On The Air

Derek gets fired, but not for being gay. I know, I’m surprised too. Read it all.

Episode links:
Jacob’s recap
TV Guide review
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Previously on The Apprentice: Aimee got fired, but I can’t remember why. Something about a mall.

Currently on The Apprentice: So this week’s task is all about creating an “owner experience” for Lexus. Trump and some Lexus folks roll up to Rodeo Drive, but the only reason they’re meeting there is because of some tenuous connection to “luxury” that both Rodeo Drive and Lexus are supposed to represent. I’d say the link between the two is more “showing off” and “ego-stroking”, but that’s just me. Oh, and look, Randall’s here! Randall from Season 4, who had the steepest drop-off in popularity of any contestant, ever, during the live finale that season when he refused to share the prize with Rebecca. He’s kind of been in hiding ever since then. I thought maybe he was dead. But here he is!

This “owner experience” is all about bringing people into the dealership, giving them a good time, and showing off the new models. And in the end you’re judged by customer surveys. So again, it’s a task that has nothing to do with real estate, but it is all about making people happy and sucking up, two skills which are invaluable in the world of business. So already this task is more relevant than 95% of the other stuff they do on this show, in that it’s maybe something that actual executives would do in real life somewhere. The challenge of the task, then, is to be creative and come up with an event that won’t insult the Lexus owners.

Kinetic sits around and stares at each other for a while, with nobody having any ideas. Like, at all. And it’s tough, because this event is supposed to be promoting “luxury”, which is kind of a made-up concept devised by people like Donald Trump, and it has more to do with the afore-mentioned ego-stroking than with anything tangible. And if you aren’t a person like Donald Trump, i.e. if you’re a real human being, it can be tough to understand what people like that mean by “luxury”. This is why people eat caviar; not because they like it, but because they want other people to know that they’re the kind of person who eats caviar. It’s the whole feedback loop of defining your life by other people’s expectations, and it’s exactly the kind of existence that Donald Trump has built up for himself. So it’s not surprising to see him so sold on the idea of luxury.

So what is luxury? For Kinetic, it’s go-karts. And magicians. Because…well, I don’t really know why. Those ideas come about at the point in the brainstorming process when you start throwing out stupid answers because you can’t think of anything good, and they both come from Derek. But what’s surprising is the quickness with which the rest of the team latches onto those ideas. The correct response to “go-karts” is to laugh, and then to say, “Alright, let’s get serious.” But for Kinetic the response is to get wildly excited and go out and get some go-karts. Because luxury is like that.

Over at Arrow, “luxury” means Surya going crazy some more. Someone put the team into a conference room with a 20-foot-long white board, and an unlimited supply of dry-erase markers. I am sure this was done on purpose. The first thing Surya starts doing is writing on the board. And writing. And writing. The rest of the team is sitting around and trying to define luxury, but Surya is just going on and on and on with this stuff, setting one side of the board apart as a “toolbox” of skills that other people can draw from. I don’t even know what that means. He’s got flowcharts and boxes and big writing with arrows that lead to little writing that lead to littler writing. And he’s doing this constantly, like all day. Every time there’s a shot of someone else on the team working, you can see Surya in the back adding to his novel. I guess it’s good for keeping him out of the way; usually when you have an ineffective team member you want to give him crazy amounts of busywork so he stays out of your hair. Surya comes with a whole sack of busywork all his own, and he does it all by himself so you don’t even have to waste your time telling him to go away. He just goes off and uses an entire box of dry-erase markers to write the Great American Brand Marketing Textbook. Stuff like “What are the huge points on this car’s (features?)” That’s what he’s writing. In boxes, with arrows. At least he’s keeping busy, I guess.

Stefani and James and Frank must be on the ball, because their event goes off so well that we don’t see much of it. There is shrimp and pastry trays and flowers and actually letting people drive the car. Nothing goes wrong, aside from a dead battery, so it’s over quick. Winning teams are so boring.

Luckily, we’ve got a whole circus of the bizarre going on over at Kinetic’s tent. First there’s something wrong with the signs, but I don’t really know what. Everybody’s pissed off, though. Then Jenn is trying to give a presentation to an already bored crowd, but there’s too much glare for anybody to see her TV screens. Even she can’t see them, which is a problem because her presentation consists of little more than just reading what’s on the TV. So without the screens she’s lost, and she can’t find her place in her notes, so there’s a lot of awkward dead air in her presentation. But then comes the best part. Then come the go-karts. Which they seem to have made the focus of the event, like the whole success of the day hinges on people enjoying the go-karts. And they don’t. The cornpone music starts playing, so you know this is a disaster in the making. The go-karts don’t even look fun. TV can make anything look fun, but the go-karts don’t. One guy actually puts on a hairnet so he doesn’t get dirty from the helmet. That’s so hilarious, and so much something a Lexus owner would do.

And the whole day is capped off with the magician. Magic has nothing to do with cars or Lexus or go-karts, but there’s a magician anyway. Because why not? You’ve already lost, at least go out swinging. And this is one of those “hip” magicians, with the goatee and the rose-colored glasses and the long curly hair. “Yanni on crack,” Derek calls him, and I don’t think I can do any better than that. He does some card “tricks”, and it’s all horrible.

We know how this is going to end. Kinetic loses, of course, although what surprises me is that they still got an 84% approval from the customers. Not enough to save their hides, though. So Arrow’s reward is to go hang out with Snoop Dogg in the studio. And, again, just like with the Playboy Mansion, I’d rather be on the losing team. There’s not much to say here. First, Donald Trump says “fo’ shizzle”. That sound you hear is the Earth opening up to swallow us all. Then we find out Surya is a Snoop Dogg fan. Of course he is. And to cap it off, Frankie Suits gets up with his champagne and cigar and does the whitest rap in the history of white rap. I’m including Mel Brooks’ Hitler Rap here. It’s whiter than that.

Into the Boardroom, talk immediately turns to how much everything sucked. The signs, the presentation, the go-karts, the magician, the whole theme. Everything. Randall brings up the go-karts, and immediately all fingers point to Derek. Who, yes, was the first one to say the word, but the rest of the team jumped all over it too. Can’t blame just him for that one. But they try, and Derek defends himself by saying he’s a go-kart and deep-fried appetizer kind of guy. “I’m white trash,” he says, and Trump jumps all over that. You can see the synapses misfiring, almost as badly as they did with Carey’s pink gay swimsuit. It goes on for a full minute, Trump having a cerebral hemorrhage about the word “white trash”, and you’d think as a businessman he’d understand that white trash sells. Just look at Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson. But no, there’s this made-up word “luxury” that Donald Trump has invented, and the opposite of that is this other made-up word “white trash”, and so Derek gets fired with a quickness for even saying the word, and sent out to the hall. For a moment there he looks pissed, just a quick moment, but then by the time he gets outside he’s laughing. Just laughing at the whole joke this show is and how happy he is that he’s not going to win, that he’s not going to have to actually go work for Donald Trump. This is like the only show where the prize for winning is worse than losing, you know? And the real point of the game is to get on the show, so that you’re on TV, but then to make sure you’re fired before there’s any kind of real chance that you’ll win. Derek realizes this and just laughs at the whole show and the crazy old coot back in the Boardroom. That’s the reason I liked him, because he got the joke of the show and he didn’t take it seriously, and every time Trump went crazy it was like Derek was looking right at me through the television going “I know!!”

Trump lets the rest of the Boardroom know that just because Derek is gone doesn’t mean nobody else is being fired. In fact someone else is going home, and it is Jenn, the Project Manager, for several obvious reasons. But before we get there we find out how much Trump hates Randall. Randall tries to take control of the Boardroom, and keeps interrupting Trump. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word, Randall butts into what Trump is saying, and it happens over and over. Donald looks pissed, and eventually he just has to tell Randall to chill. I was completely expecting Randall to get fired too. Or for Trump to go off on a big tear and just fire everybody he sees. The whole of Team Kinetic, then Randall, then the cameramen, then right on down the line until he’s firing the caterers. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Halfway through the Boardroom Jenn gets the joke too, and starts cracking up. First she suggests that they all get to go free, since Derek has already been fired. Then she see her own firing coming, so she interrupts Trump to let the rest of the team tell her how much they love her. And then she gets fired, and she’s laughing the whole time. Everyone goes outside for a big group hug, and you can kind of tell Jenn’s relieved to be out from under Trump’s big greasy thumb too. She’s still laughing during the car ride home. And somewhere, maybe hiding in the bushes, is Derek, all like “I know!!”

Next week? Everyone stops being polite. Could it have something to do with the sudden appearance of Bill Rancic?