LAST EDITED ON 10-19-04 AT 02:52 PM (EST)

Every reality series poses, deep in what passes for its heart, a single question, presented to the audience in such a way that they never completely realize it’s being asked – or that they’re preparing an answer. For Survivor, the question is ‘How much can a single person justify?’ With Joe Schmo, it becomes ‘Come now, if we meant you any harm, do you think we’d be lurking behind this tree in the darkest part of the forest?’ And for every single FOX series, it’s ‘Why are you watching this?’

With The Apprentice, the heart question is ‘Would you hire any of these people?’ And that’s a hard one to answer, even when you allow for a line of work a little more standard than mine. Admittedly, I can see some of the contestants in fairly specialized professions. Need someone to keep the crows out of your corn? Maria’s available and in case of emergency, ready to communicate with the farmhouse in blink-Morse. Could it be the local circus needs someone to pass out fliers? Presenting Raj, right there in the center ring. And if you need a reality show discussion board split right down the middle, Stacey’s on twenty-four hour call.

But twelve firings from now, Donald’s going to wind up answering that question for himself – and his opinion is the only one that matters. (That’s not the hidden question of the show: that’s just the very direct central theme.) So:

Previously on The Apprentice: with the minicorps numerically unbalanced by Apex’s losing streak, Donald force-assigned Pamela to the women’s team and stuck her in the Project Manager position, where all of her subordinates would have to look up to her unless they’d gotten ahold of some really impressive heels. Both teams fell victim to the sponsor double-blind and were carted from UPS to QVC PDQ ASAP, where they had to pick one of the shopping channel’s fine, overpriced, shipping-fee-skimming products which are available at much lower prices from any decent flea market or As Seen On TV mall cart near you, hawk their pick on the air, and rack up the most money in total gross sales. After the usual flurry of incompetence, second-guessing, power plays, and Maria’s continued commitment to The Path Of Today Show Denial, Mosaic won by a grand total of $10.47, and that’s not even counting the bulk rate rip-off QVC gets for every cardboard box they charge for. Pamela then proceeded to make this season’s classic Boardroom mistake, which is ‘Take Stacey in with you. She’s short. Short people don’t make it in the business world. Everyone knows that. Donald’s just itching to fire her,’ and got to listen to the same chorus Jennifer C. had enjoyed: ‘Short people got good reason to talk fast.’ Stacey promptly notched another witch’s hat on her farmhouse, and Jennifer C. climbed into the Ruby Cab with a sigh of ‘There’s no place like a filler segment’, clicked her eyelashes three times, and vanished forever, or at least until the following morning.

How many sponsors can get their names into the show within forty-eight broadcast minutes? How many times can the contestants change their outfits during a challenge? Just what is the cubic capacity on one of those travel bags, anyway? And as always, who will be fired this week?

Oh, Donald… Roll opening credits.

We open on a steam-clogged night in Manhattan, where there are no right turns permitted between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m, but second-guessing what’s going on in the Boardroom can be done at nearly any time. It’s a few minutes before the firing, and the momentarily-safe contestants are in the suite’s dining room, listening to John’s dissertation on How To Make Things Really Obvious For Your (Hopeful) Future Boss. ‘If they all gang up on Pamela,’ he decides, ‘Trump’s going to see it as -- they’re all afraid of her, and they’re ganging up on her because she’s an outsider.’ Several of the women give John the stone-faced stare from the nearby couch, unimpressed by his reasoning. They’ve been ganging up on people because it works, and besides, if they didn’t, all the other cliques would make sure they didn’t get the best table in the cafeteria. You can’t show a moment of weakness in junior high, and for his open questioning of the Harpies’ power, John is now due one swirlie.

Raj takes the first confessional-tell of the episode by noting the current Boardroom occupants – Stacey, Pamela, and Maria – along with Donald’s apparent view of Pamela as the strongest female contender. In Raj’s distinguished opinion, this means Pamela should be fired. It’s not because she’s female, strong, didn’t like his haircut, or attempted to string him up by his bowtie two challenges ago, mind you. It’s because she isn’t him. His philosophy is simple: everyone who is not Raj should be fired. Immediately. They can cut the series short and make this episode into the finale. Whatever works. Who knew Raj was this pragmatic?

Stacey walks in and asks about dinner. No one seems very surprised to see her, which may mean the Sub-5’ Sacrifice tactic is finally starting to go out of fashion. Maria comes in a few seconds behind her, and everyone is very surprised to see her, which may mean that, despite what happens over the next few seconds, Pamela was sort of liked after all. Shrieks of surprise, dismay, and hasty crow departures ring through the suite as Maria actually covers her mouth in slightly shy shock – make a note of it, because it’ll never happen again – and everyone rises to greet the resurrectees. Ivana and Maria awkwardly hug, Wes and Andy exchange a middle-ground-all-my-brothers-in-the-suite-respect-me-five, and John tries to get out of his upcoming scalp spa treatment by crying out ‘You’re brilliant! You’re brilliant!’ This gets him a wedgie added to the list. Blatant sucking-up without some degree of style is a high crime in Harpy-Land.

‘You did us yourselves a favor,’ Wes notes, ‘and you did us a favor.’ Raj agrees with a misquote: ding-dong, the Ice Queen is dead, or at least asking her cabbie to turn the heat down in a hurry. There’s a lot of excitement in the suite. Suddenly, there’s a universal feeling of hope that hadn’t been there before. It’s as if someone had banished an evil spell from the realm. In fact, it’s almost exactly like the last three minutes of Shrek 2, except for the complete lack of musical numbers and the fact that the ogre is already on her way out of town. Stacey repeats her Enron line to general acclaim while cementing the ‘Do not let this woman talk’ concept in her fellow contestants’ minds, and the suite parties deep into the night.

‘The women obviously gelled right after Pamela left,’ Kevin c-t observes – apparently this is the one time in history where cold was bad for Jello (Not An Official Trump Sponsor. Do Not Buy). ‘Obviously anything that makes the women’s team stronger is bad for us, but I’m not afraid. I don’t think anyone on the guys’ team is afraid of seeing the A-game from the women.’ Besides, with Pamela gone, they’ve got no one left who can dunk the ball.

Mosaic has a pre-bedtime meeting to draw the next random lot for Project Manager, and Chris gets the short tie. Given the wide range of assignments/Donald promotional opportunities, he’s not sure what they’re going to be facing in the morning, but he’s sure his skills will be up to the task. This is probably foreshadowing.

Raj asks that Chris give him an important task – Chris assures him that nothing else could even be considered – and pledges his allegiance to his captain of the moment. This may also be foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is trying to keep the women awake a while longer to do a post-mortem on the last assignment and get some plans going for the upcoming unknown one. Everyone else just wants to get some sleep. This is no bar for Elizabeth, who assures Apex that she’s capable of talking through the night while they snooze, with both her words and gestures penetrating on a subconscious level. Maria c-t feels that Elizabeth’s need to overanalyze everything is going to get in the way on every single assignment, unless the Project Manager of the moment can find a way to nip her in the bud while still making her feel she’s contributing to the team – satisfied, shunted Elizabeth=happy team=no Boardroom complaints. This isn’t foreshadowing: this is having the script shoved in our faces. (Huh. There’s a note here. ‘Reset core temperature in Pamela’s room from 26 to 68.’ Must be a production thing.)

‘We’ve got to be hardcore,’ Stacey decides. ‘I mean, we’ve been hardcore, but now let’s be harder core.’ The editors go to a transition screen while approximately half the discussion board faints and the other half runs off to throw up.

Of course, all of Donald’s little soldiers have to be up early for reveille: the phone rings before sunrise, and a shirtless Kevin staggers out to answer it. (Once again, half the discussion board faints, with some degree of overlap. No one throws up. Three people spontaneously propose marriage, but that happens in every episode.) The minicorps are to meet Donald at Trump Model Management (also known as the Future Wife Corral) at nine in the morning. Kevin thanks the caller and hangs up before staggering off to get dressed and get the group together for breakfast.

Raj, who’s rebounded well from his Anna-failure, openly hopes for a task to see which team can be the fastest to grease up a dozen models. Maria immediately tells him to shut up, clearly seeing the advantage Mosaic will have if Chris and Raj are allowed to use their hair.

Transition shot, and the minicorps arrive to find Donald surveying portfolios while chatting with the models, stopping once the teams finish filling in. ‘I don’t know if the women are excited,’ he notes – don’t ask, don’t tell, Donald -- ‘but the men are all going crazy.’ Andy ferociously nods his head to get his agreement across in a way that only a true master debater can manage.

It’s time to explain the task, and in a style that becomes more Shatneresque every week, Donald does so. In essence, the teams are taking last season’s art assignment to the Fashion District. They’ll be given a group of aspiring designers to choose from. Their chosen designer will create a women’s fashion line over an unknown (but really short – from the editing, possibly a bit under two days) amount of time. After the clothes are designed and sewn, the teams will take the new outfits and some of the FWC down to a fashion show for a formal runway presentation. Buyers from some of the biggest stores that wanted to get their names mentioned in this thing (but who haven’t paid me any money to do so, so they’re just going to have to suffer) will be present, and the team that has the highest total gross in sales wins the contest. Expenses are apparently not a consideration here: the chosen designer will be paid, the materials are covered, and the models haven’t found the soul recovery clause in their contracts yet. It’ll be straight revenue.

So. The women have to look for good final results on something they deal with every day. The men are going to be working with something they’ve only dealt with at one-removed for their entire lives, and that under ‘I wonder if she’ll actually wear this after our date?’ Not that the task was rigged beforehand or anything. After all, there’s no way the producers could have known Apex would be on their kind of losing streak coming into the episode, and we all know these tasks are planned out months in advance. Sometimes years. And Mark Burnett would never, ever plan a task which favored any team or single contestant over another, and he’s sworn that on Darrah’s key tube. So this was really just an excuse to get an important aspect of Manhattan business and a couple of dozen extra sponsors lined up. Gender discrimination has nothing to do with it whatsoever, and the men have a fair shot, really they do. All they have to do is pick a designer whose clothes they’d like to see a woman wearing. Or, to really be specific, a designer whose clothes they’d like to see a professional model parading up and down in front of them, over and over on the catwalk until they manage to fire enough neurons to ask her to stop. They’ve got a chance to win, if not to request the big finish before people’s feet start to bleed.

The soundtrack chimes in with an empathic ‘Ow-ow-ow-ow’, and we move on to the next source of pain: Maria’s been chosen as PM because – wait for it – she has a minor in Home Economics and her mother taught the subject for fourteen years. Great. So if at any time during the task it becomes necessary to whip up a tray of muffins, Apex can count on her.

The minicorps head into the Fashion District to get started. Mosaic makes the transition without any problems, but Apex gets momentarily stalled when, as Stacey sets foot on Seventh Avenue for the first time, she abruptly ceases to exist. Apex engages in a collective double-take and immediately runs for a nearby information booth to find out what went wrong. Some quick consultation with the attendant reveals that no woman incapable of wearing a standard off-the-rack outfit can actually exist in the Fashion District without special dispensation: Stacey is now invisible, intangible, unaware of her surroundings, and will rematerialize when she hits the next crosswalk. It’s a special Manhattan law created for the protection of the designers. After all, if they realized that women with non-industry standard builds existed, they might have to design something for them, and it’s just so hard to clean the stains from recently-exploded heads off the walls. Jennifer quickly files the forms to get Stacey a temporary existence license, and their missing teammate pops back into mainstream reality half a block up the street, now visible and tangible to everyone except the designers, models, fashion industry executives, and the occasional delivery truck. A relieved Apex recovers an appropriately disgruntled Stacey, explains the half-state, and receives the expected frustrated resignation in response. The reunited minicorp proceeds to their destination, occasionally freaking out a passing designer who doesn’t understand why the direction sheet is floating behind Maria with no visible means of support.

Wes c-t realizes the designer will be the key element of the task, and the men immediately head down to the screening room, where the creators and their portfolios are waiting for them. The team is looking for ‘something fresh, but not too out there’, which means the outfit made from stitched-up Trump Ice labels and sliced-up Taj Comp Cards will have to wait until next year. After a quick survey sequence John makes the final decision to go with Ilsa, whose portfolio items are just a little bit different – although she insists they’re actually much more radical than they look in flat colors – and whose concepts in wool and outfits which ‘look like art, but it’s not’ may have just the right balance of staid and innovation to carry the day. Or we may really wish Mosaic had insisted on a texture breakdown first.

However, Apex knows the real key to women’s fashion: consult a (presumably) gay male. It only takes a few portfolios to find Darren, who wants to be the low end item at the high end store (which is sort of an ‘insert your own joke here’ moment) and who seems to know the fashion industry inside and out. Elizabeth immediately starts to brew up some protests against this decision, as failing to find the right price on a low-end item during the QVC challenge was what killed them – but Maria overrides her: Darren is their designer, and the filming of Queer Eye For The Straight Girls will proceed on schedule. The executive decision has been made, and if Elizabeth doesn’t like it, Maria will get in her face and blink at her until she bleeds to death from a thousand eyelash wounds.

Elizabeth is oddly undeterred by this, and moves directly to her next point of future obsession: Apex has to spend some time surveying the buyers. The key point isn’t what the designer can create, it’s what the buyers want to spend money on. After all, what good is a startling original vision if someone else hadn’t decided they would like it before they ever saw it?
Maria sees this as the perfect opportunity to activate the shunt drive and asks Elizabeth to write down a nice, long list of all the questions she wants to ask the buyers before heading out to ask every last one of them in exhaustive detail, with cross-examinations standing by. Oh, and she can take Jennifer with her. This gets Elizabeth out of Maria’s feathers, prevents her decisions from being questioned, and incidentally takes two cooks out of the pot. Let’s hear it for the Home Economics minor!

Since a love of food is just one of the things Maria shares with She Who Must Not Be Hired, the rest of the team heads out to lunch and helps Darren design the new line over the course of burgers, onion rings, and forty-five minutes. (As any student knows, grease=creativity, although despite Raj’s most fervent wishes, that usually doesn’t go the other way around.) Sandy c-t points out ‘We made it very clear to Darren that we wanted a line which any one of us could buy and wear,’ with the qualifier that Stacey’s still trying not to sink through her chair. This means lots of wash-and-wear, businesslike materials, and near-infinite compression without wrinkling, all of which Darren can get behind. The process goes smoothly (with Ivana crediting Elizabeth’s absence) and Apex seems to be in the driver’s seat for this challenge. Not that anyone saw that coming.

Mosaic similarly splits their forces, although we don’t get such a blatant motive on this one. Kevin, Andy, and Wes go out to talk to the buyers (someone came to Elizabeth’s conclusion on their own), with John, Chris, Kelly, and Raj heading for the Parsons School Of Design, where the actual assembly work will be done by drastically underpaid help taking ‘Boost A Reality Show’s Time Mystery Factor 203’ for two credits. The camera decides to follow the design/construction team for a while, which brings us in just in time to hear the most pointless line of the night, spoken by Raj to Eliza. ‘Why don’t you show us what this ballooning bottom would look like in such as a way as to accentuate the female body?’

…y’know, up until that moment, I was ready to credit the bowties as a fashion statement?

‘A lot of the guys on this team wouldn’t necessarily be able to design women’s clothing,’ John mournfully c-t observes. ‘It’s not something I can necessarily give Kelly and say ‘Finish this while I go do this’.’ In fact, Kelly looks a little sour at the prospect. Or maybe that’s just his reaction to Raj’s earlier idiotic statement, which gets intensified as John proposes backpacks, with Raj arguing that backpacks are really out as a main piece in a woman’s wardrobe right now and of course he’d know, he’d really like to add some texture or something instead. Ilsa feels he’s being a little too vague and wants to solve this by moving on to the next outfit, so she’s already fitting in perfectly with the team.

Kelly, feeling more disgruntled by the minute, does what any West Point graduate would do in a crisis: grabs a weapon and takes charge. In this case, the fatal instrument of choice is a pencil, the battlefield is the sketchbook, and Kelly is The Man, or at least The Designer: with Ilsa safely away in the bathroom, a concept quickly emerges from his ordered brain, and is deemed good to go on a topless model almost immediately. After a quick reminder that the show is not being held in Paris, the design is amended to add a blouse.

Chris isn’t sure where this new skill came from, and c-t adds ‘After this, I’m surprised Kelly isn’t wearing pink camouflage underwear.’ Chris, did you happen to see the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ bit earlier in the summary?

Ilsa returns, finds Kelly’s design a good place to start, and begins to fill in some of his concepts. The men appear to have an ace in the hole, or at least a closet in the bunker.

And now it’s time for Donald’s Lesson Of The Week, which is – ‘Know your market’. In Donald’s case, this means that he only ventures into areas where people expect to see someone’s name plastered all over the product, which kind of makes you wonder how he managed to stay out of clothing for this long, not to mention exactly where the FWC have been tattooed. Donald feels that if you can’t pinpoint exactly what your market wants on any given occasion, you’re probably going to fail. And this fades into Elizabeth and Jennifer taking a tour of the buyers, asking their questions and dutifully recording the answers, confident that Maria is actually going to pay some small degree of attention to the results. This definitely isn’t foreshadowing, because if Donald says it, it’s going to happen. The script says so. And who do you think wrote the script?

Jennifer and Elizabeth are actually getting a good course in fashion fundamentals: the focus of the line is the main selling point, quality is always a good consideration, buyers like to see something that would fill a gap in their customer’s wardrobe, keep your prices in synch with the lines around you – all solid, basic information that would normally cost $6500 per semester to get from Parsons. Of course, Maria’s on track to ignore all of it, but at least any prospective first-year students know what to write on their application essays.

Meanwhile, the men’s fact-finding team is out beating the bushes for not only information, but a little sympathy for their position. And pity. Charity is also welcome. Outright coddling will be accepted with a few seconds’ warning. Kevin c-t realizes they’re the underdogs in this task, and if the buyers feel sorry for them, it can only help the sales. There’s nothing quite like a pity purchase to liven up the midweek.

But the question of the day, as posed by one of the male buyers, remains ‘How can guys beat the women in ladies’ fashion?’

‘Because we know what we like on the ladies,’ Kevin confidently replies.

‘You know,’ the buyer muses, ‘I’m just trying to think of all the successful straight male fashion designers out there.’ Laughter both awkward and sincere starts to ring through the room, the later produced by his buying partner. ‘There aren’t a whole lot.’ There are, in fact, exactly as many as the number of reality show contestants to display total integrity and strength of character throughout their series, followed by winning the top prize of that show. In other words, they exist – at least in theory – but you haven’t seen them.

The laughter fades, and the awkwardness switches to pure silence for the men’s team. Unless they can somehow manage to find the buyers attractive in the next twenty minutes, their game may be over. And with Kelly out buying fabric and unable to provide emergency military advice, they’re going to have to figure it out on their own: the Parsons team, accompanied by Ilsa and Carolyn, are heading into a fabric store to pick up the basic materials for their line.

Watching men looking over fabric samples is like watching newborn kittens trying to crawl out of the birthing box. They’re so cute when they’re that helpless…

(Production note: the background music played during this segment perfectly suits the scene being played out, to the point where every little musical sting accents the ridiculous and pushes it closer to hilarity. If anyone’s unbashable for this episode, it’s the series’ musical director, who knew exactly what s/he was doing in this sequence. And was arguably the only one who did. We now return you to an absolute travesty, about to be in progress.)

Raj picks out some light pink adorned with hot pink polka dots. ‘Too fluffy?’, he asks. ‘Too goofy?’

‘Goofy,’ Ilsa muses, ‘that was the word I was looking for…’ Carolyn, standing off to the side, briefly smirks.

Raj next winds up with a roll of what appears to be medium pink leatherette. ‘Your objection to this is what?’ he consults Ilsa.

‘I’m just not seeing it!’ the designer replies, which puts her way ahead of the unlucky audience, currently getting a very extended look. Carolyn giggles. (That’s right. Carolyn. Giggles. It’s been captured on color film and mailed directly to the Museum Of Radio And Television Broadcasting, and you can reference it any time you like.)

Raj is next seen carrying a bolt of mostly-brown tweed down a staircase, which he may have had to do on the sly, as his next conference with Ilsa finds him holding a nearly-translucent background color covered in middle pink and purple intersecting inch-long rectangles. Ilsa informs him that this is ‘Too white’. The only possible reply for our hero is ‘Okay…’ followed by a slow slide-back of the offending bolt. Carolyn’s only remaining recourse is to start tearing up from the effort of repressing what’s quickly turning into an all-out, double-over, stoicism breakdown into helpless laughter, followed by a duck behind a yellow fabric column to calm down.

A few minutes later, after internal order has been restored, Carolyn takes a rare c-t to inform us that what we have just seen was a golden comedy moment (we knew, but thanks anyway), with the men clearly having no idea what they were supposed to be doing – except for Kelly, who has once again risen to the occasion and started getting things organized. In this case, it means moving away from pulling random attacks of color off the shelves and asking Ilsa if they look good, to trying to get one defined, composed look that won’t send George into hysterics once it hits the runway. Soldier on, our wayward son: there’ll be fashion when you are done. Lay your frustrated words to c-t: go on and be-yotch some more.

‘It’s extremely chaotic,’ Kelly c-t admits. ‘There’s no organization. Raj is not helpful at all: he keeps going off on tangents, goes off and grabs things…’ (More tweed results.) ‘John needs to concentrate on one thing and get it done.’ (Not to argue with a superior officer or anything, but I’m having trouble staying focused after seeing Carolyn enjoying a moment of humanity, not to mention some difficulty in determining which reality I’m operating in. How does Kelly expect John to operate under those circumstances? One of Donald’s henchmen laughing… what’s next, the main man shows up with a crew cut?) But with John apparently on the sidelines, Kelly musters himself and his unit to achieve the near-impossible: getting the fabrics picked out, assembled, and paid for before closing. In a further c-t, he feels as if he’s doing the PM’s work on this job. Maybe John is just a little too concerned about what Chris thinks of him?

Meanwhile, Apex, armed with female intuition and a (presumably) gay male, is having a much easier time of it: enter store, pull bolts, get opinion, get agreement, determine amount to purchase, move on. Everything’s actually going smoothly until Elizabeth and Jennifer rendezvous at the fabric store. And what has Elizabeth brought with her? The same thing she always brings: disagreements for everybody! The fabric isn’t rich enough! She doesn’t think they have a signature piece in the line! With the absence of a jacket in the line (no time), she doesn’t think anyone’s going to go to a designer for a capelet! And not only that, but who wears clothes any more, anyway? Don’t these people know that nudity is going to be the next major accessory? If they can just find some sort of insulating cream and sell that on the runway along with a necklace or two, they can make a lot more in gross sales than Mosaic, especially when you consider that the cream’s going to wear or wash off and will have to be steadily reordered…

Ivana c-t feels that, based on perceived prior evidence, any complication is the kiss of death for their team, and all the complications are coming from one source: Elizabeth. (Usually, this wouldn’t be tunnel vision so much as it is a direct attempt to shift blame from herself for a few previous complications, but since this group of contestants seem to have the long-term memory retention abilities of your average daisy, Ivana probably shouldn’t be blamed here. But go ahead and do it anyway: you’ll feel better.) ‘You are just creating noise and – and we don’t need it!’ Ivana c-t protests. That’s right, Elizabeth. Ivana doesn’t need you to create noise. That’s her job.

‘I don’t mean to be a be-yotch,’ Ivana tells Elizabeth, establishing that she just can’t help herself once and for all, ‘but this is what we’re going with.’

Ivana Has Spoken, and that means a lot on a Trump show. Apex returns to Parsons before sunset to start working with the on-site seamstresses on design assembly. Sandy c-t notes that they’d asked Darren if there was any need to get the prospective models to the school before putting together the outfits they were going to wear, but Darren had told them not to bother: the measurements are right there in the models’ portfolios, and they can just work from the numbers provided. There’s no need to crowd the studio or take extra time in bringing them over. The women agree, and Apex gets to work,

Why was that bit important? Because the men reunite at Parsons (with the fabric team arriving at night) for their design assembly, and their first order of business is to choose their models. This is fine, because it’s something the women did off-camera earlier. And, being reality show men, they have to comment on how hot each model is, and just why they hold that opinion. Which is fine in the eyes of the producers, because filling a little camera time with pictures of industry-standard attractive women is good for the ratings. And then Chris, being Project Manager, makes an executive decision: they’re going to call their prospective models in and get some measurements. Which, as we now know from Darren, were in the portfolio to begin with.

I could try to be fair here. I could say something along the lines of ‘Well, maybe the men have been looking at – certain types of ads in a given New York City tabloid or two, and they don’t know if they can trust written measurements any more’, and you could certainly apply that one to Chris with very little overlap. I really could try to do that. But based on the available evidence, I’d like to say that a certain type of male who spends too much time looking over photos of models in lingerie becomes too stupid to read and far too eager to get a look at the actual event the pictures were based on, and while he can’t possibly manage to hold a measuring tape steady for fifteen seconds, he’s willing to try and learn – and fail – and fail – and fail – for as long as necessary until someone tells him it’s time to step away. And Mosaic has The Type. In spades.

The models are called in. There’s presumably nothing that could have stopped that phone call except twenty-eight buckets of cold water and a heaping dose of saltpeter in Raj’s soda.

Shameless flirting ensues. The models, being part of the FWC, are silently putting up with it while disregarding everything being said by every member of Mosaic making less than sixty million a year. Ilsa just gets to roll her eyes a lot.

Raj c-t observes that ‘Not having, despite his Harvard education, anything to say, Andy giggled the whole time.’ (pause) ‘I can’t remember what I was doing because I was in some kind of chemical haze.’ And testosterone isn’t a controlled substance exactly why?

Whatever Raj was doing, it involved sharing a little German with a native model – there was no translation provided, but I suspect the words ‘I have my own suite in Trump Tower’ were in there somewhere – but it finally ends with the models’ departure and Chris making fun of his teammates for doing the same thing he was presumably doing the whole time: trying to find out if these industry-standard movable clothing displays would consent to dating ‘real men’. (And presumably they would have, but they heard ‘reality men’ and got out of the building as fast as they could.) The men emerge with no phone numbers, not much in the way of recorded measurements, and some fond memories of their completely wasted time, which they can live again by watching this part of the episode. In slow motion. On Tivo. In the permanently saved file. On continuous loop.

The editors cut to the next morning, and Apex arrives at Parsons to find their designs assembled and waiting. This sets off the try-on gene in nearly all assembled: as most of Apex has industry-standard somas, they can don their own line and see how it looks before the models ever get ahold of it. Virtually everyone does so – the clothes fall right through Stacey – with Maria c-t admitting that her vocabulary was reduced to ‘Fabulous!’ and ‘Love it, love it, love it’, which was a distinct improvement over her usual vocabulary. She also notes that this brought out the nine year-olds in all of team. (Which means I’ve been giving them a little too much credit, because I’ve had them at twelve since the first episode.) The impromptu fashion show does seem to raise everyone’s spirits and even gets a lip twitch out of George, which just completely overflowed our Henchmen Humanity Quota for the entire season. Darren’s even written up the first draft on the line sheets: cut-down descriptions of the pieces for the buyers. Things seem to be going well – but Maria’s not going to c-t predict a victory, because she doesn’t know what the men have come up with.

In this case, the men have come up ‘short’, and it now looks like the models just figured that one out in advance. Mosaic arrives at Parsons to hear Ilsa cry ‘Oh no, it’s you guys again!’ – oh, the empathy – and discover that there’s one piece ready to go: the time consumed in cutting out the assemblies one at a time, not to mention a couple of hours wasted on the models, added up after all. And really, with Raj as the official timekeeper and that sudden attack of chemical haze, they’re lucky to have arrived on the right day.

With very little time left, the men have to pitch in themselves, and everyone who can’t sew (which is just about everyone, although Kelly is suspiciously absent from the first part of this sequence) is put to work on cutting, assembling fabric sample books, or doing the line sheets. To wit, Raj is put to work on the line sheets, much to everyone’s immediate regret, because Raj has no idea how to describe fabrics – here’s a hint, Raj: ‘Soft. Warm. Fashionable. Stain-repellent. Parisian. Goofy.’ – and is broadcasting this to everyone in the studio with lots of repeated words and gestures. Ilsa has to be left alone to work on the outfits, but Raj just has to interrupt every six frames to get a vital piece of information, especially if he’s been told that bit of data six times before. ‘Get it straight!’ a frustrated Ilsa finally vents. That’s kind of half the problem, Ilsa.

Finally, Kelly takes Raj aside and tells him to stop bothering Ilsa. Raj protests that he’s just trying to gather information, and Kelly replies with ‘That’s not information you need,’ because if Raj has heard it a dozen times already and still isn’t retaining it, the only information he really needs is the location of the nearest testosterone detox center. Raj protests that Kelly’s treating the fashion industry like the CIA, which is of course completely wrong: there’s a lot more assassination in the fashion industry.

Kelly tells him ‘This is not a platform for which you can expand your personality,’ thus momentarily shutting up Raj, missing the entire point of reality television, and creating another ‘Insert your own joke here’ moment at the same time. Army efficiency: it’s not just for the football field any more.

John’s response is to pop some Tic-Tacs. At least, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume they were Tic-Tacs.

Raj calls Kelly ‘John’ in an attempt to further establish his chemical haze defense for Donald later, then protests that he has his own way of doing things, as any real unit leader would have already dropped a flaming tire around his neck for. Kelly replies that he also has his own way of doing things, one of the things he can do when models aren’t present is count, there are one and a half outfits complete, they’re an hour late, and they need at least four at the show or they’ll be disqualified, which is probably information we could have used earlier. What Ilsa is doing is important: assembling the outfits. What Raj is doing is stupid: delaying Ilsa. Raj can sit down and shut up. Now. Not in so many words, of course, but the understanding is still there, and so many former Army officers smuggle out guns that Raj can’t be entirely sure of what Kelly’s capable of taking out of his luggage. The argument ends, mostly because the ‘hour late’ and ‘four outfits’ parts couldn’t even be debated by Andy, plus Ilsa’s got a really big pair of scissors ready to go, so the sewing resumes.

Meanwhile, most of Apex heads over to the St. Regis hotel to supervise the models getting into hair, makeup, and maybe even an outfit or two, with Elizabeth and Stacey staying behind to work on the swatch sheets with Darren: fabric samples to be passed out to the buyers. (If Darren’s slightly freaked by the sight of cloth squares moving through the air on invisible hands, he covers it well.) Elizabeth c-t admits that she would have liked to go to the hotel, but her grunt work assignment came from one simple fact: she’s not in with the main clique. Yes, Maria, Elizabeth has recognized her exclusion from your lunch table. She may even recognize that you’ve been giving her busy work. And all things considered, you probably shouldn’t have left her where she had access to so many pins.

John, Chris, and Raj would also like to supervise the models during the preparation period, among other things, so they head over to the hotel, leaving Andy, Wes, Kevin, and Kelly in charge of the remaining tasks: taking care of the line sheets (removed from Raj’s chemical-soaked hands) and – setting the pricing. The women have apparently done this off-camera, but the men are going to do it right in front of us, because it worked so well for them last week. After all, if total gross revenue is the goal, then pricing is going to be a very important factor. The women have elected to be at the low end for a high-end store. Where are the men going to place themselves, besides in a begging position at the FWC feet?

Kevin c-t feels this was a mistake on Chris’ part, because pricing is one of the most important parts of the task and the leader has to stay where he’s most needed. In this case, that’s figuring out what to charge, not getting a charge out of looking at figures. But it’s been left to him, so he consults Ilsa and gets her target price for each piece – ‘ninety-five’ is the example shown – then works last week’s QVC logic and apparently decides that they just might make it by a few cents again, so increasing those targets by a dollar or two couldn’t hurt. Say, to $200 for one piece and $410 for another. No one overrides him – no one’s there with the authority to – and Kevin merrily bumps up the prices across the board, only stopped by Kelly’s declaration that they’re out of time and any men left wounded on the field of battle can just die there. To the tune of well-timed faux martial music, the remainder of Mosaic scrambles and moves out.

Up in what Chris terms ‘the pimp-daddy suite’, Raj manages to get the following brilliant exchange in with a model as he dons a smoking jacket, which really should have been outright set on fire.

Raj: ‘So, do you like bow ties?’ (‘So what do you think about January, after the show wraps?’)
Model: ‘Yeah. It’s like, you hardly ever see them any more, so I like it.’ (‘Anyone who dresses this eccentrically must have money.’)
Raj: ‘It’s a shame, isn’t it?’ (‘Don’t worry. I’m going to be the heir to the Trump Empire!’)
Model: ‘Yeah.’ (‘That forgives a lot of sins, bow tie boy.’)

Showtime. The minicorps are seated in the front row on the right side of the runway, facing the buyers – and there are a lot of buyers, from a large number of very prestigious Manhattan stores that can surely afford to throw a few cents in my direction if they want to be mentioned here. Donald enters to his usual fanfare – no one in the buyer’s section reacts to the music, so he may have been doing this longer than we thought – and takes a seat. Apex’s outfits are up first. Using the announcer’s descriptions, they are:

#1: ‘Glacial tweed ensemble’. Mostly soft blues and grays, with a red belt and the threatened capelet. This actually looks wearable, which usually doesn’t mean much in the fashion industry.

#2: ‘Short, short suit’. Black with silver trim: the piece Maria was trying on at Parsons. Again, honestly not bad. Not to everyone’s taste, but you could picture it on a rack somewhere.

#3: ‘Satin camisole top’. Bright red and shimmering brown. So far, the women are on a roll: three outfits, three things that could actually be part of someone’s wardrobe. To wit, Maria’s, but at least that’s one customer.

#4: No announcer’s description: gold dress, fairly standard look. The buyers have been looking vaguely interested and making quick notes for most of the show.

‘As soon as we saw the women’s stuff’ Kelly c-ts while re-establishing his masculinity once and for all, ‘we were like, we can beat them! Miniskirts and backless dresses? No buyer’s going to buy that!’ And thus, the Mark Burnett Minimum Hubris Tally, along with a complete disconnection from reality caused by eight years of staring at ugly uniforms, is achieved. Congratulations, Kelly. Now all we have to do is get through your fashion disasters and find out what Apex’s reward for winning is.

You know the old Hollywood line about ‘It looked good in the rushes?’ Sometimes, sketchbooks make interesting transitions to reality…

#1: After three replays, this is what I swear I heard: ‘A pimento cake cut viaduct skirt.’ For a better description, let’s turn to Ivana’s world-class c-t: ‘Who raided my father’s attic? And who cut up my sofa?’ Which also describes:

#2: ‘A plaid wool-trimmed silk blouse,’ and there we have words which have never gone together in that order before and, with any mercy, will never assemble like that again. All you have to know about that piece is that Raj probably liked it a lot. It’s not indescribable, mind you, it’s just that I can’t get more than five words in before ‘MY EYES! MY EYES!’ starts to spontaneously manifest throughout the summary, and this thing is long enough as it is.

#3: ‘A textured wool mohair, lined in tweed and edged in suede.’ Somewhere, a James Bond villainness is wondering who raided her attic. And it was at this point that the buyers started to rhythmically clap while displaying the universal dazed expression of parents forced to realize that an entire second-grade class can’t perform the food groups if their lives depended on it – but it’s going to run five acts anyway.

#4: ‘A plaid woolen bloussant.’ This is actually halfway wearable, and was presumably completed while Raj was distracted by the models.

#5: ‘A mix of tweeds.’ Could be donned in mixed company, although I’d be very careful about taking the homeless leg wraps out to dinner. Donald’s starting to look a little dazed himself. The sanity of the FWC is probably being questioned. There are some things you just shouldn’t do for moderate amounts of money, and wearing the entire Mosaic line in public is on the list for anything under seven figures with no decimal points involved.

#6: ‘A little vestlet and indigo-gold Flourax skirt that has its own leash.’ Literally. One end of the skirt tapers down to a string, which connects to a loop around the model’s skirt. Wave hello to a friend and fifty digital cameras go off. In fact, do a low wave and the vestlet, which is really two strips of cloth with delusions of association, may shift to one side. And that’ll be good for at least thirty cameras. Taking an outfit out on a walk is one thing: taking one for a walk is something else entirely.

The Mosaic outfits are brought onto the runway as a group, giving some of the buyers a chance to provide encouraging cheers in their effort to thwart the editing, and even Donald manages a ‘That’s good!’ Mosaic gets complimented by Apex on their couture, and Raj c-t notes that the men have dominated traditionally female-strong areas, so he’s not worried at all. The men could not be more doomed if Nakomis was the lead buyer.

Commercials, and then everyone gathers in front of Donald And The Henches (with George on lead guitar) to await the totals. Donald takes a moment to thank the FWC, especially now that he has a better idea of their ultimate price, and then it’s time for the results:

Mosaic: $7,735.
Apex: $22,060.

This is generally what we call a butt-kicking – but not so fast. Consider the number of stores involved here, and that these are some of the most powerful stores in the city. These are buyers with the money and authority to take a chance on anything they like, with the sure and certain knowledge that if all else fails, they can slap a ‘As seen on The Apprentice tag’ on it and sell to the eBay people and collectors until the racks are empty. Then look at the high prices the men were charging, take a guess at where the women were, and it actually breaks down to this:

Mosaic: Diddley.
Apex: Squat.

Very few people liked the new lines. Hardly anyone took a chance on them, and the quantities ordered were low. By any designer’s standards, this would have been a spectacular failure. Everyone blew it: one minicorp didn’t blow quite as hard.

But even on this vastly weakened scale, Apex is successful again – and Donald announces the fallout. The women will get to enjoy a party at the Hugo Boss store, right next to Trump Tower, and Circue De Soliel will be performing there. (The men can watch from the balcony.) Maria, as the winning PM, will be exempt next week. Chris, as last week’s winning PM, is exempt this week unless he goes and pulls a Bradford, which no one’s going to be stupid enough to try. And the men are heading to the Boardroom, where someone has to be fired, because if no one’s fired, how can Donald possibly expect to achieve happiness in life? And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

The men look stunned. The women celebrate. Ilsa and Darren try to set the samples on fire, but a team from Yahoo stops them just in time. Raj loses his prospective date. Stacey flickers all the way back into existence. And Mosaic does what Burnett show teams do best: starts to turn on itself.

Chris, John, and Raj discuss matters out on the balcony. Their consensus, led by John, is that the Project Manager, who is John, right there, and not to be offended just yet, did a bang-up job and needs to build his case against those responsible for the pricing, who are hereby named Kevin and Wes, and branded with the sting of possible foreshadowing. Raj feels that both of them should be brought into the Boardroom, since John will probably only take two people and that fills his slot. John then asks what Chris thinks, which is Raj’s cue to think of the three-man possibility and interrupt with ‘Andy’. Chris agrees, as he didn’t think Andy did much other than giggle a lot. John feels he personally isn’t at much risk because he didn’t do anything wrong, but he’d better get back inside before the others decide he’s plotting against them. Which is, of course, too late, but it’s nice that he thought of it, in a sad, sick way.

Raj looks down at the party and decides it looks boring. Meanwhile, the women are being introduced to Lil’ Kim, who consoles Stacey on her temporary reality banishment while introducing her height-match sister to her own upcoming fashion line. They also watch the circus performers, chat with a pleased-seeming George about the men’s pricing mistake, and enjoy the simple (weak) bonding experience of what Ivana c-t describes as their real reward: not having to go to the Boardroom for once. A good time is had by all, or at least by the editors, and Raj’s judgment has now been consistent for the entire episode.

John consults Kelly and picks up some strategy tips: if both Kevin and Wes are seen by Donald as strong contenders, bringing both of them in is likely to get John fired. Kelly agrees with the Andy concept, and that John should argue Andy did nothing on this task and very little on past performances. There’s even an agreement in place for Kelly to say ‘Andy’ when Donald issues the inevitable ‘Who would you fire?’ question. The plot has thickened slightly more than Raj’s previous chemical haze, and there’s only so much partying George can stand – so it’s time to go to the Boardroom, where someone has to slip into rough paraphrase. And that someone would be me. As this section of the show is very speech-intensive and trying to keep track of what everyone’s saying is a problem when they start talking over each other, the speech from this point on is presented in general spirit, if not the letters.

Mosaic, dressed in their best goin’-to-the-airport clothing, heads in to find George and Carolyn waiting. Donald enters to the standard lack of Boardroom fanfare, and the inquisition begins.

Donald: ‘After four victories in a row, getting to the point where you were actually starting to delude yourselves into thinking you could be hired as a group, you finally lost one. Other than my rigging the task to make sure one of you bozos was going home, what happened?’

John: ‘Sir, I saw your rigging the task as a challenge to me personally and I felt that with my hard labor, my skilled leadership, and my talking about myself a lot during confessional-tell, I would be either be able to overcome it or build up such a good case for myself that the audience would like me later. Excepting those unspeakable SOBs on the Internet, of course. But I feel that despite my great leadership, we lost due to something I had no control over: the pricing. I’d like to pause and let you ask a question now, because I know you don’t like to let us talk too long.’

Donald: ‘You learned that faster than you did the fashion industry. So who are you about to blame for the pricing mistake?’

Kevin: ‘He’s about to blame myself and Wes, sir. Or at least that’s what we heard when we had that glass to the sliding door. But in our defense, I’d like to blame the buyers. Not just for not picking our innovative fashion line, but because we went around before the show talking to them and picking up hints, and all they did was insult our sexuality. They’re heterophobes, sir. And speaking of fear, I think John was terrified of pricing the items, which is why he retreated to the safety and comfort of the models. I don’t think he could even tell you what our prices were, since he wasn’t there the whole time we were setting them.’

John: ‘I like totally could! I got the blue script pages from the producers before we came up here! And I had really important stuff to do at the St. Regis! Mr. Trump, did you know he’s the patron saint of praying for a date with an attractive woman? That’s probably why more people don’t know about him – but I digress. The thing is that I trusted Kevin and Wes to set good prices, based on their strong performance in past tasks which I’ll be completely ignoring in five minutes, and I feel they deliberately set out to make me look bad. Which is no small feat. Have you seen my hair?’

Donald: ‘Yes, I have, and it’s still nothing compared to mine. So you feel you should have left a task as crucial as pricing, with its incredible potential to completely screw you over, to people who have a vested interest in getting you fired and out of their way?’

John: ‘Not with Ilsa there to correct them! They could consult her on appropriate pricing, and if they got it wrong, it would be on the tape. I’m sure it’s on the tape! Can we stop to review it?’

Kevin: ‘My temp needs a little time in the editing room to finish losing most of that footage, Mr. Trump, so I’d like to push a little of the blame onto Ilsa. Not that she can be fired, but John was the one responsible for ultimately picking her, and – well, you saw the outfits. Personally, I’m still seeing them every time I close my eyes. Thank you for thinking to provide Nyquil in the suite.’

Donald: ‘Think nothing of it: they’re a sponsor. And besides, I couldn’t sleep with Maria talking either. So just to get this straight – sorry, Kevin, didn’t mean to make you twitch there – it was John who was ultimately responsible for hiring Ilsa?’

John: ‘Unless my temp gets to that footage first, yes, it was.’

Kevin: ‘And she used really expensive materials – Raj told me what good ugly tweed and putrid wool cost, but I didn’t believe him until I saw it for myself, I’m sorry to say – and that drove our price up even before I did, and if I had a lower base, I would have been able to restrain myself more.’

Donald: ‘And that failure on your part is sounding a lot like John’s fault.’

Kevin: ‘As far as I’m concerned, everything in the world is John’s fault, and the only reason he’s not in The Passion Of The Christ as the nail-driver is because his footage-grabbing temps are everywhere. My guy is actually down there guarding the stuff.’

Donald: ‘For some strange reason, I’m guessing that if you were me, you’d fire John.’

Kevin: ‘Naturally. And it is my greatest ambition in life to be you, only with a better build. Although I’d be happy to give you some exercise tips.’

Raj: ‘If I could, I’d like to say a quick ninety-minute thesis in defense of John.’

Donald: ‘I have no faith in your ability to keep a speech under ninety minutes. Besides, how would you know what happened? I heard you were in a model-induced chemical haze during the entire task!’

Raj: ‘That is not true, Mr. Trump! I was fine until the moment Chris took the photos out and can accurately report on events up until that point.’

Donald: ‘Even so, I heard you were doing everything with the models except trying to hump their legs like the hound dog you are.’

Carolyn: ‘He must have been really attracted to the designer, because he spent more time hounding her than anyone else. Maybe he’s got a thing for blondes. Come to think of it, can I bring a stun gun in here?’

Donald: ‘Of course: just let me line up a sponsor first. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was hobnobbing his bowties around my Future Wife Corral, and I don’t take kindly to that. So I’m going to pick on him next and ask who he would fire, and that’s only going to be the first of his many punishments. Oh, Raj?’

Raj: ‘I’d fire Andy, Mr. Trump, because that high-pitched giggling is the only thing I can remember from two nights ago.’

Donald: ‘So you’re targeting him just because he hasn’t gone through puberty yet? Don’t you know we have hiring discrimination laws in this country?’

Raj: ‘Yes sir, and I ask you to remember that they’re right next to the child labor laws. Now, I admit that Kevin might have made a teeny tiny error when he was cruelly abandoned by John and left with the pricing sheets –‘

George: ‘Wait a darn minute! You’re admitting Kevin’s at fault, but you’d still fire Andy? In my day, we’d call that double-dealing!’

Raj: ‘In my day, we call it double-DAWing, sir. You have to take the whole picture into account, and since much like Andy, it hasn’t finished developing yet…’

Donald: ‘Enough of the analogies for two sentences. You’d fire Andy, is that it?’

Raj: ‘Absolutely. He’s not me.’

Donald: ‘Are you sure he didn’t use to be you?’

Raj: ‘Not since I answered that last piece of Spam.’

Donald: ‘Okay. That’s interesting. Forward it to me later. Andy, since you’ve had a while to fume about this, I think I know who you would fire. Want to confirm it?’

Andy: ‘I would fire John because he’s picking on me. Also, I don’t think a good game of Follow The Leader should involve a cliff jump when only one of us had enough fabric samples to stitch a parachute together.’

Donald: ‘It would have sold better than that wool-suede horror, that’s for sure. Kelly, what has the Army taught you to think?’

Kelly: ‘Sir, I would fire Andy, sir, because frankly, sir, I’m getting tired of having to put him down for his nap, sir, and if he doesn’t pick a new bedtime story soon I may have to kill him, although you’ll never be able to prove it was me. Sir!’

Andy: ‘Well, if I need so much babysitting, why were you all letting me play with scissors on the line sheets?’

John: ‘We were all hoping you would stab yourself.’

Kevin: ‘That’s not true at all! I was hoping you’d stab John!’

Donald: ‘Chris, obviously you can make enemies this week who can’t possibly come back to haunt you next week, being exempt and all, so I expect you to speak your mind freely. Who would you fire?’

Chris: ‘You know, when you put it that way, and given that I’ve gotten a pretty good chance to see which way the wind is blowing – plus I would personally be happy to take over Andy’s bedtime story, since we just got the latest Maxim – I’d fire John. Hey, balconies were made for pushing people over, you know?’

Donald: ‘Chris, that’s the most intelligent thing you’ve said all season. Now John, as always, you can take two or three people in with you, and only a fool would choose just two, because that rumor saying I pick a random number to fire one of you bozos should have reached you by now and you’ll want a lot of random numbers in the group. So who are you going to defray your odds with?’

John: ‘Much like the pricing sheet, that rumor has not reached me, so I’ll just take two people.’

Donald: ‘God, you’re all idiots. Okay, even though I know already, say their names for the camera.’

John: ‘I’m gonna pass the buck to Kevin and Andy.’

Donald: ‘Black guy and young guy. Got it. Okay, the rest of you get back to the suite. I’ve left some binoculars out and the Hugo Boss building is mostly glass, so if you try real hard, you should be able to see down Apex’s dresses. Lots of low-cut blouses out there tonight, and Lil’ Kim wasn’t even wearing that much. You three, go into the lobby so we can go to commercial.’

{All BOZOS leave.}

Donald: ‘So George, you’ve barely spoken for this segment. Who would you keep out of these three, keeping in mind that I’m probably going to ignore you?’

George: ‘I like Andy. He reminds me of myself fifty years ago. Raw clay, just waiting to be molded. And it helps a lot that he hasn’t had a chance to enter the grown-up section of the library and find out what a bunch of jerks the business world is.’

Donald: ‘That’s an excellent point and I’m glad I gave it to you. Carolyn, what did I tell you to think of during the commercial?’

Carolyn: ‘Well, John makes me laugh, although not as much as Raj, and he worked really hard to keep my spirits up during the usual emotion-crushing hell of following these idiots around. But he just made so many mistakes, and we both know I’m only allowed to laugh once per season.’

Donald: ‘I wish I’d gotten this much good advice before my last divorce hearing. Okay, Robin, you can send them in now.’

Robin: ‘Hey, guys, I get to speak the one line which has somehow turned me into a very minor star! Isn’t that cool?’

{Three BOZOS enter and take their seats.}

Donald: ‘Andy, do you know why you’re here right now?’

Andy: ‘Not a clue, sir.’

Donald: ‘You’re sure?’

Andy: ‘Positive. My mother hasn’t paged one to me yet.’

John: ‘Mr. Trump, can’t you see that Andy never takes a leadership role in this minicorp? Anyone with real potential would see the value in our random draws for Project Manager and load the hat with a thousand slips of paper containing his own name! In fact, there’s an unspoken agreement on the team not to let him take his training wheels off until he’s proven he can cheat with the rest of us.’

Kevin: ‘That’s not true! I heard you say it a bunch of times! And you were picking his name out of the hat before the draw!’

Donald: ‘Now, Kevin – you I can blame. So can everyone else. After all, you did do this little thing called ‘pricing yourself right out of the market.’ And if John can actually pin the fault on anyone, it’s probably you and Wes. Wouldn’t you agree? Better say yes.’

Kevin: ‘Yes. But can I follow that up by reminding everyone that I can stick Wes with some of this?’

Donald: ‘I’ll allow that. In fact, John, why didn’t you bring Wes in here as part of a three-pack, if you’re so eager to spread the responsibility around as much as possible? It seems to me he’s just as much to blame as Kevin is, and it’s one more target for me to shoot this week’s single bullet at.’

John: (silence)

George: ‘If Wes is at fault, he deserves a spanking! I’ve already got my belt off, too! Where is he?’

John: (silence) ‘You’re right. I made a mistake. Wes should really be here. Can I go get him now?’

Donald: ‘No. You’ve made a lot of mistakes and we’re just going to add that one to your record, which is about ninety seconds away from the big ‘Retired’ stamp. Is there anything you can possibly say to save yourself right now?’

John: ‘Sir, with Carolyn as Your witness and messenger of all things light, green, and serial numbered, accompanied by the Holy George…’

Donald: ‘What about me? I witness everything you do and think. Can’t I be part of this?’

John: ‘You were implied in the capital letter, sir.’

Donald: ‘Well, thank you. You’re a very nice young man.’

John: ‘You’re welcome, My Lord. So as I was saying, Your witnesses and Yourself have seen how hard I’ve worked on the previous tasks, that I’ve put my heart and soul into them…’

Donald: ‘I’ll go with ‘heart’. Remember, I’ve got your soul right here.’

John: ‘…and I’ve done a lot of work, I’m sorry if I said that already, and I’ve stepped up and taken a leadership position on other tasks, and I feel like I let everyone down, these are good people I’m trying to throw to the wolves here, I’m gonna get a swirlie and a wedgie from the girls once I leave this room, and up is down and left is right, and if it’s okay with Andy, I’d like to borrow his pager and call my mommy.’

Donald: ‘In a minute. Andy, you’re too small. I’m going to throw you back.’

Andy: ‘Thank you, sir. Can I go watch Finding Nemo after dinner?’

Donald: ‘Only after you’re done with Yu-Gi-Oh!. I really like that kid’s hair. Now John, you made a ton of mistakes and you used up Carolyn’s laughter time, which she was planning on saving for Maria later. You’re probably going to be a really good executive some day, and if you ask me for a reference, I’ll be happy to help you get into any company I’m trying to put out of business.’

John: ‘Hallelujah.’

Donald: ‘Now Kevin, I could still blame you, but the fact is, I like getting chances to fire people who screw up. Wes screwed up as much as you did, and John didn’t give me a shot at him. Why else would I ask for three people? I like to see a maximum number of you sweat. And since Wes wasn’t brought in here and John somehow managed to choose the lure of the models over the sweet, seductive scent of properly-set numbers, he just isn’t my kind of guy. Remember, the ideal situation is to get the girl on a bed of money, and you just really can’t have one without the other. So John – you’re fired. But if it’s any consolation, I’m going to let you have all the design prototypes to wear home.’

John: (silence)

{BOZOS leave. Two BOZOS go UP to the SUITE. One BOZO heads DOWN to the STREET.}

Boardroom Door: ‘Click.’

Donald: ‘Normally, I wouldn’t get any enjoyment out of firing someone with that kind of potential, but this show has given me some strange tastes. And besides, he really should have been using that extra capital letter all along.’

John’s Final Taxi Ride Words: ‘Anyone who headed up this task was screwed. I should have taken my own name out of the hat. What can I say – except that nothing is my fault, the rest of my team is a pack of wild animals ready to tear down the one that shows a limp, and – oops. Man, I wish I’d gotten in front of Bradford on Day One. At least I probably could have picked up some of their numbers. Say, does anyone else think Carolyn’s really attractive?’

Next week: the minicorp shuffle, canines, and Sablebunny, who’ll show the dogs a thing or six. Peace, over and out.

(And of course I’d hire these people. For starters, my bedroom could use a fresh coat of paint. As long as Raj doesn’t pick the colors.)