Last night mostly served as a nasty reminder of not only who's hosting this thing, but showed off his sewage-framed diploma from The Grodner School Of Blatant Show Manipulation. It started with his stupidly faked surprise at the cast's inability to get along. Um... right. The people you personally chose with the sure and certain knowledge that they would argue, fight, and fail to get anything done are arguing, fighting, and failing to get anything done. Really must have been a shock to see your plan working out like that: I realize that generally doesn't happen with your strategies.

And even with that to launch with, we still managed to head for higher/lower levels of blatancy when we hit the episode's task requirement. Hire a designer? Well, here's one we personally approve of! And he's going to cost you more than half your budget! That would be the budget we gave you to start with, figuring out dollar by dollar just what kind of total we could hand over and have it look like workable while forcing you to go down to your last penny three hours before you open. (Hope Vinnia has deep pockets, because he'll need to tap them a few more times before this fiasco ends.) That designer was sent in to put the cast in financial trouble and deepen the faux money drama. He may not be the last 'friend' to do so, either. Some may arrive to work cheap, some may show up to drain, and I have no idea where the pantry is coming from -- but this will go down to the last penny. Or it would if Danielle and Heidi hadn't already spent that on drinks.

(Jake seems to be the most aware of the manipulation. It's largely on a subconscious level -- but he's the Bachelor graduate: if anyone knows blatant scripting, it's him. His statement of 'ten thousand dollars in expenses that we don't even know about yet' was terrifyingly accurate from a business standpoint -- and a preview of things to come.)

As long as we're at Danielle, let's leave quickly. (If only she had.) I've known several people with her personality type: control everything, anyone trying to make a suggestion is attempting to control you, attack and claim existence provoked you, react to any response by claiming to be the victim. I have known several people just like that and I made it my job to known them for as brief a time as possible. She will threaten to leave, but she never actually will -- because that would put things out of her control.

Victim for life. Why, they forced her to be like this!