Joan Rivers Blogs:
Episode Six: Spreading a Clean Virus This was the worst challenge so far, and it was the most unhappy that I have been since starting the show!
Our team was separated, and Melissa and I were split up. It was no longer the women vs. the men, and I tried to form new bonds with my teammates Clint, Natalie, Herschel and Khloe. The challenge was to create a viral video for All’s laundry detergent, Small & Mighty. (Small & Mighty, by the way, was my nickname for Tom Cruise for years—who knew he also got your clothes clean!?)
Right at the start, I learned something new. I found out what a viral video was. I had thought it was a film you watched in sex education class to warn you about promiscuity and sailors on shore leave, but a viral video is actually a funny or amazing clip that gets passed along from person to person via email. (It has to be outrageous, like David Hasselhoff eating a cheeseburger on the floor or Christian Bale’s tirade on the set of his latest movie.) Marketers have realized that ordinary people have the power to circulate these things better than any PR firm, and so All Small & Mighty wanted to capitalize on the phenomenon.
Clint was our project manager, and from the very start he took none of the team’s suggestions for the video. As writers working in a group, you bounce and bounce and bounce ideas until you come up with one you all love (or at least all like), but Clint was having none of this. I have never in my life worked with someone so dogmatic, so rigid and so dismissive. Clint ignored all of our ideas and did the video HIS WAY. I don’t know if it was because most of his teammates were women, but then why didn’t he listen to Herschel who is a very smart and successful businessman? After many attempts, my biggest contribution of the day was ordering lunch!
The entire team felt that Clint’s video concept was stupid and had no point of view. There was a strange masturbation undertone to it, which we all objected to.
At one point over lunch, while we all were arguing so fiercely with Clint, I came up with a great (or so I thought) idea for a video that people would surely pass along. I suggested we show Clint and me fighting over how to do our viral video. Clint would then walk away and I would (pretend to) spit in his sandwich. When he came back, we’d continue to discuss the merits of Small & Mighty while he ate the sandwich. Of course, he rejected that gross idea and we did it all his way.
Because we all hated our viral video, going to the boardroom was uncomfortable and awkward. We were all so over Clint’s “leadership.”
Melissa was project manager of her team and their video was adorable. They took the words small and mighty literally and had midgets coming out of washing machines and dancing with shopping carts. It was cute, cute, cute! But the executives from All were upset with both videos: ours because it was so stupid, and Melissa’s because they used the term “midget” (even though they asked their actors for permission first).
Because neither team won, one person from each was fired: Tionne and Khloe , from our team. (It should have been Clint!) It hurt me very much to see both women leave. They were great workers, and I guess it goes to show that snakes and connivers get places, and good girls sometimes finish last.
As we enter the seventh week, it’s getting down to the nitty gritty, and I feel like I should put aside trying to help the other contestants and just concentrate on winning—with humor! An undercurrent of trickery and guile is starting to permeate our environment. One of my biggest assets—and flaws I guess—is I say exactly what I think. I’m not much of a plotter.
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