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The Apprentice 10

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apskip:
A10, ep. 4

This episode begins with Mahsa stating that Tyana, her bitter rival, does not want her to shine. The prior episode conflicts between David and James were highlighted. Wade had promised Trump to step up as P.M. but when Clint claimed that turf Wade backed down in the interest of team harmony. David was unhappy with Steuart for throwing him “under the bus.”  Tyana as last week’s winning P.M. got to meet with Russell Simmons. The idea he gave her for creating her own business (write down a plan, execute and gather people around you) is a bit simplistic, but more tangibly he gave her a $10,000 gift certificate for use at Calvin Klein.

The entourage of Trump, Donald Jr. and Ivanka arrived with the founder of Indiana Popcorn co., clearly doing a product placement episode (fees are more than $1 million for those according to what I have heard). What he wanted was a guerilla marketing stunt or event that had the potential to blossom into a viral video. The P.M. were Clint and Mahsa. Charlie Todd from Improv Everywhere was the consultant to each team on their creative ideas. His advice was to make it crazy and zany.

Clint adopted the battle cry “go big or go home.” Tyana stood out on the women’s team for her negative comments. Mahsa solved that temporarily by sending Tyana, Lisa and Poppy out on a make-work project. The Fortitude creative concept was working out in a gym while eating popcorn (Indiana of course).

David had come with recent root canal work and he lost half of that tooth while eating a hard New York City bagel. That necessitated his departure to get his tooth fixed. I don’t think anyone on Octane was sorry that he was not there to help out, as he has proven to be a divisive presence with his aggression.

One of the other members of Fortitude mentioned that Mahsa had figured out that in order to be able to pin a loss on someone else they had to have a real share of the creative  and execution aspects of the project. She changed course and set about trying to involve the 3 she had sent away, particularly Tyana. Donald Jr. observed during the final video taping that Mahsa was dominant, which could work against her if Fortitude lost.

Steuart devised a concept involving a popcorn fight individually with 6 small groups, then escalating to one with a large group. Anand was the director of video production. Ivanka observed that and asked “is it hilarious?” to which I answer “absolutely, it was a scream” and clearly worthy of becoming viral.

Trump played each video in the Boardroom. Tyana was not laughing during the Fortitude video but she was during the Octane video. Trump didn’t come right out and say it, but he effectively accused her of disloyalty to her team. Mahsa did accuse Tyana of that. The owner of Popcorn Indiana sort of liked the fortitude creative concept but felt that it did not go far enough. He said that the Octane video made him laugh but had too much violence. Trump asked Clint to comment. Clint responded that the Octane concept and spectacle went BIG. Anand was asked if Clint was an effective P.M. and responded that  he was excellent. Wade was asked why he was not P.M. and he explained. David was asked why he was not there and he explained. Steuart stated that Octane was an excellent team WITHOUT David.

Mahsa was asked if she thought Fortitude had won. She responded “probably.“  Brandy added her agreement, but Tyana disagreed. Mahsa said Tyana did not contribute to either the creative concept or execution and repeatedly interrupted Tyana with “What was your idea?” until Trump told her to quit it.

Clint was asked if Octane had won. He responded yes and Steuart responded that they pulled it off well. Tyana explained that she liked the Octane video better because it funny. I think Steuart added that they shut down part of 5th Avenue at rush hour to film the video.

Donald Jr. and Ivanka gave the post-mortems from the Indiana Popcorn owner. He sort of liked the Fortitude creative concept but found it both clever and contrived and felt that it did not go far enough. Ivanka added that it was not an event but a commercial. He said that the Octane video made him laugh but had too much violence and the tag line was a bit unclear. Trump announced that Octane was the clear winner.

Mahsa explained that she had been attempting to coordinate 50 people during production and post-production of the video and Tyana did not help at all. Lisa chimed in that Mahsa had sent Tyana, Lisa and Poppy away on something make-work while critical creative decisions were being made. Trump began polling all of Fortitude on who should be fired. The entire team said Tyana (before getting to Lisa) preferred Mahsa to stay over Tyana. Mahsa nominated Tyana and Lisa to remain in the Boardroom and the rest were excused. Then even Lisa stated that she preferred Mahsa. Trump fired Tyana.

apskip:
I would like to make the case for why neither Mahsa nor David is tempermentally suited to be Donald Trump's Apprentice. You can infer that leadership, winning record, good communications skills, creativity, interpersonal skills and teamwork are among the major factors that Trump considers in his decisions on who gets fired each episode and who gets to be the Apprentice each season. Both David and Mahsa are deficient in the last two categories, interpersonal skills and teamwork The closest analog of past Apprentice contestants to both Mahsa and David is Omarosa in my opinion. She served her purpose of creating conflict and ratings and then was jettisoned in the middle of both Apprentice 1 and Celebrity Apprentice 1 (A7). Her controversial personality effectively eliminated her from consideration as the Apprentice. I believe the same is happening to David and Mahsa.

TexasLady:
Ye gods, now I'll have nightmares remembering Omarosa, there is a certain similarity with David and Masha. David in particular since he absolutely is not a team player in any sense of the word but is also a disruptor like Omarosa.

I didn't think either team produced a video that had a prayer of going viral but the men's video was at least in the street and attracted a crowd. Fortitude's video was an ad pure and simple, nothing that would be passed around on the web.

apskip:
A10, ep. 5

Brandy opened this episode by asserting that Mahsa lacks polish and that no one who had the habit of pointing in an accusatory way will ever be successful in business. I agree with Brandy. Clint had his meeting with Steve Forbes and again it appeared to be platitudes. Forbes predicted that Clint will be successful.

Trump stated to the assembled competitors that footwear is a $100 billion business worldwide. He introduced Rockport CEO Michael Rupp. Rupp stated that his new products have the overall theme of walkability and the introduction of the Rockport Spring Collection will be done by Octane and Fortitude that evening. Octane will be responsible for women’s shoes and Fortitude will be responsible for men’s shoes. A group of female models will be available to Octane and male models to Fortitude.  The teams will be assisted by executive recruiters Catherine Rowan and Juan Betancourt taking the normal roles that Ivanka and Donald Jr. have. The P.M. for Octane is Wade and the P.M. for Fortitude is Stephanie.

Stephanie got right to the assignment of responsibilities to her teams. Kelly had Fashion show operations, Poppy and Lisa the creative responsible for clothing purchases and assignment of shoe types to models, Mahsa accounting (burying her where she cannot disrupt anything) and Brandy as the emcee. The theme they agreed on was “A Day in the Life of Tristan”. Stephanie thinks they are on the right track, but she wants to take more risk. The concept of having the male models doing final runway poses in briefs and shoes only was tossed out and Stephanie was very enthusiastic about it.

Wade first assigned Steuart and Anand as the creative guys responsible for supervision of the models and selection of their clothing. David had comedy club experience, so he was asked to do the emcee. Gene stepped up and stated that he too had superior presentation experience, so he wanted to share the emcee tasks. A theme was needed for the Octane presentation, but if they ever found one it was not apparent. Catherine arrived and talked to Wade, coming reaching the impression that the Octane efforts were well-organized. The female models arrived and Steuart and Anand were in their element.

The male models arrived at fortitude, followed by Juan. He talked to Stephanie and concluded that she demonstrated leadership qualities. Clothing for their models was then done by the handlers from each team. Poppy screwed up and only bought one pair of briefs when 8 were needed. Brandy quickly remedied this.

David and Gene prepared their presentations. Gene was clearly in trouble and not ready. He had 9 slides to complete when he should have been done. Gene had the opportunity to let David do it all, but he was stubborn and elected to stay with his task. Kelly put the male models through a practice runway walk and gave some of them specific advice on how to act.

The Rockport 2010 Spring Collection Fashion show began. Fortitude had Brandy as emcee and she did a superb job using a script that focused on the models and shoes without a lot of words. The male models strutted their stuff and the only problem was that one had pitted legs and should have been put in long pants instead of shorts that showed off his legs off to Fortitude’s disadvantage.

Gene was focused on his PC, reading long-winded descriptions to his audience and stumbling throughout. He even mixed up the name of a model and a shoe. I could just see Trump thinking “this was embarrassing” because it totally was. David’s part of the presentation was not shown. It was quite obvious that Octane had performed miserably and was going to lose, but Wade as they were leaving the stage area added “unless the women decided to put the male models naked on stage.” Is this an indication of things to come?

Trump asked why Brandy was chosen as emcee. I believe it was Stephanie who said she was sexy, suave and sophisticated. Trump absolutely agreed, telling Brandy she was fantastic. Someone asked why the model with the bad legs had been put in shorts. Kelly admitted that she had missed that in her focus on having a coherent stage show. Juan asked whose idea it was to take the risk of near nudity. Stephanie said it was her call and she stood by it. Trump said it was an amazing job and that Fortitude had blown away Octane in the judging by Michael Rupp. He stated that it was so overwhelming a victory by the women that he was excusing them right then. Stephanie as winning P.M. was going to have the opportunity to meet with Rupp.

The men were told by trump they were terrible. Gene’s presentation in particular was singled out as an embarrassment. Trump said that Gene burying himself behind his PC was a mistake vs. notes on paper. However, it was also clear that the content of Gene’s presentation had a lot of useless detail. Trump said that David wasn’t great either. Trump stated that he wanted to hear in the presentation that the models were beautiful. He asked why Steuart and Anand were not selected to do the presentation. The answer from Wade was that they had volunteered for the creative role and both David and Gene wanted to do the presentation and claimed the experience to do it successfully. Trump then asked why there was no rehearsal, at which Wade could have seen how bad the presentations were and maybe done some realignment to fix that. Trump stated that the ability to do public speaking and the ability to perform on stage are not the same and Wade should have known that and checked on David’s and Gene’s actual stage presence. Gene tried to defend his speaking ability, but he was obviously missing Trump’s point. At about this point I think it was Mahsa in the lounge area watching the Boardroom on TV who predicted that not one but two Octane members would be fired.

Trump ordered Fortitude to turn off their TV monitor so that the rest of his deliberations would be in private. He asked Juan what he thought. Juan responded    . Trump asked Gene who he should fire. Gene, in an obvious attempt to prevent Wade from going down with the ship with him, stated that he took full responsibility for his own results. Trump fired him, then also fired Wade.

I have to say that this was completely fair and reasonable. Octane had terrible presentations and was totally outclassed by Fortitude. Multiple people were to blame on Octane and the two biggest offenders got the ax as they deserved.

apskip:
It's still a bit early to predict who will be in the final 4, but I am going to fearlessly go ahead with that.

On Octane, the golden boys are Steuart and Anand. We haven't seen either one in a project manager role, so I expect that will happen soon. Clint has established himself as a decent P.M. David is going nowhere but home.

On Fortitude, we have now seen Stephanie and Brandy perform extremely well and Kelly do moderately well.  Poppy has not had much of a public profile. Lisa has come across as a bit weak and my views on Mahsa had been clearly stated.

I see the final 4 at this time as Clint, Stephanie, Brandy (who will be tested as a P.M. first) and one other from the group of Poppy, Steuart and Anand depending on how well they do as P.M.s.

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