Worst. Candidates. Ever.

Well this week’s episode of the Apprentice taught us something that I think we all figured out two months ago: this year’s candidates completely suck. Gone are the days of people who seemed marginally competent and halfway intelligent. We’ve officially hit the bottom of the barrel. If any of these candidates get put in charge of putting up a building for Trump in the next few years, I’ll be surprised if it’s made out of steel and not toothpicks and glue.

Anyway, last week’s boardroom featured Tim finally getting the axe, due largely in part to his bizarre and inexplicable infatuation with Nicole, who becomes more and more detestable every week.

Apparently, while the boardroom was going on, Nicole reads some note that Tim had written to her before heading in. His note appears to be 20 pages long, which is about how many pages I could write about how much I hate Nicole. I can’t explain in words how happy I am that we don’t have to follow along with this romance storyline anymore. Now if only Nicole could get fired this week…

“See…Dick…Run…”

Heidi returns to the mansion and gives Nicole the bad news – Tim’s been fired. Boo hoo. Nicole can’t believe the news when she hears that Frank called Tim “Wet behind the ears.” I couldn’t believe it either because I have never heard anyone under the age of 90 actually use that expression.

Shut up.

Outside at Tent City, Frank spots a mouse and everyone freaks out. Oh Tent City, what will you throw at us next?

Apparently, nothing. Because soon afterwards, the teams get a phone call from our favorite reality receptionist Andi, who tells Arrow that they’re moving back inside and nobody will ever have to sleep in tents again!

So let’s take a moment and share a few seconds of silence for Tent City, the worst reality show “innovation” since the Real World/Road Rules challenges starting putting fans of the show into the actual competition.

Alright, moving on.

Aside from the demise of Tent City, Andi’s got other news as well. The six remaining candidates must separate into three teams of two, with no more project managers.

So let me see if I’ve got this right. This season because of the “if you win as PM you stay PM” rule, of the remaining six candidates, two of them have never been PM, and Frank hasn’t been in charge of anything since the very first episode (which he lost by the way). Meanwhile, Kristine has only been PM once, which she ALSO lost. In fact, of the remaining candidates, only James and Heidi have had successful runs as project managers. Way to go Apprentice, this “innovation” is nearly as bad, if not worse than the whole Tent City idea.

Worst. Secretary. Ever.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’ll continue.

As the teams each learn the news, Frank tells us that he’s going to miss Tent City because it has “character.” Yeah, sure. Arrow gathers around outside and join hands to share a moment as “friends forever.”

Conjuring up the ghost of Carey.

Back inside at the dinner table, Kristine mumbles “I’m not going to stand up when they come in here,” and Nicole agrees. Oh snap, that’s cold! God these women are useless.

Arrow joins them in the dining room for the now inevitable “we need to make teams” discussion. James says he wants to just be straight up about who they should partner with and he immediately chooses Stefani because of her hands. Oh wait sorry, that was two weeks ago.

“What can I say? I love her hands!”

Frank says he wants to be with Nicole, without any explanation. I too have no explanation, although if the two most annoying people left in this show want to team up together, more power to them. They could team up and become an unstoppable force of idiocy and Italian stereotypes. I’ll let you figure out which one is which.

Unfortunately for Frank, Nicole doesn’t feel the same way as she’s unhappy with the way Frank treated Tim near the end of Tim’s Apprentice career.

Finally Kristine speaks up and she too wants Nicole because, as she tells us, she doesn’t want to pair up with Heidi, win, and then have it look like Heidi is a shining star once again.

So we’re down to our three teams: James and Stefani, Frank and Heidi, and Kristine and Nicole. These three groups are all so bad, I wouldn’t even know who to wager on.

They all gather in the boardroom the next morning to learn their task. Trump tells them that while L.A. is a popular tourist destination, there’s another popular tourist attraction called Las Vegas. Really? I’ve never heard of it.

“Las What-ges?”

Anyway, Trump goes on to tell them about some new building called Trump International Hotel and Tower he’s building in Vegas and how he’s building a second tower. The teams will get on Trump’s personal airplane, fly to Vegas, and create an advertising and promotional campaign for Building 2. The teams will the present their campaign to Trump himself, with the losing team getting fired.

Well good. Now Trump can see for himself what kind of losers the other producers decided to put on the show. He’s only seen them screw up in the board room, now he gets to see them actually screw up the task itself! Hoorah!

The teams get on board Trump’s plane, which is decorated in some sort of creepy gold motif. On board, each team discusses strategy, with Kristine mentioning she wants to hit on “the gold and the height.” Don’t forget the elevators. And the lobby.

“Tim’s this big?!”

Meanwhile, Stefani and James discuss the importance of a killer sales brochure. Ah, so that’s why James picked Stefani. It’s because she’s great with sales brochures…and having hands…

Heidi soon gets annoyed as Frank becomes distracted by James. She tells us that “He gets distracted very easily, it’s like he’s five years old.” I think she’s giving him too much credit.

Ugliest. Building. Ever.

Trump explains to us that the candidates will get a chance to check out the sales office as well as two model units for the buildings. I’m a little confused, are these hotels? Condos? Just a giant place to keep Trump’s suits, ties, and hair-pieces? I don’t know, and I don’t care.

In their car on the way to the buildings, Stefani comes up with the slogan “The Height of Luxury,” which James immediately latches onto. “The height of luxury makes sense, because Mr. Trump is all about luxury,” he says. Thank you James for that astute observation. James and Stefani meet up with a couple of ridiculously old men at the sales office who tell them that this whole project was all Trump’s doing.

“I hear you’re on that Apprentice show that’s on that newfangled color picture box.”

Over in building one, Kristine and Nicole discuss the building with one of the constructors on site. Or rather, Kristine asks a bunch of questions and Nicole stands around doing pretty much nothing. At least she’s not talking.

James and Stefani meanwhile, have already moved onto hiring a professional photographer to start snapping pictures for their brochure. They soon run into Frank who is telling his own photographer to make sure that James and Stefani don’t see what he’s doing. I still don’t get the point of this. “Make sure they don’t see you taking pictures of the room! Then they’ll get the same idea!”

What is this? A center for ants?!

After spending the day in Vegas, the teams get back on the plane and head back to L.A. where they can begin the process of screwing up this task. In their van, Nicole says something about how she’s got their entire Powerpoint presentation already prepared in her head and that the presentation is huge and the presentation is really important and that they better make sure they don’t forget about the presentation. Presentation. Nicole rambles on and on for a while about enthusiasm and selling to Trump, but much like Kristine, I’ve pretty much tuned her out.

James and Stefani are also hard at work, despite the lack of their use of words like “presentation” and “enthusiasm.” I take back what I said before, my money is now on these guys.

Over at some office, Kristine is preparing their video while Nicole is…where is Nicole? Oh there she is, asleep on the couch. Now that’s what I call enthusiasm.

“Oh Tim…Tim…”

Kristine tells us she’s happy letting Nicole sleep so that she can concentrate on getting things done her way. Well I suppose that’s fine as long as your way isn’t completely horrible, which I’m sure it will be.

The sun rises as Frank and Heidi have been working throughout the night. Frank makes it clear to us that he was in charge of their video and Heidi was in charge of their brochure. However, Heidi apparently can’t get her thoughts together and is laying a big egg when it comes to getting the brochure done. Frank even offers to give her a hand, which she refuses.

“Should I use Helvetica? Comic Sans? Times New Roman? I’m so stressed!”

The three teams spend the rest of the day preparing their presentations for Trump and Don Jr. Early that evening, they head back to the boardroom where this massacre can finally get started.

I’ll leave the Andi jokes to Screampillar.

Trump asks James how things went to which James says he thinks they did a great job, and working with Stefani is fantastic. I bet it is. Meanwhile, Nicole says that she and Kristine each focused on different areas. I suppose this is true. Kristine focused on asking questions and doing work, and Nicole focused on staring blankly and falling asleep.

James and Stefani present first, and give what appears to be a well-prepared and well thought out presentation. Afterwards, even Trump says they did a great job and it would be difficult for the other teams to give a better performance.

Heidi agrees too. She tells us “I was 100% impressed. Wow.”

“I am very impressed. Just look at my face. That’s my impressed look.”

Up next are Nicole and Kristine, and surprise of all surprises, Nicole can’t get her Powerpoint presentation to work. In fact, Nicole is such a dunce that James has to step in and help her get their computer working.

Kristine is very excited about playing up the “gold” aspect of the new towers. Nicole starts rambling about something, and the entire presentation is incredibly sloppy and awful. Trump chimes in, “This is the most choppy, broken-down thing I’ve ever seen.” Indeed.

Their presentation mercifully ends, but Trump’s got a problem. He now has two different brochures from two different teams and each brochure has a different phone number to call to get more information about the new towers. Uh oh. Trump sends James and Nicole outside to find out who has the right number, and who is a gigantic moron.

Outside, James calls his number and gets Trump International. Hey, the CORRECT phone number! Then he dials Nicole and Kristine’s number and gets asked what he’s wearing. Well, not quite. But it’s not the right number either, and that’s all that matters.

“Yeah, I think this is the wrong number. She asked me to take my pants off.”

Back inside, Nicole and James give Trump the news about the wrong phone number, to which Nicole blames Kristine. Trump demands the third presentation, which can’t go any worse than the previous one.

Heidi starts and immediately becomes flustered and passes along all responsibility to Frank. What the hell Heidi? Frank is naturally confused as he seemed to be under the impression that Heidi was going to, you know, speak. He immediately puts on their video, which is a giant piece of shit.

Even Kristine recognizes this and says that their presentation gave her a glimmer of hope of not being fired. Trump asks a good question, “What is your theme?” Heidi responds “World class luxury.” “But you don’t say that anywhere.” Trump replies.

Okay, a quick aside here. Where did they find these people? Was this season intentionally supposed to be a joke? Did the producers round up the first 16 people they saw and send them to L.A.? This is sad. If you’re going to make a presentation with a THEME, it oftentimes helps to MENTION THE THEME somewhere in the presentation. Preferably, in the beginning, middle, and end. That’s what makes it a THEME.

Don Jr. says, “I don’t see much of a campaign here.” Heidi then hands Trump their “brochure” which is a bunch of gold text on a black background. This is what Heidi worked on all night? “I don’t like your brochure very much!” says Trump.

Worst. Brochure. Ever.

Trump is shocked at how bad the last two teams did. He says that he should fire both teams, but instead will just fire one person from each team. No I agree with his first thought about firing four people since they were all HORRIBLE.

Trump wants to know who amongst Kristine or Nicole picked the wrong phone number. The answer is Kristine, however Kristine was doing everything since Nicole was asleep. If Trump had to fire one of them, my vote is for Nicole. Trump says that despite the wrong phone number, he liked their brochure and video better than Heidi and Frank’s.

After spending only a minute or two on the Nicole/Kristine debacle, he moves over to Heidi and Frank. Heidi starts rambling about Frank needing direction and focus. Trump doesn’t care about that, he wants to know who is responsible for their piece of shit brochure. Heidi says the both of them, even though we know that’s not the case.

This goes on for several minutes, with Heidi contradicting herself numerous times. For the first time all season, Frank actually impresses me. He spends the entire time ripping Heidi apart and she really can do nothing to defend herself.

Trump says that if it weren’t for the fact that Nicole and Kristine wrote down the wrong phone number, he’d fire both Frank and Heidi but now he’s torn. Really, he’d be best off firing all four of them, but then we’d be an episode or two short.

Trump looks to James for support, asking him who he’d fire. James says he’d fire whoever came up with the “theme.” Heidi goes back on the defensive saying that she meant to bring up the theme but didn’t.

Heidi and Frank argue for several more minutes, questioning what Heidi did and what she was responsible for. This goes on entirely too long and Heidi seals her fate when she says “if you wanted to fire me for this task alone I would 100% agree with you.” It takes less than a second for Trump to reply with “You’re fired.”

He turns towards Kristine and fires her as well, mainly for writing down the wrong number. While that was Kristine’s fault, I think it’s sort of bullshit that Nicole gets away free considering she did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on this task.
Well, that was an eventful episode. Did Trump fire the right people, or should he have gotten rid of all of them? Can you believe the final four consists of James, Frank, Stefani and Nicole? Is this the worst final four ever?