LAST EDITED ON 10-31-04 AT 08:59 AM (EST)

Official RTVW Summary
The Apprentice 2, Episode…Uh…Something, But Really, It’s My Turn, I Swear It

"Just Another Day in the Amazon"

This is just not going to be any work at all, here, because I can summarize this entire season of The Apprentice quite concisely:

The contestants suck. Every one of them is a flaming a$$hole, especially that one for whom you personally have a woody or woodette. I wouldn’t hire a single one of them to unclog my toilet, let alone lead other human beings. Furthermore, I can’t for the life of me understand why any of them were cast, once one throws out the willingness of half of them to dress like call girls and act like piranhas, and the propensity of one of them to affect bowties and walking sticks. All of the males save Raj (who is not, apparently, the Raj from What’s Happening?) and the African-American guy are indistinguishable, except for accents (and, of course, except for the guy who looks, acts, and be’s about twelve years old). All of the women are indistinguishable except by hair color, and even that’s not a particularly reliable discriminator, since something like six of the original cast members were blonde, including the African-American.

They are all vain and self-indulgent. The concept that their sh!t stinks would overwhelm each and every one of them with righteous indignation. They are all hyperaware that they are on television, and they all want to be stars. They inspire me to violent fantasies involving projectile weapons, flames, terminal velocity, and high-speed impacts.

Every. Single. Freakin’. One. Of. Their. Lame. A$$es.

Including the ones who’ve already been fired. Every single one of whom deserved it, especially that one for whom you personally have a woody or woodette.

Am I done yet? Is it time for me to go surf porn now?

Bebo: Uhm…no. If you don’t write more, I’m going to make you post 500 “What’s for Lunch?” threads.

Landru: Oh. That would be bad.

Bebo: And wash AyaK’s car.

Landru: Oh. That would be really bad. He always makes me use a toothbrush on the crevices in the dashboard.

Bebo: Yes, it would be bad. Especially since I sold you out and gave assent to you being the only contestant in the “Mock Dan Rather” contest; we’re really counting on you to take the unofficial summary bullet there, little man. I mean, I told you you had a thing or three to learn about evil, but did you believe me? Noooooo. You had to go be Hubris Boy, like you thought you were about to go into an immunity challenge. You had to go around thinking you knew everything about evil, just because you’re red and have that gay-a$$ haircut, and don’t think we can’t see those horns too, punk. You are such a high-round draft pick in the major leagues of evil. But it is possible that, if you are a good little boy-grasshopper and follow the path of my light, that you will be salvageable and may one day make a decent evil middle reliever or acceptable, if freakishly slow, evil tight end, or even the guy who comes in at the end of the game in a 40-point rout after the entire student body starts chanting his name.

Landru: Yes, Bebo.

Bebo: I’m still your favorite, right?

Landru: Uhm…yes, Bebo?

Bebo: Good. Now STFU and write, loser.

Landru: Yes, Bebo.

So previously, on The Apprentice:

No. I can’t do this yet. They’re just too loathsome. I must credit TechNoir with actually voicing this word, which was ricocheting around somewhere in the lizard section of my brain, but she uncovered it when we were having our usual post-Survivor conversation, in which she revealed that she’s having difficulty despising this season’s Survivor cast with the intensity they deserve. I agreed, and then, in an unusual display of connective intuitivity, I said, “That’s because The Apprentice cast makes them look good.”

TechNoir: Jeebus. You’re actually right.

Landru: Yes, Toots.

Note: I actually call her this sometimes. You? Are not allowed to do so. No, really. I mean, I don’t even dare you, because I really have nothing against you personally, and no desire to see you torn apart by actual dire wolves, as opposed to those little dingo puppy wolves that are going to undermine our societal institutions and make us gay-marry and raise our taxes and kill us all down at the mall after leaving the doors unlocked so that Cuba can invade. I’m not kidding. Oh, I am so not kidding.

TechNoir: I mean, I always told myself that considering how many years I’ve allowed you to bask in the glory that is the shadow of my shadow, it was mathematically possible that you’d be right someday, kinda like a thousand monkeys flinging their own feces randomly eventually hitting the warp core and destroying the universe, but I never thought it would actually happen.

Landru: Yes, Toots.

TechNoir: Actually, come to think of it, it’s exactly like a thousand monkeys hitting the warp core and destroying the universe, except it doesn’t smell quite as awful.

Landru: Yes, Toots.

TechNoir: Don’t do it again.

Landru: Yes, Toots.

Wow. I suppose I have no choice but to get on with this. Okay, previously on The Apprentice:

No, wait. Later in that conversation? TechNoir said that the cast of The Apprentice is loathsome.

Sorry, just needed to get to closure there.

Previously, on The Apprentice:

After the tribal swap, the insufferable morons are assigned to romp with dogs. Apex offers dog washing and red rockets. Mosaic refuses to shut up about how Stacey won’t shut up. The unendurable child pi$$ant Andy loses Mosaic’s cell phone. Apex wins. Stacey refuses to accept the notion that her sh!t doesn’t stink, correctly assuming that, since every contestant who has ever accepted any blame whatsoever on this show has been summarily dismissed for not standing up for themselves. She contends that she’d love to be a project manager. Trump tells her that she has to convince others that she should be the PM, despite every other PM in history having been assigned randomly, because it was their turn, or because they were imposed on a team by Trump. She is, of course, summarily dismissed, since the entire portion of the Trump organization that is on display here (including, it pains me to say, my beloved Carolyn, who appears to be increasingly aware that she is one seriously hot television mama) is completely off its meds.

And we roll credits, with that song that everyone keeps starting new threads to ask about, and various swirling imagery, and pictures of this season’s crop of intolerable wankers looking, by turns, happy, committed, determined, and whorish (and please, I’m not so pedestrian as to single out one gender when I assign that quality; Wes, for example, may as well be giving five-dollar hummers for rocks in Hunt’s Point, and would probably look better in a wig, makeup, short skirt, and fvck-me heels than many of the people who actually do so).

So back in the suite, the boardroom survivors debate the possibilities of who got shi!tcanned. The consensus appears to be that it’s Andy, which is abundantly reasonable since he has no business being here, being an immature twit with no reasonable facsimile of leadership ability who still bears scars in his crack from the number of atomic wedgies that he received at Harvard, and let me tell you, at Harvard they’re apparently pretty smart, so when they give you an atomic wedgie, you feel lasting pain.

There’s Maria, in her stupid boardroom suit with the ridiculous giant flower-thingie that should scream to anyone with a hair of sense, “Fire me, then turn my tawdry a$$ out on the Lower West Side so’s I can kick back some bling,” and Raj, who is becoming more detestable by the second despite being by far the most appealling of these unspeakable wankers, sitting there in the living room in his suit jacket, dress shirt, and his freakin’ boxers, and Chris (I think), doing dishes, and then, back in the bedroom, Maria and the doe-eyed twit Elizabeth and the scowling, Stepford robotron, Jeri-Ryan-wannabe Jennifer M, and apparently this is an extended debate because now we’re back in the dining room, and the playas now include the stormtrooper Kelly and the conniving Shih-Ann wannabe Ivana, and of course the survivors, including the aforementioned Andy, wander into the suite just as the consensus arrives that he was fired.

There is massive surprise, including revolted facial expressions and the Seven of Nine wannabe choking on her dinner, as Andy wanders into the room.

Andy moons around on the portico, depressed that no one leaped up to hug him, and that everyone is paying attention to their dinner instead of paying attention to him, and he confesses that he is 22 years old (no! say it isn’t so!) and that everyone “drove a bus over” him, which he pretty much deserved for being such a dumbsh!t as to lose the cell phone, and that he’s here to win, which of course means that he’s toast in the non-distant future. It is revealed that he will be the PM tomorrow, and he vows to “show them a side of” him “that they haven’t seen before,” and I sure hope that doesn’t mean that he’s planning to show them the atomic wedgie scars in some sort of ploy to garner sympathy.

And it’s sunrise, which we can tell because the phone’s ringing, so someone, who turns out to be the aforementioned 12-year-old, better go answer it in their underwear. Have you noticed it’s almost never one of the women who answer? I mean, wouldn’t it be a real ratings-grabber if one of the women trotted out to get the phone in her panties, all breathy with tousled JBF hair after the nightly slumber party that must be the womens’ section of the suite?

Oh. Sorry, carried away. Totally my bad. So it’s one of Trump’s people on the phone, telling us that the Donald will call at 8 AM and that we should wait by the TV in the suite. There is footage of everyone getting dressed, and of Trump doing some dirty deal with someone on an airplane, and then He Himself appears on a wall-mounted flat screen in what appears to be an auxiliary dining area. He takes great care to tell us that He is on his airplane and that He is headed for Ecuador to grope Miss Universe contestants. He also tells us that last year’s most successful suckup, Bill Rancid, is going to meet him there to enjoy some of the endless succession of blow jobs he receives as the benefit of his towering victory in the show’s premiere season.

Mister Trump tells us that Jennifer is exempt from firing, since he has come to actually fear what she and her Borg implants will do to him when he cans her (I have come to believe that there is virtually no way in hell that anyone who isn’t Jennifer will win this thing, and that the final two is virtually certain to be her and Kevin, who has a chip on his shoulder almost as big as Andy’s—but I’ve been wrong before, and it is possible that the smug sturmentroopen Kelly, the ordinary New Yorker Chris, the blonde bitchling Wes, or the flamboyant sh!theel Raj will sneak in, depending on the luck of the draw as regards the relative blood concentration of Trump’s meds in future boardrooms).

We’re going back to the Deutch agency, and the wonderfully entertaining Donnie Deutch, who will judge their efforts at creating an ad campaign. Everyone is pleased. Andy is exspecially pleased, for some reason. I think it’s because he knows he’s going to get lucky and somehow squeak out alive at the end of this episode.

The horde converges on the Deutch agency, and troops into a conference room to meet Donnie, who is looking as professionally turned out as he always does, in a polo shirt and worn jeans. I think Trump’s friendship with Donnie Deutch is one of the most reliably fun things about this show; he’s a lot more engaging than most of the other corporate fartknockers to whom Trump steers his unfortunate protégé-wannabes. Donnie tells us that we’re doing an ad campaign for NYPD recruitment, and that we should focus on the emotional element, thinking about what will make people want to serve as New York’s police.

Andy steps up to lead one of the teams—I don’t really care which one, they’re indistinguishable anyway—and starts ranting about giving Donnie D what he wants, about putting the team’s mark of ownership on their offering, about not giving up just because it’s the middle of the third period and the Rangers are up four goals to none and we’re about to pull the goalie with 8 minutes left.

There is brainstorming, always an entertaining thing with these clowns (no offense, Shakes). Maria kvetches that Andy is talking too much, already laying the groundwork for the team’s vicious assault on him should they manage to lose. She is in a competition with him to see who needs more badly to shut the fvck up. She says, “I see a hummer! Let’s talk about sex appeal!”

Maria is an unrelenting, venal, low-rent hooker. I can’t believe she hasn’t been fired yet, although I’m unable to suggest that I’d have not fired any of her predecessors as boardroom failures. She constantly turns back to the lowest common denominator, as she did last week when she wore 6-inch stilettoes and hotpants to jerk off dogs, and she simply refuses to shut the fvcking fvck up, ever. Now, y’all and my crack staff mental health providers have talked to me about suppressing my violent impulses, lest I ever actually act on one of them, but never—never—have I seen someone more direly in need of a succession of b!tchslappings. Followed, as I noted, by a career in kicking back some very-hard-earned bling, not that she’d have anything that I’d buy. I’m serious—this person totally missed her calling as an actual, fee-for-sex, prostitute.

She continues to whine that she’d be doing a better job as PM. She is one of the people driving the target-and-kill philosophy that has defined the mob mentality of these losers. By the way, Apprentice contestants? If I ever find myself working for one of you? Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. No, really. Think “mindless self-sacrifice in the service of jihad.” And don’t think it’ll be quick and painless, either.

So after some brainstorming, we head to Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s casually forgotten original and fourth airport, which now hosts, among other things, the NYPD’s training facility (it also hosts, among other things, the New York Sanitation Department’s training facility, and frankly, I think this task would be a lot more interesting if we were trying to recruit city garbagemen, but I read recently that that job is so freakin’ popular that the Department doesn’t actually need recruiting help).

And we’re going over to pay some attention to the other team, which turns out to be Apex, so the team overseen by a hopelessly self-infatuated child and whipped by a nasty inexpensive dominatrix wannabe must be Mosaic.

Raj confesses, which must mean that he’s probably not so much going to sneak through at the end, and he’s salivating over all the boy-toys at the team’s disposal. He’s so excited that I am, really, quite extremely grateful that he’s wearing pants over his boxers.

They hook up with some SWAT-looking police officer who has at his disposal a mobile command post built from a bus, and it’s time for the PM, who turns out to be Elizabeth, to brak mindlessly about…I don’t know, I can’t tell, and frankly you don’t really care, because Elizabeth has been edited so very, very badly through the season so far that you just know her end cannot be terribly far off, and since she’s the PM this week, it’s sure not looking good for her, given the shoot-to-kill mentality that permeates this school of piranhas. Seriously: if I’m ever working for any of you fvckers, I’m definitely shooting first, and asking questions later, probably while I administer some first-aid so I can keep you in pain for as long as I possibly can. And don’t make the mistake of thinking they’ll be nice questions, either.

Elizabeth whines about needing a win. Ow, my head. Who put that icepick there? The one with “Bad Burnett Foreshadowing” engraved on the handle?

Okay, I’ve done almost four hours of writing and I’m only 10 minutes into the tape. Has it occurred to you people to simply chemically lobotomize me?

Oh. Right. The electronics are doing a fine job of that. Never mind.

So Apex brainstorms, and the Y chromosomes are focused on the military angle, wanting to turn NYPD into the U.S. Army. Elizabeth isn’t thrilled with this, and tries to ask questions, but they shout her down, telling her that they don’t understand what she’s trying to say, which is primarily true because they’re so busy arguing their own point of view and setting her up to fail that they won’t let her get a word in edgewise. Elizabeth is rapidly being undone by her own politeness. Kevin confesses, oversimplifying what she seems to be saying, making it abundantly clear that he’s well-positioned intellectually for a career as a Republican character assassin. He dismisses her pretty reasonable management style—“I like this about what you’re saying, can we find a way to incorporate this other thing, too?”—as “buttering up” her teammates/charges. He’s an a$$hole, but feel free to dismiss my reasonably educated opinion as racism. Yeah, I stereotype lots of African-Americans as potental future Republican character assassins. Better go alert me now, newbie.

Raj and Chris batter her, saying that her perfectly well-founded fear of going too militaristic and fear-mongering is ridiculous; Chris says, “It’s not a friggin’ tampon commercial,” perfectly summarizing the level of Y-chromosome abuse and disrespect to which Elizabeth is being subjected. She is, after all, only trying to insert some element of an emotion other than fear. They, on the other hand, being guys (and I strongly suspect, all three of them Republicans), are unshakable in their conviction that pure Machiavellian fear is the emotion to invoke. It is unfortunate that Elizabeth will take the fall that they deserve to take for their macho fascist commitment. She tries to point out that they’re going negative; Raj shrieks that it’s not going negative to claim that people are plotting to blow us up.

Sigh.

Jennifer paints her swollen Borg lips while the rest bicker over how, precisely, to undermine Elizabeth at the task level, arguing with her every instruction and focusing entirely on their militaristic blather. She’s gonna skate, even when they lose in the most humiliating manner possible (for this task). She doesn’t need to do any actual work this time.

Raj makes a very-nearly funny joke trading on his slightly-less-whiter-than-the-rest-of-them (including Kevin’s) ethnicity, suggesting that he should portray a terrorist, babbling his not-very-funny impression of terroristic fervor. Most of the rest laugh. Elizabeth doesn’t, once again showing herself to be one of the two reasonable humans in the room (and it pains me to say it, but the mechanical Jennifer, whom I despise, is the other, although she does laugh, probably because Raj is such a relentless jacka$$).

And we’re back to the other team, which is off to shoot, but we find that Apex is already shooting. Oh, and it’s a helicopter, which gives our beloved producer the chance to belabor the “Ride of the Valkyries” cliché invented by Francis Ford Coppola. Kill me now. We’re filming, filming, doing an assault on…something…Ivana is cheering, which is about the most intellectually strenuous task for which she’s qualified…and that’s that, we’re back to the other team after a pretty pointless 45 seconds or so of low-grade, stunningly not-entertaining footage.

At Apex, they worriedly scan the skies, noting that it’s about to rain like hell. Andy b!tches and whines. Officer Perez of the Emergency Services Unit, who appears to be leading the effort to liaise with these idjits, wants to know how long this will take, since apparently his officers will cheerfully engage all manner of terrorist bastards while armed only with plastic cutlery, but will melt if subjected to anything as threatening as precipitation. We film Officer Perez’ team storming a torn-up shell of a building. Some of Officer Perez’ charges look way too fat to be cops, but the civil service is a wonderful thing, and fat cops make fat stormtroopers. Which is, apparently, an okay thing.

Andy absolutely rants in a confessional about the importance of a leader not losing his composure, demonstrating again his youthful ignorance. Sometimes? As a leader? You do, in fact, have to carefully calculate when to lose your composure. Unless you’re leading a pack of babies like Andy, who think you’re just being a big meanie and not valuing their virtually non-existent inherent value as humans.

I have a great deal of business experience. This does not make me a particularly good person, or a particularly smart one, or particularly better than you (it—or something—does, in fact, make me a hell of a lot better than Andy, and come to think of it, better than each and every one of these media whores, although I suspect that the willingness of some of them to suck a whole bunch of d!ck and then file sexual harassment suits about it—and again, don’t think I’m zeroing in on any particular gender here—will guarantee that some of them have a higher lifetime earning potential than I do). Simpering worthless pieces of dung like Andy very much make me want to retire. Now. 21 years before I’d be eligible to collect Social Security under the present rules—more like 26 years before I’ll be eligible to collect Social Security if the unrelenting strain of dealing in my daily life with simpleton pussies like this stupid, clueless, self-absorbed infant and his gaggle of skeevy, conniving, voraciously greedy and mind-numbingly vain co-contestants doesn’t drive me to an early grave.

Pay dues. Become an asset. Focus on something beyond your own self, you little gobshite, before you end up all tattooed and start sucking off Dr. Phil in your dreams like that giant wacky douche Lex.

Apex wraps its filming, and we go to:

Commercials:

A white-on-blue screen, telling me that smoking is bad, which surprises me both in that I had no idea that my personal heart attack was in any way connected to the fact that I’ve spent about 30 years sucking down between one and two packs a day, and in that it’s a commercial for Phillip Morris, who are such marketing geniuses that they are somehow making me want to go out and buy more cigarettes even as they tell me I should quit, and frankly, that’s the kind of information dissemination mastery that should just make us all give up in despair; happy voiceover and a wannabe catchy tune, for Hot Pockets fruit pastry thingies; some high-pitched chick singing “There She Goes”, for some variety of birth-control pill, and I am again surprised because there is no government-mandated fine print warning potential consumers that this pill will not protect them from the onslaught of sexually transmitted diseases that will befall them after they fall into the life of wanton slutdom that will accompany their adoption of any form of birth control, but don’t worry, just re-elect the President and you’ll get that sort of warning about even thinking about non-procreative sex—oh, wait a minute, they’re not doing fine print, it’s a voiceover warning us about the whole slutdom thing; a fighting chicken mascot, for Burger King’s chicken sammiches; a lying b!tch who isn’t fooling anyone about her age, for Oil of Olay; and NBC, for American Dreams, and for Law and Order: We’re Better Than CSI, and for Crossing Jordan: CSI’s Ripping Us Off, which appears no less wretched for having undeservedly survived to its third or fourth season.

And we’re back, with footage of Trump and his heinous girlfriend watching the Miss Universe pageant and Trump voicing over that you have to love what you do for him, in his weekly post-partum attempt to foreshadow what little Trumpian moral value he’s trying to instill in us for watching this tripe. This does several things. First, it is an excuse to show us footage of international babe-age trooping around the stage in swimsuits. Second, it is an unabashed shill for yet another Trump product. And third, it lets Trump expound windbaggishly about some or another of his supposed values, when any idiot can see that Trump’s success is based on the ancient and honorable New York City paradigm of relentlessly smacking a moneyed victim in the back of the head with whatever lead pipe is available until said victim signs over whatever assets the hitter is seeking. Can we please stop pretending that anything other than the man’s hair is more complicated than that?

We are further treated to about a second and a half of Trump grooving to the beat. On behalf of all people with just a smidgen of rhythm, anywhere in the world, I would like to humbly suggest to you, Mr. Trump, that you simply slump over without further adieu.

And back in the hellhole that is New York, we return to Apex. Elizabeth and Kevin go back to the agency while the rest of the team slacks. Elizabeth whimpers about the creative team. Kevin tells her that she’s not going to be able to blame the creative team, seeing as he does that they are swimming in a pool of hungry, cannibalistic wahoos, and that he will try to help her come up with something that satisfies her creative side.

The two of them come up with a much better idea—focusing on how NYPD is not a hum-drum job. It is a concept far superior to the idea that the team has been working with, that of simply scaring the crap out of everyone. After a time-exposure sunrise, everyone prances around in their jammies and towels, just to inject a little suggestiveness into the proceedings, and we go back to visit with Apex.

Of course, the team attacks Elizabeth remorselessly. Ivana makes her into a flip-flopper again, when basically all the girl’s doing is trying to get to something that works for the whole team—not for everyone but her. Raj also savages her, convinced in his little totalitarianism-loving mind that fear is the way to go. Elizabeth makes her first real mistake—she allows this rabble to begin to force her to change her mind.

We spend 45 token seconds with Mosaic as they edit their footage. The team leaves Andy with the editor. It is all very boring, and I want us to get back to the team that is really bickering and ineffectual and is obviously going to lose big. But I’m wrong, because Andy has made a huge mistake allowing Maria to seize control of anyone’s ear, and she’s talked them into trying to inject more sex appeal into the proceedings.

Is it possible--just possible--that Maria needs to get laid, and in a very big way?

Maria has gained the ear of Kelly, who is one of the less-visible cannibals, and Sandy, who is stupid. They are shrieking at him about sex. He holds the course, correctly noting that a thumping backbeat, strobing dance-floor lighting, and bare-chested men are not going to do what NYPD wants here. Pay close attention, because it is really, really unlikely that I will ever agree with Andy again. He’s right. Maria is wrong. Not only that, she doesn’t know when to shut the fvck up in pursuing a pigheadedly wrong course. My recommendation for Maria? Get laid, assuming all the persons of whatever gender you choose to fvck don’t die from fast-acting syphilis within 40 seconds of coming within airborne transmission range of you or run away screaming for their mommies when you open your pie hole.

Then? Die.

And whether or not you follow these recommendations? Don’t ever come anywhere near me.

And we’re back to whatever team we weren’t just with. Apex, I guess, has finished brainwashing Elizabeth to the point where she has zero confidence. She pisses off Kevin by throwing over the idea they labored into the night to come up with. He’s confused about what she wants now, as is Seven of Nine. Chris says, “I’m out,” which right there is grounds for firing him over Raj, the man who until this moment most deserved to be fired for this developing debacle. Kevin confesses that Elizabeth “sucks.” Elizabeth storms out, her whereabouts unclear, after whining quite reasonably that she wished these people would work with her instead of trying to invalidate her leadership. She does not point out that what they are very clearly and deliberately (and effectively) doing is setting her up to take the fall.

With Elizabeth out of the room, the team begins to conspire to take her out. They’re no longer viewing the task as an opportunity to impress; they’re openly viewing it as an opportunity to scapegoat her, perpetuating the mentality that has permeated this cast since the show’s outset. There’s no reason to stand up and do anything around here; it’ll just get you noticed by the pack.

Kevin talks to Elizabeth privately, telling her that she is facing a coup because she won’t make a decision. Now, it’s good of Kevin to be decent enough to do this. But he’s lying. She will make decisions. The team just won’t give her enough simple respect to carry them out. It’s not like she hasn’t earned respect, or like she doesn’t deserve it—whatever your view of respect is. What she has, apparently, earned is derision because she is the leader of a team that doesn’t want to be led. They begin to bicker, neither letting the other finish a sentence, so it is unclear what either of them wants, until Kevin tells Elizabeth to tell him what she wants him to do. After telling her to shut up, which she probably deserves. As they part, he tells her that she’ll get no more input from him on this. Elizabeth mopes off, and so do we, to

Commercials:

a guy driving, for a Wendy’s chicken product; a bunch of models and dancers on a train platform, ripping off the very elegant and beautiful “Death Row Tango” from Chicago in a commercial that should be banned, then burned, and I mean, vaporized, all of the electrons scattered to infinity, with all those responsible for making it put to death without possibility of being allowed to reproduce, for some oral health product; Heather Locklear, I think, who’s amazingly hot considering she’s about 90, for some L’Oreal product, and y’know, I had no idea she colored her hair; a trailer, for the Spongebob movie, the only funny moment of which appears to be a cameo by David Hasselhoff; NBC, for Saturday Night Live’s pre-election compilation of some of its very fine presidential humor and far more of its relentlessly crappy presidential humor; another trailer, for the unusually well-timed cash-in that is Universal’s movie about the great Ray Charles; NBC again, for Saturday Night Live, in a touching vignette in which Marshall Mathers offers Kate Winslet his nuts; frontal crash tests, for Saab, and I gotta tell you I love watching European things get smashed up; TNT, for Law & Order: Still Airing; music and driving, for some Nissan product; and the drunken nekkid weatherman who my ex-cop friend used to arrest annually for being drunk and nekked and on his front lawn, for My Local News, brak brak brak, which has now become officially The Only Freakin’ Local News I’ll Ever Watch Again, since the iteration of My Local News which airs on the affiliate that shows that other reality show that I’ll watch, has completed its own Foxification with the extermination of My Revered Local Icon Anchorman, who has now moved, after 35 freakin’ years at the station, including about 30 of them as the total fvckall Dean of Local Anchordoods (not a small dilly in this, your nation’s freakin’ capital), to the local affiliate of a network that refuses to air a watchable reality TV program and therefore never, ever gets its news products mocked around these here parts, and its complete assimilation of that blockhead newbie fvck from the Fox affiliate in Moonie’s Media Market, and by the way, Estee and TJ, since Moonie can’t tell me if I’m right about what network affiliate puked up this Todd dweeb in Your Media Market, could you please enlighten me? Thanks.

And we’re back, with Mosaic kvetching about who’s doing the presentation of their pitch, and not coincidentally conspiring to off him should they lose. Of course, they are not privy to the machinations over at the other team, and they have absolutely no clue that there is absolutely no chance that they will lose. Kelly is positioning to give the pitch, mostly because he thinks very highly of himself. He’s an a$$. He should be interned, and don’t think he wouldn’t do it to you. Andy ends up saying that he’ll do the introduction, and let Kelly do some braking too. Much is made of pretending that any of this makes a sh!t’s worth of difference. Andy’s confession about this is yet another reflection of what must now be a certitude: this kid has a really, really, really tiny penis.

Back at Apex, they’re looking over the print product. Kevin thinks it’s “horrible”; Elizabeth loves it. It contains a word error that will go unremarked upon for the remainder of the show, but it’s a perfectly valid reason for Elizabeth’s increasingly obvious upcoming deceasification; the campaign is trying to say that NYPD is New York’s front line. But they make “frontline” one word, giving up the jig that Elizabeth (who is presumptively responsible for this) watches way too much PBS and is therefore undoubtedly a communist and a homosexual.

Carolyn! confesses that she thinks that Elizabeth’s inability to lead this team has led to confusion and dissension. Carolyn is totally missing the freakin’ boat here. You can’t lead a team that doesn’t want to be led. The team would not accept her creative direction, and when Elizabeth caved to that, they viciously and relentlessly attacked her for yielding to their sh!t. I'm sorry, Carolyn, but PM's simply don't have the option of firing people who won't take direction on this show.

Trump should fire this whole team outright, but that would screw up the episode count. Elizabeth has been regally shafted here. This is only relevant because she’s one of the contestants who probably should have had a realistic shot. She’d have been weeded out close to the end, because she can’t put up with any kind of pressure, but she really doesn’t deserve the pasting that these criminals are giving her.

Before we do the pitch to the fabulous Donnie Deutch—and yes, I have concluded that I would bear Donnie Deutch’s children, do you have a problem with that?—I’d like to take a moment to do a quick rundown of the contestants:

Mosaic:

Andy: Immature, self-absorbed, penile-deficient in a really, really big way.
Kelly: Smug, jackbooted fascist thug.
Sandy: Stupid.
Wes: Most likely to be turned out in prison.
Maria: Shrill whore.

Apex:

Elizabeth: Shattered hulk of former self.
Kevin: Self-assured and way arrogant, but probably smart enough to take down the rest of these hosers.
Jennifer M: Borg, plus ditto the Kevin thing.
Ivana: Non-entity, but a keen contributor to any form of viciousness. Along with Maria, one of the biggest active contributors to the Lord of the Flies, blame-anyone-but-me mentality of this season’s cast (although Seven of Nine, Kelly, Sandy, Raj, and Chris are all encouraging it more passively).
Raj: Puerile jacka$$, albeit with some sense of style.
Chris: Useless slacker fvck.

Trump comes in from Ecuador, landing at Teterboro and jumping into his limo to call Rona importantly and tell her what she already knows, that he’s filming a freakin’ TV show and that explains why these self-absorbed twits are running around New York wreaking havoc in his name. The rest of us come in at the Deutch Agency, where Mosaic and Apex will present their little vignettes.

Chris introduces for Apex, as Elizabeth wisely leads the presentation with the most obviously New York guy in the crowd. Then she pitches the print ads, starting with an action shot of NYPD stormtroopers dropping from a helicopter, earnestly explaining that NYPD is on the front line—which they spell and use correctly in this one ad, making this simple and abject failure in Apex’s other pieces even more intolerable.

Apex moves to its video ad, which is backdropped by maudlin, then triumphant music as SWAT types, including one of the aforementioned huge, fat, beergutted, heavily tattooed fellers, storm something, and people drop from helicopters, and motorcycles glide by with flashing lights, and Donnie Deutch and his two associates look on and wince and gasp and cower at the badly executed, heavy-handed fearmongering that Apex is offering. Deutch recovers enough to politely dismiss the team.

Mosaic comes in. Andy doesn’t really have the gravitas to pull off the introduction they’re shooting for—but Kelly would have too much of it, as he proceeds to demonstrate with his grim, humorless presentation of the print ads. Their video commercial is a succession of officers asking “When was the last time you…” (saved a life, fought terrorism, brak brak brak)? It’s not bad stuff, for what they’re trying to do. Deutch is pleased.

By the way, Maryland is hanging with Florida State. It’s the middle of second quarter. We’re up, 13-3. I unconditionally guarantee that we will lose this game.

Deutch asks his advisors what they thought. They correctly note that Apex either absolutely ignored or studiously misconstrued the directive to appeal to emotion. They both note that civilians would be utterly turned off and skeeved out by the fear factor. Deutch calls the teams back in and gets The Donald on the phone. Deutch tells Apex that they turned New York into a armed camp and derides their lack of common sense. He tells Mosaic that he liked the way they actually followed instructions. Deutch tells The Donald that it’s Mosaic and that it’s a landslide.

Mosaic’s reward is a surprise; they’ll be picked up in a limo for it at 9 AM. The losers will go to the boardroom, where the one person who wanted to follow the task instructions will be remorselessly scapegoated by everyone else, then unceremoniously fired. And we’re off to

Commercials:

a bunch of people and a puppet carnivorous plant, in addition to non-human showboating idiot shills Deion Sanders and Stuart Scott, for Pizza Hut; relentlessly perky voiceover and fast-moving fall colors, in a pile of crap obviously not made by our delightfully creative and ceaselessly brilliant Executive Princess Pooh, for Penney’s and it’s One-Day Sale, which is now, apparently by law, required to occur only when I write summaries for RTVW, unless they do them like every week now; another trailer, for Ray, again, and this thing really looks like an insult to Ray Charles; animatronic gum with a very bad Scottish accent, for…uhm…some gum; cows of various species, for Lean Cuisine; maudlin music and video imagery, for the Cingular-ATT merger, which reminds me that I got a new cell phone and it’s really cool, so send me your phone number so I can send you really classy text messages like “r u a QT2?”; and NBC, for yet another falsified news story perpetrated by Dateline, and for the eternally vomitorious Third Watch, and for the idiotic Medical Investigation, and for the just-plain-stupid Fear Factor, and for the network’s entry in the things-about-Las-Vegas sweepstakes, this one cunningly titled Las Vegas, and for Saturday Night Live’s presidential thingie, and we’re back, oddly enough without so much as a nod to My Local News, which tells you an awful lot about what My Local News thinks about the drawing power of this season’s offering of The Apprentice.

So we get various looks at New York, and Mosaic is in a limousine. Andy confesses about how proud he is, once again pounding on the fact of his youth. The team stops in the middle of Times Square, where their commercial is running on NBC’s big screen in the square. This against the backdrop of stirring martial music and stuff. Mark Burnett’s brain has really freakin’ turned to mush. He’s got huge unspeakable suckjob seasons of his two prime properties running at the same time. We are being played.

Over on ABC and disjointed in time? Maryland leads FSU 13-3 at the half. A graphic notes, as the sideline reporter talks to our coach, Ralph Friedgen, that Friedgen’s record when leading at the half is 31-1. Unfortunately for us, the 1 was last week. I maintain that the 2 will be this week. It is my hope that you will not find resolution to this matter during the remaining running time of this summary.

So back in New York, we’re at the Tower and in the suite. Wes coaches Elizabeth about what to do in the boardroom. Seven of Nine gives him hell, saying that it’s unfair, and that Elizabeth is bringing the whole team down, confirming my impression that she’s as noxious as any of the more visible piranhas. Seven of Nine makes some pretty snippy and smug comments. She’s a piece of shite, and I pity whatever piece of the Trump organization she ends up running.

Raj ignores Elizabeth as they talk about things, listening to his Ipod or Walkman or something. Raj tells her that she’s going to try to pin the whole military thing on him. Elizabeth says that she doesn’t think there’s any “unclarity” about that, and she’s right—the whole thing was absolutely, positively Raj’s fault. Raj confesses that everyone went along with it, lying through his teeth, since Elizabeth was clearly opposed to it, and further lying when he says that it was the only vision available, when Elizabeth and Kevin had another vision, it was just shouted down by the other blowhards on the team. It’s painfully obvious that Elizabeth is going down hard. And suddenly, after less than five minutes of video pain, we’re off again, to

Commercials:

The Donald, rooting in a dumpster for his Visa card; some idiot C&W singer, of whose identity one of you will no doubt enlighten me, for a voting drive that is apparently sponsored by royalists, to wit Burger King; the Sprint idiot, for Sprint; desperately horny women and hunky waiters, for the Outback; a trailer, for some Oliver Stone movie about a sexually ambiguous guy in funny clothing whose name seems to be Alexander, and I may have to go see this piece of sewage just to find out what kind of whackjob theory Oliver Stone has this time; NBC, for some hideously cruel hoax show hosted, hideously cruelly, by Ed McMahon, who is for some reason still alive; a very, very, very bad cover of “Magic Carpet Ride”, fast-becoming the most called upon song in the history of reasonably cool movies (to wit, and so far: Star Trek Next Generation: Whole Lotta Borg Goin’ On; Austin Powers: The One Where I Don’t Get To See Heather Graham’s Oobies; Team America: Funniest. Movie. Ever., and some fourth movie that escapes my memory at the moment), for Chevrolet; some modern, mannish-looking, shoe-shopping chick, for DSW Shoe Warehouse, which is probably a local phenomenon; loud blaring music and some a$$hole, for some pickup truck that turns out to be a Nissan; and finally, a very brief tease for My Local News, with the coolest anchorman in town, heralding a story about another fight over the imminence of a baseball team arriving in town and giving most of its money to the unscrupulous, conniving, greedy, criticism-intolerant, pedophile (he prefers sex partners close to his own height) who owns a team in a nearby city.

(Clearly a parody of a public figure, public figure, public figure, you fvcking fvck. Come and get me, you egregious fascist robber baron piece of toxic waste.)

ETA: The fourth movie, I'm reminded by SLH, is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

And we’re back, as the loser head to the boardroom to unfairly b!tchslap Elizabeth to save their own worthless skins and declaim responsibility for the back-alley abortion that they just perpetrated.

The Donald asks what happened; in ridiculously fractured grammar, Elizabeth says that Mosaic didn’t have a good idea before it was time to start shooting. When asked if it was her fault, Elizabeth says that it was a team problem (true), and that their ideas were generic, not specific enough (also a reasonable, if not complete, explanation). The Donald asks if she was a good leader. Elizabeth then steps into the lie box, declaiming that her idea of a good leader is one who stands by her convictions. Well…that may be. And we’ll give you credit for trying. But you let your scheming, blame-addicted teammates blow you off your stand.

Trump asks to see the ad. He’s laughing. He yells to the unseen producers to show the ad, and they do. Carolyn has one of her quiet conniptions. Bad storm a-comin’, boss man.

Trump correctly savages the ad. Then he tries to get to the point, asking Elizabeth if Raj shoved this campaign down her throat. Now, we don’t know if Elizabeth answered, because the editors immediately pipe Raj up. He says he firmly advocated the military approach. The wind is blowing toward vindicating Raj because he’s a flamboyant male he stood by his convictions. Sigh.

Seven of Nine pipes up, damning Elizabeth by praising Raj, who virtually singlehandedly dragged the team to defeat with his fascist idea and his stubborn dedication to ignoring Donnie Deutch’s instructions. Every single one of them claims they had no direction, when in fact they shouted down, mocked, ridiculed, and undermined the direction that they got from the one person who tried to get them to follow the fvcking instructions.

Attention, remaining members of Mosaic Apex (thank you, AMAI): You are utterly without integrity. You are not morally fit to be people who stand at intersections with spray bottles of storm water runoff and greasy towels, demanding quarters for smearing people’s windshields. You are not intellectually fit to drop fries. You are not polite enough to be trusted to ask people if they want fries with that. Each and every one of you should be fired. You are vile human beings, in the same category as that baseball owner I didn’t libel.

Donald leads the blamefest, spurring a sheaf of lies from Ivana and Seven of Nine, who call her weak and ineffective.

Let’s go over this. If you’re a belligerent twit who refuses to be led, who argues with everything your leader puts forth, and who explicitly refuses, as Chris did, to take direction, they’re not a bad leader. No. You, however, are a stunningly bad employee.

Seven of Nine is the most vicious of the liars, expounding on Elizabeth’s supposed weakness. It’s hard to be strong when you’re being torn apart by the Borg.

Kevin finally pipes up, and savages her for not holding the team to the idea that he and Elizabeth came up with. He interprets her caving to the team as not believing in the idea, when it was simply a product of the team’s determination to come up with something that they could blame on Elizabeth. When Trump hears that she let the team change her mind, he goes batsh!t. He refers to the rest of the team, and I quote, ”all good people”, not backing her. Clearly, he has been brainwashed by the Borg-led assault on truth and justice, and Elizabeth is toast. “What the hell is missing with you?” he asks. He asks who she’ll bring to the board room to be fired, and she names Raj and Chris. “I don’t think it’s necessary,” says The Donald. “You’re fired. I don’t want to waste a lot of time.”

Wow. Fastest. Scapegoating. Ever. Carolyn and George nod their heads in agreement with The Donald like little bobbledoggies, and we’re off to

Commercials

A truck at night in the desert, for Nissan; a rooster that would, if I were involved, soon be dinner, for Tide; a loud commercial for Shark Tale, the most obnoxious movie in America; an excited sales guy, for some L’Oreal skin product; fishermen in a stream, for AT&T Wireless; and more loud flashy stuff, for KFC, and we’re back.

Next week on The Apprentice:

Cast members in hard hats. The return of this season’s Can’t Play Nice With Others Poster Child, Stacie J, along with the hapless Rob, the fvckwit Bradford, and the racist twit Jenn C. Scenes of demolition-type construction. And in a dramatic boardroom scene, this week’s domination jerkoff fantasy tease from Carolyn is, “I don’t want to hear how bad your team is! Fix it!”

After a quick tease for the Yahoo! Apprentice tie-in, we go to Elizabeth in a taxi, confessing that she doesn’t know why she was ganged up on in the boardroom.

Uhm? Honey? Not to shake you up too hard, but…uhm…because they’re bad, bad people and you weren’t one of them?

The rest of her confession is whining, although she does note that they’re lying scum.

As we return to untaped footage, there are 5 minutes left in the Maryland-FSU game, and Maryland is up 20-10. I stand by my convictions. Maryland will lose.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to Kimmah for trading weeks with me so that I can make a business trip that I need to make without this hanging over my head, and more importantly so that I can stop watching this stupid show a whole week earlier than I otherwise would have.

And this time? I ignored enough shouts that about two dozen of you can whomp on me for that. Really--thanks, Kimmah, for making my life a little easier by trading weeks.

Final Maryland-FSU update: 8:55 left, Maryland up 20-10, Chris Rix has replaced Wyatt Sexton at QB for the 'Holes, FSU is driving, and my beloved Terps are not only about to drop to 31-2 when they're leading at the half, they're going to be the team responsible for giving Rix, who is a 12th-year-senior and the poster child for everything that is wrong with college sports, his job back.

ETFix grammar and typographical problems that would've make Coco lose her brekkies, not that I necessarily found them all, and to point out that Maryland did, in fact, beat Florida State. But if you think I'm using a shameless trick like that on Tuesday night, you're outta your freakin' mind.