As always on all Apprenti, the show opened with the post conference room reaction and fallout. Dawna was particularly affected this week and cried her eyes out. Please... Has Martha ever cried? Ever?! I can't imagine Ms. "There's no crying in business" Stewart would look too kindly on Dawna's raw emotion. When the others learned it was Howie who had been sent packing, the general feeling was that of confusion. Amanda pondered sagely, "If she likes Jim, then she certainly won't like me." Part of the fun of writing Martha recaps is that no one cares when I write stuff like, "You're right, Amanda... As you'll find out later when you are sent home to your coven of weird mannish Interrupter People."

The next morning, Marcella won the race to the ringing telephone clad in nothing but a towel. That wasn't the strange thing though - far off in the background was Jim in his boxer shorts mugging for the camera. Like the 5 year old he is. (And the previews for next week highlight his immaturity yet again. Sigh.)

Martha again had to pre-tape her bit outlining the week's task. Am I the only one who finds it terribly annoying that the recorded snippets sometimes start with Martha discussing business with someone first, rather than just addressing the candidates? Who in the world believes that Martha is there working with someone and the camera, lighting, sound guys magically appear to surprise her so she can outline the challenge? What was even worse this week was that she was speaking from the Martha Stewart offices right downstairs but couldn't meet with the candidates. I know I'm splitting hairs about an already doomed show, but I can't help it. Trumps little commanding fake helicopter phone calls are amusing; Martha's little fake decision making clips are just stupid.

The challenge: With $40K seed money, each team would be given a retail space and have to sell as many Tiassimo Hot Beverage Systems as possible. Gee, that's exciting and fresh... About as exciting and fresh as it was the first time they did it this season with the flower challenge. At least they weren't given the exact same retail spaces. Or were they? This show is just so incredibly lazy. I fear that this is plaguing all of reality television - Martha is just (once again) on the forefront of a trend.

Team Matchstick still had four members - Project Manager Marcella, Leslie, Amanda, and Ryan. While sitting around thinking of ways to sell the beverage maker thing, Ryan proved one of the more elusive and little understood facts of life. When a bunch of women live together for a couple months, their menstrual cycles get in synch. 'Cuz Ryan was totally PMS'ing when Marcella asked a simple favor of him. Ryan strikes me as more of a "pads" rather than a "pons" man, but that's just a guess.

Over in the Primarius camp, Dawna was taking charge and confounding Project Manager Jim and his peanut-headed underling, Bethenny. (Remember the "scandal" about how Bethenny seriously dated Charles' son or something? Yeah, me neither...) Dawna knew that if her team was to lose, Jim and Bethenny would gang up on her in the conference room. So she decided to head down to a PR firm on her own and hammer out a plan.

This caused Jim to refer to Dawna as a, “rogue and disparate team member." Boy, how would he feel to know that Dawna signed a deal with the PR firm giving up $30,000 of their seed money - all without his consent? Here's what I would have done: Taken the $40K seed money and divided it equally among four of my NYC friends. We'd have gone to Nobu or Daniel (or both) and had a nice long ridiculous meal and some ridiculously expensive bottles of wine or whatever. The next day, we'd all stumble to our grungy storefront to meet Charles, his stupid cigar, and Alexis and their disapproving glares. I'd shout, "Open for business," my four buddies would stumble in and pay 9 grand each for four Tiassimo Beverage makers. I'd shout, "We're closed," draw the blinds, walk past Charles and Alexis, stuff a tip into their pockets telling Charles to go buy a lighter and Alexis to get some nice heels, and go sleep off my hangover. Do you think they have rules against this sort of thing?

[Though maybe only 1% of you watched it this past summer, there was a very interesting "scam" pulled off successfully and within the rules on Tommy Hilfiger's, "The Cut." It was pretty compelling television and if you care to read about it, I actually covered that show.]

After the required MarthaWisdom segment, Mark Burnett punched us in the face again with some of his trademarked swervey foreshadowing; Matchstick's fate was sealed when Marcella said, "There's NO WAY I am going to lose against Jim again." If it makes her feel better, it was actually Dawna who made all the right moves, Marcella - but you'll find that out later. And at least you have perfect eyebrows - something Martha will be sure to point out when you do inevitably get sent home.

Posted by on November 18, 2005 9:31 PM