On The Air

Both project managers walk around like they’re lobotomized this week, but only one ends up getting fired. Plus, after four episodes of being a nobody, Surya all of a sudden just won’t shut up.

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

Previously on The Apprentice: What’s bigger than Donald Trump? The Super Bowl is bigger than Donald Trump. So no show last week. Before that? Hell, I don’t remember. Something about chickens.

This week on The Apprentice, we’re back to the weird and choppy editing. What’s going on there? This show always used to be put together so well; you could argue day and night about the validity of an entire show dedicated to the kissing of Donald Trump’s ass, but the one thing you couldn’t refute was that it was made well. Technically. But this season, we’re even losing that. Did they outsource this show to Korea or something?

This week’s task is all about honey. Trump barely has time to meet the teams in the driveway on his way to the limo, and he tells them in this weird halting way that they’ll have to harvest…the honey. Then they’ll have to bottle…the honey, and have to sell…the honey. Even Trump is off this episode. Did they outsource him to Korea too? Maybe this is really a CG Trump, being tested for the upcoming Trump cartoon.

So we get to see the teams visiting the beehives and “harvesting” the honey, but there are hardly any of the usual voiceovers that orient us to where we are and where we’re doing. We see some people putting on bee suits, and it’s not clear exactly who it is. Stefani is the only one talking, and she’s talking about how afraid she is of bees. And we hear Frank’s voice (you can never miss Frank’s voice), so it’s clear we’re dealing with Arrow here. But where’s the other team? What’s going on?

Now we’re in a building, also without any kind of transition, and Surya is talking and talking and talking about honey consumers and household penetration of honey. James clearly wants to punch him in the face. Aaron is just sitting there like he’s on painkillers, eating honey with a spoon. Like he’s checked out of the whole process. Never mind that he’s the project manager. And Sean, yes Sean’s back, he’s just sitting in the corner doodling in his notepad. And still Surya keeps on talking. Remember how in the first three episodes Surya didn’t say one word the whole time? I’m wondering now how difficult it was to find footage where he wasn’t talking. That would be a real editing challenge.

Now we’re back with the bees, and there are different people there. But we actually know who these people are, because there’s a voiceover from Aimee talking about how she took on the project manager role and sent the rest Team Kinetic to go harvest the honey. See how easy that was, editors? Try to keep it up. Derek is finding out that the bee suits, which are supposed to protect you against bee stings, really aren’t working too well. In fact, he’s still getting stung through the suit. That’s gotta suck.

And just like that the harvesting is done and the team is heading back. While they were gone Aimee was supposed to be handling their marketing, but we find out that she was waiting to do all of that until she had a name. A name for the honey. A name that they could put on the label. And she wants the whole team to brainstorm for a name for their honey. Hey, how about this? Just put a big sticker that says “Honey” on the jar. Problem solved. Looks like Aimee has checked out as project manager just as much as Aaron has.

Next the teams take a field trip to a honey factory, where they’re actually overseeing the equipment that fill the bottles. Is this what the show is about now? Factory work? Because I would think you’d actually have to be qualified to run these machines, but apparently not because we’ve got people like Frank and Nicole on the factory floor. But no one is worse than Tim. His job is literally to watch the machine fill the bottles. That’s it. The whole process is automated, and he just has to watch it. And he’s screwing it up! Something like five times he has to yell out to Frank to push the emergency stop button, because the bottles didn’t fill right. Or, as we see, the bottle weren’t lined up right and the machine squirted honey all over the floor. I can’t even figure out what’s wrong here. How does this get screwed up? Anyway, the whole team finds this uproariously funny. Tim and Frank are good-naturedly yelling at each other, and the rest of the team is laughing, and the whole time there are real employees standing in the back of the room, real factory workers who actually do this for a living and who have quotas, and they look like they want to kill themselves.

And then, before you know it, Team Kinetic is at Ralph’s supermarket. So, did they ever figure out their naming crisis? Did they go to the factory to fill bottles too? And did Aimee ever get any kind of marketing plan together? Apparently not, because the whole team is complaining about her. And for good reason. Their esteemed project manager is wandering around the store, dazed, like she’s just been let out of the hospital and she’s still a little disoriented. She even has this plain t-shirt on, that if you look at it just from the front, the way it’s hanging off of her, it looks like it doesn’t close in the back. The whole thing has an “Aimee just had her appendix out” vibe, and we see Derek and Muna getting their shit together and unloading honey from the truck, while Aimee stands around brushing her hair, yawning, and “watching the cart”. Other people are putting up crappy homemade signs in the front of the store proclaiming it to be “Honey Day”, and still Aimee is just standing there. Maybe she took some of Aaron’s painkillers.

Over at Arrow’s store, we see a closeup of their honey bottles, and guess what name they put on the label? “Honey.” Looks like someone had their priorities straight. We’re shown lots of shots of happy customers buying honey, and the team has done the smart thing of giving away one free bottle if you buy two. Because of the way these tasks are structured, the only thing that matters in the end is how much money you take in. The amount you have to spend to get there, and the amount of product you give away for free, and therefore the total profit you make, are irrelevant. It’s all about the hard numbers of how many you sell. And so it’s smart, in these cases, to go crazy with the giveaways and promotions, so that even if people are spending a lot of money they feel like they’re getting a lot. Hell, use your seed money to give out free gold bracelets with every bottle of honey sold, whatever it takes.

And it seems to be working for Arrow, at least until Surya shows up with his big giant energy suck. It’s funny how Surya seems like he’d be a good contestant, like on the surface, but all we’re shown of him is him being a distraction and an obstruction to everything around him. God, what if Surya is the Brent of this season, or the Markus, and we just haven’t realized it yet?

And Aaron is continuing his downward slide into stupor, half-heartedly grabbing a tray of free samples to hand out while muttering “I hate sales.” This coming from a guy who works in sales. We see him just standing around, doing a lot of nothing, and it seems like he just had the same surgery as Aimee.

Speaking of Aimee, the rest of her team is rallying around to save her ass. Angela puts on a track suit and starts trading on her reputation as an Olympic gold medalist to get attention, and Derek puts on his bee suit and starts walking around the store like a big goof, pulling sales that way. They’re gimmicks, but when you’ve got two hours to sell honey in an empty supermarket, which I can’t imagine is a big seller to begin with, you need all the gimmicks you can get. And it works, well enough for Kinetic to take the lead and win the task by a hundred dollars.

Oh god, here we go again with Trump. Trump is out of town “on business”, which really means he’s giving another one of his inane Learning Annex lectures. He’s up on stage talking about some crap or other, and there’s a whole group of people who may or may not be extras hired by Mark Burnett to fill up the hall, and someone is holding a sign that says “Trump For President”. This is so horrible. And then it gets worse. Sean, in the Boardroom, calls Trump while he’s still on stage to read the results of the task. And Trump stays on stage, and puts the call on speakerphone so the whole crowd can hear it. He explains about the “killer bees” and we hear that Kinetic won the task. The crowd goes wild. I have to lay down, because this is so stupid that it seems like it should be fake, but all the evidence points to it not being fake.

Trump goes backstage to yell into the phone that Kinetic’s reward will be playing basketball with the LA Lakers. Trump then hangs up and goes off to collect his $1.5 million speaking fee, while Sean dismisses everyone from the Boardroom. Arrow has to pack up their crap and move back to the backyard, and Kinetic gets to meet up with Kareem and some Laker Girls to shoot some hoops.

And then, Boardroom time! Trump is back from Minnesota, and he immediately starts laying into Aaron for being quiet last week in the Boardroom, when he was sitting at Trump’s right hand to judge Kinetic. There are some detours along the way, with talk about branding and the actual task at hand, but Trump just can’t get off of it. You know how he gets one thing that worms his way into his brain, and he won’t let go of it. That’s what’s happening here.

Oh, but there’s one more detour, where talk turns to Tim and Nicole and their supposed secret romance. Which of course we’ve seen absolutely none of so far, thanks to the editors, but he we are in the Boardroom talking about it. Frank’s giving Tim a hard time about how they’re going to get married, and Trump is saying that Tim deserves to be The Apprentice if he can get Nicole into bed, and everyone has a good laugh. Ha ha! Objectifying women is so funny!

But in the end all these detours are meaningless. Aaron spent the whole episode shuffling around like a zombie, and above that Trump just can’t get off the fact that he was so quiet in the Boardroom last time. So Aaron’s fired pretty quickly. But in the end, Surya still can’t stop talking. Even after Aaron has been fired, even as everyone is leaving the room, Surya is still trying to talk to Trump. Trump just tells him to shut the hell up and get out. No kidding; people have been fired for crap like that before. You don’t want to poke a stick into the hornet’s nest that is Trump’s subconscious.

And then, while Aaron is getting into the town car for his ride off into the sunset, Surya is still talking. Still! He shuts up for a blissful second while the car is driving away, but then he starts back up again during the walk to the backyard. The music fades out, the show’s over, the crew is going to bed, and still Surya’s talking, talking talking. Somebody needs to get that boy a muzzle.

Next week? Tim and Nicole get busy by the pool. Maybe. You never know with these promos. They seem to have very little relation to things that actually happen on the show.