Alas, my hopes at a running joke at “The Silent Croatian’s” expense were immediately dashed as the show opened with him giving some commentary. It turns out, his name is David and he’s most likely never even been to Europe, let alone participated in racial cleansing. Oh well, something tells me there will still be plenty of material to make fun of David with later on – his hair alone could fill a paragraph.

The conference room survivors arrived back at the loft to resounding… apathy. Everyone had agreed that it would be Dawn who would be sent packing, or perhaps maybe Jim. It was then I realized that for a “PR Consultant,” Dawn is a very unlikable person. Perhaps her gig is to represent extremely unlikable clients, thereby shifting some of the hate onto herowndamnself? Whatever, I happen to dislike Jim far more than Dawn. He’s just such a slimy bastard, I imagine he lives under a bridge and eats small children for fun. Small, handicapped children. There’s simply no way anyone could love Jim – Brr-Ring! It’s the giant stupid Pottery Barn phone and it’s Jim’s wife on the line! Holy crap, this prick is married?

Lest you think for one second he somehow has a caring bone in his body, it turns out that his wife is pregnant and expecting to give birth at any moment. Huh? And he’s in New York acting the fool on a reality show? As if that weren’t enough, he concluded his call with, “I love you, good luck in your task.” I’m not a woman and I’ve never been pregnant, but godamnit, that’s just about as insensitive as one could be. Then again, something tells me Martha Stewart would find that to be a perfectly acceptable refrain.

Where was Frau Martha? Oh, there she is, tending to her horses out at her stables in Westchester County. When she called into the loft to lay down the ground rules for the day, she asked how everyone was doing. “Most everyone is still sleeping,” she was told. (It was someone from Primarius, and aside from Howie, I couldn’t tell you anyone’s name on that team.) Martha seemed surprised and replied, "Oh really, I've been up for hours!" Geez, such perky passive aggression.

She gathered the troops at her offices and laid out the challenge. “The wedding industry is a 72 billion dollar a year industry!” (Yup, definitely getting pointers from Trump.) Teams would have to decide upon, design, bake, transport, and sell a wedding cake at a Michael C. Fina bridal show. The team that makes the most money, of course, wins. Martha ended the segment with the scripted, “I hope it is not Matchstick who loses again.” Shawn-Suze-Orman stepped up and declared, “I guarantee it will not be!” You know what that means in Mark Burnett land… Matchstick might as well have that Iraqi spokesman guy telling us that Baghdad is still safe – same diff.

This episode spent a little bit more time on Team Primarius, so perhaps I’ll get to know some of the players a bit more. Unfortunately, the only one with a personality (Howie) was named Project Manager and was the only one to speak. They decided to sell low, researched cakes, picked a somewhat traditional design and broke out into applause. Applause? For what? These people force-clap more than an Ellen audience.

In a somewhat weird sequence, Howie sent three team members to a bridal shop to “get some more ideas.” He simply threw a dart at a phone book and gave them an address. Unbeknownst to him, the store was smack dab in the middle of Chinatown – not exactly the market they were looking to tap. The show presented this as a major crisis, as if the Primariuses couldn’t just simply leave the premises as quickly as they entered. Puh-lease. With Matchstick’s creative geniuses on this show, there's no need to play up mini-Primarius situations as major to-dos. We’re not fooled for a second.

After one of those “Martha wisdom” vignettes, we were treated to the weekly implosion of Team Matchstick. As mentioned, the Silent Croatian is named David, and he was leading the hopeless troops this week. Playing up his “I live in my parent's basement collecting hentai” character, he admitted, “I don’t know about cakes. I eat cakes for the taste with a big glass of skim milk.” He also mentioned something about how he doesn’t know much about chickens either, because he just raises them for the sex. Whoa, where did that come from?

Posted by on October 10, 2005 12:45 AM