night turns to morning. And how do we greet the morning? With a shirtless Kevin stumbling out to answer the ringing phone. Score! Thanks, shirtless Kevin! And...nice, you know, hips. Rhona tells Kevin that Trump is "working" at Trump Model Management, and the teams should meet him there at 9:00 AM. Somehow, I suspect Trump logs a lot of hours at the model store. Undoubtedly, he has the yoogest models around.
In the kitchen, Maria makes a sad little pan of scrambled eggs while Chris, putting on his tie in the living room the way guys do when they think it's hot to watch them finish getting dressed, hypothesizes that perhaps the task will be greasing a bunch of models. Ew. That's not even cute. "Oh, shut up," Maria says with a little squint, trying to be all Flirtiest Girl in the Room. She haaaates when the boys are all crazy like that! We then move directly to Trump Model Management, where Trump (unsurprisingly) is personally taking an interest in reviewing some of the models at his disposal. Honestly, the jokes about Trump opening his own Wife Farm so that he won't have to go outside the corporate family in order to replace Melania when she gets saggy are so plentiful that I don't know where to begin, or even whether it's worth it. Probably not. The teams enter, and Trump makes an obvious "the men are excited about the models, heh heh" joke, which...hilarious. No, really. Hilarious. Trump welcomes them, and says that "New York City is the fashion capital of the world, by far." And, as you know by now, when Trump says "by far," that means, "kind of." (See: Milan. Paris. You know the drill.) He tells the teams that they are to produce a new clothing line to break into this $90 billion industry. (I have to say, I have a feeling that my inclination toward inexpensive sweaters means I am probably not doing my share.) They'll each choose one of a group of from "emerging" designers (read: "They designed who in the what now?"), and they'll use his models to show their clothes at the Avon Fall Fashion Show at the St. Regis Hotel. A bunch of high-end department store buyers will be there, and whichever team sells more of its stuff to the buyers will win. Trump reminds Chris of his exemption in the event his team loses, and reminds us once again that we will see the losing team in the Boardroom. Thus begins my weekly Boardroom Prayer: "Now I lay me down to sleep, please fire Stacy." (I find it's best to keep my prayers short.) ["And about the short. Yeah, I said it." -- Sars]
Maria interviews that she will be the PM for Apex, because she has a minor in home economics. I will freely admit I didn't even know you could get that anymore, and haven't ever even heard of studying home economics in college, except in one of the funniest Mystery Science Theater episodes of all time. ("It's a wonderful world when you're married, and you have a faaamilyyyy!") But that's what I get for going to a crunchy liberal arts school with an Experimental College program -- lots of people didn't know you could get college credit for studying the filmography of Winona Ryder, either, but that's only because they went to the wrong college. At any rate, Maria also claims that she's "made tailored suits." I don't know. I find Maria's taste in clothes to be a little sketchy, actually, so I'm not sure I find this all that compelling, but I won't argue. She certainly seems to wear clothes that are...carefully thought out, in the same way that poodle grooming is carefully thought out. I will leave the wisdom of both to the judgment of the ages. Elsewhere, Kevin admits that the men are a little out of their element with the women's fashion, but he's sure that if they put all their effort into it, they can do fine. It's all about the women sucking wind, you know. That's the most promising thing of all.
And now, the designer segments. The men meet with a red-haired woman in a flowery peasant top and a woman with short, stark, black hair in a flat bob. Wes says they were looking for a designer who wasn't "too out there" but was still "fresh." Someone tall, and yet short. Someone rich, and yet poor. Someone...well, you get the idea. They also meet with a woman in lacy purple sleeves who works with vintage denim, and then with a woman enamored of her own "edge" who goes by the name of Ilse. After Ilse makes the rather unpromising point that her stuff "almost looks like art, but it's not" (in fairness, I have seen many things actually labeled "art" that I would describe similarly), John tells us that he was the one who made the final call that they'd pick Ilse as their designer. The women chat with the short-bob lady, who tells them that her look is kind of "Audrey Hepburn," with the peasant-top lady, and then with a man who says that the trick is to be the low-end product in a high-end store. His name is Darren, and Maria likes him because he "knows the industry from A to Z." Which is 25 letters more than the women know, since they're pretty much limited to "U" for "Unprofessional."
Later, as the women discuss the designers, Maria brings up Darren, and Elizabeth raises the entirely fair point that she thinks they have to be careful about repeating the last task, where they picked the less expensive product and then tried to get the price up. Maria is hearing none of it. "Darren is the right choice," she says. "I just want to say it one last time, and it's over. We're done." Wow. She didn't like dictatorial leadership from Baldford or Pamela. How odd that she would immediately think that it was all right for her. It's just crazy how that works, isn't it? Ivana smirks. Elizabeth brings up the point that they really need to be aiming at the buyers, and not necessarily at "the masses." Again, Elizabeth is right, and again, Maria acts like she's patiently tolerating her. In fact, Maria interviews that Elizabeth was sent off with Jen M. to talk to the buyers, just to get her out of the way. Maria's lack of understanding of the importance of those meetings is unsurprising, but kind of hilariously telling. She really is a complete idiot. It may not hurt her this week, but this stuff is all backing up. Nobody in this game, ever, has been as lucky as Maria -- the week she completely booted the toothpaste task single-handedly, it turned out to be Gang Up On Stacie week; the week she screwed up as the presenter, it was Trump Hoses Pamela week...eventually, she's actually going to be held responsible for her behavior, and once that happens? Yeah. She won't be around a lot longer.
Anyway, Maria is so devoted to working super-hard that her first move as PM is to take girls she's friends with and the designer out to lunch so they can sit around eating and talking about clothes. Button noses to the grindstone, everybody! Ivana's wild contribution is that they could do pants -- and also crop pants! Wait a minute. Now, it's 2004, right? And Ivana's big idea is...crop pants? Whaaatever. ["Hey, I bet Stacy liked it. Yeah, I said it." -- Sars] Sandy contributes her big idea, which is that she thinks there should be a "sexy button-down." Well, they're practically designing the clothes themselves, so how great is that? Sandy then interviews that they "made it very clear" to their designer that they wanted clothes that they themselves would buy and wear. And at that moment, I actually said to my TV out loud, in the designer's voice, "So, you're saying...skanky, then?" Ivana claims in an interview that they "designed [their] entire collection" over lunch. Do you suppose she really thinks that saying "crop pants" is designing clothes? What a twit, seriously. The designer is designing the clothes, sweetheart. You're just standing around nodding. Not quite the same thing. I hate it when people do that -- act like they can waltz in and do, over lunch, what somebody else has studied for years. It's insulting, it's presumptuous, and it makes you flat-out dumb. She also congratulates Maria on "getting Elizabeth out of [their] hair." This little knot of bitches -- Maria, Ivana, Stacy, and Sandy -- is awfully full of itself for a group that has yet to chalk up a victory in its last four tries. I mean, what makes Ivana think Maria knows how to do anything? If Maria were so brilliant -- if any of them were -- would they have four consecutive losses? No. No, they would not. Anyway, they eat. Or pick at their food, or whatever.
We move over to Mosaic, which has split itself into two groups. Kevin, Wes, and Andy are off talking to buyers, while Raj, Kelly, Chris, and John are going with Ilse to the design school, where she's going to be doing the work on the clothes. There is a fairly painful sequence in which the guys, with no idea what they're talking about, try to communicate with Ilse about the clothes she proposes to design. It's like watching four guys try to speak Latin to a cat. Kelly says that he was frustrated by the way the other guys were "futzing around," so when Ilse left, he "sketched one out." And indeed, Kelly turns out to have some sketching abilities, and he roughs out a drawing of a three-quarter-length jacket with a slightly flared sleeve that...isn't entirely ugly, actually. The collar is a little too imposing, but other than that. "You put a nice hot model in that with no top, that looks great," John offers. Way to ruin the moment, tool. Chris marvels in an interview about Kelly's facility drawing clothing. "After today, I'm pretty surprised he's not wearin' pink camouflage underwears," Chris says. Yes, "underwears." And with that, he is officially Joe Junior from While You Were Sleeping, which is not a compliment. Anyway, when Ilse returns, even she seems to approve of Kelly's drawing, so...go, military guy with fashion flair. I guess that's what he does when everybody else is...standing in formation or something. Kelly's off drawing women's jackets. Pretty brave for a guy named "Kelly," but I guess that's why he chose a profession where he can carry grenades.
In the ongoing effort to spoil the endings every time, the Trump motto this week is "Know Your Market." Trump lectures to the camera about how whenever he builds anything, he knows what the market is. And what is the Trump market? The insanely rich. I mean, it looks that way, at least. I've never seen anything by Trump on sale at Sam's Club. We see him pimping his books, and he talks about pinpointing the market and whatever. And then we are with Jen M. and Elizabeth as they visit with buyers. One woman tells them that the "focus of the line" will be the selling point, more than colors or fabrics. Another guy tells them that themes would include quality and luxury. And, judging from the clothes both teams are going to produce, another theme would be "total impracticality in any actual work setting." Another one tells them that the line can't be priced in such a way that it's out of whack with the other stuff in the store. Jen says that while the buyer meetings were a bit rushed, the buyers gave a lot of useful information.
Whistling confrontation-in-a-broken-down-saloon music plays as Wes, Kevin, and Andy go to meet with the buyers. Kevin thinks the win will be about selling the line, so talking to the buyers will be an important step in the process. Furthermore, as Kevin says it, since these are the actual buyers they'll be dealing with, they're "trying to generate a little sympathy and set the bar low." In the meeting, one of the buyers wonders how guys in suits can be trying to do women's clothes anyway. Kevin tries for a suave, purring, "we know what we like" answer, but the guy comes back with, "I'm just trying to think of all the very successful straight male fashion designers." Heh. Uh, it's a fair point. The guys look unhappy. So do the world's few straight male fashion designers, who are all, "Oh, marginalized again."
John, Raj, Kelly, and Chris go to the fabric store with Ilse to make some choices. Raj shows Ilse a filmy fabric that's pink with giant raspberry dots. "Too...fluffy? Too...goofy?" he asks. "Goofy. That was the word I was thinking of," Ilse answers. Off to one side, Carolyn chuckles. Raj shows Ilse another fabric, which she rejects. As the guys walk around with bolts of fabric, Carolyn gets a nasty case of the giggles. Raj holds up another light fabric with some purple and gray in it. "Too light," Ilse declares, and Raj stands with a befuddled expression on his face and says, "Okay." Carolyn's giggles take hold, so she's not getting out of it now. She interviews that "the men are clearly out of their element; they have no idea what they're doing." You can see she's still getting over having laughed so hard she had tears running down her face as she points out that Kelly has again become the one with the organizing skills and is pulling them together. Kelly himself interviews that this entire trip is totally disorganized, and that John isn't able to concentrate on one thing. He congratulates himself on "doing the project manager's work." As the guys are leaving, Kelly says, "Let's go, ladies." There's really no situation in which I approve of a guy calling other guys "ladies," because it's never meant as a compliment, you know? So...shut up, Kelly. And...have I mentioned your name is "Kelly," and you might want to back off with that anyway?
That segment contrasts with a segment full of upbeat music in which the women run happily into the fabric store and dive in with great enthusiasm. You are meant to conclude they know all about fabrics, when in fact I think they mostly have a much, much more cooperative and friendly designer. Late in the game, as they're finishing up, Elizabeth and Jen return with the information from the buyer meetings. Elizabeth wonders whether one of the fabrics they've picked out is "rich enough material." Ivana snoterviews about how "every complication is definitely the kiss of death," and they're all Elizabeth's fault. Every one! Without Elizabeth, the team would be sooooo good! Elizabeth asks the women what the centerpiece of the line is, and Ivana tells her it's the "capelet." An item of clothing so stupid that MS Word doesn't even have it in the dictionary. And I'm not adding it. Elizabeth has some concern over the fact that you don't normally go to an expensive designer for a capelet, and I could not agree more. Ivana, in her interview: "It was just frustrating the hell out of me, because it was just like, 'You are creating noise, and...we don't need it!'" Ivana badly needs to graduate from her internal production of Bring It On, in which she is both the Courtney and the Whitney. Back in the fabric store, Ivana lectures Elizabeth about how the capelet is the signature item, so she should shut up. "I don't mean to be a bitch, but this is what we're going with," she declares -- completely being a bitch, as so many people are right after they say they don't mean to be a bitch -- and she immediately takes a little sip of her coffee. I'm not surprised that she's one of those latte-toting people who loves to punctuate everything with a slug off of her little paper cup. She really is detestable. Almost as much as Stacy, though in a totally different way. Speaking of Stacy, you'll be shocked to see that she's not doing jack shit on this task, any more than she has done jack shit in any other task. Hmm. What do you know? Still managing to dodge responsibility at every turn.
The women head back to the design school and meet with the seamstresses. Sandy gives a snippy little interview about how they asked whether it was necessary to bring the models over, and he told them it wasn't, because they had measurements for them. This is a set-up segment, in case you aren't way ahead of them. Which you should be.
The men finally return with their fabrics to get the clothing going, and then they sit around perusing the models and picking which ones they want. John interviews that they then made the decision to bring the models in to get some measurements, and thus begins your obligatory heh-heh segment about how the guys horndog it all over the models, blah dee blah. John compares it to a beehive, in that all the men were buzzing around the girls. Raj claims that Andy giggled the entire time the women were there, and that he can't remember what he said, because he was "in some sort of chemical haze." Chemical haze? Surely there was a better line there, no? What we do see is Raj speaking German to one of the models, who is speaking German back. Big show-off. At this point in the game, the models seem to be amused by Raj, although Ilse? Not so much. In fact, I would describe her as visibly irritated, which is not what you're going for in a creative type who already looks like she spends a certain amount of time thinking about all the way she could kill someone and make it look like an accident. As the models finally leave, Chris (I believe) chastises the rest of the guys for having "no game." I'll say. Although I'm not sure any level of "game" would have helped, you know, Andy.
In the morning, we find the Apexiennes returning to the design school to admire the fashions they had almost nothing to do with designing. Maria, incidentally, is wearing that striped leather jacket that I know is officially so, so cool, but that I, unsophisticated person that I am, find so, so ugly. Some of the boys in my seventh-grade class had the down jacket version of that in about 1984. I didn't like it then, either. Maria interviews proudly about how "rewarding" it was to see "their designs" created and on the mannequins. Yeah. Because they were like, "Can we do crop pants?" So the clothes are from their designs. Rewarding! She babbles that she can't say anything right now except "fabulous" and "love it, love it, love it." She thinks this is really cute. They all try the clothes on and giggle about how fabulous they are, and eeeeee! Yuck. In other interesting news, their designer wrote up the promotional materials for them, so they didn't even have to do that relatively minor task. Basically, their designer -- quite wisely -- made sure that these dimwits had practically nothing to do with the presentation of this line of clothes. Maria interviews that she knows the buyers will love their line, but she's "not guaranteeing victory," because she doesn't know what Mosaic will do.
Well, first, Mosaic will arrive at the design school to find that Ilse is nowhere near finished with their clothes. John comments that there was a lot still to do when they got there, and not a lot of time to do it. Raj is put to work on the same promo stuff that Apex's designer did for them, which seems quite unfair to me. They ought to be told exactly what's the designer's responsibility and exactly what's theirs, because it's not cool to have one designer do all the work while the other designer does just the clothes, it seems to me. Raj tries to ask Ilse questions that will help him describe the clothes on the "line sheets," but she's in too much of a hurry and keeps blowing him off. Kelly complains that Raj "doesn't shut up," and kept asking her stuff. She complains about the stupidity of the questions, but what I don't understand is that if she's told them all this stuff, as she implies, why didn't any of the other guys step in and give the information to Raj? It feels to me more like she didn't, in fact, explain it, and the guys expected Raj to just make up the line sheets, which I don't think he can really be expected to do. Furthermore, I like Kelly, but he needs to stop standing around making faces at how much everyone else sucks, because that will get old very quickly. And as he explains how he stepped in to lecture Raj about how the information he wanted was "information [he didn't] need," I really wish Raj had just said, "Then you should do the line sheets," because I think Raj is right that if you don't know what the clothes even are, you can't really write up anything to describe them. In an interview, Kevin blames John for not stepping in with the Raj situation and leaving Kelly to do it instead.
With a few hours to showtime, Maria takes the most favored Apexiennes with her to the St. Regis, leaving Stacy and Elizabeth to do the actual work of creating the sheets with the swatches on them. Elizabeth interviews that, obviously, she would have rather been at the hotel, but she recognizes that she's "not the favorite of the group," so she knows realistically that she's "not in with a lot of them the way a lot of them are in with each other." I, personally, think this speaks highly of her, and she should be grateful.
John announces that he's going with Raj and Chris to the hotel to "get these models dressed," and he's leaving Kevin and Wes to do pricing and Andy doing the line sheets. And Kelly...blustering, I guess. And probably saying "ladies" a lot. Kevin interviews that he's not sure John, the PM, should have bailed out early, leaving the rest of them to deal with pricing. "I think that John should have had more control over the things that were most important, like pricing," he says. "A leader stays where he's most needed." Yes. I hear that is a major element of leadership. That and "a leader never goes anywhere without a hard, oval protrusion under his suit between his shoulder blades." You haven't heard that one? Huh. Anyway, Wes explains that Ilse went through and gave them what he characterizes as "minimum" appropriate prices for the items they were selling. The guys all stand around and look at the prices, and they decide to hike the prices substantially from what Ilse suggested. And interestingly, while Wes and Kevin may have been primarily in charge of price, Kelly is clearly in on this conversation, too. Finally, when they're done with that, they all head out for the show.
At the St. Regis, models receive makeup. Chris, wearing sunglasses inside (ugh), explains that they're in the "pimp daddy suite," watching the models get ready. Did I already say "ugh"? Because...ugh. Raj is putting on his bow tie, talking to his German friend again, but in English this time. He asks her if she likes bow ties, and she claims that she does. She mentions that you don't see them too often anymore. She obviously doesn't watch Tucker Carlson -- who, speaking of pimp daddies, kind of has a new one as of last Friday, no? Who knew Jon Stewart even wanted that job? Who knew anyone did? Just then, the other four guys show up. John says that he was nervous, but the clothes were finished and looked great. They all throw fists in the center of the group, blah dee blah.
Everyone files in for the show. Raj says that it was an exciting deal, because he's never been part of a fashion event before. Except, of course, dressing himself. Which is a fashion event every time. Unsurprisingly, Trump has made time to be present at the show as well. Everyone leans forward anxiously, and the women's fashions are the first out onto the runway. The first must be Ivana's famous crop pants, which are presented in a kind of blue-green tweed, with a little shirt and the damn "capelet." And see, I think crop pants with a capelet looks stupid. Crop pants look like summer; a capelet looks like it's cold outside. Furthermore, I'm not so hot on crop pants with (or in) tweed anyway. The outfit I absolutely detest, because while it has a perfectly nice (though perfectly ordinary) fitted black zippered jacket and black skirt, it has a completely unnecessary and dumb-looking gold point on the front, aiming at the crotch. She looks like she left her napkin on her lap when she got up from the table at Benihana. That's just dumb. I'm not at all impressed with the bit, which is a red satin camisole and brown tweed pants. Not really sure where you'd wear that combination, unless your top half was lounging about the boudoir while your bottom half went to apply for a bank loan. And then there's a very unremarkable gold dress, and apparently, there's also a sort of berry-colored dress with a fur-lined wrap thing. Dumb. Kelly says that when they saw the women's line, they were hopeful that they could beat them. I would have been, too.
And now for the men's stuff. The first model has a huge brown scarf trailing all over the place that looks totally ass, but other than that, it's not a terrible outfit. Nothing I'd pay outrageous money for, but not as bad as much of "high fashion," as far as I'm concerned. Of course, Ivana interviews that her first reaction was, "Who raided my father's attic and who cut up my sofa?" What? For the first outfit? Is she blind? It's a silk top and a tweed skirt, moron. You had quite a bit of tweed yourself, there, you know. Anyway, the second outfit is by far the ugliest -- it's knickers (ugh) and a dark belt/cummerbund/something (ugh) and a floral silky top (ugh). I think Ilse was drunk during that part, because of all of the outfits in both lines, that is, by leaps and bounds, the most horrifying. The third outfit, oddly, consists entirely of items I think are fine, but none of them should be on the same person. The pink capelet is the cutest of the many capelets being shown, the green shirt looks relatively normal, and the red pants are okay, or would be okay with the right top. I would wear any of those items (well, if they fit me, which they wouldn't). up is a pair of tan pants (I believe) and an odd plaid shirt, which announcer Isaac Miz-a-ha-ree calls a "blouson," and...okay. Ugly, but not remarkably so. The outfit is the only one in both lines that made me think, "Okay, that is nice." It's a red wrap top and a gold skirt, and that, I think, is lovely. Or I thought it was until I learned that it has a drawstring hem. Ew. Drawstrings are almost always dorky. They're for bags that hold all your precious 20-sided dice, not for clothing. I still like the top, though. And then again, with the final outfit, the shiny mermaid skirt, while impractical, isn't necessarily ugly in and of itself, but...with a wool plaid vest? What? Interestingly, it appears that Kelly's jacket that he sketched never made it into the collection. One of the buyers, as the men's collection is reviewed, points and enthusiastically says, "That's great!" about, it appears, the first outfit. That would be the one that Ivana said came from her father's attic. She is so knowledgeable about fashion! That's why she did all the designing herself, you know.
As the men's show ends, Jen leans over and says to the guys, "Those are so couture!" They're like, "Uh, huh?" "High fashion," Jen says pleasantly. She is so obviously the least objectionable of the women, it's not even funny. I'm sure she's riddled with flaws, but at least I am not constantly overwhelmed by the urge to punch her in the jaw. Raj interviews that he doesn't feel like the men were the underdogs in the task, and we watch the buyers put their heads together over the tricky buying decisions.
Later, the teams gather to hear the results of the task. Trump, George, and Carolyn enter. Trump congratulates them, and says everyone seems to have had fun. Carolyn is asked how the men did, and she reports that they sold $7,735 in clothes. Asked how the women did, George reports that they "more than tripled" what the men sold, and made $22,060, which...is not "more than tripled," but it's still a lot more. We forgive you, George. These people would make me tired and number-impaired, too. Anyway, the women squeal and jump up and down. No, literally squeal, and literally jump up and down. Maria is in blissful tears (UGH!) as Trump tells her that she'll be exempt if they lose week. NO! NO, NO, NO! Damn. This is so...unsatisfying. God. Trump announces right here at the task that he thinks the men's prices were all wrong. He tells the women that they're going to a party at the Hugo Boss store. Oh, whatever. Trump reminds Chris that he'll be exempt in the Boardroom.
Back at the suite, John tells us that he's "crushed." He feels "miserable." John gives Raj his opinion that Kevin and Wes are responsible for pricing. John doesn't know who he should bring. Raj agrees that perhaps, bringing both is the thing to do. "You need to build your case on the pricing issue," he offers. John says that Raj backed him up, and when Chris came out and joined the conversation, he agreed as well. John asks a new question: "Chris, overall, irrespective of this task, who do you think deserves to go home the most?" "I would have to say..." Chris hesitates. "Andy," Raj puts in. Chris agrees that it might be Andy. John says he thinks he's not in much danger, because he doesn't think he did anything wrong. Raj looks over at the Hugo Boss party -- which is door, so they can see in the windows -- and says that "it looks a little boring." Which, actually, I agree with.
There is a cut here that's supposed to be ironic, about how non-boring the party is, but you know what? I think it looks deadly boring. I mean, yes, there are famous people, I guess, and bouncy music, and people from Cirque Du Soleil, and that's fine, but really, the women are just milling around. What are they doing? Not a hell of a lot. Ivana says that the reward wasn't really the party, it was not having to go to the Boardroom. Oh, I'm sorry -- "face another Boardroom experience." Lord knows Ivana can never just speak when she can blather instead. And it's a good thing she felt rewarded by something other than the party, because I'm telling you, the party blows.
John now has a powwow with Kelly on the balcony about Wes and Kevin being equally responsible for price. Kelly isn't so sure Wes and Kevin are the way to go. He warns John that taking two strong players into the Boardroom is a great way to get yourself booted, particularly since they'll gang up on him. John has a new plan -- he tells Kelly, "Andy didn't screw up, but he didn't do shit either." He asks Kelly who Kelly would say should be fired overall if he were asked, and Kelly says Andy. Or he agrees to say Andy, or whatever. And he insists he could justify it either based on all the tasks, or on this task, where Andy "didn't do anything."
The elevator doors open, and the men head for the Boardroom. Trump enters. "So men, after four victories in a row, you finally lost. What happened?" Rather than saying what happened, John answers a totally different question by talking about how very "devastated" they are by the defeat. Looking paler and more panicked by the minute, he says he thought they were underdogs, but he resolved to "work [his] butt off" and do whatever he could to snag the win. It's amazing how some people who seem normal in other circumstances completely look like weasels in this situation. John writes the entire loss off to having "priced [them]selves out of the market." Wes looks down at the table. Trump asks who set the prices. Kevin says that it was him and Wes. He says that they went out and talked to the buyers and tried to get the best feel that they could for where the market was. Kevin points out that John probably doesn't even know anything about how they set the prices in the first place. John insists that he responsibly delegated it to Wes and Kevin, and Trump asks him whether total delegation of something like pricing was a good idea to begin with. John argues that pricing should have been very easy, because the designer knew what everything should cost.
Kevin counters that he thinks they blew the task when they picked Ilse, which was John's decision. Kevin says that Ilse uses more expensive materials, so they were at a disadvantage from the beginning. He doesn't even mention that she thinks knickers are still a viable option, which I totally would have. I would have said, "And, I mean...did you see the clothes? John picked her, and she made knickers." And then I would say something like, "I think I've made my point," and stop talking. Anyway, Trump asks whether Kevin thinks John should be fired, and Kevin says yes.
Raj asks to speak in defense of John, but Trump cuts him off. "What do you know? You just wanted the models." At first, this is lighthearted, but Carolyn and Trump make clear that Raj drove both Ilse and the models kind of nuts, and they're clearly not happy about it. Asked whom he would fire, Raj is the first to bring up Andy. He says that Andy hasn't been able to gain the team's respect, and admits that it's in part because Andy is young. As to the particular task, Raj blames Kevin, for what happened with the pricing. (And not Wes because...?) George challenges Raj on why he's blaming Kevin if he just said he'd fire Andy. Raj makes the fair point that who screwed up this task the worst might be a different matter from who overall deserves to be fired the most. Trump turns to Andy, who says he'd fire John, for having "led [the team] in the wrong direction." He then asks Kelly whom he would fire, and Kelly again fingers Andy, saying he "needs the most attention and oversight." Andy counters that if he requires so much babysitting, he doesn't understand why he was the one handling the line sheets on his own. John is, you can tell, trying to set Andy up in a Stacie J. kind of situation as he says, "Because that was the most non-intellectual, labor-intensive job, because no one would trust you to do anything where you --" "That's not true at all," says Kevin, quite annoyed with John for trying to shift the blame off of himself by making it seem like the entire team sees Andy as a screw-up. Trump asks the exempt Chris what he thinks. He says that even though John worked very hard on the task, he'd fire John, because there just were too many problems. John looks surprised by this.
Trump now offers John his shot to bring either two or three people to the Boardroom with him. For the first time, I can see a reason for bringing three, in order to bring both Wes and Kevin if he also still wants to pursue the Andy issue, but John sticks with two. Trump doesn't understand why nobody takes him up on the offer to take three, but anyway, John just wants two -- Kevin and Andy. Kelly, Chris, Raj, and Wes are sent up, and John, Andy, and Kevin wait in the lounge.
Trump asks George and Carolyn for thoughts. George speaks favorably about Andy, saying that he thinks there's "raw material" there that might make Andy exceptional one day. Carolyn says that while she likes John and thinks he worked hard, he made a lot of mistakes. Trump brings the guys back in. And you should get ready, because it's going to move pretty fast. When they're seated, Trump says, "So, Andy, you don't think you should be here right now." "I do not, sir," Andy says straightforwardly. "You sort of don't know what you did wrong," Trump feeds him. "I really don't," Andy says, hitting the softball nicely back to the pitcher. John tries to defend the decision to bring Andy. "Andy never takes a leadership role in anything we do, and that happens week after week after week, and there is kind of an unwritten consensus on the team that he is unable to step up when things count." "That's not true," Kevin says flatly. I have to say, I admired the hell out of the way Kevin conducted himself in this meeting, because I have come to love the willingness to call people out on their bullshit almost above all else there is to admire.
Trump tells Kevin that he does understand why he's there; he worked on pricing. Kevin says he worked on it with Wes, and makes it clear that he's not sure why he's there and Wes isn't. George and Trump both ask why Wes isn't there, and John offers no particularly convincing answer, and by "no particularly convincing answer," I mean "no answer." Ultimately, John owns that he probably did make a mistake, and Wes should probably be there. And then, John goes into a really dopey thing where he says that "with Carolyn as [his] witness and with George as [his] witness," he can prove that he worked really hard. Trump's like, "Aren't I your witness?", which is stupid, because obviously, John's point is that Trump isn't there for the tasks the way the other people are. He says that he hopes that his reputation in past tasks will help carry him through. Not. He goes for a really weaselly, really phony apologetic routine where he's like, "Oh, woe is me, I suck, my team lost, I feel so guilty," and it's just such total horseshit I cannot even tell you. He's decided that falling on his sword is the way to save his ass, and it's just unseemly. If you're going to eat the blame, you eat the blame calmly and you hold your breath and hope for the best. It's how Kwame did it, the best way it's ever been done. Not like this. Begging never, never works.
When the begging is over, Trump turns to Andy. "You shouldn't be in this room," he says. He goes on to tell John that he made some bad choices as the PM. And then, the horrible voicing over commences. For some reason, either because Trump made no sense, or because Trump talked about something copyrighted, or some dumb-ass thing like that, they can't use Trump's real comments, so this is all voice-over work, and it's just atrocious. I mean, you can never really match voices, but Trump is also horrible at trying to sound spontaneous, so he always sounds like he's reading lines when he does this. He "says" that Kevin overpriced the designs, but he can't fire him, largely because John was even dumber by not bringing Wes. Furthermore, John didn't take a hand in pricing, which he should have. "As the project manager, that's just inexcusable," he "says." We come back to real live Trump just to hear him say, "John, you're fired." John leans back and exhales. "Too many bad decisions," Trump adds, in case he doesn't get it. The guys get up and leave. Andy and Kevin head up; John heads down.
When the guys are gone, Trump tells Carolyn and George that he thinks it was a hard choice, because he thinks John has a lot of talent, but...again with the too many bad decisions. And I think that at this point, I definitely get it.
John gets into his cab. Goodbye, John. You were not bright, but you were pretty.
In his exit interview, John chalks his ouster up to "unfortunate circumstances." He insists that anyway, nobody else could have done any better. Way to get the point, there, kid.
week: Team shuffle! Unexpected returns to the Boardroom! Something with dogs! And, deliciously, Donald Trump hates "people that [sic] exaggerate."