Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Lesson Four: Strap It Back
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 10.12.2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Trump steps up and gives the teams a pretty simple task: step up to create and market a new character advertising the Dairy Queen Blizzard, a blended ice cream dessert. Capital Edge steps up with a nondescript cartoon character that's like a living dessert cup, and Excel steps up with Genie, who's like if the Carver from Nip/Tuck were somehow not only a serial killer who slashed people's faces up, but also sold delicious ice cream desserts. It's horrifying.
Clay steps up as PM for the men, which suits them fine since they're still smarting from his passive-aggressive pick-pick-picking from last week, while Capital Edge steps up and votes Felisha in after Toral fails to show any initiative whatsoever, except of course that required to step up and talk some mess about anyone she's ever come across. It's nasty, she's nasty, and the phrase "step up" is used about four hundred and seventy thousand times, making it officially the most irritating, obnoxious phrase in the English language. Clay's managing style is judged to be needlessly abrupt and yelly, while Felisha steps up to giving in to the Great Blonde Willpower that runs everything, and pretty much rules.
Luckily for Clay, Toral hijacks the entire episode by stepping up and making an exasperatingly huge deal about how she doesn't want to dress up as Zippy The Ice Cream Idiot, which would be fine except how -- spurred on by the Mean Girl solidarity of the Blondes -- she's eventually driven into a crazy-person corner and steps up all about how dressing like a giant milkshake is against her religion. I'm so sure, Toral. God. Only if your religion is the Church Of Giant Assholes. Toral chooses to step up and do nothing whatsoever, instead, and also steps up to telling huge lies to anyone who will listen.
Meanwhile, on the men's team, it's super-ridiculous and embarrassing in every way, as Mark steps up as a creepy (in description and in execution) Ice Cream Maiden, and Adam steps up about singing some karaoke song they write about ice cream. Josh steps up to be snarky and cool on the sidelines, Randal steps up to be doggedly helpful, Markus doesn't step up with any more of that "turd" talk, and James, Adam, and Brian finally step up to get some kind of airtime, and they are cool. Well, Adam's dorky but in an awesome way. There's way too much of Mark's junk stepping all up in your grill in the revealing Ice Cream Lady outfit.
The Viceroys are impressed with the teams, and the teams are impressed with themselves, but ultimately Capital Edge is jacked by their understandable group hatred of Toral and desire to exploit her inability to "step up" to destroy her, so Excel gets the reward: stepping up to playing baseball with the Mets.
In the Boardroom, the dirty Capital Edge secret of Toral's total craziness steps up (again) and the team steps up to turn on her (yet again), only this time, even Rebecca can't help but step up about noticing what an ass Toral is. Trump steps up to fire Toral without even blinking or asking anyone back into the Boardroom, and it is the most delicious ice-creamy treat you ever did taste. Toral The Unforgettable Business Genius is sent stepping back up to Crazytown, and the Excel team steps up to unanimously give Clay his exemption. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
The entire teaser takes place over last week's unending, torturous Boardroom, as the Blonde Coven nurse their massive headaches about how Toral's going to be busting their nuts right into the Boardroom every week for the rest of the season. Most delightfully, the recap includes the awful exchange between Trump and Toral where he tells her to enjoy the view that Rebecca bought her, and her snitty and smarmy "Thank you, I will." I can't believe I ever said she was cute. God. While everybody's waiting for Rebecca, Jen W., and/or the totally safe Jen M. to return, Markus and Toral drink some wine and feel great about themselves some more.
Kristi -- bitterly, like I need to note that -- bitches that Toral isn't even wasting her time waiting for Rebecca, especially since Kristi's convinced that they're never going to see her again. Felisha, who has a really intriguing face, tells us that Rebecca's decision was less about loyalty than stupidity, and that "she's going to go home for it." Gee, I hope they don't hold this against her forever and ever. I wonder how much they hate her going to bat for Toral because of Trump's praise of it, and how much is because...well, because it was retarded, and aligned her with the hated Toral.
Rebecca and Jennifer (née the triumphant Jen M.) return, and everybody's happy to see them. Kinda. Toral lugs her wine in there as an afterthought, as Kristi and Felisha are somewhat nice to Rebecca. Kristi does that "everything's on my face" fakeout, all, "I didn't expect to see you back! I really didn't! You must've held it good in there!" She's got just enough of the wide-eyed innocence that I still kind of believe her when she does this shit. Like when she was so pleased by Rebecca's broken ankle -- how much was viper ambition and how much was sisterhood? Nobody can say. I really go back and forth with her. I like her this episode. Meanwhile, Toral skulks around and stares creepily, because if she graduated with any of those contested degrees we keep hearing about, number one is: skulking and bitching and being ungrateful.
Rebecca immediately impresses me again: "As a team," she says, they have "a lot to talk about before [their] next task." I love how that leaves the door open to whatever the Bloven is interested in discussing: like, whether they're all about "leaving it in the Boardroom," like Josh last week, or "bitching me out for selling everybody down the river for no good reason," or "how to kill Toral" -- she wants to take the temperature first, and is notifying them of her openness to that up front. She confides in us the basically obvious fact that Kristi, Alla, and Felisha "really wanted to understand why I didn't bring Toral into the boardroom, and what my thoughts were." I wouldn't mind hearing about those myself, even though I really enjoyed seeing that shit work itself out in the last Boardroom.
They all lounge on the beds in one small room, like all good sorority sisters do when they've got their knives out, and Felisha negligently indicates Toral on her left with a tossed-off wrist. "I hope sincerely that we get to see what you see in Toral...it felt like you were just going 'here's my friend, I'm going to protect her,' when we've not seen what you...apparently have seen out of her." See, I've been liking Felisha's AAUGH reaction shots, but I think that was brilliantly worded. Throughout the episode, she consistently gives you the option of proving you're not the idiot or asshole that you clearly are. It's a fun strategy. Rebecca nods, and acknowledges that Toral is to all appearances worthless: "I do see something in Toral, and I guarantee you that you will see her step up on the next task. I guarantee it." Kristi descends like an adorable harpy, with the hate finger all up in your face. "For each task that we've had, have you, Toral, given...your all, in every single task?" Toral, who has not yet and will never see the snares looping slowly around her feet like vines in that one Star Wars movie, is like, "Uh, probably not." I would have slapped her. Just LIE! Blame-shift! Something! She goes blue-screen every single time -- this isn't merely "stepping up" to make a brilliant marketing decision, or do something stupid or whatever, it's "stepping up" to take part in a fucking conversation! Which is about her! Her favorite thing ever!