The Apprentice L.A. - Aired February 18

Surya was angry after last week's boardroom. Oh, he was PISSED! So full of righteous fury was he that it was all I could do to not shout "SHUT THE HELL UP!" at my television. He was just that mad.
Um, get over it? He has family, a job, and a reputation to go back to after this is all over. I usually recommend that people watch the show they're going to compete on to get an idea on how to succeed in the competition. This time, I would have recommended that Surya watch the show before going on to see what show he was going on. Besides, by the time this is all over for him it's highly likely there will be much more happening to hurt his reputation than one boardroom, and in order to hasten that along he demanded to be the next project manager. Okay, Mr. Raging Hair, let's see how you do.
Huh. All this time doing this blog, and I just noticed I can do this or this or even this. I promise I won't (usually), but damn, how could I have missed that? There is one button for Edit Html, and one for Compose. I've always just stayed on the default Edit Html side because it does everything I want it to. Yes, I'm digressing. What do you want me to do, talk about Aimee? Fine.
Aimee was feeling pretty good about herself after last week's victory, and she was pretty sure she's the pinnacle of management excellence. She is a glorious Golden Goddess and her minions flock to her light where she leads them to decisive, historic victories that will be sung of by bards for millennia to come. Her team, however, felt a little different and they pretty much won the last task in spite of her. Well, with the new rule for winning project managers she now has a second chance to prove to them just how fantastic she really is.
This week's task is pretty simple. Each team was to go to a different shopping mall in Las Angeles and get people to enter a Priceline.com sweepstakes. The team with the most people signed up wins. Set up an attractive booth and get out there and sell, sell, sell. How much easier can it get?
Kinetic already has an ace up their sleeve. Come meet an Olympic Gold Medalist and enter a free sweepstakes! HOW DID THEY NOT USE ANGELA FOR THIS?!?!? Are they under some sort of injunction that prohibits them from using her as a spokesperson for anything other than honey? I liked the tropical themed booth they had set up, even though Aimee really didn't like an inflatable pink octopus. She reeeeeeeaaaaalllllyyyy didn't like it. She didn't like it so much that I have a feeling she was letting out all her sublimated hostility over never being able to make a decision at it. Well, at least she knows how to delegate poorly without putting enough thought into it. That's a skill that will do well for her in life.
Derek and Jenn were walking through the location with a mall representative and Derek asked what the ethnic makeup of the mall customers was, and she told him it was 50% Hispanic and 50% trailer park trash. Ha! Noooo, she didn't call the honkies that! I did wonder why the heck Derek would ask that, but as it turned out, it was a good question. I live in a fairly linguistically homogenous city in a fairly linguistically province in Canada. We do have some French enclaves around Alberta, but for the most part you'd have to head much further east for language to be an issue.
Aimee is from Chicago, so I'm actually on her side that it may not have occurred to her that many of the mall customers might have a problem with English. Derek not only asked the question of the mall representative, he's also from L.A. and he speaks Spanish. That they didn't have translators there and all their signs, ads, and computer sign-up bilingual falls largely on his shoulders.
"Watch the damned show" comes into play here as well. One thing that usually works out very well on The Apprentice is doing casual focus groups. Go talk to your potential customers. If someone bothered going through the mall talking to customers to find out what would attract them to the sweepstakes, the language issue would have come up a lot sooner. This also gave us something for future Apprentices to learn from when they watch this damned season. If you're going to be competing in a location you're not familiar with, and you know where it's going to be, study up on it. Learn everything you think you may need to know for what may come up.
Over on the Arrow side, Surya continued to make himself into someone it will be very pleasant to see fired. The task is getting people to sign up for a sweepstakes. That's it. Yes, it's more than just setting up a table and waiting for people to come to you, but it's not that much more. The way he was approaching it though, you'd swear he was getting ready for a hostile takeover of the Coca-Cola company. He really doesn't fit in with his team. It's like putting Sean Penn in with the Three Stooges. Not that Sean Penn is dour and humourless! Oh, wait. Yes, because Sean Penn is dour and humourless. (I'm thinking back to a recent dour and humourless Academy Awards appearance he made, when he didn't much like the host's joke at the expense of a fellow dour and humourless actor.) Arrow may be a little too goofy at times, but at least they work well with people on their own wavelength.
"Frankie Suits" annoys the hell out of me, but he can sell up a storm unlike Surya who appeared to have no luck with his little walk around the mall. That was bad, but even worse is that his team had no idea where he went. Really, if you're going to disappear, tell someone. Especially if you're the project manager, and even if your team does better without you.
So much better, Arrow won. The lack of understanding of the mall's clientele likely killed Kinetic in this task. Having everything bilingual and hiring an interpreter or two could have made all the difference in the world.
The reward Arrow got for winning this task, other than getting to move back out of the tents, was a surfing lesson from a couple of champion surfers followed by supper at a fancy restaurant. It all seemed fun until the waves got bigger and bigger. It really didn't seem safe for a beginner out there. Someone might get... Ouch! Nicole got hurt! It was bad enough that she had to go to the doctor, and Tim volunteered to go with her. This romance is really heating up! But first, what about her injury? Will she have to play the rest of this season on crutches? It wouldn't be the first time a reward caused that to happen, and what was the result? Possibly the best second place finisher ever, Rebecca (I say not having seen season 1 and having heard good things about Kwame but not seeing him in action hurts him in the ratings). Too bad Rebecca wasn't in this season or the last. She'd be owning the competition. Anyway, nothing was sprained or broken. It was a jellyfish sting. Well gee, if they knew that earlier, Tim could have peed on her foot for nothing!
I don't know if the doctor gave her something for it, but back at the mansion she was able to jump into the pool easily enough. Then she and Tim kissed. Awwwww! The big romance that's been blossoming all season is finally blooming! And I still don't care about either of these two, even though Tim does play a wicked piano.
Going into the boardroom, Aimee planned on calling on Derek for not telling her about the ethnic makeup of the mall, and sure enough she did. It was so obvious that Trump should fire either him or Jenn for not telling her about the 50% of Hispanics! Imagine her surprise when pretty much the whole team called her lack of management style into question. She really was surprised. She's the Golden Goddess of Management! If looks could smite...
Things didn't get any better for her when her team kept telling The Donald that she is no Heidi. They praised Heidi's leadership more in this boardroom than they did at all while she was project manager. The best part of this is that it gives me a great excuse to go into my weekly Heidi segue and boardroom style comparison.
Surya did a far better job sitting at Trump's side than Aaron or Aimee did, but he didn't quite match Heidi's poise, confidence, or ability to say the right things. On the plus side, he didn't fall as far from all that as the other two did. He was competent, which is something he hasn't been showing much of lately.
Something else occurred to me about Heidi this week. I really like the way she's playing this. Yes, she did very well as a winning PM in the boardroom, and while she didn't blow me away as PM, she was a solid performer in that position. If you notice, we haven't really seen or heard much from her since then. Believe it or not, I actually think that's a good thing.
It means she isn't out there actively putting down the other PMs on her team, and each task she's in there working hard for them. One of the biggest mistakes we see every season on The Apprentice is that too many people want to be the leader and get all bristly when someone else is PM. Yes, Trump is looking for a good leader. But he's also looking for someone who can be lead and is a smart, capable team player. I would like to see her step up a little more if a PM is failing, but she's not creating pointless friction and that's a good thing.
This is a show that makes it pretty impossible to fly under the radar. If you're not pulling your weight in a team, it will be noticed. If you're not willing to be a project manager, it will be noticed. You can't win this show if you've never been a PM. So just because we're not seeing a lot of someone, it doesn't mean they're playing to fly under the radar. It means they're not PM, not creating drama, and not a disaster.
I can see one thing about Heidi that will probably turn a lot of people off her. At times she does have a bit of an air of smugness about her. When she was being praised by her team, she couldn't keep that smile off her face, despite at times looking like she was trying to hide it. The smugness came through, but I also saw a little embarrassment and some genuine happiness at the kind words. Who wouldn't be affected by that show of support?
I wasn't sure at first, but I'm making it official. Realivision is now cheering on Heidi to win.
Back to the boardroom, Aimee chose to bring back Derek and Jenn with her, which was no big surprise. They were the two who knew about the ethnic makeup of the customers, and neither of them bothered to mention it to her, and this was the big focus of the night. They didn't tell her, but she didn't ask. She also didn't think about it herself by taking time to actually look around the mall. I agree she should have done that, but out of fairness, I don't think the language thing would have occurred to me either. I don't see that as a bad thing. "Look at all these Hispanic-looking people. Oh dear, they must all speak only Spanish!" No, I can't hold that against her. Losing this task fell more on Derek and Jenn's shoulders if it was all about the language barrier.
The thing is, it wasn't all about the language barrier. Aimee was just an awful leader. Maybe in a real life situation she's a lot better, but not here. Maybe it's the fear of looking bad on television or not wanting to give her teammates cause to want her gone that caused her to be that bad, but if so, in the end it cost her everything. Well, not everything, but this competition anyway.
That said, she really did seem to have an overinflated opinion of her abilities. She was pissed when she was fired! Getting into the car after leaving the boardroom, she looked at Derek and Jenn and said something angry. I can't read lips, especially from the side, and there was no sound, but yes, it was definitely not "Goodbye and good luck!"
Her bitterness shone through in her final words, and bitterness is usually the name of the game there. Perhaps she should have had an Apprentice Night with Surya before they started the competition to see just what show it is they were going to be on. Do people sign up for Survivor then act surprised that they're going to be stranded on an island? Boardrooms are going to be cutthroat, and your flaws are going to be exposed. Sorry. You should have known that going in.