Recap: The Apprentice: No Speako Spanish

Due to a DVR mishap, I watched this week’s episode of The Apprentice over at NBC.com. Every episode has a one sentence description, and somewhere along the line someone got really, really lazy. Last week’s one sentence description was “Romance blooms sweet like the honey harvest challenge.” This week’s? “Romance blossoms during a travel website challenge!” That second one isn’t even clever. What about, “Romance takes a honeymoon when the teams compete in a travel challenge,” or “Romance is…hey wait a second, isn’t this The Apprentice?”

Seriously, does anyone even care about this “romance” between Tim and Nicole? And when did the Apprentice turn into The Bachelor anyway? For three goddamn weeks they’ve been pumping up this supposed “romance,” further proving that this show has lost a lot of what made it good in the first place.

Anyway, last week Aaron was fired despite trying to throw Surya under the bus in the boardroom after their failed honey challenge.
Upon returning to their tent, Surya goes ballistic. He feels that there was a lot of lying going on in the boardroom and he doesn’t want his reputation ruined. Tim, fearing for his life, tells us “I didn’t know if he was going to punch someone or cry or kick the wall and my first thought was…how am I going to bang Nicole in this goddamn tent?” Well, all but the last part.

Surya immediately decides he needs to Step Up and become the Project Manager for the next task. Strap in, The Hair’s in charge now! Surya’s first order of business after becoming PM is shouting, “You guys are freaking brilliant!” Um, not really. He continues, “I’ll bleed for this team if I have to! We will win! We will win!” I think Surya might have left his Prozac inside the mansion.

The next morning the teams gather at LAX to learn their task. This reminds me, what has happened to the early morning phone calls and completely disheveled appearances? Once a staple of the past, these great moments seem to have left us forever. What has happened to the once great editing of this show? I NEED to know what Jenn looks like at 5 in the morning and what Tim wears to bed. This is integral to this show and now it’s apparently gone forever.

Anyway, Trump arrives at LAX in a limo with a couple of suits, Suit #1 and Suit #2. Even though Suit #2 looks like he’s 15 years old, it turns out that they’re a couple of executives from Priceline.com. As you might be aware, the travel industry is a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY. Suit #1 explains their new task: the teams will be going to two different malls, setting up kiosks, and signing up mall customers to a Priceline.com sweepstakes promotion where they can win FREE trips. The team who signs up the most people becoming the winner. Sounds easy enough, right? Oh, lest you forget that Aimee and Surya are in charge so we know that anything can happen. And since Surya is willing to BLEED for his team, who knows what kind of madness will ensue.

On the ride to the mall, Aimee goes into full PM mode, which apparently consists of her arbitrarily designating tasks to the rest of the team. Not surprisingly, this immediately turns into a disaster. This quickly turns into nobody knowing where they’re supposed to be or what they’re supposed to be doing.

Kinetic arrives at their mall where we’re shown a foreboding montage of mall customers, all of whom appear to be Hispanic. As if the montage of Hispanic people wasn’t enough, we’re also treated to a salsa musical soundtrack Okay, we get it. This mall is full of Hispanic people. Hispanic people who speak…Spanish!

Derrick and Jen break away from the team to go on a tour of the mall with their mall contact, Deepa. When Derrick asks what the ethnic makeup of the mall is, Deepa tells him “about 50% Hispanic.” That’s a lot less than I had thought based on the previous montage, but Deepa IS the mall contact so I guess she knows what she’s talking about. I wonder if this information is going to be useful…

Well, now that it’s blatantly obvious that there are a ton of Hispanic people in this mall, what is Team Kinetic going to do about it? That’s right, nothing!

Over at mall two, Team Arrow spends some time brainstorming. Tim devises the plan to have a raffle drawing every 20 minutes, giving mall customers a lot of incentive to sign up. Frank puts himself in charge of a small PA system they will have set up. Oh great, Frank on a microphone, just what every mall needs.

Once again, Surya starts talking and making this task sound a lot more difficult than it actually is. Signing up mall customers for a FREE raffle where they can win a FREE trip anywhere they want does not sound difficult. There’s no need to bring words like “external marketing” into this. After basically being told to shut the hell up by Surya, Frank spends the rest of this meeting doodling a caricature of Surya on a napkin. Oh that Frank! What a funny guy!

Frank hands the napkin drawing to Tim, who finds it absurdly funny for some reason, as does Nicole. This eventually turns into a scene from a third grade classroom, with Surya being the teacher, and Frank being the kid who picks his nose and should probably be held back a grade or two.

Back at mall Numero Uno, Team Kinetic starts to set up their sweepstakes kiosk. Heidi explains the signup process to us: mall customers will have to get on a computer (problema numero uno) where they’ll have to watch a tutorial about Priceline.com (problema numero dos). After the tutorial they’ll have to enter their personal information into the computer in order to be a part of the sweepstakes (problema numero tres). Sounds simple enough until you think about the fact that 50% of the mall customers are Hispanic and might not speak English. Wouldn’t paper and pencils just be a lot simpler? Or maybe instructions in Spanish? No? Okay then. This whole process seems muy dificil, when really it should be…uh…facil?

Jenn has designed the kiosk in a tropical theme, which translated to flowers, straw hats, and Hawaiian shirts for the team. Oh, and Jenn also threw a pink blowup octopus on top of the kiosk, which Aimee decides looks completely unprofessional. To Jenn’s disdain, Aimee removes the offending octopus and suggests that the team vote on whether or not to keep it. Yeah, that’s a good usage of time.

Team Arrow hits the streets with a massive amount of fliers. They attach them to cars, shops, and street signs in the attempt to get people over to the mall. They also put ads up all over their mall in order to draw attention to their raffle. Good job Team Arrow, you’ve finally done something right. Back at the mall, Frank accosts anyone that will listen to him and drags them over to their kiosk to sign up for the raffle. I guess his overbearing nature works well when he’s trying to sign someone up for a FREE TRIP. But that’s about it.

“I am a selling machine!” he tells us. “Where’s my PM? I have no idea. All I know is that Franky Suits is on fire!” Who is Franky Suits? Is that his mob name? I’d prefer “Franky Loudmouth” or “Franky Blowhard.” Or “Franky Third Grade.” You know, something that really describes who he is.

Meanwhile, James also seems to think that Surya is nowhere to be found. It turns out however, that Surya is also scouring the mall in an attempt to get people to sign up for the sweepstakes. This does not appear to be Surya’s best skill. Nobody in the mall is interested in Surya or his FREE vacation. Way to sell, Surya.

Back in little Mexico, it’s more salsa music as team Kinetic tries to draw up interest in their sweepstakes. Heidi and Angela walk around the mall, and quickly realize that, oh my God, this mall is full of Hispanic people! And many of them don’t speak English! Hmmm, this was also a fact that they had learned the day before and might have wanted to plan for…time for a new plan! “Mucho dinero!” They begin to tell mall customers. At least they didn’t go for the “You-o can-o win-o money-o!” route.

Derrick and Muna break out their high school Spanish skills and attempt to help mall customers sign up for the sweetstakes, a time consuming process. Oh if only there were instructions in Spanish. How could they have ever planned for this? Oh that’s right, simply by looking around the mall the previous day and noticing that EVERYONE IN THE MALL IS HISPANIC.

Aimee announces the first winner, Wendy Lee. Wait, Wendy Lee? Where the hell did she come from? In a mall full of Spanish speakers, the one Asian lady wins. Smells like racism.

Back at his mansion, Trump interrogates the two suits from Priceline to figure out which team members did the best job. Suit #1 says that Derrick did a great job, while the child impersonating an executive says that Frank, yes Franky Third Grader, did a great job.

The teams gather in the boardroom to learn the results. Trump enters, once again wearing his pink Ode To Carey tie. And joining us in the boardroom this week is Don Jr. Surya is very confident that his team won this task, while team Kinetic doesn’t have much at all to say. “What did you all think of Aimee is a leader?” Silence. “Was she a good team leader?” Silence. “Was she an effective team leader?” Silence. “Does anyone have anything to say?” Silence.

Don Jr. announces the results and Team Arrow wins in a tight race. For their reward, they will go to the beach and get private surfing lessons from a couple of pros followed by brunch at some fancy restaurant. Team Kinetic meanwhile, will be moving back to the tents and SOMEONE IS GOING TO BE FIRED.

Team Arrow hits the beach and in a boring reward sequence, learn how to surf. However, once the waves start getting bigger things get interesting. Nicole somehow ends up injured and is carried back to their van so she can go see a doctor. Tim volunteers to go with her, and I’m sure that’s only because he’s concerned with her health and not at all because he’s trying to sleep with her. “Tim you can fully take advantage of her now!” says Frank. I imagine this was Frank’s M.O. back in college. “Dude, put this pill in her drink and then you can totally take advantage of her in a few hours!” I’m guessing that the only women Frank gets these days are the injured ones who are unable to run away.

At the doctor’s office, Dr. Notcredited tells Nicole she was most likely stung by a jellyfish. Unfortunately for us, she’s going to make it.

While Tim and Nicole are at the doctor, the rest of the team enjoys their brunch. “Surya, it’s very impressive that you went in the water, how old are you?” asks Frank. Jesus, now the third grader is asking OTHER PEOPLE how old they are? Instead of punching him in the face like he should have, Surya comes back weakly with “That’s very demeaning, how old are you?”

Later that night, Tim and Nicole get left alone outside by the pool, which means it’s finally time for this “romance” to happen. Tim finally leans in for a kiss, although the way he holds her head it looks more like he’s giving her CPR. This, er, really “excites” Tim. I guess Kelly’s just not doing it for him back at The Office.

The next morning in Tent City, Aimee mentions that she’s upset at Jenn for not doing anything about the 50% Hispanic population. Team Kinetic gathers in the boardroom, where they’re greeted by Trump, Little Trump, and winning PM Surya.

When asked what went wrong, Aimee immediately says that the Spanish speaking population in the mall was not accounted for. Derrick says that not having the Spanish part covered is a red herring and the problem boiled down to Aimee’s management style. The team goes down the line and they all basically say the same thing – Aimee sucks as a leader.

Trump asks Aimee why she didn’t hire some people who could speak Spanish to help out with this task and Aimee weakly replies that she didn’t know the demographics of the mall. Trump wisely replies that in all fairness, all she would have had to do was look around to be able to tell that the mall was full of Hispanic people. Hey, maybe Aimee doesn’t see people in terms of black and white…and Hispanic. She just sees people. Shouldn’t she be rewarded for that?

Trump the Little finally chimes in though and tells Derrick that he was specifically told that half of the mall customers were Hispanic and he didn’t relay that information to Aimee. While true, it’s still sort of a fruitless argument. Yes Derrick was told that information, and no he didn’t relay it to Aimee, but really she should have been able to figure that out on her own. Especially with the salsa soundtrack playing and everything.

Aimee chooses to bring back Jenn and Derrick with her because of the whole Hispanic issue. Trump Jr. goes on the offensive and asks Derrick why he didn’t tell Aimee about the demographics of the mall. “It’s the obvious,” says Derrick. Aimee says she didn’t think it was obvious because she wasn’t paying attention to who was walking through the mall. Whoops. I think she was doing alright here until that last statement. “Shouldn’t you have been paying attention? Isn’t it all about who is walking through the mall?” asks Trump.

This turns into a big squabble about the Hispanic issue, but really it comes down to the fact that Aimee sucks at management. Trump focuses in on that fact and Aimee is fired.

In her car ride, Aimee is not happy. She says she should have just told the whole team to stay at home and she should have done it herself. Yeah, I’m sure that would have turned out great.

Was Trump right by firing Aimee? Will he ever get some new ties? Habla Español?