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A task I'm still not sure I understand -- which involves a mall, some computers, the downtrodden, bilinguals, airfare, hotels, and a plastic octopus -- causes PMs Aimee and Surya to...disappear altogether, for near the entirety of their task. Aimee continues to look insane, and Surya continues to whine and bitch and moan and act like a jackass; they both wander around staring at stuff for awhile. It's like, they have to make people sign up for something, on the computer, and then there's also a raffle, or somebody wins a trip or a hotel room or...something, I don't know. It was dumb. So then Arrow wins, possibly having to do with the first language of the customers at Kinetic's mall, and then everything devolves into an unending Seinfeld sketch about whether or not it's okay to wonder if a person with Latin features in a mall in Southern California speaks Spanish, or only Spanish, or would prefer to speak in Spanish, or would prefer to be spoken to only in English, etc. etc., and of course Trump only barely gets why this entire conversation is kind of upsetting, but Derek and Muna carry the day again, this time by speaking Spanish to those people who speak Spanish, and English to the ones that speak English. Jenn finally shows her true colors, and they are awesome. Aimee is somehow unable to get it together for the boardroom this week, and though her and Surya's positions are reversed from last week -- right down to her conspiracy theories about being "buried" by her team, and his Viceroy position -- he doesnât lift a finger to help her, and she gets sent home. Everybody else looks pretty good although Derek and Muna, and especially Jenn, have kind of a ticking-clock vibe at the end of it. Meanwhile, Tim and Nicole get the pool to themselves for a truckload of gross and a bunch of awkward kissing, all of which, surprisingly enough, causes Frank to act like a three-year-old. I'll give that a moment to sink in. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Last week, Sean was upset by Aaron's lack of outside signage at the Sue Bee/Ralph's task, but Aaron didn't have time to explain what we all know anyway, i.e., how in order to have signage outside, you first have to define your Area Of Visual Centrality as well as its surrounding Points Of Promotional Conversion and then run those through the Promise Of New And Time-Tested Aspirational Jargonization in Surya's head in order to create a Maximized Potentiality Of Lateral And Synergistic Revenue Streams before you even can go to the store, or before God will even go so far as to invent bees, because Trump was just about ready to fire him for no real reason instead. While all this was going on, Surya was taking an annoying amount of umbrage at being asked to contribute anything at all to the task beyond lecturing and getting his jargon all over Aaron's perfect face and everybody else's so that they did nothing but sit and listen to his unending stream of bullshit. Over in the yard, Stefani and Frank are talking about who should get fired, and Tim doesn't actually care; later he suggests somebody explain to Surya on the task that when you are put in charge of marketing, what you actually do is design and implement a marketing concept and its constituent parts in order to create a customer base, instead of explain made-up words about marketing until it's dark outside and everybody is asleep. Stefani's awesome: "Um, fuck it, he should be Project Manager, actually." They all agree that this would be hilarious, because they are so used to losing at this point that the idea of losing the task on purpose is less frightening than simply a matter of how they're going to fuck it up this week.
Then Trump fired Aaron for no real reason, and let Surya stay, and Surya commenced kissing ass about how great he's going to be one day in the future when he stops sucking, but Trump went, "Just GO! You just made it by the skin of your ass anyway!" Which was kind of awesome. Back in the yard, Tim spots Nicole and Surya coming back, which would make me double-sad, but only makes him half-sad. Nicole shrieks horribly about how much she hates the boardroom so they have to win, proving once again she doesn't get it. Derek and Kristine spy over the hedge and watch Surya...acting like the most perfect jackass I've ever seen in my life.
He's shaking, right, like a horse after a long run, and his lips have that hangover wiggle like sometimes when you're adrenalized, and his stupid eyes are bugging out, and his veins -- as Tim will note -- are popped all over the place, and his hands are trembling, and he's got that impotent, obnoxious, repressed anger thing happening, but it's more than that. It's like...you know a person who, when they fuck up, get so scared that you're going to get mad at them that they decide to get defensive and angry at you before you have a chance to even hear about what they fucked up? And like that fake, kind of stupid-looking, self-feeding, frenzied kind of denial they get? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? I don't know if I can explain it correctly. It's like very shifty-eyed, and the lips pooch out, and the heart rate and breath are way up, and their shoulders kind of curve forward, and they're really jumpy, but also kind of defending their bodies at the same time? That's Surya right now. I hate it so much, because it's a whole lotta hustle that doesn't go anywhere, and he's like exhausting himself trying to come up with reasons and buttresses for how he's the good guy, and it's like: at some point the laughing stopped being fake and Surya started thinking that the whole marketing thing never actually happened, and his body, his actual chemicals, are going haywire trying to keep that version of the facts cooking, and his mouth and extremely overdone emotional faces and body language are trying to convince everybody else on earth that it's the truth, so that then it will be truth. His face doesn't say, "I'm insulted and a little hurt," it says, "this is the face people make when they're insulted and a little hurt." And that's fake and stupid and doesn't convince anybody of anything other than the fact that you're a fucking drama queen who is delusional about his own culpability, and P.S.: They were there. You total choad.
So Surya screams and bleats and shivers and shimmies and flounces and bounces and grinds and fantods around for a billion years about how he is just so pissed and virtuous and how the one thing -- the one thing -- that you could do to hurt him to the core, more than any other thing, is to lie. "Don't lie!" That's all he's saying. It's really more of a philosophical pant that he's shitting right now: an ideal ethic which has been trespassed. "We all have our integrity!" he fake-rails; whatever. No, you don't, but also: who rants like this? Tim interviews to make fun of the drama and veins and popeyes and Surya keeps flopping around and freaking out and acting like an idiot who is very offended, and James fully goes, "He...wasn't lying, dude. Just think of it like that: he wasn't lying." I'm paraphrasing, but it was awesome. Because HE WASN'T LYING. He wasn't doing much of anything, but he never lied. And he got fired, and now you have no idea what to do with yourself, so why not act like the biggest dork of all time? This little wobbly of Surya's makes Brent Michael Buckman look a bit more stable, is what I'm saying, and Brent Michael Buckman used to describe his teammates using words like "doody." In the boardroom. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this. Surya keeps telling, and Tim interviews about how all he could think about was how great, to have to deal with this "energy that is annoying" throughout the task. Which given the intensity of Nicole's annoying energy rays that she's been aiming at him all along, also proves that Surya is a dick. Surya totally tells Stefani that he wants to be PM, just to right the imbalance of good versus evil in the entire universe or something, and Stefani's like, "I think that's a really good idea, Surya." HA! Then he turns his horrible annoying caffeination bullshit against them, in the mistaken belief that it's motivational or something, when really it's: still obnoxious. He makes these stupid faces and talks about how he'll bleed for them, etc. And out here in the real world, he looks like a dickless wonder screaming stupidly about nothing, but in there? In the Surya movie? He's like Braveheart.
We meet Trump at LAX with planes flying over, because he's getting on his stupid penis jet, because the product placement this week is a travel website. That's literally it: they had to drive out there in their vans, and he took a limo with two of the execs from the client, to stand under his stupid jet so that he could talk about a travel website. Sigh. The execs are more attractive than usual: one of them, Chris, looks like a hot TV-ready hitman, and the other one is a totally sexy gravedigger or undertaker who knows how to play the guitar, I bet, and his name is Bret with a variable number of t's in it. So their task, and this is precious, is to promote the website at "an LA cultural phenomenon: the shopping mall." Look at those words. I wish we made a magnetic version of these recaps so you could move those words around and make some sense of them. This is stretching to the infinite level: stand under a jet and then go to a mall, and all of this adds up to "LA culture." They have to sign people up on these computers to win a sweepstakes, and I think that additionally to this, they also have like I think ten grand to give away right there. Now, this task is harder than it looks, because the internet is scary, especially to people in malls, and you don't want to give computers your info, and also free stuff is scary, because there is no such thing, so you have the sketchy offer of free stuff and the sketchy putting your information into a computer, plus the sketchiness of Surya (at least the rest of Arrow's good at selling, even though there's still a median sketchiness they can't really do anything about) and the sketchiness of all mall kiosks, and like, that right there is equal to the sketchiness of Chris Hansen catching like Gregg Jarratt at a Moffatts concert.
In the van, Aimee delegates: Angela will be doing marketing in the store, Muna will be on timelines and marketing, Derek will do creative and marketing, Muna will be with Derek on creative, Jenn's on like hats and octopi, Kristine is dealing with the legal stuff and the execs I think, and that's everybody, except for how -- as Kristine points out both to Aimee, and to us in interview -- that means Muna's in at least two places at once, whereas Kristine's responsibilities end about half an hour into the task. Muna and Heidi both wonder what Aimee's up to, and Kristine interviews: "Aimee's just not getting it." They're going to have to manage themselves. Again.
Into the mall! Where the Emmy for editing subtlety goes to this show for the sixth week running as we are treated to so many shots of Hispanic customers in various areas and modes of dress I start to think they're splicing in stock footage from the NBC warehouse just because they have that much in there. The mall is full of Latinos, we get it. Did you know you're taping in Southern California? (Hint: Aimee didn't!) Derek interviews about how he and Jenn toured the mall to figure out where to put their kiosk, and he asks the lady straight out about the demo makeup in the area: about 50% of the customers in the mall are Hispanic. And you know, duh. This whole storyline just reeks, in this episode. I mean, I get that LA is big and you have different areas, I'm from a big city too, but the way the show itself seems amazed with this new information is really off-putting, in a way I can't really figure out. I don't know where it's coming from, but it's like, "Wow, California! Whole new world!"
Arrow's totally got it together: they have this great idea to do raffles every ten minutes, meaning that it'll take two hours to blow through their ten grand, which is like the whole task I bet, but they'll have constant freakouts and cheering and stuff, so people will crowd them for the nine minutes between the raffles, I mean it's great. Everybody loves it. Frank gets excited, and Surya acts like a total asshole.
Frank: I have this great idea!
Surya: Don't tell me your great idea. Sit quietly for two minutes, then give me two sentences that accurately describe your great idea. That's your Strategy.
Frank: Okay, my strategy is that we should...
Surya: Frank, again I'm going to have to stop you. Do not tell me your great idea, Frank. Tell me two sentences that describe your great idea, and then we can talk about that, and then you can tell us how you're going to Execute your great idea.
Frank: So then I would be telling you my great idea?
Surya: No, that's later. First your Strategy, then your Execution, then we meet about it, then you can tell us your idea.
Frank: But I already have the idea. I don't need to implement a procedure to have the idea.
Surya: I implement these procedures instead of having ideas, Frank.
Frank: But like I have an idea right now in my head, and it's about to go away. Have you ever met me before? I've got a fifteen-second short-term memory. I ate shoelaces this morning because Stefani forgot to tell me not to.
Stefani: It's true. With a béarnaise sauce he made last night.
Surya: I do marketing as my job, Frank. This is going to be great. Now, tell me your Strategy.
Tim: Yeah, Frank, tell us your Strategy and then when Surya goes away you can tell us your idea, and we can do it, and then we will win.
Frank: Okay, here's the -- oh, it's going... Put some flowers on Algernon's grave for me...
Tim: No! Frank! Write it down! Write it down!
Surya: Draw a flow chart of how you're going to write it down!
Frank: What were we talking about?
Tim: ...I don't fucking care anymore.
Frank: I drew a cartoon of Surya with eyelashes and crazy hair!
Surya: [lots of words]
Frank: Suck it, Surya!
Stefani: Behave!
Everybody: No, actually? Kind of...suck it, Surya.
Surya: [fake laughter like he's in on the joke; he is not in on the joke at all]
Surya: [additionally can suck it]
Kinetic, of course, is merrily rocking out as Aimee once again wanders aimlessly, talking to the cardboard standups of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Lucy Lawless at the Suncoast, trying on hats at Lord & Taylor, going for a ramble through the camping display at Macy's, spearing koi, being racially color-blind, being actually blind, bumping into things, wiggling her eyebrows at little kids, blowing up balloons, singing Yoko at the karaoke place, whatever. They get the whole kiosk together, in a tropical theme just like every week, there's mango and papaya all jacked up on top of everything, and Aimee wanders up finally and has a long conversation with a plastic blow-up octopus, takes it over to Jenn and makes Jenn talk to the octopus, decides she doesn't like the octopus, it's a bad octopus, thinks about calling a vote about the octopus, wanders away again mid-sentence to tell Angela about how there was an octopus and she didn't like the octopus so she took it over to Jenn and they discussed having a meeting about the octopus, and that was their meeting about the octopus, so now I guess she's having a meeting with Angela about the meeting about the octopus that she just had with Jenn, and all around her, the other members of Kinetic are actually doing shit. Heidi walks the exec through the task. Jenn interviews that Aimee is "bossy and dumb" and that you can't really be led by a person who makes one decision all day, especially when that one decision involves thirteen meetings about a plastic pink octopus.
James and Frank and Nicole run around with flyers and stuff, and Tim's on the high-tech video screen ad walls talking about the raffles, and Bret watches as James sells his ass off, Stefani continues to be awesome, Frank rocks -- and tells the camera, of course, about a billion times about how great he is, and refers to himself, of course, about a thousand times as "Frankie Suits" -- and Nicole and Tim are awesome. James and Tim have a little meeting about how Surya has once again disappeared, and James interviews about how as usual, God knows what he's doing, and as usual, Surya's wandering around not selling a damn thing. Surya interviews about his amazing salesmanship and how it's never been easier, as played of course against footage of Surya striking out probably fifty times with his negative charisma, retiring manner, off-putting demeanor, and total lack of hustle or friendliness.
Kinetic: Kristine and her herpie and that voice of hers telling a guy how it's going to go, making baskets with the raffle entries (oh yeah, Kinetic had the same basic idea about the ongoing raffles), and Angela and Heidi roaming the mall, "generating buzz" in Angela's parlance, and doing a great job of it...until things get all Old Testament and everybody in the mall with the exception of Kinetic itself forgets how to speak English. Just like that, Boom! And they're so busy selling that they A) don't even notice until like the fifth strikeout where the people just immediately start running away when they start talking, and B) don't even notice how they're totally in a science fiction movie suddenly where nobody speaks English. And you know what, if we're going to admit that a sizable portion of people in areas of Southern California speak Spanish as a second language, can we also admit that a sizable portion of that group in turn is not going to be like vitally interested in: having their pictures taken, being on camera, or putting their personal information into a database run by sketchy white people? At this point, you get a translator, not because you're messing up sales conversions but because getting aggro in the faces of these people is going to create negative buzz: "White people going crazy in the food court and asking personal questions about where you live. Leave the mall now, come back tomorrow. Pass it on." I mean, it's just awkward. So whatever, the music gets scary, Heidi takes a while to figure it out and finally Angela mentions to her that she's selling with gibberish, and they go up to one guy like, "Mucho? Dinero?" and that's very Amazing Race for a second, but then BOOM, Derek again. Speaking (not that awesome) Spanish at the kiosk, rocking out, noting in interview that the computers themselves, which have a whole advertising thing before you register, are in English only, which is slowing them down too. Jenn offers somebody hotdogs, probably to shove in her mouth for a hundred bucks, and Derek's rocking out. Aimee fully goes, like, "I finally noticed there are Spanish-speakers in southern California." Muna rocks the Spanish even better than Derek, and then somebody wins one of the raffles, and she's overjoyed and has a kid with her, and I'm happy she won something.
Upstairs at Donald's, he's asking the execs who was best on the task: Chris liked Derek and Muna, though he found the kiosk staff "underwhelming"; Bret thought Arrow was "aggressive" (word) and that Frank stood out in particular, and then he asks for my phone number, and then we totally make out on a pile of Trump's money, and he has a heart attack from seeing this but he doesn't die, but the experience finally teaches him to love, and he hugs Donald Junior, and DJ never ever makes that face he always makes again, in his whole life. And all of this, the Trump family saved, so many crises averted, because Bret from that travel website finally gave in. What a guy.
Surya manages to be annoying simply when applying Chapstick, Trump and DJ come in, and they're both making that face, because the fact is that Bret never called me and we never made out on a pile of money. It was all merely a fantasy. Trump's wearing his pink tie again, which is kind of a victory I guess, because I think he looks nice in that pink tie. I also like how he only brought four ties with him to LA, even though you'd think he'd have a separate jet built for his neckties, considering...you know what, what's with neckties? What's the semiotics of neckties? Why do we wear them? I know from fashion, like, what they do to your body and your face and how the colors work, but I'm thinking more like how they happened. Whatever, anyway, Trump asks Surya how Arrow did: "In a word? Amazing." You think so? "Absolutely." Everything he says pisses me off now, I don't know. That word amazing, looking at it right now it's like the most annoying word in the whole world, to absurd. Shut the hell up, Surya. Trump notes, apropos of nothing -- but for the eighteenth week running -- that if they lose this week, they're all going to say Surya is a horrible leader. I think he thinks it's last week. Like how last week he thought it was the week before, and fired Aaron, and now he's thinking it's Surya's first week again, but he's been on the team for like two or three tasks, and I think we have to face up to the fact that someday soon we're going to have to put Uncle Donald in a home, because if you're going to become demented, wouldn't you want to live and remember fondly some other time period than fucking Season Six of The Apprentice? Seriously?
Trump asks Kinetic how Aimee was as leader, and Jenn and Derek are both sad about how bad she sucks. "Not good"? he asks. "Ineffective?" he asks. Because just like last week, he's already decided to fire her ass for no reason, so whatever. Heidi smiles the wickedest, most wonderful grin ever; Derek kind of grins. They are the exact same amount of magnetic no matter what they're doing, it's weird. They're like...what's that math thing? They are a like a pair of sexy asymptotes. Anyway, Arrow won: 359 to 326. Arrow cheers, Jenn's whole face drops -- I really like her, I think -- and Aimee looks profoundly disturbed, but...nah, too easy. Surya immediately starts talking but all I hear is "Blah blah blah, the two Arrow storylines are that Surya Sucks and that Tim and Nicole are Repulsive, and meanwhile James is sneaky-snaking up one side and down the other, and Stefani is amazing, and somehow Frank is coming off better than most of the team, and all three of those things are so much more interesting than either of the stories we're highlighting this season, even if Tim is pretty cool whenever Nicole's not the subject, because those things are interesting and complex, like how you end up Frankie Suits while being a great salesman and a funny guy, or how you end up Erin Brockovich and a defense attorney and still stay so sweet and funny, or how Tim and Nicole both suffer in this romance edit, because they are independently a thousand times more interesting and likeable than the sum of their parts, and James is the new Aaron in that his dark side is very, very secret, but the audience is I guess too stupid to hear about any of this, so we get this monochrome, boring, trashy shit every week, making Arrow look like dumb hicks no matter what they do." Only with more words. Okay, and then the reward? Surfing lessons, then brunch at Gladstone's, which will include, I'm sure, more champagne with more classy fist-sized strawberries floating in there. That reward is, to me, for the fiftieth week running, horrible. This one in particular is like hearing that the reward is a free colonoscopy, because it is the gift of health or something. Dear Donald: If there's any kind of gift up there at all, I'm not gonna want it. FYI. Unless the alternative involves surfing, actually, so there we go. Oh, and they get to move back into the house again, of course, and Surya is PM week, and also a Viceroy right now, this very second, giving him -- this is worth thinking about -- the opportunity to help Aimee out the way she helped him last week. Right? Right? I mean, I don't have anything against Aimee, and I have no vested interest in her staying or going, but surely Surya isn't that much of a douchebag, right? Hello? Is this internet on?
Kinetic moves out, Kristine complains about health conditions outside, Frank makes steaks out by the pool, Arrow goes surfing. It's boring and shitty and goes on forever, but the music acts like they're about to release the kraken, but they never do: just surfing, surfing, the obvious people looking totally hot in their wetsuits (Tim, Stefani, the surfing coaches), the obvious people having dramatic goofball overbites and never having seen the ocean or water or the sky or anything ever in their entire lives (Nicole and Frank), the obvious people being suck-ass douches (Surya). Then a SCREAM from Nicole, and Tim and Frank walking her out of the ocean between them, and fake-coughing that doesn't even sound like her version of milking this would, and then lots of her lying in the sand and Tim to her, looking bored, and Nicole's foot hurts, but all you can see in her head is a big neon sign going REBECCA REBECCA REBECCA and like, you know me, the entire concept there is offensive. But not as offensive as when they're helping her into the van to get it checked out, and James volunteers Tim to go with her, and two terrible things happen.
Surya: He's gonna make his big move now! He's gonna make the big move now!
Frank: You can take advantage of her now, buddy!
Nicole: [yelling from inside the van, but not the response that actually goes here, I'm sure just some kind of jocular "I desire the approval of all men" joking around about the fact that he just advised their teammate to rape her while she's distracted by pain in her ankle, when of course the proper response is to get out of the van and punch him in his fucking head]
So the doctor's touching her foot, and it's funny, because he's like, "It hurts when I touch it? Really? That's painful? Are you...sure that hurts?" But it's not Nicole, it's a jellyfish bite. Nicole and Tim are admittedly cute in the doctor's office, and at one point she screamterviews that she's never even SEEN a jellyfish, which is kind of horrible if you think about it. I don't know, she doesn't bother me as much this week. When she was interviewing about the ankle two paragraphs ago, she made this really cute face and went, "Uh oh! What did I do?" with the exact inflection that I would have used, and I guess it made me like her more, because I don't know if you know this but I'm a little vain. (Or is it that I know what I want? And I want it now?) She asks the doctor if a real surfer would have just kept surfing, i.e., is her personal pain threshold a wussy thing or is she allowed to be in pain right now? And again, I feel her on that one really strongly -- that's like the coolest thing she's said on this show, because that's, again, all me. "Am I allowed to admit that this hurts? Because I can't be sure, but I'm pretty much thinking it hurts like a bitch, so if you could ask ten other people how much this hurts, I'll know if I'm overreacting." This tendency has put me in some dangerous situations from time to time, but I think it comes mostly from not wanting to be a pansy, and a little bit from growing up feeling incredibly guilty and in denial whenever I got sick, because it compromised household revenues in a way I could have avoided doing if I'd had the foresight and fortitude not to get sick in the first place. (P.S., the inside of my head is a snakepit, but you already knew that.) So the guy answers her in a fun, funny good-doctor way, that "In this town?" the people would probably keep surfing.
Then Stefani's breasts attempt to conquer Gladstone's, and there are -- I was right! -- more drinks with stupid gigantic fruit, and James gives an unending toast with that voice of his, and Surya tells us all about how he's "the underdog" and how he "let" Arrow Corp into the house this week. OH! You know what he's like, is Lee from last year. Not the self-aggrandizing huffy Toral shit, that's his own, but the self-mythologizing crap is totally reminiscent of that little pisher. I wonder where he is. I wonder where Adam is, and if he's still lying about being a virgin. I wonder -- this is true, I was thinking about it last night -- what superstud77's up to. I love this show. So Frank congratulates Surya on finally getting in the water, and asks how old he is, in order to make the joke that Surya is a wiener. Which he is, and we already knew that, but proves only more hardcore as he sing-songs about how condescending that is for Frank to say. Um, like "Frankie Suits" could ever condescend to anybody. I don't think you know what that word means. James interviews, Rachel Raying it up about how it wasn't Surya at all, he can't believe how awesome Surya seems to be finding himself, when in fact he was "lucky to be part" of the rest of the team rocking out. And I don't know if I would say that to the camera, but I know that's how I'd be feeling privately, because it's pretty much how I feel from here outside the show.
Then something happens. And it's kind of like a boardroom, where you want to look away but you can't, except you can look away, so you do. And it involves three things going on simultaneously. Thing One: Everybody jets and leaves Tim and Nicole alone in the pool, and they are drunk as SHIT, and they make out, and it's awkward and gross, but even drunk Tim can kiss. Thing Two: Nicole is interviewing some self-hyping BS about "poor Tim and his persistence" and how she finally let him kiss her, or whatever. Thing Three: Tim interviewing some wide-eyed BS about how one side of him was like "do it!" and the other side was like "what are you doing?!"
And it's like neither one of them has ever seen TV before, because: this is nothing new. What you're doing is proving something, because you've got something to prove, and you're proving it on national broadcast. I don't know what it is, I mean I have some guesses, but I don't really know -- all I know is that the second you say to me, "I don't know why I'm doing this," without even meaning to, my eyes are going to flick to the eighteen cameras pointed at you, and back again. Hopefully faster than you notice, but maybe not. And that's why you're doing this, and that's between you and God, but I hope whatever the reason is, doing this on TV helped you with it, and you proved whatever you're trying to prove, because love and passion may be limitless and know no timetable, and you might spend most of the six weeks filming drunk, but you're there to be on TV, and you're playing a character, and you're directing this character as much as the editing is, and the fact is that -- I mean, I'm going on how I would feel about all this -- you spend so much time thinking about what you don't wanna give the camera, because you don't want it used against you in the story...but after the fact you're going to pretend temporary insanity? I'm not buying. I'm not criticizing or attacking, beyond the fact that disingenuous bullshit pisses me off, I'm just saying: figure out why you needed to make out with each other on TV. That's all I'm asking. It's kind of a trick question because it has more questions in it than are perhaps at first apparent. Some of which probably have been at the root of similarly unexplainable behavior, some of which might be really old and really boring, all of which you should have answered by now.
Aimee blah blahs at the Kinetic Kids about how she's "sad and stressed about everything" because somebody has to go, and it's going to be weird no matter who it is, but especially if it's her, because she's going to freak out. She talks about how she doesn't want to bash Jenn, but the fact is that she knew that the mall was half-Hispanic and yet did not address that, meaning that it's all Jenn's fault. And you know what, I don't even need to go off on a thing here, because racial profiling is a thorny issue but it's not that thorny, really, and either you get it or you don't get it, or you are interested in using discussing it as a pretext for your own casual racism, or as an aversive way of expressing your ignorance racism while thinking you can hide behind it as rational discourse (a la "Black people can use the N word, so why can't white people?"), and none of those things I'm really into talking about this week, so whatever. Either you get it, or you're an asshole, basically, and I'm not writing it down for the benefit of either of those groups. Aimee tells us at length about how great she did, and how she "managed the team the way they wanted," but they totally turned on her and were uncreative and rolled eyes and pointed fingers, and also Jenn is a bitch. So then she goes to Jenn, and Jenn tells her to shove it, because reporting to Aimee what her own eyeballs can see shouldn't be anybody's responsibility on a team, and she interviews that Aimee is making a big mistake bringing any of this to her door, considering the marked and documentable failures that Aimee specializes in. They have a short, civil conversation, and Aimee stalks off, and Jenn takes a sip from a water bottle and waits for Aimee to bring it on. It's pretty great.
Andie talks without moving her face and her smile doesn't reach her eyes, and then inside the boardroom, I'm once more led to ask: If you're in a room with Heidi, how do you look at other stuff? I would have to put like a strobe light in the corner to remind me to look away or blink. I mean, damn. I liked the whole transcript thing last week, did you? Well, we're doing it again this week for the boardroom, because I think it's funny to pretend they're this interesting in transcript format.
Trump: So what went wrong?
Aimee: People speak Spanish, which I didn't know. They did this in the mall, which impaired their ability to be sold to, and then they also did it at the kiosks, which hampered the computer's ability to be understood. Basically they gave up speaking English every time it would negatively impact the task. Luckily, there were Derek and Muna there, speaking Spanish.
Surya: So this interfered at the point of conversion?
Derek: That's what she said. But also, that's not actually the problem. She's a terrible manager.
Trump: So is she a good or bad manager?
Derek: Um. She's an excellent hard worker? And in terms of having no leadership whatsothefuckever, I really like the hands-off approach, but...some people wanted her to lead us, or manage the group, in a way where she was doing things, or leading, or managing. I guess we were spoiled by Heidi.
Trump: Congratulations, Derek, you just got her fired. In about twenty minutes from now.
Angela: Aimee has problems with delegating, following through with plans, relating causality and effect, the past and present, and with letting the grimblewinks tend the rainbow fields themselves. I mean, I love her as a salesperson, or whatever, but [verbatim, this] as far as leading, I was just confused.
Kristine: I miss Heidi. Also, I hate Aimee. Also, we should have hired a translator the second we saw this was going to be an issue.
Aimee: I was not aware of the Spanish demographic! Jenn did not tell me that there are people who speak Spanish!
Trump: Often you can tell just by looking at people if they are English speakers. I mean, it's not PC, but let's be realistic.
Aimee: I never even went to that mall. I was in Paramus, New Jersey through this whole task.
Derek: Honey, that's a lie.
Aimee: HEY. Let me finish lying. I let you finish telling the truth!
Trump: Muna?
Muna: She's very caring...
Trump: Ouch. That's all you had to say.
Aimee: I haven't said my point yet! I have to lie some more about how I needed Jenn to tell me things I could see with my own two eyes!
Trump: Muna, you're a minority. You tell me.
Muna: You just need to walk through the food court with your eyes open.
Aimee: But I wasn't there when Derek asked how many Spanish-speakers there were!
Derek: You were in the mall. With eyeballs.
Aimee: I don't have those! Jenn took them! With her sorcerous eyeball-stealing octopus!
Donald Jr.: So they explained to you how Spanish is a language?
Aimee: NO! EXACTLY!
Jenn: You never asked us whether or not Spanish is a language, Aimee.
Trump: [Trolly bored face]
Aimee: It's a standard sales tactic to make a list of all the languages there are, Jenn! God!
Derek: In fairness, she did not ask us to make a list of all the languages there are, or to point out to her that there were people in the mall, all of whom were of various races, or what race they were. She didn't ask for those things.
Aimee: You're trying to bury me! With self-evident facts that don't even need to be stated!
Derek: I'm not trying to bury her at all. I'm just trying to be adorable.
Trump: So you think Jenn's right? People really do speak Spanish sometimes?
DJ: How could you not bring that up with her, if you knew this key piece of info? How can you avoid conveying this to the PM?
Aimee: [hissing] This is very astute, bright team...
Heidi: [laughs like a beautiful, terrifying entity from an Edith Hamilton survey class and the snakes are about to come springing out of her gorgeous hair]
Trump: You don't like your team, do you?
Aimee: This was not the team that Heidi managed. It was different.
Everybody In the World: COBRA!
Trump: Okay, pick your people I guess, since you just fired yourself.
Aimee: Derek and Jenn. The person I praised first until he called my bad leadership bad leadership, and also the person that introduced that monstrous octopus into what was previously a pretty beautiful, pretty groovy experiment in consciousness-expansion.
Jacob: AIMEE! NO! My two favorite people! (Yeah, I love Jenn now. Don't you?)
Surya: [giving DJ a run for his stupid amount of money, in the smug grossness face-off]
(Outside)
Derek, Jenn: [beautiful, sad, delicious, wonderful, pretending to feel like they're getting screwed but actually obviously, totally safe and loving it]
(Inside)
DJ: How can you keep key information like how there are other languages away from your PM? I didn't hear about that at Wharton!
Surya: [some equivocating mess that basically resolves down to: "Anything you say, that's what I'm sticking with, because I am disgusting."]
Back inside, Trump asks why everybody hates Aimee as the PM, and Derek describes their recent history as "two tasks with an absent PM." OUCH! Nice! Also true! Even nicer! DJ asks about the whole demographic secrecy issue like a billion times, and Jenn laughs out loud at one point about it, because it's so tenuous and stupid and producer-ordered.
Derek: I only asked because I was curious about how overwhelmingly Hispanic the demographic actually was, not because I wondered if there were Hispanic people in the mall, you fucking halfwit.
Trump: But why didn't you tell her?
Derek: Because of eyeballs, Mr. Trump. Everybody has them.
Trump: He sounds pretty confident about these "eyeballs" of ours, Aimee.
Derek: [so cute right now it's unbelievable]
Aimee: I wasn't paying attention to who was walking through the mall! Who would do that?
EVERYFUCKINGBODY: COBRA! COBRA! COBRA!
Aimee: That's why I asked Derek and Jenn if there were people in the mall!
Trump: Isn't it important? If only for the safety risks that walking through a crowded shopping mall with your eyes shut tight would present to you, and to others? You trip or something, the mall's liable, and your team's without leadership.
Aimee: That's why I asked my marketing team about the demographic and whether there were people in the mall! And they don't tell me that there were!
Jenn: EYEBALLS. You needed a translator the second you walked in there, idiot.
Aimee: Mr. Trump, you should fire Jenn because she had this information, how there was a shopping mall with people in it, and she kept this information secret from me out of malice.
Jenn: That is still not true. First of all, if I led her ass in here by the wrist, would she need me to tell her how many people in this room are Caucasian? And second of all, am I insane? Because what she's talking about, hoarding random information that is freely available to PEOPLE WITH EYEBALLS, wouldn't make sense even if it made sense, because that would make me CRAZY. So my question -- again -- is why you didn't get a translator: we had the money, we had the capability. I don't know if you know this, but there was actually a surfeit of Spanish speakers in the mall. We've been talking about it for about a half-hour, but I can understand if once again it has slipped your notice: we had our pick of the bilingual crop. Just say the word. The word is Si.
Aimee: But but but...
Trump: Wait, there were people in the mall? And they weren't invisible? I didn't realize that. Forget everything I already said, and my stupid son, and go back to the beginning of the boardroom when I said I was going to fire you no matter what.
Aimee: We had people on the team speaking Spanish, and there were Latino people in the mall.
Derek: [cute]
Trump: Um, okay. So you knew they were there? They weren't in hiding?
Aimee: Right.
Trump: Because let me tell you. You know Angela? She's like a superhero, like she could bench me over her head, right, and she's amazing and I hope she wins, and maybe she will, and she's very strong and silent, and very tough and silent, and even she, who only wants to say nice things and make out with my daughter, who goes out of her way to be nice, can't help but put a big "but" at the end of talking of about you. And that big "but" is "but leadership."
Frank: [giggling somewhere at this precise moment; doesn't even know why]
Trump: Everybody is just not that into you. You're bossy and dumb and I think you're on drugs right this second. It's always leadership is the big but. You're not a leader. Aimee, you're fired.
Derek: [sad/tasty]
Jenn: [gorgeous/starting to look like she's sleeping in the yard, though]
DJ and Trump: [that one face, in tandem]
Surya: [sucking]
(Alone)
Trump: Too many things against her! Like reality!
Surya: It was tough. It was tough. [AAAAAAAAAAAARGH! SURYAAAAAAA!]
DJ: It was pretty "cut and dry," as the saying doesn't go; I mean, the whole thing that I was harping on, that made no sense? Once we eliminated that, it retroactively became a pretty obvious choice.
Trump: All of this makes sense to me, because I am slowly going insane. Now let's get out of here, Fibber McGee & Molly's on upstairs in ten minutes.
Outside, Aimee runs for the car like the hounds of hell are behind her and pissing her off. She's like righteously angry; her eyebrows are like two characters in a telenovela that she'll never understand. Because it is in Spanish.
Derek and Jenn sigh, and she's very tiny, and he's very gigantic, and they are both perfect. Aimee whips around as she's getting in the car, and I watched this part just now probably a hundred times, for two reasons: number one, her hair does this amazing thing I've only seen hair do in the Ãon Flux cartoon, like it's also simultaneously angry, and she looks prettier than she's ever looked, and she calls down like thunder upon them and says something mysterious I can't figure out that looks like it rhymes with "furflipper," so your guess is as good as mine, and she jumps in the car and shakes her head violently at them the whole way she's driving away, and Derek's like, "Whoa, dude." In the car, she talks about how people in this game will bury you to get ahead, and I don't have anything to add because it's the same exact thing I said about Surya last week: you told everybody you were in charge, but didn't believe that anybody believed you, so really nobody was in charge, but everybody gets to feel like they're in the right, except now you're going home, and that sucks I guess, but not as bad as this show sucks. She is funny talking about how she should have "just told the whole goddamn team to sit in the frickin' mansion" and hired her own people and done the task herself. Which may or may not be true, but either way she's gone now and I still don't get her. "I guess they didn't care about winning this task...on a personal level, they wanted me buried, and that's unfortunate." On the occasion that a team actually does throw a task to kill the PM, I hope I'm still recapping, because that is going to be like seeing a unicorn. The sheer self-obsessed narrowness of that entire concept is just mind-blowing and narcissistic; it's like these people should be on reality TV. In two weeks, after the Oscars have come and gone: two words result in an insane double firing! What are they, and who will it be? I'm guessing Derek and Surya, somehow, based on the flipbook-fast edits of them looking scared, or maybe Tim, which would make me sad but not as sad as if it's Derek. And the two words? I'm blanking. All I can think about is "black dick."
Frank: HA! You just said...
Jacob: -- Frank. The recap's over. Go to bed.
Frank: Will you watch Newsies with me until I fall asleep?
Jacob: Go put on your PJs.
Frank: I call 'em my Sleepy Suit!
Jacob: I...know. God, I know.