First, some apologism. I generally stand in solidarity with my aspiring screen/television-writer friends against the miserable fad of reality telvision, but I think my fascination with The Apprentice is somewhat excusable. First off, it's much more intelligent than your run of the mill reality pap. Watching a group of people try to make a business venture work in less than two days is much more engaging than seeing who can eat the most ground beetles. Also, as a young (soon to be) professional, I can justify watching The Apprentice to see what it'll be like in a few years when I'm surrounded by assholes. Plus, I need to work on my cattiness.
That being said, on to last night's episode. The big controversy was that Bradford gave up his immunity and was consequently fired. Trump repeatedly emphasized that Bradford's decision to give up his exemption was "stupid," but only noted that it was "impulsive" in passing. But the impulsivity was the real crime. What Bradford should have said was "Mr. Trump, I realize that I'm exempt from being fired this evening, but to show solidarity with my team I'm willing to waive my exemption and take whatever responsibility the team wants to give me for our failure." Had he done that, Trump may still have said it was a stupid move, but may not have accepted the waiver right away. Or, he would have accepted the waiver but not fired him (especially considering that there were two other perfectly acceptable firing candidates to choose from). But what Bradford did was suddenly throw away his immunity while talking about what a great job he did. That came off as cocky and impulsive and Trump killed him for it.
The firing of Bradford creates an interesting dynamic for the Apex team next week, which is pretty much embodied in Ivana's reaction to the ordeal. In addition to the "ohmygodohmygodohmygod," she almost has trouble standing and very nearly falls over while pushing her chair back in. In the end she can only stare at Jenn C in horror as Bradford and Stacie leave the room. Ivana had the perfect chance to get rid of Apex's worst player (Stacie) and instead got rid of one of their strongest (Trump acknowledged that Bradford was the best person of the four potential firees in the room, right before firing him). So, of the eight remaining Apex players, one is universally despised, and another has established herself as a disastrous leader. Holohan's ignorant prediction is that the other six Apex members will consolidate against Stacie and Ivana - the next Apex PM to lose a challenge will bring them both into the Board Room. Ivana may be able to work herself back into the team's good graces (depending on what Jenn C tells them coming out of the Board Room). Stacie's smartest move would be to approach the team, apologize profusely, point out that Mosaic is united and energized and that Apex stands no chance unless they pull together, and try to be accepted back into the team. But given her defiantness (and batshit insanity) she's more likely to continue to do her own thing and focus on proving to Trump that she doesn't deserve to be fired, rather than proving to the team that she's a valuable player.
Finally, I'd like to comment on some reality show editing. There are numerous points during the Board Room scenes when Trump is laying into someone and we see that person scowling and shaking her head. I find it extremely unlikely that any of the players is ballsy enough to do something like that. What likely happened is that they spliced some tape of unrelated scowling/head shaking against the audio of Trump's insults to make it seem more tense. I'm wondering if similar trickery is at hand in the commercials for next week's episode. We're clearly meant to believe that Mosaic encounters disaster, but all we really get is (1) an ominous Excel spreadsheet, (2) two or three Mosaic people grimacing in despair, and (3) a woman's voice saying "We have no back-up plan." It's not entirely clear that the woman's voice is Pamela's. But I guess we'll have to see.
But more importantly, Mosaic made donut ice cream!!! DONUT FUCKING ICE CREAM!!! There's a place in San Francisco that carries it, supposably. I'm going to need a bigger freezer.
I read just about everything you post here, and this is the least relevant yet. Nice work.
Bradford's firing was hilarious. While he didn't do anything punishable in the actual task, and though he was the best performer out of the losers brought to the boardroom, he's such an ass I was pleased to see him get the smackdown.
First of all, he smiles too much. Stop smiling, dickface.
Second, I will never forgive him for claiming that a football player head on wheels would be an appealing toy, even though the toy they ended up creating after Mattel shot him down turned out to be very cool.
Third, all that damn clapping when he's getting the women ready to go. How patronizing. What a dick.
Fourth, rubbing in his immunity by saying "I don't have to pack shit," then jumping in unnecessarily to kiss up to Caroling by backing up her trashing of his team (and hilariously mispronouncing her name in the process, earning her total contempt).
Seeing him shoot himself in the foot with his arrogance was tremendously satisfying dramatically.
As long as we're on the subject, how about that Raj? He's so unbelievable I almost suspect he's invented this absurd cane-toting, bow-tied persona out of whole cloth, Handley-style, lying as a stunt just for the fun of making people believe it. It would be hard to get past show screeners making that stuff up, but they may have let him through confident that he would make the show interesting, which is the most important thing.
Would he be tremendously irritating in real life, assuming the persona is true? Yes. But if I were ever on a reality show, that's exactly how I would want to act.