This leads to speculation, crazy as it may seem, that Alla might have intentionally tanked this task. Not spectacularly, but enough to ensure a loss, since after last week she could see how vulnerable Felisha was and figured a loss would finish her. If any doubt arose, she was confident (as we saw in the confessionals) that her Boardroom ability would destroy any argument Felisha could bring up in her own defense. Make the presentation a bit hard to follow, dress inappropriately, etc., then let the Dead PM Walking take the heat. Obviously, if a double boot was preordained she was toast anyway, but she would never have assumed that, thus "Sit Alla!"

Anyone else want to join me on the grassy knoll?[/quote]

I still haven't decided, but save me a seat because I haven't ruled it out either. On the one hand, Alla seemed so sincere with her last minute "Oh, I've got it!" regarding the text thing. On the other hand, we've seen her work before and that just is nowhere near the quality of her previous work, and she DOES hate to lose. On the OTHER other hand, she sucked pretty badly at the last task too so maybe she was just coming apart or was never as great as we were led to believe.

I think she went into this fully devoted to winning and when she had her last minute idea thought it was a good one. But they ran out of time once they chose what they wanted to put on there and only had x amount of time left to produce the thing. I just can't imagine any other scenario where Alla thinks it's a good idea to have words flying around too fast to even read, and while Felicia was no superstar, I can't see her thinking that would work either. I mean that's just common sense.

The odd thing about this to me was that they seemed stunned to have 2 1/2 minutes of film for a 1 minute video. I know nothing about filmmaking but I thought that should be a GOOD thing, get more than you think you need then only select the best shots that are essential to telling the story. They acted as though they expected to use the whole footage almost like trying to get the whole thing in one take, or something.

So anyway maybe once the video was done, Alla knew it was all over and fully expected Felicia to take the hit for it which, based on previous performance, she was pretty justified in expecting. So I think maybe she didn't deliberately sabotage the task itself, but once the video hit the point of no return she saw no point in trying to save it in any way, even by dressing appropriately, thinking that could only fall on Felicia as PM and hasten the inevitable.

That might be giving her too much credit but she DOES seem to hate to lose. But Felicia's leadership really did have to be frustrating for her. She was dead on when she said Felicia was more focused on not letting Alla outshine her than she was on winning the task. But Felicia was right too, she was dead woman walking so her desperation was understandable. Let Alla do too much, then "what did you contribute, Felicia?" Shut Alla out too much and you don't get her undivided energy, focus and creativity. And for those who say Alla never had trouble being led before- well that may be true but I've always felt the teams of 2 are kind of awkward anyway. The less people you have, the more important it is for both team members to fully contribute. One has veto power, but nobody has the luxury of getting lunch or sweeping or doing something behind the scenes. You're not so much boss/employee as two employees who need to be on the same page, and one has ultimate veto power.

There was a lot going on in this task between these two and it's hard to pinpoint one particular thing that wrecked it. And I loved every minute of it. I hate when it's so easy to just go "oh well candidate X fucked this all up, he should go." It's more fun to look at all the different dynamics that led to the loss. A lot of times I am more interested in examining what went on with the winning team because the losers can be shown as such a simple one dimensional story, but that sure didn't happen on last nights show. Good tv!

ETA: Every time I look at the bonus footage on Yahoo lately, my computer shuts down. Would someone mind giving a minicap of the scenes for those of us who can't see it?

Edited again to fix italics.