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The surprisingly short interview segment featuring the final three is entirely anticlimactic once it becomes clear that not only is Craig kind of a jerk, but he's the worst interviewee in history. Every answer sounds like it came out of an online answer-generating application, complete with sentences constantly doubling back on each other. So, Craig? You are fired. Like, a lot.
Tana and Kendra are then assigned to their final tasks: Tana gets an athletic exhibition to promote New York City's 2012 Olympic bid, while Kendra gets a videogame tournament. For the first time, the candidates who return to "help" appear to be specifically chosen because they suck -- Tana is given Chris, Kristen, and Brian, while Kendra is given Erin, Danny, and Michael. Despite this obvious disadvantage, Kendra and Tana go off to begin their final tasks. Tana's team can't stop arguing (Brian and Kristen still hate each other), and Kendra's team can't stop screwing up (Danny still stinks at organized thinking), so things are looking rough. We go out on the image of one of Kendra's sponsors threatening to exit the event, so that can't be good, which means it almost certainly doesn't matter in the end. What will happen? Who will be hired? Will Tana find a use for her leftover rhinestones? Tune in week. Things could get sloppy. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Get Shirty: The teams were asked to create and sell a shirt that was art, and art that was a shirt, and it was this collision of utility and self-expression that, like, whoa. Suzanne Somers's laugh and Tony Danza's laugh had a baby, and they called it Alex's laugh. A couple of pop artists sold their credibility for a stack of greenbacks. Craig and Kendra couldn't stand each other, and although neither of them would be the world's most enjoyable person with whom to be trapped in an ATM vestibule during a power outage, Kendra emerged as the less obnoxious of the two, which is really saying something. We learned that Craig's answer to questions for which he has no rational response is, "It's irrelevant." Tana looked at the entire task through Bedazzler goggles, and she wound up dragging Alex to Staten Island to tap into the world's extremely limited supply of doodads. It was like she was making tchotchkes during the war. Craig and Kendra madly outsold Alex and Tana, and in the Boardroom, even though Tana was rightly roasted over a slow flame for marrying a lack of fashion sense with a lack of regular sense to come up with her entire five-rhinestone concept, Alex's oily, superior, and yet oddly blank brand of corporate slither finally got him plunked in the back seat of the taxi to the Hotel Sequester. There, he will undoubtedly prove to no one's surprise that he calls his friends "ladies" when they choose to spend time with their girlfriends, but he can't drink a Long Island iced tea without crying and telling you about the time he accidentally killed his pet turtle with a Dustbuster. Because Alex is, now and forever, exactly and precisely That Guy. Now, only Kendra, Craig, and Tana are left. Somebody's getting knocked out, and then we shall have our final two. Who will be the last good shooting?
We are in New York City, and we are looking at the moon. People congregate on the sidewalk. And up in the Love Palace, it is almost entirely quiet, because the only people in the place are Craig and Kendra, and you can bet they aren't spending too much time talking to each other. I suspect the conversation ended quickly when she asked him what time it was, and he said, "It's irrelevant!" Craig is, however, whistling. Because nothing says "I would rather eat ground glass than speak to you" quite like whistling. "Oh, boy," Craig finally says. Craig interviews that it's tough to say who will come back from this Boardroom. He adds that of course, he continues to believe that he and Tana are "the cream of the crop." Which is kind of like being the most well-rounded guy at the comic book convention, but okay. He says that Alex is "a smart and very intelligent young man." Smart and intelligent? What a lethal combination! "It's going to be up to Mr. Trump," Craig adds meaningfully. Kendra chuckles as she comments to Craig that Trump (I think) must be really irritated at Alex and Tana for getting spanked so thoroughly.
He leads the candidates to the corner of this enormous apartment, and he explains to them that this 90th-floor apartment (in the highest, tallest, best-smelling, most carefully vacuumed, blah blah blah building) is the kind of place they might live one day if they get the job. ["And I know I'm supposed to envy the super-rich the views from the tops of these crazy high-rises, but…not everyone is as keen to live on the ninetieth floor of a Manhattan building as we might have been four or five years ago, if you take my meaning. Not to be depressing about it, but my marble tub is getting installed on Three." -- Sars] He tells them that we're down to the wire, and they've all done well, by which he means, "You just barely edged out Alex, so think about that." He also reminds them that they've had the opportunity to work with some of the country's really big companies. And now, some of those companies are providing executives to interview them for the final task. First will be David Brandon, the Chairman and CEO of Domino's. Also, Darlene Daggett, President of U.S. Commerce for QVC. And he calls her "very dynamic," because Trump has no idea what to say about women executives except that they are "dynamic," as if only really dynamic chicks would ever think of getting jobs. Then we have Howard Lorber, of Douglas Elliman, which so memorably kicked Jen C. to the curb last season after her unfortunate "old bags" incident. Finally, there is Greg Brenneman, Chairman and CEO of Burger King. I often wonder what it would be like to be the major bazoo in charge of something really pedestrian. Like when that guy meets people, I wonder if he says stuff like, "Here's my card -- if they ever give you any grief about how many packets of ketchup you can have, don't hesitate to call me." And then he winks and makes with the finger guns.
Trump points out that these four people together supervise over 500,000 employees, and the companies are valued at more than $11 billion. The candidates will be heading off to interview with them, and then the interviewers will report back to Trump, and he'll fire someone.
Time-lapse clouds. Tana arrives at Darlene Daggett's office at QVC and asks to see her. They tell Tana that she has only 17 minutes and 28 seconds to purchase an interview with Darlene Daggett during this very special offer which will not be repeated. Okay, not really. Tana interviews that you can't prepare for interviews (lie!), and it's "just who you are." Her hair looks really weird this week, like it's...poofier? Or something? Parted more in the middle? She looks extremely poodle-licious in a way I'm not having any luck putting my finger on. ["Jiang and I thought she ran out of conditioner. Girlfriend needed a hot oil bad." -- Sars]
Darlene asks Tana where a "small-town girl from Iowa" fits into Trump's company. Tana says that she fits in wherever Trump wants her and she'll make the best of it. In other words, "[Monkey noises.]" She claims that she has been an entrepreneur since she was nine, and I'm not sure how meaningful that can really be, but all right. Tana adds that the reason to be an entrepreneur is that you want "freedom," and I really don't understand why this show has such a thing about being an entrepreneur and wanting freedom, because if you want freedom, the last thing you're going to do is leave self-employment with its tasty sky-high taxes and lack of health insurance and go to work for Donald Trump. It's senseless.
The Burger King asks Craig what his most challenging business problem was. Craig says it was "getting the right people," presumably for his shoeshine business. The Burger King asks him to elaborate a little bit about getting personnel and what he did about it. Craig's answer, verbatim: "What happens is when I set up something, and I hand it over to someone, I tend to allow it -- it seems like it's easy, it seems like, you know, and I'm -- and I'm trust -- I'm willing to hand it over to someone with the intentional of them allowing -- for them to have the opportunity to burn their own bridge." In other words, "[Qu-- qu-- well, quack.]"
Howard asks Kendra what would be her ideal job with Trump. "Selling real estate or being involved in one of the buildings that he's going to be constructing," she says. A decent answer, for once. Howard points out that she doesn't have experience in construction, as we look at what I think we are meant to notice are Kendra's hands shaking. He says her experience seems to be in marketing, and she says that's true, but "you have to start somewhere, and my goal is to become a developer, so Donald Trump can either hire me, or I'm going to be his competition soon." Howard smiles, but she really didn't carry that off all that well. You can say that, but you have to be able to back it up with something more convincing than a statement that you're going to enter a field in which you have zero experience, and by gum, you're going to cause some trouble for its current titans.
My favorite interviewer, the Domino's guy, asks Craig about the fact that he's done a bunch of different stuff. Does he have "a short attention span"? "N-- n-- I've -- uh…," says Craig. Going great!
Darlene asks Kendra when it's okay to bend the rules. Kendra says she bends the rules every day, which is a total lie. She says that there are a lot of legal loopholes and tax loopholes in real estate. She's the tricky one!
Howard says to Craig, "So you want Donald Trump to do low-cost housing or subsidized housing?" "If that was something he's interested in, I would be one of his front men," Craig offers. "Doesn't make any sense to me," Howard comes back. Whoops.
Domino's Guy asks Kendra to choose the better of the other two finalists, if she were picking someone to be her business partner. Unsurprisingly, she picks Tana. As the screen begins to break into the montage section that always drives me nutty during the interview segment, we see that Tana picks Craig and Craig picks Tana, unsurprisingly. And then it all sort of breaks down into this mishmash of talking that deprives us of getting almost anything out of this segment, which they always do, and which I always hate. I don't think these interviews should be boring, but they're always treated like a pill we have to swallow as quickly as possible, and it just baffles me.
Later, Trump, Carolyn, and George meet with the interviewers in the Boardroom. Trump tells them that he needs their help in making his choice between these three, and he starts with Domino's Guy, David. David says that he thinks they're all talented, but he was not impressed with Craig. "He was very hard to pin down," David says, adding that Craig's answers, when you probed them at all, basically had no substance to them. Trump nods, because boy, he knows what that's like. He thinks Kendra was "somewhere in the middle," perhaps "too assertive," but his preference would be Tana. He thinks Tana was "solid" and "very capable."
And now, we look in on the L-Pal, where the candidates are packing. About the important people she met and the effort she put into being herself, Tana can only say, "[Arf arf arf.]" They leave the L-Pal, the three of them, and head for the Boardroom…
…as the conversation shifts to QVC Darlene, who says that she, too, would hire Tana. And seriously, if there's anyone who would agree that rhinestones are important enough to justify an inter-borough quest, it would be someone from QVC. Darlene says she was impressed with Tana's "entrepreneurial skills," and there's some story about Tana making $12,000 when she was nine, and if they were going to refer to it, I wish we could have at least heard it, especially since there was time for the music-video-like montage of interview segments. Darlene also says something about Tana being a wife and mother, and WHAT? Like, okay, you don't discriminate against people for being married with families, but I consider it equally out of line to show preference for them. Your family situation should not come up in a job-interview setting, period. Darlene has no idea how good Tana is at juggling those responsibilities -- this has the stink of just liking moms better than non-moms, and that blows, fairness-wise. Shut up, Darlene. She says she thought Craig was "interesting" (more loss of credibility for Darlene), but again, little substance to his answers. And she found Kendra "most in question." Because she felt like every answer was "scripted" or "preconceived." Guess what, lady? That might be because you asked dumb questions. It's kind of ass to be like, "Well, Craig didn't have any substance to his answers, and Kendra had too much substance, so I'm going to go with the nice, friendly mom." Seriously, Darlene's preference for Tana literally had not one thing to do with this job. Entrepreneur? Not relevant; that's not this job. Wife and mother? Inappropriate to even bring up, let alone rely on to prefer her over others. I don't like Darlene one bit. Which kind of makes sense, because...dude. QVC. Anyway.
Howard says he liked Kendra, with the only drawback being that she's young. He thinks this could be a positive thing, because you have time to develop her and so forth. "I think she could be a superstar," he says. Craig, however, he didn't think was much to write home about. When asked what he would to in the Trump organization, Craig suggested ways to change the company to give him a place to fit in -- presumably, this is where the bit about the low-income housing came in. Howard goes a different inappropriate route than Darlene when he dismissively mentions that Tana is "from Iowa," like, who cares? Why is it that with Craig, the discussion has been about the quality of his answers, while with Tana and Kendra, it's all been personal? Too young, married, kids, from Iowa -- what does any of this have to do with anything? Howard goes on to say that Tana can't make it "in a big metropolitan city." Oh, come on, Howard. She might take a little while to learn the subway, but not everyone west of Pennsylvania spends the day churning butter, you know.
Greg says that he, too, found Craig's answers to be totally devoid of meaning. "Absolutely no substance," he says. He did like Kendra a lot, as Howard did, despite her being "very young." "In my mind," he says, "she was by far the most intelligent and the most talented, I got the most concrete and the best answers to questions from her." He says that he thought Tana was good, but he's not sure whether she could be a leader. Trump thanks them for their input and sends them on their way. They have the most thankless job ever, those people. They'll be quoted asking about one question, and then they'll be shown preferring one nincompoop over another, and it's just very hard to look like a person of substance.
When the interviewers are gone, Trump has Robin send the three candidates back in. It appears that Tana stops and waits for Craig to pull out her chair, which I really think is a huge ick -- it's one thing for the guy to pull it out, it's another thing to stand there, princess-like, waiting for it to happen. Gross. Trump asks Craig what he thought of the executives. Craig says he thought "they were incredible." He adds -- shooting his own foot off -- "They can discern a good business mind." Trump basically says that the executives liked everyone, but they all thought Craig wasn't good enough, so he's fired. That Boardroom, on screen, took about 45 seconds. Talk about dispensing with Craig in a hurry. Trump tells Craig he thinks he'll have "a great future," notwithstanding the fact that all four executives thought he sort of sucked, and Craig gets up and leaves. As he gets into his cab and leaves, Craig tells us that he thanks Trump for the opportunity and such. He looks forward to getting back to his family, and thinks he just didn't do a good job of "getting deep" in the interviews. I am not going to miss Craig.
Back in the Boardroom, Trump congratulates Kendra and Tana on being the final two. And...do you feel how weird that is? Kendra and Tana? It's like..."meh" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's Kendra. And Tana. There wasn't a person in the top five in the first season who wouldn't have kicked either one of their asses. Just...unsatisfying. Trump can't help pointing out that just as it happens (like magic!), they've wound up with one Book Smarts and one Street Smarts in the F2. He rattles off their credentials again, and tells them to head up to the suite, and then tomorrow morning, they'll get their big final tasks. They leave.
Kendra and Tana return to the L-Pal together. "Oh my Goooood!" Tana says, and they hug, even though they've kind of never been friends so it doesn't make any sense. Tana, on having made it to the end: "[Cock-a-doodle-doo.]" They find a bottle of chilled champagne and a photo album. As Kendra interviews, it was full of pictures of all their former teammates -- in other words, Burnett has chosen to incorporate an equivalent of the Walk of Dead Survivors into the final stages of this show, and that is not good news, because I hate the Walk of Dead Survivors. Or, as Wing calls it, "Snack Time." Anyway, they open up the photo album. They open it up first to a picture of everyone standing together before they'd even gotten to know each other. And then there is a picture of Todd, and Kendra says, "Ohhh," and Tana says, "Is that Todd?" Because she doesn't remember, because it was one hundred years ago, and Todd was eliminated before man walked upright. "Wow," Tana says, "I don't remember that much." HA! "He was a handsome man," she finally offers, because...what else can you say?
And then, Brian. First in a picture that makes him look like a low-level mob guy, and then during the motel task. "Oh my Goood, he carried that green book around and it didn't do any good!" Tana giggles. "Oh, Verna," they say . "There she is with her suitcase!" Kendra exclaims. And indeed, there is a shot of poor, nutty Verna, strolling down the street dragging her rolly-case. Not perhaps the moment she'd most like to see remembered, but all right.
"Awwww," Kendra says as they look at a picture of Danny at the Nescafe task. "He was an absolutely disaster as a leader, but he was great on the emceeing," Kendra remarks. We see Kristen. "She's a pretty girl," Kendra says. "Boy, you know what?" Tana says. "You never see her smile, do you? Look at this. You never see a smile." My dislike for Kristen kind of clashes at that moment with my hatred of people who bitch at women for not smiling enough, because shut up. "Look at freakin' Michael!" Tana says. "Big ideas!" Kendra openly mocks. "Tara was so cute in her costume," Tana says as they look at a photo of Tara dressed up to paint in the graffiti task. "Cute in her costume"? Does Tana have anything substantive to say about anyone? Apparently not. And then, Audrey. "Ohhhhh," Kendra says. "She's a pretty girl," Kendra comments -- again. "She is," Tana agrees. We see Audrey in her clown suit. "Sorry I put you in that clown suit, Audrey," Tana says. Did Tana put her in it? Huh. "Look at the rock star!" Kendra says of obnoxious John. And then Erin is at Home Depot in her little apron. Kendra can only say, "Look at her, workin' it." Tana jumps in: "Was this when she had her...heels and her...?" "Yeah," Kendra says. Heh. And then Stephanie, whom they agree is "very photogenic." Tana does a little squee-ing over Angie. "She's a smiler," Kendra says approvingly, and shut up about smiling. God. "Oh, Chris," Kendra says, a little noncommittally. In case, you know, he punches her later. "He was a handsome kid I thought," Tana says flatly. "I liked his personality so much," Kendra says, much to my surprise.
Kendra and Tana both respond with a gasp of affection at seeing a picture of Bren -- which is indeed a nice picture that makes him look less sleazy than he looked by the time he left. They look upon Alex. "He's just so handsome," Kendra says. "He is a handsome man," Tana agrees. "I hope he is a friend for life," Kendra offers, not having yet heard about whether she's either a moron or the mascot of a moron. And then, a huge smile on Craig's face, and of course, they get all excited about that, because if there's one thing these two women care about deeply, it's whether or not you're smiling. "I hate that we fought," Kendra says, "because I do really think that he's a great guy." A butthole, but a great guy. Kendra interviews that they've met "amazing and crazy and colorful people," about whom, in most cases, they could think of nothing interesting to say other than that they were or weren't good-looking and did or didn't smile a lot. Bonded! For life! With everyone!
They close the book. "Each one of them, I kind of hold dear to my heart, whether I like them or not," Kendra says. And also, "[Mooooo.]" "Which one of us beautiful broads gets the job?" Tana asks as she and Kendra share a toast. Clink! Feh.
The day, Kendra and Tana play Dueling Mascara Wands as they prepare for the Boardroom. Trump exits...somewhere, and he gets into his limo. Kendra and Tana leave the L-Pal. Ding! They are in the lobby. Okay, what in the holy hell is Tana wearing? Tana is wearing...Tana is wearing a jacket with dyed red fur lapels. I swear to God, I am not lying. She looks like the chaperone at a hookers' field trip. I prefer to think that Carolyn's slightly bemused expression relates to this choice in some way. Tana and Kendra turn in surprise as Trump appears on the big TV down at the end of the Boardroom table. He tells them that he's in his car on the way to his plane. Hot shot! He reviews the whole stupid college/not dynamic that nobody cared about to begin with, and then says that now, there are just two of them left. For the final task, Kendra will run the Best Buy Videogame World Championships. So she may actually meet the most well-rounded guy at the comic book convention! Hott! The tournament will be "yooge," and will take place at Webster Hall. Tana will run NYC2012's Athlete Challenge, a sports exhibition at Chelsea Piers to promote New York City's Olympic bid. They'll use all their skills and so forth, and we'll see who does the best job. The winner will be the apprentice! The loser will amount to nothing!
And now, Carolyn and George will be providing them with some employees to help with the task. And they will be familiar faces. Trump wishes them luck and says he looks forward to seeing what happens. When the screen goes dark, Carolyn buzzes Robin to "send them in." And I will just stake my claim right now that what you are about to see is one of the most diabolically hilarious things Burnett has ever done. Because when the door opens, the people who come in are: Brian, Michael, Kristen, Chris, Erin, and Danny. "Is this it?" Tana blurts out. "This is it," Carolyn says. "Oh!" Tana says in surprise. Carolyn explains that Kendra will get the Magna doodles, including Erin, Danny, and Michael; Tana will get the Net Worth(less) Kristen, Brian, and Chris. In other words, welcome to the most suck-ass and potentially crazy and disruptive people from your respective teams. You thought you might get the competent but stammering Angie? The odd but basically decent Bren? The sexist but capable John? The misguided but well-intentioned Tara? Oh, no. No. It's the nutbars who, for the most part, can't do anything and aren't making news anywhere except in the DSM-IV.
George also adds a crucial point: "Bosses are free to use or not use their employees any way they want." So that's the clarification we've been looking for. You can indeed bench anybody who's more trouble than they're worth, so one of your skills for this task could potentially be firing anybody who's truly in the way. George claims that this will somehow finally answer the Book Smarts/Street Smarts question, which I'm sure it pained him to say, since it's a lie.
When the employees have left, Tana says she has a question. "Any chance of changing around our team?" she asks. Carolyn pretends to think for a minute, which is awesome. "No," she says. "Okay," Tana says, trying to sound chipper. How exactly would that have happened? Kendra's not going to take any of those people voluntarily. George tells Tana that she'll always have to deal with people who wouldn't be her first choice. And seriously, I don't think that was a smart move at all. Opening your performance on the last task by complaining, which is basically what she did? I think that's unwise. Anyway. George says that the idea here is to able to operate in any environment, however unfavorable. Tana and Kendra leave. I am fairly sure that at this point, even though we don't see it, Carolyn turns to George and says something like, "Jo Anne Worley is going to be pissed as all hell when she finds out that Tana took that jacket."
For some reason, we linger on a couple of brass pigeons (I don't know) before watching Tana and Kendra return to the suite, already in full bitch mode about the crazy people they've been left to work with. "You've got all the worst tempers," Kendra says. "And you've got all the scatterbrains," Tana adds. Tana interviews that getting "the Three Stooges" on her team was not something she took as good news. She claims to have wondered whether the entire thing was "a sick joke." Well, that could sort of apply to the whole show, lady. Tana also calls the members of her team "Snuffy, Brian, and Kristen." Hee hee, "Snuffy." I am totally not too sophisticated for that. Not, like, in the least. Kendra interviews matter-of-factly, "Danny, Michael and Erin were selected to work with me on this task to see how I could manage people who have a degree of incompetence." She adds that she's in a high-stakes situation, and these people are significant in determining whether she wins. I'm sure that's not comforting. Tana and Kendra decide to get changed. Well, sure. Muppet pelts are only for evening.
And then, it is later. Erin and Michael are in the back of a red SUV, and Erin answers the Space Communicator. "Well, hello there, darlin'," Kendra says, trying to sound friendly. "Hi, Kendra!" Erin says, trying to sound friendly back. "This is not our first rodeo, my love, we're here to play ball," Michael says, and I can seriously almost hear Sars's shoe hitting her TV, despite the fact that we are separated by a thousand miles when this airs. ["HATE!!" -- Sars] Kendra claims to be happy to see them, which she wasn't. Although I will say I don't think she was as horrified as Tana, and probably rightly so. I'm not sure the worst of Magna can quite compete for uselessness with the worst of Net Worth. Later, the team meets up with Kendra as she gets out of her car, and Danny assists her out and so forth. Michael says he's not sure Kendra is overly thrilled with her team, but he thinks they'll "do fine." Hugs are exchanged. As they walk along, Kendra tells the team that the tournament is 90 minutes, and there's also a VIP reception. And then the team points out that Kendra is in the process of walking right past the entrance to Webster Hall. Confidence-inspiring! She turns around and heads in. Whoops. She reviews for us her task, which is the Videogame World Championship. Now what's not particularly promising is that she then laughs, like, "Ha ha, videogames, how stupid." Which...just, no. There is a ton of money in videogames, and the people involved will smell it on you if you act like you think it's a dumb thing to be involved with -- kind of like people who, say, write about television. But she laughs and rolls her eyes.
Inside Webster Hall, Kendra is shown around the venue. She sees the main ballroom where the main event will be. Apparently, Electronic Arts is providing a game, Fight Night Round 2, that they're using for the tournament. So...everybody plays a new game for the tournament? I'm not sure I get it, but for God's sake, don't email me. The team is then taken to the basement, as Kendra interviews that the platform they're using for the game is the PlayStation 2. So apparently, it's an EA game, but you play it on a PlayStation. (Right? Right.) Kendra tells us that she has a lot of logistics to work out, which is...kind of how these final tasks always are, of course.
A little amusingly, Erin interviews, "If you can manage us, you can handle the Trump organization." She adds, "However, if you can manage Chris, Brian, and Kristen? You might deserve the Medal of Honor."
And that, predictably, takes us over to Tana's team, where she is meeting the group at Chelsea Piers. Again, hugs are exchanged. "We were hoping it was you, congratulations!" Kristen says. So apparently, they left for this before Craig joined the group, if he ever did? Anyway, Tana says that she has "the three most explosive personalities that ever existed," which isn't true, but all right. "You have a team here that love each other," Kristen says with sarcasm that flies right over Tana's head. "Oh, gooooood!" Tana coos with a giant, toothy grin. "Is that true, Brian?" she asks. "I'm glad you feel that way, Kristen," he growls. Heh. Kristen explains about the event and how it's to promote the Olympic thing and so forth. Chris and Tana chat about the layout of the "greeting area" and stuff, and Kristen tells us that there will be gymnastics, track, beach volleyball, and some other stuff. "It's huge," she says. She has learned well from Trumpy-Wan.
Tana meets up with Erica, who is from the venue, it appears. She takes the team for a tour as Tana interviews that she has to turn Chelsea Piers "into an Olympic ring, more or less." In a team meeting, Tana tells the team what seems to be her most important point: they should feel free to make decisions without her. Huh? Granted, it seems to be about fairly small and stupid things, to the point where Chris and Kristen seem to be openly laughing at Tana as she seriously intones that when she puts you in charge of balloons, you can run with that and make all the strategic balloon-related decisions you think are necessary. "I respect that, Tana," Brian says, and Chris laughs some more. "Feel free to make any decision on my behalf," she says. I think that may be over-delegating, considering the stupidity of these people. Tana returns in her interview to an overly chipper "We'll do the best we can!" attitude.
In a meeting, Danny is talking about having a meeting where everybody will be there, including EA, and they can "pitch the whole thing to them." Kendra interviews that because there's so much to do, she thinks it will be really helpful to bring everybody in for a discussion so that they can see what's what. Here, we see Kendra welcome a guy in a suit and a woman in a green skirt. They ask for Danny, who probably made the appointment, but Kendra greets them and tells them that Danny is, in fact, upstairs. We watch Erin pop in on Danny and tell him that the "meeting is now." Danny exposits that Best Buy is really the biggest cheese of all with respect to this event, so it's good that EA and Best Buy are getting together with the team to discuss the event. He thinks the sponsors will want some specifics they may not have yet, so they'll have to be on their toes.
Now, Danny sits down with some entirely different people -- a woman in a pink sweater and a guy in a cream-colored sweater. They aren't sure whether to wait for Kendra or move along. All of a sudden, there's a third guy in a leather jacket, and I don't know where he came from, but when Danny asks about their timeframe for the purposes of whether to wait for Kendra, the pink-sweater lady says they can wait about two minutes. Cream-colored sweater says that they don't have all that much time, and there are a lot of pieces to figure out. Danny interviews that as he sat down for the big meeting, Kendra wasn't there. He says that these -- the sweater people -- are the people from Best Buy. Best Buy? I don't know. It's all very confusing. Danny says that he felt obligated to start without Kendra, under the circumstances, because the Best Buy sweaters were in a hurry.
Unbelievably, Danny opens with the "We're Team Magna" theme song, which is so ridiculous that it fairly obviously means one of three things: (1) he's clinically insane; (2) he's fucking Kendra over on purpose; or (3) somebody told him to do that for the purposes of good television. I hope it wasn't (3), but that's kind of the one I'm leaning toward. It's just not credible that even Danny would do that particular thing unprovoked. Erin interviews that Danny was "scatterbrained" at the meeting. And, like, to say the least, you know? She says that Danny wasn't able to communicate effectively with these really busy people. Danny sets up his laptop at the meeting so that the sweaters and the random leather jacket guy can all see. The male sweater tells the team, just as George is seen walking up, that he's getting a little anxious about the event being a day away and not seeing any level of detail about what's going to go on. Danny interviews that the meeting became "a nightmare," and Kendra wasn't there. The sweater goes on to say that he has no understanding of how things will work, and Erin says that everything was getting worse, and they needed to get Kendra. Erin then goes and finds Kendra with the dark-suit guy. She tells her that they're having the meeting upstairs, and they need her for that. Erin says in an interview that Kendra needs to be monitoring what the rest of them are doing, as Kendra runs upstairs.
Kendra arrives at the meeting along with the dark-suit guy, and you can see the green-skirt lady in the background as well. As Danny continues to stammer, Kendra interviews that she was "infuriated," because she had set the time for these meetings, and had no idea that Danny would "grab" the executives and start without her. It's true that she wasn't there to greet them, but it's also true that somebody probably should have told her that they had arrived, rather than just starting without her. They do have the Space Communicators, after all. Kendra jumps into the meeting and says that now, she'll walk them through everything they need to know at the venue. "I was desperately trying to reestablish the credibility that I had lost," she says, and it's a comment that impressed me a little, if only because it tends to suggest that she has some idea of what the dynamics are, even if she hasn't always navigated them all that successfully. She tells us that she ran them all over the place, doing all she could to reassure these people that the team wasn't completely incompetent. She does seem to be providing a good amount of information to the sweaters, who are the only people who seem to be with her, although leather jacket guy does appear occasionally. She says she was talking very fast, but the pink sweater tells her not to worry about it -- to talk fast, because they need all the work she's going to be doing. A-ha! Leather jacket guy is from EA, because there's a caption that introduces him as EA's David Pekush, who says that Kendra did a good job of giving them an idea of how the event would go.