On The Air

Again, just like every week, you can ask the question: what does any of this have to do with real estate?

Episode links:
Jacob’s recap
TV Guide review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

Previously on The Apprentice: A whole lot of yelling at tourists ultimately came down to nothing, as Michelle realized that it’s just a game show, and bowed out of the competition. Meanwhile, Trump’s head exploded. Some more.

The show picks up at the same phone call we saw last week, Andie calling from Trump’s “office” to let Team Arrow know that Boardroom has been canceled. Frank answers the phone, jumping up and down, and everyone shares a hug. We fade out on a hilarious freeze frame of Frank, like six feet in the air, with a cigar in one hand and everyone hanging off of him.

Normally this is where we’d segue into the opening credits, but instead we get some beauty shots of sunset in LA, and a gorgeous time lapse of a red moon rising over the city. We’re then treated to a sequence that almost seems staged because it’s too perfectly set up. Team Kinetic is having a nice orderly meeting inside the mansion, with clipboards and minutes and everyone sitting around in a power circle sharing their thoughts and feelings on how to prepare for the next task. This immediately cuts to Team Arrow sitting around the campfire in night vision, yelling and laughing and drinking beer and discussing the existential nature of Cheese Doodles. It’s like they’re setting up this whole duality between the haves and have-nots, between white collar and blue collar, and they’re making Arrow out to be the fun-loving hooligans while Kinetic are the stuffed shirts. And the funniest thing is that Donald Trump is the stuffiest stuffed shirt around, and his idea of “going wild” is taking off his black socks to show his wrinkled-up old man feet at the beach, and Trump is so totally a Kinetic. But they’re showing Arrow to be the more fun team. Another silent jab at Trump here?

Anyway, the phone rings and it’s Trump, who begins by calling Team Arrow “pathetic” and ordering someone from Kinetic to switch sides. Nobody seems too thrilled about this, not only because they don’t want to sleep in the backyard, but also I’m guessing because none of them want to get too close to Frank. But soon it dawns on them that Trump’s actually testing them here, and volunteering to be the one to rescue a failing team will look good on their permanent record. So pretty soon half the team is stepping forward to do it, including Heidi, the project manager. In the end it’s Surya, who we’ve seen on-screen for about five seconds total this season, who gets picked to switch sides.

Trump tells everyone that he’ll meet them the next morning on Mulholland Drive, and pulls out his standard lie for occasions like this: “I’ve got a lot a meetings tomorrow, but I’m going to stop by very quickly to give you your next task.” He does this every season, pretending like when this show is filming he does anything more than sit in the makeup chair for hours and hours, waiting for his next chance to be on TV. Everything surrounding Trump on this show is so fake; I’d be surprised if it was actually him on the phone talking to the teams right now. Surya heads over to the Arrow firepit and is immediately offered a beer. Welcome to the fun side of the fence!

And then we get some more hilarity. Surya, not realizing what he’s gotten himself into, whips out his little clipboard straightaway and starts going on and on about “righting the ship” and openness and trust and structure and the Fifteen Rules of How Arrow Can Do Better. They overlap the footage here so there are the Three Voices Of Surya in your ear and he seriously goes on and on with this stuff. And everyone on Arrow is drunk off their asses, so one by one they all fall asleep, right there by the fire, leaving Surya talking to the coyotes and no one else in particular.

Finally, credits. Six minutes in.

Cut to the Trump Limo heading up into the hills. Inside is some unspecified bald guy in a suit chatting about how some unspecified business is doing. And also there is Sean, last year’s winner. You remember? The British guy? No? Me neither. Until this episode, all I remembered about last year’s season was Lenny and Orlando Bloom, Brent and his bagels, and Lee and some other guy in the final two. Lee lost, but I couldn’t remember who won. But now here he is! Sean! The metrosexual! Remember now? No?

Trump tells his limo driver to pull over, and it’s so hideously fake, because when Trump’s talking you can see out the back window that they’re in traffic on some city street, but the exterior shot shows them all by themselves on the top of a mountain. So fake. Trump starts talking about automobiles, and how LA has automobiles on top of automobiles and how people do “everything” in their automobiles, even stuff he doesn’t want to talk about. Trump laughs at his own innuendo, and everyone gets squeamish because it’s like your grandma talking about sex. But his point is that LA is different than New York, where all they have is taxis and helicopters, and here in LA they have this thing called the “Drive-Through Restaurant”, a thing which Trump has obviously never experienced in his life, and when he finally gets to the damn point we find out that the unspecified bald guy in a suit is actually the CEO of El Pollo Loco. So it’s Fast Food Week on the Apprentice, and we’ve fallen so far this season that El Pollo Loco is the best they can do. What, Long John Silver’s didn’t return your call?

We jump right into the middle of the teams creating their new menu item, and I’m getting dizzy from how fast we’re moving through the tasks. We seriously spend like thirty seconds watching Arrow create a Chicken Tortilla Bowl, and fifteen seconds at Kinetic watching them chow down on their mango-pineapple bowl. We also see Derek and Marisa at some other building, completely in another part of town, and we get a voiceover about how they’re doing marketing and creating graphics. All of this takes place in less than two minutes. This whole middle section of the episode was so disjointed and jumpy and confusing, it felt like the pros that normally do post production on this show stepped out for lunch and left the editing to a high school AV club. It’s quick, it feels like there are big chunks missing, and it leaves you wondering what the hell happened. I had to check my Tivo to make sure I didn’t hit the wrong button and skip over five minutes of the show somewhere. Not a great showing from the editors this week, at least not in this middle section.

Kinetic is wrangling with a name for their new product, and they all seem to agree on the “Paradise Pollo Bowl.” It has chicken and pineapple, so what else are you going to call it? But Marisa, who you’ll remember is somewhere across town, keeps calling in with her brilliant ideas. Her brilliant ideas, of which she has precisely two, are: call it the Bravado Bowl (that’s just a horrible name for food, any food), and put some people in chicken suits on the sidewalk. The chicken suit idea gets universally shot down, because come on, even Donald Trump is classier than that. And they’ve already come up with a name, thank you. But Marisa won’t be held down. She keeps calling, and keeps calling, and every five goddamn minutes she’s on the phone talking about Bravado Bowls and chicken suits. By this time Heidi is completely pissed off and ready to chuck the phone into the deep fryer, but she just won’t stop talking.

Over at Arrow (or Aarow, in tribute to their Project Manager), we’re shocked to see everyone actually acting competently. It’s kind of funny when Aaron speaks with wide-eyed wonder about how they got “five dozen balloons” to decorate the store, like he’s never seen that many balloons in his whole life. But they’re generally doing a good job. They’ve got banners, and signs, and yes, a whole 60 balloons. They’ve got James out on the street yelling at cars, and if there’s anyone on this team who could actually be heard from inside an enclosed car going 45 MPH, it’s James. They’re also sending Frank and Tim out to do “bulk sales”. In the world of Frank and Tim, “bulk sales” seems to mean walking into the first car dealership you see and jumping around a lot so people are afraid to say no to you, but it does get them an order for 22 bowls. And at $5 apiece, it could be said that’s a task-winning move right there. We also see that everyone coming into the restaurant is getting excited about these new tortilla bowls, and the drive-thru is so backed up that people are honking constantly (fake!). Sean is there, and everyone is smiling and happy (although not necessarily because Sean is there), and could this be the week that Team Sucky turns into Team Awesome?

Meanwhile over at Kinetic, it’s like a ghost town, and the few people that do come in aren’t too thrilled about the exciting new blend of chicken and fruit that they’ve whipped up. Marisa and Derek have returned from their field trip, and they’re stuck outside in the hot sun handing out free samples to drive-thru customers. Marisa’s still going on and on about her chicken suits, and I guess so much of her brain was occupied with those suits that she forgot to make signs and banners. Because I see a few small signs by the front counter, but nothing like what Aarow has set up. There aren’t even any balloons! Aarow has 60 balloons, how are you going to top that? Sad music leads us away from Kinetic, mourning for the lack of chicken suits.

And we’re in the Boardroom, with everyone still wearing their El Pollo uniforms. Trump gets all 1950s, all “Take your hats off, you’re inside” in this stern headmaster voice. And we find out from Sean that Kinetic sold $313.54, and Aarow sold $480 for the win. Everyone on Aarow is happy, and I think Frank is in tears. But poor, sad Kinetic looks so deflated, and they’re told they’re coming back to the Boardroom. For the first time, ever. There are so many people on that team who I’ve never heard speak. I don’t even know their names. Is there really someone named Aimee there?

Aarow’s reward is to be taken to Malibu (Nicole’s fantastically excited just to hear that much…I think she’s easily pleased), where they will be treated to a beachfront concert by Andrea Bocelli, followed by feasting and fireworks. They’re all pretty thrilled, and I think I would be too, considering this is their first good news after more than a week of filming. I think they’re also thrilled just to get hot showers for a change. There is much celebrating at the mansion, with everyone jumping in the pool fully clothed. And then they go to the beach, and Andrea Bocelli shows up and starts playing piano and singing. I really have no idea who this guy is. Except that he was a guest on American Idol last year, and I had no idea back then either. Maybe I just don’t keep up on my Italian musicians. Frank’s pretty excited, though. Apparently he pops in an Andrea Bocelli CD every Sunday at dinner. Then they sit down to their feast, and because this show loves contrast, the shots of them eating on the beach are interspersed with Team Kinetic in the backyard cooking spaghetti in paper plates. You know I love contrasts too, but sometimes it’s just too much, you know?

Then we see Kinetic, sitting around in one of their power circle meetings in the backyard, only instead of discussing motivation and goals, they’re discussing who to stab in the back. And this team approaches scapegoating in the exact same way they approach everything else, by getting together and getting consensus. And who’s the chosen scapegoat this week? Why it’s Marisa of course, she of the chicken suits. Now normally on The Apprentice, and I’m talking about previous seasons here, the theme is that the Project Manager is always the one to be fired, unless someone else screws up horribly. But this season, Trump must be slipping a little or something, because every week he just seems to be going along with the team’s chosen scapegoat and firing them. He’s usually pretty sharp in the Boardroom; it’s admittedly the place where he has most of his mindblowing moments and reveals his inability to deal with the world the rest of us have to face, but a lot of the time he’s able to see through the cloud of bullshit that teams who’ve chosen a scapegoat walk in with and he’s able to fire the right person. Which usually is the Project Manager. Because there’s screwing up on the small things, which is what the scapegoat gets charged with, but there’s also screwing up on everything, which is what many Project Managers have done. And this season he’s lost the ability to see that. Like the sun in LA is getting to his brain or something. Like when he fired Carey for designing a pink suit, when it was the Project Manager’s job to tell Carey to quit it and go sit in the corner. The old Trump would have been able to ferret out Nicole’s incompetence that week, even if there were a gay man in the room. And this week he should have been able to realize that the correct thing to do with a disruptive task member is to sideline her and tell her to shut the hell up. Which was done to Marisa. And they still lost, which makes me think the fault lies elsewhere. Sure, Marisa obsessed so much over the chicken suit that she was incapable of processing any other thought. But what was Derek doing? Wasn’t he also on marketing? Does Trump know that he’s gay yet? He must not, or else he would have been fired. And what about the people inside the store, who were actually in charge of selling the damn thing? Or the people who thought that chicken and mango were a match that was just waiting to be made? Marisa was useless, sure, but it wasn’t her uselessness that made them lose.

Of course, it could be said that she was fired for her Boardroom performance. Because here she is interrupting everybody, and we’re not even thirty seconds in. Sean starts talking about the distinct lack of banners and balloons at Kinetic’s store, and Marisa just keeps saying his name. “Sean. Sean. Sean. Sean. Sean.” While he’s talking. He’s learned enough during his two months at the Trump Organization to know not to get up, reach across the table, and slap the hell out of her, but it’s what she needed at that point. And she’s not done! Whoever is talking at any particular moment in the Boardroom, she’s talking over them. What’s kind of funny is that most of them, Sean especially, just keep on talking like she’s not even there. It’s like when you’re chatting with someone, and there’s a phone ringing in another room, and you have the choice to either get up and answer it or just pretend like you don’t hear it. They’re all pretending like they don’t hear her, which I guess is roughly equivalent to a slap in the face.

Muna pipes up (for like the first time ever this season), and points out that Marisa is disruptive, and that even in this Boardroom she’s been interrupting everyone. Which is a smart move, because if your scapegoat is doing you the favor of acting rude in the Boardroom, the least you can do is bring it up so it’s fresh in Trump’s mind. And how does Marisa respond to this? By interrupting! By interrupting Trump as he’s defending her, no less! Talk about a bad move. A good portion of this game has nothing to do with winning tasks or displaying business competence, it has to do with getting on Trump’s good side. Because it is an ass-kissing competition, let’s not forget, and Trump over the last six years has shown himself to be highly unstable and emotional in the Boardroom. You never know what will set him off, so you’ve got to kind of read his mood, and if you’ve been labeled as an interrupter, what you’ve got to do is cut it out. Right now. Don’t give him anything to latch onto.

The rest of the Boardroom goes pretty much along the same lines. Aimee and Marisa get into a shouting match at one point, so when Heidi is asked to bring two people back it’s a pretty easy choice. And Marisa just won’t shut up, just won’t let Trump finish any of his sentences. He has to tell her to stop, he has to tell her to settle down, he actually has to ask her if she’s ready to let him speak. And that, on top of the fact that she only had one idea for getting people into the store, the chicken suits, leads to her being fired pretty quickly. After she’s gone, he pretty much confirms to the camera that the scapegoating worked on him: “Every single person on the team wanted her out. I think I had no choice.” Way to take control of the Boardroom there, Trump.

So goodbye, Marisa. You were hot, but sometimes that’s not enough. Even with Trump, surprisingly. And even in the towncar ride home, she Can’t Shut Up about the damn chicken suits!

Things we didn’t see this week that were promised in the previews: The shocking(!) move in the Boardroom. Didn’t happen, didn’t see it, why did they promote it so much if they were only going to cut it out. And: The Apprentice romance. Tim and Nicole were flirting a little around the campfire and on the beach, but there was a whole scene with them making out by the pool that was in the previews but didn’t make the show. Does NBC have the worst promo department in network TV or what?

Extra credit assignment: After watching chicken suits be vilified during this entire episode and this entire recap, look at this picture of Aaron, Project Manager of the winning team. Discuss.