The Apprentice L.A. - Aired March 11

The big question this week was, of course, would Surya's unsurpassed management brilliance bring him a third win as project manager?
While the women of Kinetic still like their former teammate, they'd much rather get the win themselves, and this time around it was Kristine's turn to step up, giving her more screen time in one episode than she's really had all season.
It didn't look good for her from the start. The task this week was to do a half-time promotion at a professional soccer match promoting GNC, a vitamin and nutritional supplement company. And as an aside, doesn't it make more sense that the rest of the world calls soccer "football", as there is a lot more connection between feet and the ball than there is in what we call football here? Anyway, the reason things didn't look good for Kristine is that she's done this sort of thing before, doing half-time promotions for an arena football team. Shouldn't that be a good thing? You'd think, but more often that not, when someone on The Apprentice says something is within their field of expertise, they find some way to horribly screw things up so I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen again.
Over on Arrow, driving in the vehicle after getting the assignment, Tim came up with the idea of a story based around a boxing match. Frank picked up on this and they started getting excited about the possibilities. Surya put a damper on their enthusiasm, saying it was a good idea but they should still try to think of others, resulting in rolled eyes and seething resentment.
Unfortunately for them, they didn't come up with anything better, so they went with the boxing.
Kristine's idea for the promotion was to have people dressed up as different vitamins run an obstacle course. I was thinking they should use their Olympic gold medalist somehow, but with a good enough show, they should be able to get by without doing this.
The biggest problem on Kinetic this week was Muna, who kept second-guessing Kristine and expressing concern over the plan, despite the project manager's experience doing these things. Nice try, executive producer Mark Burnett. Make us think that Kinetic might lose and Kristine would take Muna back into the boardroom with her. Classic misdirection.
Despite Muna's concerns, the Kinetic promotion went over smoothly. It was simple but fun, an easy message to get to the hundreds of soccer fans sitting in the stands. Yeah, people kept talking about the "15,000" fans at the game, but there didn't seem to be anywhere near that many watching this all happen. If there were 15,000 people in attendance, I'd hate to think what the lines at the bathrooms were like.
Arrow's show, however... Surya thought it went fantastically, but poor, poor man. It didn't. It was a confusing mess, and so his reign as project manager ended. Poor Surya.
When your goal is to win The Apprentice, you can't get a better reward than something that will let you get face time with the man who will make the final decision, and in this case Kinetic got to have a round of golf with The Donald, and some guy from some golf company who also provided the women each with a brand-new set of clubs. Sadly nobody made a fool of themselves desperately vying for Trump's attention.
I really would have liked it if someone had. As you might have noticed, this has been pretty short. It's not that this season is particularly bad, it's just not the best one we've seen.
The board room was fun. All of Arrow felt Surya should be fired, and he brought James in with him, someone he felt spent too much time covering his own ass, and Tim, who came up with the original boxing idea.
I'm not fond of seeing someone come up with an idea unless all other things are equal, and even then, it boils down to it being the project manager's approval that lets a bad idea go through, so Tim was safe. It came down to Surya's inability to lead this team against James' butt covering, and James did wait until it was way too late to voice his discomfort with the boxing idea. Yes, if you think something's a bad idea, cover your ass, but do so early enough in the process so that things can be changed if necessary. Better still, come up with a decent idea of your own. If nobody accepts it, fine, but at least you tried. That way you have something to really back yourself up with in the board room. With James, it just didn't look good the way he approached it.
There has been criticism that Surya was too repetitive with his points in the board room. He kept repeating his 5-2 record (which includes him as just a team member as well as a PM), but repeating points can often help. He fought hard, and managed to get Tim to admit to James having flaws and covering his ass, even though he still felt Surya should be fired.
But before we get to that, it's time for our weekly feature...
How Did The Winning Project Manager Compare to Heidi?
During the first two weeks of this process, Heidi set the bar for the winning PM and how they do sitting next to Trump in the losing team's board room, and nobody has come close. I'd like to say that Kristine succeeded, but she hardly said a thing. Granted, it would be hard to get a word in the way Surya and James were both defending themselves loudly and repeatedly. It took Trump asking her if she had anything to ask for her to say anything. She did ask a decent question, and she managed to look comfortable there (something not everyone was able to pull off). Heidi is still the champion though.
So Surya was fired, which was no surprise. He was holding his own and possibly even turning the tide in his favour, but then he made the mistake of going too far. He said that with this team in particular, he functions best when he isn't the leader. That so isn't want Trump wants to hear. If you ever, EVER want to be The Apprentice, do not admit to there being any conceivable situation where you couldn't be a leader!
Once the room cleared, The Donald did say he liked how hard Surya fought to stay, something James and Tim both agreed on as they stood watching Surya being driven away. Ah, some respect. Too little, too late, but it was respect. That's always nice to see.