It’s down to the Final Four — two episodes to go after this one. Yes, indeed. It's the 13th week of the 15-week-long interview. Thirteen is bad luck, right? I guess it was for...
Wait; let me tell you about the episode first!
The show opened with Sean preparing a salad for whichever Synergy team members survived the Boardroom. He was so hoping that Tammy would return, although he acknowledged there was a strong possibility that she was the one Trump fired. He looked absolutely crestfallen when Allie and Roxanne walked in. Then he changed to determined and outright angry. "They lack integrity!"
In the morning, the teams met up with Donald Trump and the Trumplets — his adult children Ivanka and Don, Jr. For no reason on earth (that I can think of) other than to promote his own fragrance, they met at the Estee Lauder offices. The actual task for the teams involved Embassy Suites, so you decide the reason they met at Estee Lauder and showed the design of the fragrance bottle.
The task had the candidates in their gender war team mode, Gold Rush men and Synergy women, designing uniforms for Embassy Suites staff. They had to create four designs — front desk, bellmen, suite keepers, and chefs. The finished product would be voted on by Embassy Suites employees.
Lee decided he wanted to be the project manager for Gold Rush, and he went with Sean to meet up with the E.S. executives. He wanted a focus group of employees and that's pretty much what the execs suggested, too. They went about asking the employees what they liked about their present uniforms and what they would want changed if they could. They didn't go hog-wild and worked on more functionality than changing everything around.
Sean seemed to know a lot about fashion and clothing design. He believes it's because he's a metrosexual. That prompted Lee to say, "What's a metrosexual? A cross between a homosexual and a heterosexual?" He must live under a rock.
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Article comments
1 - ClubStyle_DJ
I am through with The Apprentice 5.
I will no longer be WATCHING.
This episode's firing was complete BULLSHIT.
Nuff said.
CSDJ
2 - NR "Read what is on the page, damn it!" Davis
Indeed. The boardroom scenes are all about contestants blaming other contestants. Whom do Trump and the Trumplets (man, the Trumps creep me out!) think they're fooling? Of course Allie and Roxanne cast blame on each other: There were only two people - what the hell did Mr. "Business Is Business" Trump expect Roxanne to say when he asked her point-blank if her friend should be fired? She stammered - this is her pal, after all - that Allie should. Allie attacked in kind, though not kindly. It's business - and it happens in every single boardroom. Suddenly it's disloyalty? Both are there to score a gig at Trump: They have to stand up for themselves. Would Roxanne have scored points if she had said, "Fire me. I should have spoken up earlier"? Hell no. He would have sacked her on the spot. And then he would have fired Allie, who really deserved to go. The "catfight" (hideously sexist term, that one) was probably Trump and Burnett's favorite part - conflict grabs ratings. So this "loyalty" BS... someone ought to tell Trump to respect his audience if he wants to keep it.
You see, Roxanne and Allie went because THERE ARE TWO WEEKS LEFT AND TWO WEEKS ARE NEEDED TO DEAL WITH THE FINAL TWO. He had no choice but fire both so that Week 14 of the 15-week job interview could deal with the final task and the 15th week could conclude said task and lead to the naming of the newest Apprentice. That two people, one of the two two-human teams, would be fired was apparent before the show aired; it had to go down that way because of scheduling. So I began watching knowing this. And after the Donald's little soliloquy on "business and friendship," I knew it would be Allie and Roxanne to get the boot.
This thing shows that Trump, Mark Burnett and co. have no clue that intelligent people do (or did) watch the show and we know when Trump is bullshitting us. Last night was once such incident.
And Trump prefers cheeseburgers and milk to the fare served at Aquavit? That attitude will score points only with folks who have no clue what Aquavit is (and how INCREDIBLE the food there is) or who aren't fans of the restaurant. Then again, most of those who know and appreciate it probably aren't big Trump fans anyway (unless they work for him; then they have to be).
3 - Rodney Welch
I can only agree with what's been said -- Trump's decision was not only a total insult to the audience, but an extremely hypocritical act as well. In boardroom after boardroom, the lesson has been: if you defend yourself, I still might fire you, but if you don't fight back, I will DEFINITELY fire you.
Here you have Allie and Roxanne fighting for their lives, and Trump -- pretending to make some kind of imaginary point about how friends shouldn't backstab friends -- trashes both.
That is so NOT the message of the show.
Remember Season 3, when Bren and Alex made that Godforsaken Staples product and they had to go in the boardroom together? Bren said something about how they were friends, but now they were forced to carve each other up. They did. Bren lost. Those are the breaks.
4 - Heloise
I was not surprised he fired both of them. I think it was because the team failed two tasks in a row and badly. Since both were on the teams at that time...no brainer.
About the loyalty...eh...I think that was sort of an excuse. They should defend themselves. Especially when the white woman starts to attack the humble black woman. She should have known it was coming.
I predict Sean the UK hottie will win.
Heloise
5 - NR Davis
What does melanin have to do with it???????
Roxanne? "Humble?" She was almost as much an eye-roller as Allie. Stammering in front of Trump is about fear and insecurity, not humility.
6 - -E
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7 - Lavonia Matthews
Theoretically the Donald size up every candidate that comes in sight of Caroline & George. Believe me he already knows who he wants to work in his company and it sho' ain't some someone like Roxanne who has no sense of style, who walks like cowgirl Jane, no offence but girl-friend truly needed fashion patrol, and that hair man i wanted to come through my tv set just to do her hair, i was hoping when they had the salon task maybe she could've gotten her own hair done (the proper way) i'm a black woman and SISTA!!!! yo locks needed help. Maybe next time, any way back to DT he's a very pacific man and there's a pacific kind of person he wants to work for him. You can be educated well versed but if you don't fit the grade then it's hasta la vista baby. PS. i hope with all that money he's gonna make that Randall from APPRENTICE 4 have a little cosmetic surgery on his nose. He'd look hot if he did. CISSY MATT
8 - Dynamo of Eternia
This one was interesting. Allie just didn't seem to have a clue. She just assumed that she knew everything, didn't worry about functionality, went her own route (even arguing with the designer in the process), and all in all she was just horrible.
Roxanne's biggest mistake was not speaking up during the task and confronting Allie. Obviously Roxanne did not like a lot of what Allie was doing, and if she had intervined early enough, the project could have been salvaged. But, she didn't, and in the end, it was a disaster.
Jackie, I love your comment, "It was like she took her designs from a '60s science fiction space novel!" When we were watching this, I told my fiance, "This looks like something out of a bad futuristic movie from made during the 80's."
I just found it funny that we had similar comments (even if they were a couple of decades apart).
Gold Rush clearly got it right. They listened to the staff (which was a HUGE part of this task that Allie just completely missed the point of). And Sean and Lee worked really well together on it.
As far as the boardroom goes, I also kind of wonder what Trump expected. Trying to save yourself while getting the other fired is all part of the game. I guess I can kind of see Trump's point though. I don't think that it's so much the fact that they would be pointing out each other's short comings (which is what you need to do in the boardroom), but just the way they basically were yelling and talking over each other, and trying to rip each other apart. Instead of having a fairly reasonable discussion of what went on, it turned into a verbal cat-fight. But still, those kinds of things will happen in the board room.
I wonder if it was just Trump's way of kind of messing with them. I mean, obviously he had to know that he was going to fire both members of the losing team, no matter how much better one member of that team may possibly have done than the other. Based on the number of episodes left, he had to fire two. So, maybe he just decided to sit back and see what would happen.
At any rate, I think the two people who were fired are the ones out of the final four who are the weakest. And I'm not trying to be sexest or anything. It's not the fact that they are women that bothers me, it's just that neither of them seemed all that impressive (and for the record, I think that Rebecca, the runner-up from season 4, could wipe the floor with anyone from this current season, including Sean and Lee).
As far as the final two are concerned, I wonder who will get the win. Personally, I'm kind of rooting for Sean. I just like him more than Lee. Lee can be a 'politician' as Trump has said. That could be either a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. Lee can be sneaky, which could be beneficial, but if I were in Trump's position, it would make me wonder if he could be trusted. I think with Sean you pretty much know what you are getting, which is a good thing. And he's a strong player. I don't know for sure if he will win, but I am rooting for him.