Luckily, everyone managed to wrap up their work in time for the boat to head off, and that night, the teams buckled down and edited together their commercials. On Synergy, Roxanne once again had trouble with Andrea who was reluctant to show the angry, depressed actors. "You're making the product look crappy," she said. Except it's not the product. Don't you realize, woman? You're portraying those other lame cruise lines and-- oh, never mind. I wouldn't want to frazzle Andrea with all my direct talk.

Having put up with enough bullshit, Roxanne finally put her foot down and said she was sticking with her plan (Does this mean she's not listening? Does this mean she'll lose??). "The only thing I expect is just some respect," Roxanne said, proving herself to be an accidental poet. Looks like one thing she doesn't expect is help with her rhymes. Sistah gots some natural freestyling skills. Which would make sense because it's all about the freestyle cruisin'! It all comes together.

Meanwhile, over on Gold Rush, Tarek came up with the brilliant idea of only using text on the commercial. Why? I don't know. But let's not forget that a) he's in MENSA, and b) he looks like Orlando Bloom. That alone should be reason enough to listen to him, right? Well, that and the fact that he's got so much grease in his hair that one spark and he'll incinerate a fifty-foot radius.

Anyway, a text-only commercial was a risky venture, especially since the team already had the tricky task of conveying a castaway narrative. Had these people been diligent Apprentice viewers, they would have remembered how Alla and Felisha had totally bombed their commercial thanks to overuse of text. Or maybe they would have remembered how just the week prior, Synergy lost due to an overly-written Grapenuts banner. But alas, no one could question Tarek's text-only vision -- an artistic choice on par with other great cinematic landmarks such as The 400 Blows and Big Momma's House 2.

Well, Lenny raised an objection in a surprisingly non-obnoxious way, saying that the words could be confusing with so many images going by so fast. But no one listened to him. Ah ha! The lack of listening! Gold Rush is going to lose after all!

Yes, for some reason, Tarek and Dan were massively opposed to a simple voiceover narration. I didn't know why. It would take about two minutes tops to record the track. Still, Tarek had some odd logic to rationalize his bizarre fear of voiceovers. "How many times when you're watching TV -- you see a commercial only once?" he said, implying that the viewer will have several chances to read the text in the spot. And if there's one thing we know about TV watchers, it's that they love to dissect cruise commercials over and over again. Heck, sometimes that's all they tune in for!

Luckily, Lenny made the point that should have won over everyone: "We don't get chance to show commercial 20,000 times."

"You know what, and you can defend your ass that way too," Tarek replied. Seriously, he was way too in love with such a minor detail. I suppose we can start the countdown clock to Tarek's firing right... now.

The next morning, Synergy presented first and even came dressed in matching blue scarves which looked delightfully fey on Sean and Michael. Anyway, their commercial seemed pretty good -- although, Andrea may have been right. Those fleeting three seconds of the couple looking unhappy with the regimented cruising totally made the product look awful. I'm shocked the company didn't receive 50,000 cancellations right then and there!

"Guys, I can't believe we all wore the same thing. This is embarrassing."

Sean: Reinforcing the foppish Brit stereotype wherever he can.

"I'm quite ravishing."

Next up was Gold Rush, and even though they didn't have dapper scarves, they did have dapper ties, causing one of the Norwegian Cruise Line execs to suddenly say, "Hey guys! You look fabulous!" Of course, with his bizarre Southern/gayish accent, it sounded more like "Hey Gaaaahz! You look fabuuulous!"

The execs then watched the commercial, and sure enough, Lenny was right. The text and images flew by too quickly. Even worse, the execs didn't get the whole castaway thing. Dan tried to explain it, but he wound up veering into abstract (read: silly) territory as he talked about how the castaway's raft was some symbolic image of restrictions in not just cruising, but life in general. Wow. Next time I see a commercial, I'll keep my eye out for random images filled with symbolic heft. That chandelier in the Swiffer ad? Yeah, that represents the inner soul coming to life with the experiential illumination that only the Swiffer can provide.

Well, after some deliberations, the execs faulted Gold Rush for their lack of voiceovers (suck it, Tarek). They explained that voiceovers were critical for reaching people who were only half-watching the spot. It was therefore no surprise that Synergy won the task, and as their reward, they got to visit a secret diamond vault where they'd be able to take home $30,000 worth of jewels. We then cut to the team at an underground bunker (which looked alarmingly like CTU), and after they were frisked by security, they were led into a vault where they could play with diamonds. Yay! Unfortunately, no one seemed to understand the basics of simple finger pressure, and as a result, diamonds went flying from everyone's tweezers. First Tammy dropped a diamond, then someone else, and then Roxanne -- were these people idiots? Did they realize they didn't have to press down AS HARD AS POSSIBLE?

Posted by B-side on March 29, 2006 11:47 AM