Previously on Pop Fizzle: Well, first, Dr. Atkins was born. Okay, that's going back too far. More recently, Pepsi was introducing Pepsi Edge, and had decided that the best way to promote it would be a stunt bottle designed by amateurs. Kelly and his team came up with a bottle with a hole in it, while Andy and his team came up with something that looked like it was invented to demonstrate the word "bloat." Kelly won and yelled, "Check the box!", which caused him to lose any hope of ever being cool, ever again, in his entire life. In the Boardroom, Sandy and Jen were all, "YIPYIPYIPYIPYIP!," and Andy was all, "But -- but -- but -- but --," and they were all, "YIPYIPYIPYIPYIP!", and he was all, "Muh -- fuh -- buh -- ", and then Trump noticed that Andy was having his ass verbally kicked by a couple of girls and fired his ass. Because what kind of a Trump viceroy-in-training can't stick up for himself? Also, this way, Trump gets to keep the girls. What's not to like about that solution? We are down to the final five. Who will be fired tonight, and will it be for partial nudity?
Credits. I like how Chris's face is shown over the words "out of their minds."
The moon. The skyline porn. Manhole, hee hee. We slide up to the ACWDW, where Kevin is asking Kelly what he's guessing as far as who's coming back. Kelly talks about how irritating Jen is, and Kevin puts in that she doesn't contribute much to a team. He generously allows that it isn't quite that she contributes nothing, it's just that it isn't much. Kelly muses about which two of the Mosaicians will come back, and Kevin interviews that he thinks Jen has little chance of actually winning, because "the powers that be are on to her and realize that she's not bringing as much to the table as everybody else is." Kevin is the King of Wishful Thinking. Kelly, Kevin, and Ivana share a toast with some red wine, the better to forget that their fates lie in the hands of a man who has hair like a ventriloquist's dummy. The door opens, and Sandy and Jen return. Ivana passes the news via whisper to Kelly, and Kelly passes it to Kevin. Apex pretends to be happy about the returning pair (or pairs, I guess), but they're not. Kevin asks if the Boardroom was "crazy," and Jen says, all smug and secretive, "You know. This and that." It won't help Jen's image to admit that Andy got fired because she and Sandy were screeching at each other and Trump couldn't believe Andy didn't get them to stop, after all. Ivana asks whether Andy was fired because the suck bottle was his idea, and Jen responds condescendingly that she just thinks the other team should understand that she wouldn't want to talk about it. This is despite the fact that it's been talked about every other week thus far, and Jen herself has crowed and gloated over things that have happened in the Boardroom repeatedly when it benefited her. This sudden routine, like What Happens In The Boardroom Stays In The Boardroom, You Classless Buffoons, is...a load of hooey.
Sandy interviews that it was "the most intense Boardroom" that she's experienced. She says that she felt vulnerable, and felt forced to "defend [her]self to the fullest." Thus all the hollering. Sandy asks Jen whether she expected to be coming back with Andy, and Jen says no, she's been in the Boardroom enough to know that "anything can happen." Which isn't true, because Jen clearly considers herself completely immune to firing and believes she has the system knocked, but whatever. Sandy decides to buy into Jen's "I'm just keeping it real" line, explaining in an interview that Jen "isn't into buttering people up." As reported by Sandy, Jen feels that she shouldn't have to "hand out candy to win a popularity contest." Which is interesting, because I don't recall seeing anyone hand out candy, but I do recall seeing some people do some damn work, have an original thought from time to time, not take credit for other people's ideas, and not lie about other people's work. I've seen those relatively simple steps go a long way toward improving a person's professional reputation. I think Jen, like a lot of people who aren't very nice and also aren't good to work with, confuses the fact that people don't like her with the fact that they also don't respect her. It's okay if the people you work with aren't your friends; it's true that you're not obligated to mold your personality to suit everyone. But people thinking you're going to lie to the boss that they sat on their asses during a task is not good, and it has nothing to do with failing to hand out adequate candy. Anyway, Jen and Sandy talk more in the suite, and they agree that it will be great to have the team made up of just the two of them, without being held back by all the bad people. It's just comical, this entire thing, the way the people this year have all told themselves that their failures are the result of other people being bad, and if everybody else would just get out of the way, they would be so awesome. I think a lot of people in business believe that -- "I would be an awesome manager if it weren't for all these other people." At any rate, Jen has another thought: "I think Mr. Trump wants to see the two of us together," she says with a grin. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but I suspect it's true in a few ways.
The morning, for some reason, we drift down a chandelier to the Rhonaphone, which is answered, again, by Kelly. He's informed that the team should meet Trump at 8:30 in the "residential lobby" of Trump International Hotel and Tower, near the Trump Water Fountain, between the Trump Plants, over by the Trump Elevator, three doors down from the Trump Men's Room. We have the sublime pleasure of watching Sandy apply eyeliner and Kelly brush his teeth. Jen puts on makeup, Kevin gets dressed, and Kelly ties his shoes. I don't know about you, but I've got a bad case of Personal Grooming Fever -- Catch It!
We move over to the hotel, where pink-tied Trump is asking Tom the Hotel Guy how things are going for him. Tom the Hotel Guy is proud to report that Trump International is "the most successful hotel in New York City." They can say things like that, because asterisks are silent. Trump proclaims himself "happy." Outside, the candidates approach. When they get inside, Trump sends them in to wait in a little seating area. Apparently, he's not done powwowing with Tom the Hotel Guy, and he can barely be bothered with his stupid TV suck-ups right now. But when he gets done with Tom, he finally finds a few minutes to come and talk to them. Trump tells them that they're in his great hotel, which is "the hottest hotel in the city" (no air conditioning -- rimshot!). Anyway, he gives a speech about how he likes to create things that are of the highest quality, which brings us, through the awkward segue logic that only writers of patter can appreciate, to candy. You see the connection, right? Hotels...candy. Hotels...candy. Anyway, Trump mentions his own sweet tooth, and then says that they'll be working with M&M Mars, which does five billion blah blah blah chocolate pimples orgasm yippety-do. Trump says that the candidates will be creating a new bar, called the M-Azing Bar. He doesn't really mean "creating," except in the sense that tomorrow morning I will "create" a new bowl of cereal, but there's no time to get tied up in details. The teams will each set up their own assembly line, and they'll make bars that will be inspected for quality. The ones that pass inspection, they'll sell themselves, and whoever makes the most profit selling their bars will win. The other team will be in the Boardroom, and somebody will be fired -- but not Kelly, because he's exempt as a result of "CHECK THE BOX!" and its overpowering star quality. Ivana is going to be the Apex PM. Who's going to be the Mosaic PM? Well, Jen and Sandy haven't decided yet, but it appears that this is the part where they have to. There is hemming and hawing, and what do you know? It's not Jen. Funny how that keeps happening. And...just take a moment to observe this tableau. When the season started, who would have dreamed that in the very last team task, the two PMs would be Sandy and Ivana? Can you imagine how the other bootees feel? It's like losing in the early rounds of a chess tournament that's eventually won by Jessica Simpson.
Trump also explains that this is the last week in which there are teams, and everybody will be working individually after this point. One of the things that means is that there are no exemptions beyond this point, so this week's winning PM gets nada. Trump bids the teams adieu, and regal music escorts him out.
Trump's black-and-white motto of the week is "Know Your Enemy." It's a shame he doesn't footnote his ex-wives' divorce attorneys for that one, as he probably should. In his limo, Trump is (supposedly) talking to someone on the Disconnected Handset-O-Phone about a particular highly important negotiation of some kind. In the red tie interview whence cometh all of these speeches, Trump tells us that underestimating your opponent is "the worst thing you can do." Besides marrying ugly chicks and building casinos. He says that you should always assume your opponent is really smart. Of course, with most of the candidates this season, this would turn out to be grossly untrue, but it's not like you can tell that in advance. Well, you can, but...wait, I'm sure I had a point. I'll find it somewhere. Anyway, Trump instructs the guy on the phone to "be a hard-ass," and we're mercifully done with that. Every time I hear Trump say the word "ass," some part of me shrivels up like a dried seed pod.
Apex, all casual in its working clothes, shows up at M&M Mars. Kelly recaps the task, sounding surprisingly disgusted and bored by it. It's chocolate, dude; don't be morose. Kevin gets Kelly a pair of candymaking coveralls in the right size, and Kelly reminds us in an interview that they had a fairly limited time at the production facility to actually produce the bars. The members of Apex meet up with some of the M&M staff, as Kevin interviews that he thinks they all expected to see something out of Willy Wonka with the chocolate river and the Oompa-Loompas and so forth. It was not to be. Kevin explains that there were several steps to making the bars, as we see the steps demonstrated for his team. You temper the chocolate, then you put it in molds. Then the molds get vibrated, then you drop the crispy M&Ms on the bars, add another layer of chocolate, and put it back into the coolers. As they work on candy, Kevin calls out to Kelly, "I feel like Lucille Ball." "Only darker," Kelly says back. "Little darker," Kevin chuckles. "Bigger," Kelly adds. "Less feminine," Kevin counters. Heh. Oh, whatever, Kevin didn't look like he cared.
Kevin notices an inefficiency in the way they're doing production, so he goes and talks to the production folks and, with Ivana there and everybody standing around, he asks if a suggestion he has makes sense to everyone. Ivana now offers a prickly interview in which she says that it's nice that Kevin tries to fix problems that he sees, but sometimes he doesn't get her approval. Good grief. Okay, with some things, yes, you should talk to the PM. But just to streamline the way you're doing the candy bars? No. Not every nitpicky thing needs to be approved. I don't think project managers are covered by the divine right of kings.
We look on Mosaic, where there is already honking in the background, so apparently, we are to suspect them of ineptitude already. Sandy explains that her relationship with Jen is strictly business. "How can you get personal with Jen?" she says. "I don't think that's even an option. She's like a mannequin. She's just, you know, she's plastic." And Sandy works in a bridal shop -- she knows from mannequins and plastic people, although Jen is a little tall to put on top of a cake. Meanwhile, Carolyn catches up with one of the plant guys and says, "I think they've been working on this for...what, two and a half hours? And you're saying they have about ten bars." The guy agrees. "That's not so good, is it?" she asks. "No," he responds dryly. Now what's suspicious about that, to me, is that the dossier says they only had a four-hour shift to make the bars. I don't know how much "help" they were allowed to get when they got off to a horrible start, but it occurs to me that nobody wanted to see Jen and Sandy wind up with only a handful of bars, which would basically kill the selling part of the task. So what do you do? Well, you offer them some kind of assistance from all the production people standing around. Or at least it seems like maybe you do, because somehow, they made ten bars in the first two and a half hours, and then they made 280 bars in the hour and a half. Of course, it's possible that they could have suddenly caught on. But...is that the most likely explanation? I'm not sure. Carolyn peeks back into the room.
And there in the room, Sandy and Jen are bickering while a tray of chocolate bars simply falls off the end of the conveyor belt and is ruined. Carolyn continues to watch. Sandy then slips and falls on some chocolate that's on the floor. As Carolyn looks in, another tray comes to the end of the belt, slides off, and hits the floor. She explains in an interview how she watched as these two trays were just sacrificed to the trash bin. "Genius," she says sarcastically. And correctly. And then Sandy examines a tray of seven finished bars, finding that only one of them is usable. Sandy emphasizes that she'd rather take her time and make good chocolate bars, because there's no point in making ones that won't pass inspection. "I can't believe how much care goes into each one of these," Jen gushes to a lady working with her. "I'll never take it for granted again!" But I suspect she will. The Mosaic bars are taken to be inspected. The guys don't seem impressed by the volume, but they do say that the quality is okay. Except for the ones with...fingerprints, which they snap in half. Sandy interviews that seeing some of the bars broken on account of flaws totally broke her heart. They wind up with 290 bars that pass inspection (or so goes the claim, even though there are only 180 marks shown on the sheet, but there could be more, or another page, or whatever).
We now head over to Apex, where they go through much of the same rigmarole, and learn that they have 323 good bars. So, a little bit more than 10 percent more than Apex, following whatever miracle caused Apex's bar-per-minute output to improve by a factor of 50 from their first 150 minutes to their last 90 minutes.
The morning, muted horns play all porny-like as Jen and Sandy prepare to go out and sell their bars. They've got an "M&M Sisters" gimmick worked up, which isn't too bad. They're in denim skirts and red strappy tops and sandals. "We've got to make our hair look the same," Jen is saying. The two of them leave the suite, and they look good. They look fun and cute, and not trashy. They're showing a little cleavage, but nothing you couldn't see in a regular button-down shirt. They're not making a particularly great impression in the van when Sandy self-satisfiedly says, "Buy some candy from the eye candy." Because there's really no need to be quite that impressed with yourself. Calling yourself eye candy is generally a bad idea, especially since aside from the hair and the bod, Sandy is not particularly attractive, in my opinion. And when the driver tries to (it seems to me) joke with them by saying, "Hey, I can be the candy man," they get all grossed out and "whatever," which...is fine, but if you're going to talk about yourself like that, he's not exactly choosing an off-the-wall way to kid around with you. But they stress that they want the win very much. "We're willing to do just about anything...within reason," they say.
Apex. Kelly is yelling to the crowd about the great chocolate bars with M&Ms in them, blah dee blah. They've got the bars priced at one for $2, or two for $3. In other words, they're using normal-level inflated pricing. But when Kevin has a lady almost walk away from him, he offers her a bar for a dollar, and she takes him up on it. Ivana overhears this and looks displeased. She interviews that in fact, Kevin told her, after he had trouble selling the bars early, that he was going to just sell them for whatever price he thought he could get. On the one hand, I agree with her that he should have asked her about something like that before he did it. But on the other hand, it isn't clear why she didn't tell him she was the PM, and she had set the price, and if he didn't like it, he could choose to quit the task, but not to change the price. If you're going to be all Project Manager Cranky-Ass about it, then when he tells you what he's doing, you have to be willing to say no. What good is a manager who just lets you do whatever you want? If I had one of those, I'd be recapping the Vikings-Bears game right now, and I'd be crying, and you'd all be bored. And no one wants that. ["Especially not the football-apathetic manager." -- Sars] All Ivana does, actually, is complain to Kelly about what Kevin's doing, telling him that she's staying at two dollars, and she thinks Kelly should stay at two dollars also. We watch as Kevin continues selling bars for a buck.
Meanwhile, Mosaic pulls its van up to a group of ten guys. "There's fifty bucks," Jen says, already counting the money. They walk up to these guys and start asking them to buy the bars. For...five dollars. And the sales pitch is kind of like this: "Pleeeeeease?" And the answer they get is mostly something like this: "Well, okay." Sandy assures us that Jen is "a fantastic salesperson." Sandy goes on to explain that it wasn't like they went "over the top," as they were selling to children and families. Not that they didn't initially target a group of ten guys, because...they did. And I agree that they are certainly not inappropriately dressed or anything. They're dressed to look cute for men, no question, but they're perfectly decent. Is it my favorite thing to see in a task? No. Would I want to see them pull this on every single task? No. Does it particularly keep me up at night? No. Not this brand of it.
Over at Apex, Ivana runs into a middle-aged guy who tells her that he just saw people selling the same bars for five dollars. "Wait, was it working?" she asks, horrified. "Were they able to sell the candy bars for five dollars?" The guy says they were, and tells Ivana about how they were wearing red, they had the van, all that jazz. "Two blondes with high heels on," he says. "I didn't think they were that attractive." Heh. "But they were able to sell them?" Ivana asks. "A couple," the guy tells her. Ivana interviewed that this made her feel "panicked," because she figured that Mosaic could easily beat her if they were really selling each bar for more than twice what she was. Ivana meets up with Kevin and tells him the news. Kevin tells her flatly that they're not going to be able to sell the bars for five dollars. "That's not going to happen," he says. I'm curious about what Kevin thought they should do, because she's obviously right that if they bars are being sold for twice what they're selling them for, they're going to lose whether Jen and Sandy completely sell out or not.
Ivana has another team meeting in which she proposes going into the area where Jen and Sandy are and selling bars for four dollars to take their business away. Kelly points out that they'll still lose if they're selling for four and the girls are selling for five, because they don't have the inventory to beat them on volume. Ivana says no, she's talking about just taking away customers from Jen and Sandy, on the theory that there is a limited supply of people who will buy candy bars for five dollars. So Ivana talks the team into going over to where Sandy and Jen are selling to a couple of guys. As they walk by these guys who are in the process of buying, apparently on impulse and mad at what she sees as the "sex sells" thing happening, Ivana leans in and interrupts the conversation Jen and Sandy are having with the guys and says, "If you guys buy one of our bars, twenty bucks, I'll drop my skirt." But she's already smiling and walking away, so at that point, I don't even think she was serious -- she was more out to annoy Jen and Sandy. Because she is just that mature. It also doesn't exactly look like the prospective buyers are leaping up and down in excitement about seeing her underwear. "She's so obnoxious," Jen says after Ivana is gone.
A bit later, Ivana watches Mosaic walk away down the street. "They look like strippers with chocolate bars, I'm not going to lie. And when I say 'strippers,' I mean, like, at a cheap beer dive in Texas. With peanut shells on the floor." If she weren't such a jerk the rest of the time, I would chalk that up to just one of those things where you're so frustrated that you spit out a barrage of insults you know is irrational -- I've done it a million times, mostly about basketball officials. But it's Ivana, so she gets no slack. As she walks with Kevin and Kelly, she says that it's now "a street fight," and she's "not afraid" of Jen and Sandy. They're "cheap hookers," et cetera, et cetera. "Give me twenty bucks a bar, I'll take off my skirt," she says. Now, how you can reconcile calling other women "cheap hookers" and taking money to take your own clothes off is something that isn't quite clear to me, but we'll get back to that. Carolyn, who apparently is around, looks concerned. Ivana interviews that when she saw that Jen and Sandy were using sex appeal, she decided to "do something completely drastic." So. Ivana walks up to this guy and asks him if he'd like to buy a chocolate bar. He hesitates. "Twenty dollars a bar," she says, putting her thumb into her waistband, "and I'll drop my skirt." When he blanches, she says it again. "Twenty dollars a bar, and I'll drop my skirt." He laughs. "Come on," she says. "You're making big money in there, come on." Another guy walks up, and she makes the same comment to him. One or the other of them gives her twenty bucks. She puts down all her stuff. She grabs her skirt, and she pushes it to the ground, revealing white boy-cut underwear with some kind of print on it. One of the guys points. "Niiice," he says to his buddy. "Yeeeah," he adds. She executes a spin for him, as another few people walk past. Carolyn stares coldly, thinking, "The Equal Pay Act was passed, and all I got was this lousy idiot in her underpants on the street."
Ivana interviews that she had decided that "desperate times call for desperate measures." We watch her tell Kelly that she just needs to do that a few more times to bring their average up. "Absolutely," Kelly says enthusiastically. In an on-the-street instant interview, Kelly smarms that Ivana "single-skirtedly" brought their average up with this technique. "It doesn't reflect very highly on her as a businesswoman, I don't think," he adds. Not that he told her not to do it, which would have been -- in addition to the professional thing to do -- the kind thing to do. I mean, he's not getting fired. He's exempt, even if they lose. He might as well say to her, "Dude, you don't want to be taking your clothes off." Rather than, you know, saying, "Absolutely." Ivana makes this offer again, though it isn't clear whether anybody but that first guy actually accepts it. Way to go, Men of Wall Street!
Boardroom. The teams walk in to receive their results, and just to twist the knife a little, Sandy and Jen have dressed alike again, this time in mint green tops and black pants. Trump enters. He first asks George how Apex did. They sold 323 bars for a total profit of $560.75. Carolyn reports that Mosaic sold 290 bars for a total profit of $1023.11. Sandy and Jen hug. Trump tells them how impressive it is, and he also feels compelled to comment that they "look like sisters." Because he so thinks that's hot, not that this is the way he explains it. He comments on how much they hated each other, like, two days ago, and here we are. "We're competitive and we want to win together," Sandy says diplomatically. He then tells them that he thinks the reward they're getting is awesome. They'll be taking a jet to Chicago to meet with Boyfriend Bill, as it turns out. They might as well -- I don't think he's exactly short of free time. Trump promises that Boyfriend Bill will show them around and then give them lots of tips on how to win and how, if they do win, to pretend that working for Donald Trump is really fun. He reminds Apex that they'll be back in the Boardroom, where either Ivana or Kevin will be fired.
Chicago. Jen announces that she's never been to Chicago before. And what better way to discover it than through the eyes of Boyfriend Bill? Well, exactly. That's certainly my position. The two of them stroll into what they would like us to believe is Boyfriend Bill's cavernous office, where he greets them with handshakes and a congratulatory "Final four, huh?" What he is thinking is, "Slim pickings this season, huh?" He shows Jen and Sandy a seven-foot model of the tower that's being built. He then brings them into the model unit. Certainly are a lot of distracting lights in the kitchen. It would be like making breakfast in Vegas. Like, out on the sidewalk. "You guys want to sit down and...strategize?" he asks them. Did he just offer to strategize with them? Man, it's like they're trying to break my heart. Incidentally, what is up with Boyfriend Bill's dark suit and that stupid tie with the tiny red check on it? Ew. It looks like a picnic napkin. Jen says that given the surroundings, it was "easy to start picturing victory." Well, sure. Boyfriend Bill starts talking them about "heart" (Jen: "Wha?") and "passion" (Sandy: "Huh?") and how it's important to forget all your past grievances against people and so forth. Of course, he never worked with Jen. Oh, and he says "swing for the fences," so he is apparently a graduate of the Trump/Deutsch School of Batting Cage Hyperbole, unsurprisingly.
Sandy mentions that she, like Bill, is an uneducated buffoon. How did Bill handle going up against Kwame the Harvard Man? Bill acknowledges that Sandy and Jen are opposites in this regard, just as he feels he and Kwame were. Although Bill did have a college degree, as I recall, he just didn't have grad school. Sandy is more the Troy than the Boyfriend Bill, but I get his point. He says that, no offense to Jen, he thinks you can get to the same spot in a variety of ways, because running a bridal shop or a law office gives you "fundamentals" to run any business. Sandy interviews about all her similarities to Bill, and how this just emphasized that she has "a huge shot at this." He also advises them not to try to bring each other down in the Boardroom, but to work on selling their own accomplishments and value. Jen once again interviews about the greatness of meeting Boyfriend Bill at "the last mile marker." Where he failed, unfortunately, to clothesline her. "It was the best reward of all," she says. And then they leave, and he hugs them. Feh. Don't hug them, Boyfriend Bill!
Back at S5, when Mosaic returns, Sandy, Jen, and Kelly sit around on the balcony and Sandy asks Kelly who he thinks should be fired. Kelly's answer is, "What kind of company do you want them to run?" The women aren't buying, and they push for a better answer, but he declines to tell them what he's going to say if pushed until after he's already said it. In a disturbingly shiny maroon shirt, Kelly interviews that he feels fine about this Boardroom, because absent some incredibly stupid maneuver, he's not being fired in any event. He tells us that the fact that either Kevin or Ivana will be fired is "a tragedy," because he considers them both stronger then Jen or Sandy. It's not, you know, a baby-down-a-well tragedy, but that doesn't mean you can't cry. Because they are so strong! Not that how strong they are helped the team actually beat Sandy or Jen.
Inside the suite, the show tries hard to present a vibe in which Ivana and Kevin are friends and are agonizing over going up against each other. They exchange compliments. Kevin assures her that he and Kelly really tried to get her the win. Aside from the part where he undercut the price, I guess. Kevin tells Ivana that he doesn't intend to take shots at her, and won't be provoked into a fight. He'll just say, "Evaluate me based on what I've done." And then he'll say, "Keep me, and I'll drop my pants!" Not really. Ivana says that's what she'll do, too. He repeats that he'll say, "She did a great job as project manager, flat-out, but we lost." Kevin interviews that he isn't happy about winding up against Ivana, one of the few people in the suite he felt like he was friends with. He thinks she should be in the final four, so he's not excited about this. Or so he claims. ["I just do not understand how either Kevin or Kelly 1) genuinely thinks Ivana is a good, strong candidate, or alternatively 2) thinks that lying that they do is an effective strategy. She's utterly ineffectual, at best, and part of the reason I don't really like either of these two is that they don't seem to get that." -- Sars] We watch as Ivana tells Kevin how much she likes him and his integrity and all that. And then we cut to her interview. "I will have to go after Kevin," she says coldly. "I will have no choice but to go after Kevin. I'm going to fight for my life tonight." They huuuuug, all the better to investigate possible angles at which knives can be most effectively inserted.
Ding! Ivana, Kelly, and Kevin get off the elevator and head into the Boardroom. Trump enters. He leads off by telling them that they lost to "two people who were screaming at each other last week." I'm not sure what the great importance of that one is, but, okay. He asks Kevin how the loss happened. Kevin claims that on some tasks, you lose because of something you do, and on other ones, you just get beat. He claims that this was one where they just got beat. Trump asks Ivana who set the price. She claims that she fought for a higher price, but "with this team, obviously, the guys weren't going to be able to sell a candy bar for five dollars." Her mind, I have to say, is so tiny. "Sexy" is not the only gimmick they could have used. They could have used a lot of ways to create a much more fun and individualized experience that would have allowed them to use basically stunt pricing like Sandy and Jen did. Anything that would have made it seem like a fun event rather than just schlubs in baseball caps would have helped a great deal. You've got cameras around -- don't just yell, "Who wants to buy a candy bar?" The fact that she has two guys on her team doesn't mean there was nothing to do but use a regular retail price. They could have dressed up like the Mod Squad. Or Charlie's Angels.
Kelly, weirdly, tries to argue that it's not, in fact, about price, proving again that the person who isn't in danger should always, always shut up. Trump seems baffled. Mosaic sold fewer bars and made twice as much money, Kelly. That's called "It's about price." What's Kelly's argument? "I think it's about, we underestimated the other team," he says. But ultimately, didn't that manifest itself in...price? I think it did. Because they weren't separately scored on perceptiveness (now that is something you'd have to grade on a curve). George tells Kelly that this is actually one of the worst things you can say about yourself, that you overlooked the opponent. "That's a flaw. That's a serious flaw," he says. Kelly squirms. Not learning the lesson about shutting up, Kelly decides to go on the offensive against Ivana, saying that as far as the price, in the morning, Ivana wasn't able to "control Kevin" when he started selling the bars cheaper. Carolyn asks how that came about, and Ivana says that Kevin came and told her that he was going to sell the bars for less money after becoming concerned that he couldn't sell them at the price they'd set. "And did you say that was okay?" Carolyn asks. Ivana says it started without her approval, but doesn't really mention anything about what she did -- which was nothing -- when she found out. Carolyn asks Kevin whether this is true, that Kevin dropped the price without consulting the PM. "Kevin," Trump jumps in, "didn't you really set the price too low?" Kevin initially denies having set the price, which I think will raise a few eyebrows. He admits, though, that he certainly didn't expect to be able to sell a candy bar that would normally retail at 75 cents or so for more than two dollars. Because Kevin is still living in a parallel universe in which logic is relevant. Trump asks, though, who set the lowest price. Kelly confirms that the responsibility for the lower prices would be on Kevin.
George moves on to asking Kelly whom he would fire. Kelly says he'd fire Ivana, in spite of his "great respect" for both of them. "I think this is the strongest three people that have ever been together," he says. "You really believe that?" Trump asks. Ha! Seriously. Kelly insists that he does. "Oh, really?" Trump asks, still not really sure that Kelly could possibly be serious. Trump moves on to something a little more quantifiable, in case Kelly is just being all abstract. He asks Kelly why three people only made a few candy bars more than two people. Of course, the answer to that totally depends on what the limiting factors on the production line were, and the extra person may or may not have made any difference. Kelly doesn't answer.
Now, Trump gets to the heart of the matter, saying to Ivana that she apparently "flashed a group of people." "Look," Ivana says impatiently, "this --" "No, no, did that happen?" Trump asks. "It happened, but it happened for a reason." "Why?" Trump asks. Ivana starts to explain about the dropping inventory and the discovery of the higher Mosaic price, but Trump cuts her off again by asking her what she actually did. "You ripped down your pants?" "I was wearing a bikini," she lies. Come on, now. She was wearing underwear. That was not a bikini. "And let's not blow this out of proportion," she lectures. "I was wearing bikini shorts. I wear --" "We haven't said anything yet," Carolyn says calmly, pointing out that Ivana is on the defensive when she hasn't even been attacked. Ivana stammers that she's "really defensive about this," in case you can't tell, and Trump says he wants to hear why she did it. "It was a gimmick," she says. "It was a gimmick just like girls --" "Did it work?" Trump asks her. "It did work," she says nervously. "I sold a candy bar for twenty bucks." George looks up. "You sold a candy bar for twenty dollars?" he asks, not hitting the point too hard. Ivana sighs with impatience. "Look," she says grumpily, and this gets her in trouble again. "I would stop addressing him by 'Look,'" Carolyn says. "It's not really professional." But either Trump or George mutters in the background that he doesn't even care. Oh, little burn on Carolyn. Even though I agree with her. Ivana apologizes for being snotty as Trump asks her who came up with the idea of showing her underwear. "It was my idea," she says. "It was my decision." "Are you happy about it?" he asks. She says that looking back, maybe not. But -- and here comes what they absolutely all say, so say it with her -- it seemed like a good idea at the time, because they needed to raise the price. Playing off what George said, Carolyn says, "But you weren't selling a candy bar. Wouldn't you agree? You were not selling a candy bar?"
And...exactly. This is why Ivana was so much more skeevy than anything Jen and Sandy were anywhere near doing, and it's why the women last year giving out kisses and their phone numbers was so off-putting. When you wear a sexy outfit to sell a car, or a product, or whatever, you are using sex to sell, but in a way that doesn't make the sex the commodity, in the sense that you don't get any extra sex by paying for it. A guy could buy a chocolate bar or not buy a chocolate bar, and he wouldn't see any more cleavage from Jen or Sandy, or any more heels, or any more of their hair. But to see Ivana's underwear, you had to pay extra. And that's when, as Carolyn said, you're not selling the product -- you're selling the sex. And what's extra-bad about Ivana's example is that her pulling down her skirt isn't even sexy. It's really just humiliating. Offering money to someone to humiliate yourself is not only kind of stupid (which is why it didn't work very well), but it's gross. What kind of a guy gets off on a woman taking off her skirt in broad daylight on Wall Street? Is that sexy? Or is it really just a guy who gets off on women who will do anything for twenty bucks? Because I kind of think it's the second one. To some degree, it's just paying money to see somebody act like an idiot, but there's a whole different quality to it that makes me cringe.
Trump sends them all outside to wait while he confers with George and Carolyn. They all leave. Asked for his opinion, George says all three are pretty weak, but he actually weirdly defends Ivana for at least doing something, rather than just standing around like the other two. Carolyn looks horrified, which is exactly how I feel. Asked for her thoughts, she says that she doesn't at all agree with Ivana's choice. "A hundred percent, I can't agree," she says. "Oh, you mean stripping?" Trump asks. "Yeah. That's horrendous," Carolyn says, seemingly shocked that either Trump or George would fail to see that you don't hire a person to run a business who has that kind of bad judgment. Trump tries to split the hair of whether Ivana really stripped, but Carolyn points out that probably either way, she doesn't look like great executive material. Trump brings them back in.
He returns to Ivana, asking her whether she would have fired Kelly or Kevin if Kelly weren't exempt. Ivana says that she's worked more with Kevin, so she's seen all of his "leadership qualities," so she would probably fire Kelly. Kevin asks whom he would fire if they were all eligible. Kevin claims it would be "very, very close," but just on the basis of her having lost twice (as PM), he'd fire Ivana. Carolyn asks Ivana what her record is as project manager. "I've suffered two losses with two street tasks," she says. Methinks the woman who just showed her undies for twenty dollars might want to watch the use of phrases like "street tasks," no? As for Kevin, he's 2 and 0. Kelly? He's 3 and 0. Not a great record she has, Ivana would have to admit. They all sit there silently. "Are you three just waiting for someone to be fired, or is anyone going to defend themselves?" Carolyn asks. Ivana gamely jumps in by saying that she thinks all three of them deserve to be in the final four. She says she just has to "put it out there" that they all deserve to be there more than Jen. Carolyn and George simultaneously say that firing Jen isn't one of the choices. Of course, in retrospect, that from Ivana is completely embarrassing, and it makes her look weirdly obsessed with screwing over Jen, but honestly, Trump has done several things this season that were supposedly against the rules. He's accepted somebody giving up the exemption, he's brought the whole team back to the Boardroom to discuss something after they were sent up, he's fired two people at once, and he's fired someone without letting her even take people to the final table and defend herself...it isn't the most absurd notion ever floated that maybe he would buy the idea of bringing the other two women into the Boardroom. I mean, it's crazy, but it's not completely implausible that that might be an available twist.
But what it does in this instance is make her look desperate, especially since, rather than accepting the "no" she gets first, she persists. Because when Trump goes back to her losing record, she goes back to Jen, talking about how Jen has the same crap record. Which is true, and which would be a fair point if she could make it sound like she was saying, "Last Boardroom, Jen was here with a worse record than mine and wasn't fired, so you are looking at more than win-loss record." But instead, it just comes off like whining. They try to tell her to shut up again, and she comes off all squirmy and angry and about-to-yell again. "I am not the only person with this record, is what I'm saying." "How can I choose you over Kevin when you've been losing?" Trump asks her. Ivana goes into a frozen, hands-clenched posture. "I am smarter, I am much more creative..." "How do you know you're smarter?" Trump asks. "He's a smart guy." In response, Kevin rattles off his degrees, which I think is kind of dick, actually, because it probably wasn't necessary for him to do that. ["In theory, it's dick. In practice, don't drop trou on the street and then try to pass yourself off as the brains in the room. Ivana asked for that." -- Sars]
Ivana tries to maneuver some more, but ultimately, Trump says to her, "You agree that Kevin is very good, right?" She just has no idea what to say. She finally breaks into a guilty smile. They agree it's a tough question. And now, Ivana announces that as between Kelly and Kevin, she thinks Kelly is better. Even though she said Kevin before -- you know, before Kevin said he would fire her. Trump now goes back to saying that of course, Kelly or Kevin isn't the choice. Kevin or Ivana is the choice. Ivana tries to say she's proved herself in tasks other than the ones where she was PM.
But anyway. Trump tells Kevin that he's not happy that he priced the stuff too low. However. "Ivana, you stripped. I'm not hiring a stripper. You made a lot of bad decisions, and frankly, you've lost too much. Ivana, you're fired." Trump thumps the table and then actually fires her with the little finger-gun. And because of, I think, something that tips over from the table-thump, there's actually a bang when he hits her with the finger gun. Couldn't have planned that one better. They all stare at Trump. Finally, they get up and leave. Kevin and Kelly go up, Ivana goes...well, Ivana goes down. Carolyn seems happy with the decision to fire Ivana; George seems somewhat more guarded. Which...no, George. Can't have the women who take their clothes off. That's just not going to fly.
Ivana gets into her cab. Just another weird, though oddly formidable, candidate gone.
In her taxi interview, Ivana thinks Carolyn was mean about the part where she stripped to her underwear on the street. She goes on to insist that she was still wearing more than Mosaic, and that she's worn less than that to the gym, and that it's like bloomers under a cheerleading skirt, and that it's really no big deal. She also makes the mistake of saying that if she had it to do all over again, she would "shoot for the moon." Yeah. "Moon." She really said it, apparently by accident.
week: Interviews! Boardroom fighting! Two more gone! We're sneaking up on the finale, people, so don't lose your ability to fight nausea just yet.