The Apprentice Episode 4

Last week on The Mics Don't Even Like You:
Team Trainwreck had to compete against each other. Michelle led one team while Aaron led the other. Stefani wore her glasses really really low, but did a great job as a tour guide. Nobody wanted to listen to Michelle. Aaron's faux-team won and their reward was the satisfaction of winning. Hahahaha. Michelle wanted to quit, which pissed Trump off because dammit, he wears the pants.

This week on Two What? Oh, Chicken Suits. Right:
I actually just watched the episode like half an hour ago and I'm already recapping. Because this was an excellent episode, even though they didn't really show much of the task. I have many theories that will be forgotten after a night's sleep.

I took very brief notes at the beginning so I wouldn't forget to mention things such as last week when Aaron's team didn't get any sort of reward except for the satisfaction of winning. Best. Reward. Ever.

So I noticed that Apprentice has started going the Survivor route of showing a few minutes of the current episode before going to the intro. In this time, we already get to see about five ridiculous things happening. First, Heidi is lecturing her team like she is their mother. Everybody on Kinetic looks about as excited as a dead rat. So, anybody else think Heidi looks exactly like Rebecca the gimp? Also, Kristine has the same facial features as my mom's friend and Tim looks like someone I can't place.

Anyway, next we get a replay of the call about nobody else getting fired. Frankie Suits the Chimpanzee's ridiculous reaction included. Then we get an odd three-way call from Trump to the two teams. It seems like he's actually calling both teams at once, but he could have easily called them separately. He tells Kinetic to give someone up to go work on Arrow. There is really only one answer here and it's Derek. Possibly Angela. Nobody else on Kinetic would mesh with Arrow. However, Heidi, being the head honcho that she thinks she is, volunteers to go if nobody else will. All along probably assuming this won't happen since she's supposed to be PM again. Aimee, Marisa, and Surya all volunteer and Trump asks Arrow who they want. They choose Surya.

So Surya packs up his bags and moves outside with Arrow for the night. This is where we find out the real reason why they picked him. They're all drunk and like to say his name. Oh, by the way, before this happened, Arrow was sitting around their campfire discussing Cheese Doodles. No joke. Stefani has never heard of the term Cheese Doodles and Frankie Suits cannot believe it. You know, as dysfunctional as they are, they're fun to watch. I also think at this point, everybody left gets along with everybody else. Oh, and a couple Kinetic members are standing on that rock looking over the top of the bushes to watch Surya settle in. It's kinda cute.

Now this is still pre-intro. Surya totally pulls a Furonda and pulls out his fourth grade composition notebook where he's written a bunch of guidelines, or let's say rules, for Arrow to follow. He starts reading them off and the editors did a montage of it and made it seem like he talked forever. Nobody really calls him out for trying to steal Furonda's thunder, so I don't know how long it actually took. Or maybe the rest were too drunk to care and clapped for an encore when he finished. All I know is if you have guidelines ready for Arrow, not knowing at all that you'd actually be joining their team, that's pretty ridiculous.

Credits. By the way, I think the new intro is hilarious.

Our special guest of the week is Sean, whom nobody seems to recognize. So either nobody remembers the past season or it's actually only been like two days since Sean won. If I remember correctly, they filmed this right after the previous season like they usually do but then NBC told Trump to suck it and put him on haitus for a season, which was unexpected.

Anyway, Trump says Sean never had to stay in a tent. Well, he might have not stayed in one, but he sure did pitch a tent everytime Tammy's unexcitable, boring personality was around. I feel like although last season was funny, the entire season was a circus. Nobody was Apprentice material, really.

So Sean is the Ivanka for this episode. And the name of the task is Top Chef. I've figured now after the bathing suit episode, Trump has just decided to sit down, look at the current reality shows that are on right now and just shamelessly steal their ideas. First he did Survivor with the tent business. Then he did Project Runway/Top Model (Nicole and Surya modeled) with the bathing suit fiasco. Now he's doing Top Chef.

The teams have to create a new Pollo bowl for El Pollo Loco (that's Spanish for "Frankie Suits"). So, as I mentioned, we don't see that much of the actual task. We see Arrow throwing together their bowl and tasting it. We see Kinetic adding fruit to their chicken bowl. It's Kristine's idea to do this Paradise bowl, fruit and all. Remember that.

Arrow has made huge signs to put everywhere because they actually learned something from the first task. Kinetic has sent Marisa and Derek off somewhere to do marketing. This is where the ridiculous chicken dance fiasco begins. Marisa wants the name to be Bravado bowl or something. She also wants two chicken suits to draw in customers. Heidi says no, Frankie Suits isn't on our team and no, it's Paradise bowl and that's that. They have like five exchanges where all Marisa wants is two chicken suits and Bravado and all Heidi wants is to reject Marisa coldly.

Here's my theory: I think Marisa's demise was Heidi. For some reason, they never clicked. They bickered over the swimsuit design in the second episode where they ended up going with Marisa's design and winning. I think maybe they're too much alike and Heidi can't stand someone else like her around. It's probably because Marisa's the only one who will challenge Heidi or stand up for things that Heidi shoots down. This is all under the file folder labeled "Being winning PM got to Heidi's head." Heidi sees herself as the boss and she doesn't want any dissention. The rest of the team just doesn't want to get on Heidi's bad side in case they keep winning and she's PM forever.

I think next week once someone else is top dog, Heidi will suffer within the group. I see her as a Melrose. When Monique was there, Melrose seemed normal. Once Monique left though, Melrose's true colors showed. When Heidi is no longer Hitler, she'll stick out like a sore thumb as a difficult soldier who always tries to take command. Okay, bad analogy. Still.

When the task actually starts, we have James from Arrow being his typical raspy self. James always sounds like he's been at a concert yelling too loudly for the past five hours. He has permanent laryngitis. Anyway, he's pulling people in. Meanwhile, Aaron has sent Suits and Tim off to try to get some bulk sales going on. Surya thinks they need to come back because the lines for their store are all over the place. Aaron doesn't listen to Surya and we get the only trouble at Arrow this week.

Tim and Suits end up going to some office/showroom/sketchy building and getting 22 orders of their new Pollo bowl. They're excited and Aaron's excited and it's Aaron-1, Surya-0.

Meanwhile, as Sean visits Heidi's crabby shack, there's no business and Marisa and Derek are doing the only marketing they could think of. They're offering samples to people in the drive-thru. Which isn't a bad idea.. if your food tasted good.

So they go to the boardroom and it turns out Kinetic sold like $300 while Arrow sold $430 (?). That means the bulk sale made a difference for them and it was actually closer than the editing showed. It wasn't like that one sports task a couple seasons ago when Trump fired four people for actually decreasing profits. It also wasn't as close as the previous tasks have been, and that credit goes to Aaron for sending Suits and Tim to get bulk sales.

Arrow is bouncing off the walls with this and cannot wait to move into the house. You know, I'm really starting to like them. I think, with possibly the exception of Surya, this group is tight and really mesh well with each other. They're all not your typical businessperson and I like it. The two girls aren't the plastic, frigid businesswoman type. The guys are all caricatures of normal people. It's better than those cookie cutter Kinetic types. Except for Muna. I really like Muna.

Arrow's reward is a trip to Malibu to have a private performance from Andrea Bocelli. This is a great reward, and I'm sure they didn't think it could get much better after last week's reward of nothing. They also cannot move out of the tents fast enough. They throw everything into random boxes and haul ass inside.

Kinetic moves outside and they are all disgusted by the living conditions, particularly the filth that Arrow has left. I feel like after three weeks in that misery, Kinetic would have been just as lazy. But maybe not because this team is the obsessive-compulsive team. Muna is upset and says even in Jamaica where people are poor, they're at least clean.

So Arrow gets their wonderful reward. And more importantly, we see glimpses of the alleged Apprentice romance that trumps Sean and Tammy's pretend fling. Tim goes and plays the piano after Bocelli has left. He's decently good and this gets Nicole all turned on for whatever reason. They mention that Tim won't be single after this and the comment seems to be directed at Nicole. So I don't know what's been going on, but you've got me. I'm interested. I kind of like Nicole and her crooked teeth. She's got some spunk. More than Tammy could ever dream of having. So if this ends up being the romance they promised, it'll at least be entertaining. And also mean that these two are sticking around for a bit.

Now boardroom time. Here's how it goes down: Marisa interrupts everybody. Heidi stays pretty quiet. Marisa wrongly chooses Aimee to be fired. Heidi brings back the two loudest of the boardroom and watches Marisa get canned.

Although I may not like Heidi much, I have to say the girl is smart. She owned that boardroom and it may have been the experience on the other side as winning PM for two tasks that helped her. Surely she saw that the ones who talked too much got screwed. Also, as it seemed her goal was to get rid of Marisa, she executed a brilliant plan. She could have brought back Kristine for coming up with the bad idea. Instead, she chose the person Marisa wanted to send home.. Aimee. I don't know if there's a Heidi-Kristine alliance, but it was easy for Heidi to sit there and say that everybody wants Marisa gone and Marisa wants Aimee gone. No way Heidi's going. If Kristine were there, and she was smart, she could have said true, she came up with the fruit idea. However, as PM, Heidi okayed it. This turns attention onto Heidi. Smart, Heidi. Smart.

Here's where Marisa went wrong. I didn't think she should have been fired based on merit. First of all, shut up about the chicken suits idea and the Bravado idea. Second of all, just shut up. She talked way too much. Of course, it's the only reaction she knew to being ambushed like that. I do think they ganged up on her as a basic survival skill. Nobody wanted to stand out, so they made someone else stand out. Lastly, wrong tactics. Don't accuse Aimee when she can't be singled out for something disatrous. Accuse Kristine. Why didn't you sell more? Say it wasn't marketing or sales. It was the original concept. If you say that, other people will have to agree that perhaps the fruit idea wasn't great. Accuse Aimee randomly and you now seem like you're the one going by a personal dislike agenda.

Anyway, Kristine, you're lucky. Heidi, you're smart. And Marisa, learn to keep that mouth shut.

Next week on The Apprentice:
I say either Heidi or Surya is in danger, depending on which team loses.