Thank you! Could not agree more. I've never felt the Carolyn love, but some seasons she annoys me worse than others. I'm not knocking her job, but COME ON -- you manage Trumpy's golf courses, you sure as hell ain't John D. Rockefeller! She's gotten just a little too big-headed for my taste.

Thought Ivanka rocked. And did you notice that maybe for the first time in Apprentice history, The Donald actually followed the advice of both of his viceroys? He fired the two people Bill and Ivanka called out. Guess Trumpy loves his two babies.

Not so, Brent thought of shaving cream on their faces, pointing them into the 'shaving attire' direction, not that anyone was listening.

Absolutely no doubt in my mind they reviewed the footage. There's no way they would have gone into the boardroom without someone from Trump's organization checking out a potentially threatening behavior and reporting back to him. That's why they knew Stacy was lying, and that's also no doubt why Stacy had backed down the night before. She thought it through and realized the footage existed to proved her a liar.
Wordy McWord netful. I'm no Brent fan, but the rest of the team's behavior (with the exception of Roxanne who redeemed herself at the end) was disgraceful. All it would have taken is the common courtesy of letting him finish his idea, or even a sentence.

In the hallway, if Stacy had let him complete a sentence, and hadn't rudely turned her back on him, it's unlikely he would have gotten in her face. And after that, what ever happened to hearing two sides of the story before deciding who is telling the truth? What a crappy team.

P.S. I love Lenny.

Pardon me, but this was the first episode I've seen, and I was appalled at the behavior of the so called "best and brightest".

All they did in the boardroom was pass the freaking buck. If your team screws up, it is NEVER one person's fault, and it is a shitty, SHITTY manager who doesn't own up to anything when his team fails so miserably.

I make $30,000 a year, and already I know how to take more responsibility than these schmucks.

My thoughts:

Location: not crappy
Herding around and hoping for someone to take charge: stupid
Stacy: totally goading Brent
Brent: an incessantly squealing moron who responded just the way all the "cool kids" knew he would
The witch hunt: duh. Even as grotesque as Brent was, it wasn't his fault.
Roxanne: correct about saying that they should have been up earlier, but how is that Pepi's fault? She didn't think of it either. Nobody did.
Sean: hee! Product in his ear.
Lee: he needs to pull an Andy and just take charge.
Bathrobes: eh. But I don't see how Michael should be fired for having an idea, and it's not like it was unpopular.

These are some seriously hateful people.

Ivanka is so fabulous that it is impossible to undermine her. Also, girl can pick out some nice suits. The women on the show should follow her lead. If the men are all in business suits the women should all be in suits -- not business casual skirt/tight blouse/hooker boot combos.

From the dossier:

1. Each team had $25,000 line of credit with a guerilla marketing team
2. Each team had $7500 seed money
3. The task ended at 3pm Sunday.

So, if Synergy started at noon, they only worked for three hours. Losers.

I don't know where the teams spent any of their money. Maybe Synergy bought Trump Bathrobes for $900 a piece and Gold Rush had gold embossed flyers.

The least they could have done is give everyone who text messaged a free razor (and I would have stuck a $1, $5, or $10 bill in each one).

Wordy Wordsworth McWordenstein III

I can see Burnett and Trump at the casting session: "Mark, the public will just not put up with us making another black person look stupid. Who can we get?" "Well, Donald, fat men are the last acceptable targets." "Good, get on it! Hire a ringer if you have to. This season will be My Big Fat Obnoxious Apprentice!"

That said, this task? Was a huge steaming bucket of elephant piss.

I mean, does no one at Gillette remember SNL's Triple Track Razor commercial ("Because You Will Believe Anything")? Not to mention this.

I'm not likely to text anything to anywhere, but I certainly wouldn't spend money (even if it is just a dime) to participate in a marketing scheme for the Dumbest! Product! Ever! The best shave I ever had was with an old-school double edged safety razor.

I hope we get to a, you know, real estate oriented task soon. It's been, what, one and a half seasons since they've renovated a house or something.

Yep, this would have been my choice as well. Takes 5 seconds and then on to strategies to get people to make calls. Lee was overanalyzing the details when simple action was in order.

I'd like to think Brent is a plant. In the show's history, there is little footage as humiliating as his jumping around in a bathrobe. Ivana is still the gold medalist in this category, but Brent is at least a contender. The shots of his primping in the mirror (adjusting that mop of hair in particular) was high irony.

Interesting as someone noted up above that DT followed the advice of both viceroys.

Good for Lenny & Roxanne. I especially like Lenny's direct common sense. I figure someone who came of age on the streets of Tashkent will do well on any of these stupid street tasks. I figure Lenny is one of those guys from whom respect is difficult to win but also that his respect would be a worthy prize.

I thought Pepi had the potential to be the next apprentice

Shame he got fired

That means Lenny & Co. were on the streets on Saturday night. That would have been a prime time to hit the clubs, hand out free razors (shame they didn't think of giving an incentive to use up your free minutes texting a dumb ass message), and generate some texting.

Yep. I didn't hear him say anything about Allie getting one last week, so I guess Lee's not getting one this week.

I thought the deadline was 3:00 PM on Sunday.



They were, which was a very smart move.

That's also why as noted upthread I would have hit Penn Station in the late hours of Saturday night/early hours of Sunday morning, as many of those same people who hit the clubs then wind up there waiting either for trains back to Long Island or New Jersey, and in the case of NJ, the first train on NJ Transit that leaves Penn Station on Sunday mornings at 5:14 AM (which I know because I've been on that train many an early Sunday morning coming back from a Saturday in New York to Trenton, where I then switch to a SEPTA train to Philly over the last 10+ years, and that train is always crowded).

Both PMs were horrible in this task. And if there was ever a time to fire a winning PM, this might have been it because as much as I like Lee as a person and someday as a businessman he was so in over his head in this task it wasn't funny. And Pepi was pretty much in the same sunken boat. Neither had a grasp of the task (lame as it was) or of their problem team-members.

Stacy didn't cut Brent off at first as he got in his lame 'shaving cream' idea if not others. But considering nothing previously out of his mouth made any more sense, I'm going to side with her on cutting his ass off during the planning stages. I know many have said it was brainstorming, but it felt more like planning to me (which comes after the 'throw out crazy shit' brainstorming stage is over). Which makes cutting Brent off much more reasonable (even though I think it was still too curt).

Also, a person can be threatening (as Brent went out of his way to be towards Stacy) without the target feeling some sort of life threatening horror which Don and the Vics apparently thought Stacy had to feel in order to validate her argument. Besides, she had backed off of that issue until Michael put in on the table. So I sort of feel sorry for her, but she never articulated the 'threat' very well and thus got fired.

Michael's defense simply should have been "We brainstormed and my idea was considered the best idea by the team." Focus on the fact robes was the best idea they had. And could have worked a little better if they had sold it more.

Brent. Pompous prick who has few social skills and could have ended the whole 'she cut me off!/he threatened me!' debacle by simply Shutting the Fuck Up when he obviously wasn't getting his way. Assailing Stacy was a sad attempt to inflate his own ego as his waiting to get her alone seemed more because he felt it would be more 'threatening' than an attempt to politely put asside their differences out of public eye. And as Pepi was waffling on firing him, he pretty much challenged him that he couldn't. In equally 'threatening' manners to his fight with Stacy. And if Pepi had any balls at all he could have put Brent in his place by getting calmly but firmly in his face and sidelining him for a while to 'cool off' or something. He could even have sold Brent on the idea he was doing it for his own good and I think Brent would have swallowed that. If Pepi had sold him at all. But Pepi didn't or couldn't. So we have the whackyness of Brent for at least another week.

I meant they were out working the streets getting actual text messages for only 3 hours.

Problem with that is that Brent actually had a semi-good (definitely better than bathrobes) idea. But, since Stacy cut him off no one heard it and attention got divereted because Stacy thought Brent had cooties.

As annoying as some people can be, when you're brainstorming you gotta let all the ideas out so that you can have stuff to work off of. Stcay, probably becaue her job doesn't involve brainstorming, was the one acting innapropriately. Brainstorming is ABOUT throwing out any stupid idea or concept and building off of it.

I can't believe, after all the time they had, they didn't come up with a hook until thew last few minuted before the went home and were literally heading into the elevator.

My question the whole time was, "What the hell have they been doing all day?" There's pick a hook, print up promo materials, find locations and go,

Why didn't they hire models? Why didn't they hire people who could barely speak english to ride around in white vans and screech the text number into megaphones? Thre was just NOTHING to their plan. I think they literally spent all day talkign about what a disaster Brent was. They didn' plan their task, they planned their exit strategy. Ironically, both failed.

Stacy sucked. Accusing Brent of assaulting her? Come on.

She was rude and she did interrupt him, but if I were her, and he'd said that to me, I'd have told him that if he'd quit spouting nonsense and disrupting the proceedings, I'd stop interrupting him.

Going to tattle on him was childish and completely out of line.

Okay, so the thing that appalled me the most about Brent was in the boardroom where he was going "Shame on you Stacy" and in his interview saying "Shame, Stacy, Shame." He was acting like she was a three year old. Whatever dude, whatever.

During the strategy time, Stacy asked him to just wait a moment and he just kept going. I'm wondering if he waited until she was done writing whatever she was writing if things would have gone better for the team. Who knows. I blame both of them for the incident.

I was impressed with Ivanka because as another poster stated, I too was expecting a Paris Hilton knock off. She seems smart and level headed. I LOVE the fact that she has attained a degree from college. So many of these "Rich kids" never go to school and that just pisses me off. I value higher education (yes, I want to be a college professor someday). So I admire that she went and it appears learned quite a bit. I also loved her suits. I want her wardrobe, just in my size. I liked her haircut as well.

I did not like Pepi. His walk, especially when he was finishing grooming himself at the mirror on the otherside from Brent, just reeked of smugness. Whatever dude, whatever. I am a little sad that he was fired. Only because his name reminds me of Pepi le Poo, the looney tunes skunk cartoon charcter. Everytime they showed his name on the screen I had a good giggle.

They should have set up a station with a chair and shaving cream and the Gillette razors and should have targeted people heading to restaurants and offered the men a free shave. That would have gathered a crowd, and then they could have worked them for text messages. The "call this number to find out why we're wearing bathrobes" is the worst incentive ever.

The shot after the boardroom, where the elevator doors slowly close on Brent, was worthy of Stephen King. You almost expect the next show to open with CSI going through the bloody mess in the living quarters.

On another note, is it still too early in the season to hire help? The Shania task was a numbers task that was won (barely) by getting more people to shill the phone calls. It would make a lot more sense to spend the seed money on temps rather than bathrobes.

Go Lenny!

Brent said he had a few ideas. Pepi, as the team leader, gave him the floor. Stacy interrupted him before he even got two words out. So how is he the one doing the disrupting?

A few thoughts on the candidates being the "best and brightest". Perhaps the real best and brightest people are too busy making money WITHOUT Trump's help. Perhaps they don't want to be dissected, by people like us, every week. Perhaps they don't look like Ken or Barbie and therefore know they don't have snowball's chance on this show. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. I feel like Doris Day.

You're kidding right? The stock market has only recently returned to pre-9/11 levels. The person in question worked as a stockbroker ... do the math.

Additionally, as other posters have written, unless you were here and lived through it, walked through it, smelled it, saw the people jump, looked at the faces on the missing posters each day you really would have no idea of the effect it had on those who were here.

9/11 was more than a TV event for the rest of the country/world, it effected every NYer and still does.

Seriously; I bet in the unedited footage they show 'native New Yorker' Stacy showing her unenlightened country bumpkin teammates some 'authentic' NYC Italian restaurants, like Olive Garden or Sbarro's (like Michael Scott in The Office).

While I can't argue with that, what really irks me is Stacy's firing. Can't stand her. But in three hours the team logged more average texts per hour than the other team did. It was not location. It was not bathrobes or lack thereof. It wasn't een Brent (though I do think that Pepi let the Brent issue drag the whole team down). It was management. Pepi should have had the team out on the street at 8 am and it seems likely they would have won. Or had a better chance.

Trump's double firing was ass when you look at the statistics. Stacy had nothing to do with loss. Despite being as a big a loser as Brent.

Thank you, Mark Burnett and the powers that be, for outing Little Stacy: Part II out in time.

And is it just me, or does Ivanka look like a younger Trump in drag?

I had decided that I wasn't going to watch anymore, but I changed my mind.

The show contradicted itself last night. During Trump's "People are Strange" section, he talks about how people who may look different may be winners over time. There's even a public service announcement "the more you know," talking about putting your best self forward.

Trump sees through the team's bull but then calls Brent "a disaster."

What happened to being a winner over time? Methinks Trump isn't giving Brent a chance to show that he may be a winner. It sounds like Brent is being cast as the next Sam from S1 or Marcus from last season. On the other hand, Trump didn't fire Brent last night so he has another week to prove himself.

If only the rest of the team would get over themselves and listen to someone who may look different from them. Roxanne is the only one with courage to say who really needed to be fired.

In any event, Brent is why I watched last night. He's good TV.

The task was terrible but I agreed that the right people were fired.

As others have noted, its quite plausible that 9/11 stress/trauma could start someone's downward spiral. As a stockbroker, this guy probably worked very close to ground zero, and may have lost friends or coworkers that day. Many young professionals are overextended from school debt, family obligations, or other reasons, and living in NYC isn't cheap. Even one or two missed paychecks could be the difference between success and homelessness, esp. if you don't have family around.

I also strongly disagree with the statement that PD's are there because they can't get jobs elsewhere. There are many PD's who are remarkably competent attorneys who choose the job for a variety of reasons. Even though it's often a thankless, dangerous, and poorly compensated job, competition for PD offices in major cities can be fierce, with hundreds of applicants for a single position. They deserve a lot of credit. Stacy may have sucked as a potential apprentice, but its no reason to bash all Manhattan PDs.

I was such a big set up, I suspect it must pay off next week -- with Brent as a successful team leader. Just a thought.

Ooooh~~I agree. I would love to see Brent as the PM next week!

And IF he succeeds, what a hoot that would be!!!

Yes, yes she does. Somehow it works on her though. Bizarre.

Brent could certainly end up the PM of a winning team, but to this point he's shown nothing that would make him a "successful" PM regardless of how his team might do. Much like Lee's team won despite his complete lack of organization or leadership.

I only see porn....and one of the Girls Gone Wild!

They had $25,000 loc with a marketing firm? Why did neither use it?


I think they could have had something if they went with the idea of hiring models with their seed money, renting a platform, and doing some sort of eye-catching thing with people with shaving cream on their faces or in bathrobes or something. Not doing anything tacky or overly slutty, but just something fun like the Tide-to-Go boxing ring of last season. B/c having the Synergy team wandering around aimlessly in bathrobes while trying to get people to text was lame and sort of sketchy. I see someone in a bathrobe, I think cult.

But, overall, I think this was a lame, worthless, nigh-impossible-to-impress-on task.

I actually thought this was very sweet. Totally unprofessional, but still very sweet. Was it wrong of me to wonder what Carolyn would have done if Trump had tried to kiss her?

The more I think about the "reward" the less sense it makes. One of these guys was a stock broker, another was in sales (I don't think we heard what the third one did). I would assume since both of these are white collar, professional jobs, they probably already had a closet full of suits sitting at home. Surely, they didn't lose their clothes when they lost their jobs. I think more suitable help would have been something along the lines of networking tips, resume polishing, practice interviews, etc. (Although I agree with all those who think there was more to these poor guys than met the eyes).

Best looking woman despite kind of looking like her dad: Liv Tyler. If that could happen, Trump having good looking kids seems probable.

If I had been Pepi (which by the way, I'm glad I'm not because I would never stop saying "You are so learned Papa Homer.") I'm not sure that I would have been able to control my emotions and my language at the boardroom table. If Brent, who has the social skills of an inbred dalmation, started talking over me like he did to Pepi, I'm pretty sure I would have cursed him out something so fierce that the paint would have peeled off the walls.

Man, I really dislike him.

Lenny: Love him. He was 100% on target--if you ever watch American Idol, they have a ton of these "for Idol trivia/call-in numbers/etc., text the letter 'A' to 54321" spots. The shorter the message, the more likely someone will do it.

Lee: Props for admitting Lenny was right.

Stacy: Sucked.

Pepi: Sucked too.

Brent: Plant. Obvious plant.

Ivanka: Gorgeous. Need more of her.

A disruptive employee like Stacy can cause a lot of problems. First off, she wouldn't shut her mouth. Then she makes a blatently false allegation about Brent, then she backpedals when she senses she's busted.

Pepi wasn't a strong manager but he should have gotten Stacy under control pronto. I'm not a Brent fan but that whole brainstorming session was torpedoed by Stacy, not Brent.

I've often wondered how all these "elite" business school graduates and advanced degree holders fail to brainstorm properly. I took the same business school courses they did and we were taught proper brainstorming: no comments about ideas and all ideas go into the pot. The goal is to stir the creative juices, not prove how smart you are (or how stupid the other person is).

I'm not particularly a Brent fan, but he was only the 4th worst member of Synergy this week. Disclaimer: I'm a bit Brent-shaped, but unlike him I try to dress appropriately and stick to normal hair. I'm also not a whiny attention whore. However...

Stacy: The poster child for anti-feminism. She wasn't thrown off for the location thing, but for her horrible personal dynamics. I've worked with women like this, who decide that they shouldn't have to play by the the rules of business or law because they're, well, fragile women:

1. Don't rudely interrupt teammates.
1B. Don't rudely interrupt teammates while brainstorming.
2. Don't accuse someone of threatening you because his finger was too close to your face.
2B. Don't accuse someone of threatening you because his finger was too close to your face because the space was small.
3. Don't get the team involved in your personal conflict.
4. Don't make accusations lightly.

Business isn't a man's world, but it also isn't a place for wimps. Add that to her utter incompetence in picking a location, and Trump even had a public reason for firing her. A horrible person who will hopefully be drinking in some bar in New York, whining to no one in particular about the horrible fat man who cost her a dream job.

Pepe: Did he do anything? He couldn't run a brainstorming session (something Brent's been the only one willing to do in both tasks), jumped on board a moronic plan, couldn't get the team up in the morning, and then didn't change anything when it became clear the team was crashing and burning during the task.

Michael: I may be in the minority here on thinking Michael was worse than Brent. Not because of the bathrobe idea; the fact that they went with his atrocious idea reflects worse on the rest of the team than it does on him, given how little he was pushing it and that he had no authority to do anything about it. But because after the competition, he became the one leading the "scapegoat Brent" bandwagon. He was the one who brought up Stacy's nasty accusation to deflect Trump's attention from himself. Totally unacceptable behavior, especially when compared to Lee and Lenny last week.

Message to the next Synergy PM: Brent looks awful and probably shouldn't interact with customers. Put him in a room, give him a chance to think up ideas, some of them will probably be good, and come the actual task give him an important behind the scenes role. So far Brent's presented all of the original ideas for Synergy, and they went with a variation on his idea in both tasks without giving him credit. I'd be pissed too.

Just throwing my two cents into the mix. I don't like Brent. He is sweaty, and loud and socially awkward. But I agree with the other posters' comments -- he wasn't the reason they lost the task.

I liked Ivanka a lot. Yeah, she could stand to use a lighter hand during makeup application, and the outfits were a little too tight, but she was articulate and made intelligent observations. Pretty remarkable considering her parentage…I mean, that's a lot of genetic predisposition to overcome.

ETA: Am I the only one who, when Brent was in the bathroom fixing his hair (before the BR), said, You mean, he actually styles it to look like that?

Say what you will about Brent, but my respect for him soared when Trumped asked his opinion of Pepe, and received this priceless ditty - that he would not hire Pepe to organize his son's birthday party. BWAH!! I love it when men like Brent dare to command respect especially from the brat pack.

Interesting if only because we didn"t see how much, if any, of it was spent -- other than on bathrobes,.

Trump is a moron for not firing Brent-Pepi should not have been fired on this task- He had alot of potential and was a good team player

He kept his team going and they woke up 6:30 am? Where did 12:00pm come into play? He allowed every member of the team to put forth their input, and respected everyone, including Brent

It is beyond me how anyone can stand that psycotic man but I think the finger is being pointed in the wrong direction

Ooh! I forgot to say! I think Brent's hair is a rug. Watching him groom in the mirror reminded me of an adage of my husband's: "Always pat, never comb." We knew a guy in college who wore a toupee, and Mr. Alphaharpy was the only one who knew, because he saw the way the guy adjusted his hair. He never ran his fingers through it like a normal human being, he always patted it and kind of shifted it around. Also, my sister-in-law's dad has the exact same poof shape on the top of his rug that Brent does. I'm just saying.

I was thinking it was more "it's your own natural hair, I can jog, play tennis and even swim in it! My wife loves to run her fingers through it! And I'm not just the owner, but a satisfied customer too!" type hair.

Was I the only one who expected the line to end "It looks good. It feels good. It tastes good. OW! Mah tong!"?

Yeah, I thought it was obvious Brent wears a rug. I remember in the first ep, when Trump made the comment about the gusty wind proving his hair was real; the camera cut to Brent and his toupee.

And speaking of Brent:



As a human resources professional I totally agree with this. However, if the issue came across my desk Brent, Stacy and Pepe would've all been called on the carpet - Stacy for being rude and unprofessional in her determination to cut Brent off at every pass; Brent for his actions - even blocking someone's path can be grounds for harassment (at least it can in California), and Pepe for being totally ineffectual for not telling Stacy to show some courtesy.



I think there are plenty of people who've dealth with being different i.e. not made from the pretty/popular mode who don't act a fool as a result. IMO, being unattactive doesn't give Brent a get out of jail free card in the personality game. Dude's just extra, and not in any kind of a good way.

In the end, I think it was a smart decision to fire Pepe and Stacy, however Brent could've/should've gone too. No way will he be the Apprentice.

You know, I'm not on board the Lenny love-train. I think he's overbearing and discourteous. In last night's case, Lee certainly was out of his element and Lenny had the right idea. But Lenny refusal to show Lee some respect as PM and politely but firmly making his case was unnecessary. I think he's a control freaky blowhard, and he won't be the Apprentice either.

I'm pretty meh on everything else. Boring task, boring (though the potential to be valuable, good thing to do was there) reward...whatever. I was wondering, though, if Mark's idea for robes and Brent's idea for shaving cream had been combined if that would've worked.

Actually, what I really would have liked to have seen was Trump offer the three disadvantaged guys jobs. I was hoping that would happen when he showed up. I know, I'm naive.

Out of all the charity awards, this was the lamest. They clothed three men. The men still need jobs. If we stick just to the dressing for success part, they helped three people. Would it have really killed Trump to open it up to more people - even just seven more.

Exactly. Couldn't they (Gold Rush) help the three unfortunate guys put together a resume, call employment agencies, set up some sort of a mock interview - I mean some kind of role playing, or something useful along those lines. The concept of that reward and the the Gold Rush' role were not thought through, IMO. But then I keep forgetting that it's Trump, and that everything he does is simply about Trump - not charity, not reward, not the winners, not the recepients of his handouts - all of that is secondary to what is really important to Trump. This time it was about Trump's clothing line.

I wanted to comment on a few things. The people that got fired were the ones that should have been fired. Brent, annoying that he was, did not cause the team to loose. Trump seems to have gotten better since the pile-on Stacy J. episode.

Also, to Nascar, when I attended the apprentice legend cruise, I met a new friend who happened to be from upper Manhatten. Before 9-11 he was a banker. That day he watched from his office as the towers fell. A week later he left his job. That event changed his life.

As someone wondered where the best-of-the-best are? They are not on this show. Talking with several of the cast members, I discovered that no contestant is allowed to have higher then a $5 million personal net worth. That is the cut-off point for the NDA. TPTB determined that they could not risk having someone on the show that could write a check for that amount. They realized that if they picked the wrong type of candidate with enough money, that person would be able to blow the lid off the contest rigging on this show.

Lancer 78, please tell us more. I love the inside info.

Back on Topic: As far as Trump, Bill, and Ivanka seeing or not seeing the tape with Brent and Stacy prior to the boardroom, the producers could have told them what went down or I think I read (not sure) that Trump could have the tape shown in the boardroom.