The Apprentice Episode 6

Last week on The Honey Whore and The Alliance:
We were not shown footage of Jenn getting honey squirted in her mouth. Surya and Derek went all Rob and Amber on us and asked Aimee to be their Lex and save Surya in the boardroom. Aaron got screwed over by the alliance and Surya got really really pissed off.

This week on Apprentice Goes Bachelor and Lex Gets Screwed:
So here are my overarching themes in Apprentice so far: (1) Trump is stealing ideas from other shows. He's already done Project Runway, Top Model, Top Chef, and Survivor. This week, Tim and Nicole get a little frisky. (2) Kinetic is playing a game. Much like when Rob saved Ambuh in Survivor All-Stars by using Lex and then throwing him away, Derek saved Surya by using Aimee and then turned on her later. (3) On the Kinetic side, it's Heidi's show. Heidi is running the game. It makes her both brilliant and really annoying. I don't like that she's the big alliance leader and whomever she is intimidated by gets the ax. (4) Stefani's glasses only appear every other episode.

Okay, this sucks. I like to write my recaps in the order that the shows were shown. So unfortunately, I had to get through Survivor and The Amazing Race to get to this recap. Those two shows are still in their early stages and are really hard to recap. The Apprentice, however, is my favorite to recap and I probably would have done a better job had I done it after I watched the show. Oh well.

Remember how mad Surya was at the end of last episode? Well, he's definitely fired up as he and Nicole head back into Trump Trailer Park. He says he basically needs to be PM for this task. That's apparently what he wanted to tell Trump when he made the rookie mistake of trying to say something after a firing. He goes on and on about how Aaron lied and that's just not cool. He's either about to burst into tears or about to throw a chair at a wall.

So according to interviews that Aaron has done, Surya is exactly this crazy in person. Aaron said that just because he didn't assign roles like Kinetic does, doesn't mean that he didn't expect Surya to step up in marketing. Anyway, who cares about all this. Surya's little tantrum is annoying and boring. Moving on.

This week's task is getting people to sign up for Priceline.com something or other. Another lame task. Where the hell is Ivanka?! You take Carolyn and her hilarity away and now Ivanka is missing for, what, three weeks now? The Priceline people whose names Trump doesn't know are going to be his eyes and ears. What lame eyes and ears.

The teams brainstorm and we are shown very predictable footage. On one hand, Kinetic is assigning roles. Surprise. And a lot of the team are not happy with their assigned roles. No, Kristine, because you're not assigned an afternoon role doesn't mean you should go home and take a nap. Can't they just try to work as a cohesive unit? You can't predict issues that will arise. Why should you micromanage so that it becomes hard to deal with problems later? And why have you all decided already that Aimee is leaving? Kinetic pisses me off.

On the other hand, Arrow is sitting in a conference room where Surya wants Frankie Suits to right a five-sentence paragraph in his composition notebook about how he's going to go about doing this task. Frankie Suits is the type of guy who shouts out ideas and works them out by talking through them. Surya cannot call himself a good leader if he cannot adapt to work with all sorts of work styles. Frankie passes around a picture he drew of Surya on a napkin which is a pretty good caricature of him. Everybody is laughing while Surya is still dead serious about this paragraph thing. And before all this, Tim is the one who brings up the good idea of auctioning off travel packages. Kinetic is also doing this, but every half hour instead, and rather than auctioning packages, they're giving away $1000 towards a trip, which is much less appealing for people to hear.

At some point, on Kinetic, we get to see the Octopus fight, which probably was nothing during the task and was blown way out of proportion to make Aimee look crazy. Worked. They also like to film Aimee when she's thinking and not aware she's on camera. They often get her in her thoughtful phase and she looks a little out of it. An easy way to make her look like she's not a strong leader. As you see, I am generally supportive of all the contestants except for two in particular. I am very wary of the editing, however. I don't doubt at all that Aimee was just as good of a leader as Heidi, except she probably had a much different, less annoying style of leading.

Anyway, what's going on? I think at this point is when Jenn and Derek go on their meeting with the mall manager or whatever she's called. The lady points out that about half of their customers are Hispanic. I understand that some people might not get this, depending on where they're from, but if you're familiar with the area, you know that if a high percentage of the people around look Hispanic, there's a good chance that many of the adults do not speak English fluently. It was not a racist comment that Jenn made in the boardroom. It's just that she knows this and wasn't aware that Aimee wouldn't also know. Aimee is from the Chicago area, so it's understandable that she isn't as familiar with the area.

I would also like to make fun of Jenn for going to ASU. No doubt she got a great education and is great at what she does. I don't want to make fun of ASU's academics. I want to point out that if I was told one of the contestants went to ASU, I would have put money on Jenn being the one. She's got a little bit of the ASU tint. I just don't like ASU gymnastics that much. Not a big deal. I like Jenn. I think she's really funny.

Anyway, so at Arrow mall, Frankie Suits is being a great salesperson and is actually physically bringing people to their kiosks. He's great at this. I know I was harsh on Suits in the first recap, but he's really done a 180. He was just too excited the first time around. So all of the Arrow kids are working it. And where is Surya? He's walking around with all of his notes.. I have no idea what he's doing. He's obviously not a good salesperson. What he doesn't realize and what Heidi definitely doesn't realize is they're difficult to relate to. They present themselves as important and have a hard time transitioning from talking professionally and talking to average people. And they take themselves way too seriously.

Heidi and Kristine (I think) are over at Kinetic mall walking around doing a poor job in pulling people in. Heidi definitely thinks she's above all the people in the mall. She looks down on the ones who don't understand her because she thinks any reasonable person can speak English and understand what she's saying. She thinks she now needs to simplify what she's saying and it irritates her. She doesn't like to be the one making compromises and adapting. Tell me I have this read right. I know the Heidi type. And while it's easy to edit people's actions and often their words, it's really difficult to put a facial expression onto a person's face. Or to give someone a different demeanor. Heidi annoys me.

So it comes down to Arrow doing a great job drawing people in with their big personalities. Kinetic relies on Derek and Muna, who speak Spanish, to translate for those who don't understand.

In the boardroom, it's Donny Jr. that joins Trump. Boo. I want Ivanka. First, Trump asks for standouts in the task from his eyes and ears whose names he does not know. Suits is named for Arrow and Derek (I think) for Kinetic. I hope they also mentioned how Surya wasn't around. Because for whatever reason, Trump thinks Surya is the reason this team wins. It's true they blame Surya when they lose and don't say anything about him when they win. Because they're not stupid. Why would you speak up if you won?

Anyway, Arrow wins, which is great. They get private surfing lessons from two pro surfers. At reward, everybody suits up and everybody except Stefani goes into the water. They're all having fun until Nicole gets hurt when a huge wave comes in. She thinks she's twisted or broken her foot and they wrap it up while it still has sand all over it. Then she gets into the van and Tim goes with her. Big surprise. When they get to the doctor's, he tells her she's been stung by a jellyfish. She's a little embarrassed and asks if most people would have continued surfing. The doctor says most people from the area probably would.

When they go back to the mansion, we get the big makeout scene. It was kinda awkward how the entire thing was filmed and the cameraman was just standing there. And Tim's holding Nicole's head at a weird angle and I'm sure it would have been better if it wasn't filmed and then broadcast all over the country. But hey, they signed up for this show and I'm not at all saying anybody did anything wrong here. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

In the boardroom, the main topic is the language barrier. Everybody blames Aimee and Aimee blames Jenn. For some reason, Derek is invincible. In two cases now, he's been at the source of the disaster in a task and his name hasn't even come up. He was with Marisa during the El Pollo Loco task and she was considered a disaster (wrongfully, though). He was with Jenn at the meeting, but not telling Aimee about the language issue seemed to end up being blamed on Jenn.

Aimee brings Jenn and Derek back into the boardroom. This is where Surya does not blindly defend Aimee like she did for him the past week. Lex anyone? Neither Rob nor Amber tried to save her (Aimee). They throw her under the bus. Aimee fights hard, though, and really gets on Jenn's case about the language barrier. I see the entire issue as a misunderstanding. Aimee did not understand by looking around that there would be the problem. Jenn did not see how it wasn't obvious and probably didn't think twice about not mentioning it to Aimee. In fact, that probably didn't even come to her mind. They made it seem as if she made a conscious decision to not give Aimee that information. I don't think so.

Anyway, Aimee is fired like I predicted (kinda) last recap. As Aimee gets into the car to leave, and as the car is pulling away, she is staring daggers at Jenn and Derek. It's all kinda funny because you know they looked back at that and laughed when it aired.

Next time on The Apprentice:
Apparently, somebody says two words that cause The Donald to do the first double firing of this season. I really hope it's on the Kinetic side. Although saying something stupid sounds like an Arrow mistake, what with all their talking and stuff. I do see Jenn leaving soon because I don't think Heidi has any need for her. Maybe hopefully Heidi will get overthrown soon. I'm sick of the Heidi show.