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.