[QUOTE=TeaElle]
Thoughts, in point form so I don’t have to be cohesive (because I’m mentally cooked):
[list][/QUOTE]
Just one of those days, huh? 
Um. If a mod fixes TeaElle’s post, please delete mine. It’ll be a non sequitur thingie. 
Let’s rock the Casbah with the newest Raj Ratings. Based on Raj’s love of battleships (and all too revealing underwear) we rank each Apprentice into a type of sea-faring vessel. This week, Vague Redemption of Womanhood, or Pink Camo + Little Tiny Capes = Fabulous!
Edmund Fitzgerald - or, Gone with no hope of returning
Bradford, Stacie J., Rob, Pamela
Jenn C - You still really suck. Learn it, love it.
John - last week, Stuck in dry dock. Well, you lost after being fairly low key up until now. The guys are pretty solid, but you probably should have gone. Less for poor choices and more for lack of control. But Trump seemed to like you well enough so at least you will have 5-10 minutes of post show favorability.
Titanic - or, Dead in the water, just waiting for the cargo class to drown
Elizabeth (no change) - Ah, the evil harpies have their next victim. Next week’s shake-up probably extends your life because if this group of women views you as hopeless, you must really be awful.
Ivana (no change) - Sadly this task doesn’t seem to have given you the chance to work on a laptop. And last weeks extra boardroom footage showed Trump does not respect you. I’d say steal some towels from the suite because that is about all you will leave with this week.
Sandy (last week - No change) - Ummmm, what do you do that’s worthwhile? Seriously people. Think about her contributions on this or any other task. At this point one of Madame Tussaud’s creations could add more value and look more lifelike.
Maria - last week, no change. Woohoo, you beat a bunch of clueless guys at a task. I’d feel about as proud after taking out a girl scout in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (unless I get lashed in the eye by a braid. Those sting.) Speaking of eyes, I reckon you hold Christmas dinner at your house, because with that frenzied blinking? Let’s just say the Nutcracker Suite was written with those lids in mind.
Bismarck - or, probably sinking, but it will take a couple more blows
Andy - No change. Trump clearly fancies you (ew no, not like that). The rest of your team should now realize that you won’t win, but to be fired it will take more than callow youth and rapidly thinning hair. You probably won’t be in the boardroom again you make a big mistake. Like another lobster themed challenge.
Stacy R. - No change. Ah, kids these days. Oh wait, she’s a grown woman? Seriously? I’d think she graduated from the Ralph Macchio school of eternal pre-pubescence but she was showing cleavage at one point which is vaguely disturbing. I tend to think 5 year olds shouldn’t be doing that.
Stuck in dry dock - or, Who are you? Are you on this show?
Wes. Well, you screwed up the pricing but John continued a trend on this show by bringing in the wrong people. So, you continue to not get a ton of screen time. As of now, I would guess final four just because you need some more character building time. Lead a task.
HMS Pinafore - or, Some singing, some dancing, some tragedy. Overall, not too bad.
Kevin - No change. You are goofy when you wake up. You also survived by a whisker this week. I’d say your stock dropped the most and you are now teetering on the edge of Bismarckhood.
Chris - No change, although you are slowly improving. Those glasses sucked more than a Hoover attached to a jet engine. But, you did get to hang with models so I can’t be too hard on you. I’d guess you have the most to lose by a team switch-up, because I see your style rubbing women the wrong way.
Raj - Last week, Queen Mary II. Ouch. Those cads and bounders sullied your good name this week. Based on how you hit on anything that moves, I’d say you haven’t been spending enough time raising the sail if you know what I mean. I think you’ll be around a while longer, but your eccentricity and big talk/small leadership leanings will hurt you.
Queen Mary II - or, Leader of the Pack, vroom vroom
Kelly - No change. This is essentially the 2nd task where you were the de facto leader. Add in the actual PM victory and short of trying to seduce Trump in the boardroom by dimming the lights and singing a torch song, I think you can cruise for a while.
Jenn M. - Last week, HMS Pinafore. You move up due to obvious business acumen, an ability to bring the best out of people, amazing political instincts, and. Eh, who am I kidding. Just keep wearing that same shirt and I’ll offer you a job climbing my corporate ladder.
Next week? Based on my track record of guessing, I could say the teams have to enter the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest and have as much of a chance of being correct. I’ll guess the teams switch (ooh, bold) and the person going home cusses out Donald (ooh, bolder.)
I want my mommy.
Is there a mod in the house?
I for one was glad John was fired. I haven’t liked him since the first boardroom, where he got all heated about Rob’s alleged slacking. Then, the next week, he flipped out when Raj wanted breakfast. What a jerk.
Like many of the women, I suspect John is used to getting by on his good looks without having to answer for his screw ups. His earnest pleading to Carolyn was truly pathetic, and I had a flash of how he’d be if he was trying to make up with his girlfriend-- get all sincere and self-abnegating, with that sad puppy look in his eye (‘awww, how can I stay mad at you when you’re so cute’ :rolleyes: ). And you know what? It worked to some extent, because Carolyn did defend him between the first and second boardroom. See, even she has a soft spot for a pretty face. Fortunately, the Donald was a bit more clear-headed.
John made a lot of terrible decisions. With a major pricing error like this one, Trump likes to place the fault ultimately on the PM. He did it last week with Pamela and then again this week with John. If you’re in charge and your team is making major mistakes like this, you should be the one who catches it. It was so ironic in the taxi ride home when John said, “I worked so hard on this task, I gave it my all” or whatever. Kid, that proves you deserved to be fired, if your best effort leaves you with 1/3 the profit of your competition. :smack:
I hated the men’s designer. She was surly, irritable, and a slow worker. She also might have helped them pick better fabric, for the love of all that’s holy. Kevin was probably right-- the task was lost right then. Also, if Carolyn is weeping tears of hysterical laughter over your fabric choices, you might want to rethink them. What makes it even worse is that, if Raj was correct, that was really expensive fabric too. Did they think their models looked hot in those outfits? My god. If so, they all clearly have a fetish for the upholstery in my great aunt’s den.
IMO, Kevin didn’t get fired because Trump was making a point-- that John committed a major mistake by not bringing his bestest friend Wes into the boardroom too. He took a page out of the Jenn C School of Boardroom Strategy, and made nearly the exact same comment when this error was pointed out: “You’re right, I should have brought Sandy/Wes in here… I made a mistake.” Well, duh. You are allowed to take three people into the boardroom, so why didn’t you use that power? Trump does not admire misplaced loyalty.
Another parallel with Jenn C-- she tried to scapegoat Elizabeth, conspiring with her buddy Sandy in advance, with disastrous results. John tried to do the same thing to Andy with Wes and failed just as miserably. I think Trump sees through that smarmy, naive tactic and punishes it harshly. These people have very poor boardroom strategy.
I think Kevin is the Jenn M of the men’s team. He stood up for Stacie J when she got pilloried by the women, and did the same for Andy, even though it might have led to his own firing. That took guts and real integrity, which I admire, and I think Trump might have noticed that too. It’s rare as hell in a game like this. I’d like to see him and Jenn M as the final two.
I enjoyed this episode because it showed all the catty in-fighting, bad behavior, and idiotic decisions made by the men; they aren’t a hell of a lot better than the women, with the exception of Kevin. Kelly is OK, but I don’t feel like I really know him yet, somehow. But the rest of them? Drooling over models and giggling incessantly until you seem like a 16 year old at a high school dance is just embarrassing. Playing favorites in the boardroom is also embarrassing. I can’t wait until a bit more of the chaff is winnowed off so we can see some really good competitions.
One question my husband and I had after watching this—on all the ads for this episode, it said that the Boardroom Lesson was : Don’t Annoy George. Yet, at no time did George seem so outrageously annoyed. Did we miss something?
I really lost a lot of respect for Raj this ep. Now, I didn’t like him at first - his affectations annoyed me. But as he relaxed, he seemed like a smart guy and a good team member. The thing with Anna Kournikova was a little weird, but like he said, sometimes you’ve just got to try. But he was useless with this task. You’d think he’d never been around a woman before. He’s intelligent, good-looking - you wouldn’t think he’d be that, well…just weird around some attractive women.
StG
Going in it was obvious this would be an uphill battle for the men and its clear that they really didn’t take anything to compensate for their weaknesses. A solid PM for this task would have gotten as much outside assistance as possible. The poster who said that their designer was surly was dead on, a friendly designer who would understand that none of these guys had any clue what they were doing in this situation would have been better than one with big ideas and grumbling at the idiots who didn’t understand fashion.
FWIW, I didn’t like any of the women’s designs. They all looked bland and flat to me. If the models had stood against the wall I would have mistaken them for wallpaper. The men’s bad furniture look wasn’t much better but at least if you changed the fabric it could have looked okay.
Raj was definitely a doofus this time. Perhaps not enough to get fired if he was hauled into the boardroom (I think Trump would have still nailed John for the management of the task), but enough that Trump may have him marked.
Regarding the three versus two in the boardroom, my feeling is that its best for the PM to just pick the people they can put something on and build a case against. Trump has been putting a lot of weight on why people are being picked to come into the boardroom and if you have a hard time justifying your two then you’ll be in a worse position with three.
And next week should be fun with someone being called out for exagerating. Gee, I wonder who that could be.
Is it just me or did none of the clothing presented by either team look especially attractive?
I lost all respect for this show when Pamela was fired, but what the hell …
This task was stupid, not a good indicator of business skill at all. Fashion, I’m told, is a highly rarefied world. When I watch a fashion show I’m sure that my opinions have absolutely nothing to do with what will be considered a Fashion success. It’s all quite mysterious to me, and I would guess to all these MBAs as well. So, it’s a task which has nothing to do with the likely ability to run a Trump enterprise, IME.
I think this is borne out by the fact that the men’s atrocious choices were not even commented on in the boardroom. Ivana nailed it – cross between my grandfather’s attic and a sofa, was it? The women’s fashions seemed okay to me; the men’s really were a disaster. What was that three-tiered, three-toned thing? And all that plaid? Ugh. But Trump, Carolyn and George said nary a word about the style choices themselves, which shows I don’t know anything about fashion. But neither did the men, or the women. This was one of those luck-of-the-draw tasks.
Stupid for the teams to be so directly involved in selecting the styles, too. Selecting the fabrics? Why were the teams even there? I’d have focused on choosing the designer, and then hardly interfered in the design itself. Why on earth should either team have so much input in fabrics? This is the designer’s business to know.
I didn’t like this task at all, but the boardroom firing made sense. Setting everything aside, John’s blowing off the pricing meeting to see that the models got hairdressed and made up properly made no sense.
None of it was attractive, but I could picture the women’s clothing on someone else at work. (and snickering because that capelet screamed “fashion victim,” but still it was plausible).
The men’s clothing was just hideous. One model was wearing knickers. KNICKERS.
It was a skewed task, I wonder if men’s clothing might have been more fair, because women often have bought men’s clothing - but most men haven’t bought women’s clothing. The women heard the store names, knew who the audience was, knew the price ranges that they were aiming for, and knew what clothing sells there (I knew, and I’m not really a shopping person). I don’t think the men did…they could have found out by walking into one of the stores, but they started out behind.
At first, during the designer choice, I thought it would be another win for Mosaic - because based on what the designer said, I thought he’d skew more Target than Bloomingdale’s and the men’s choice of designer (without having really seen sketches, just hearing a few snippets of the pitch) seemed like a better choice. Turns out, I was wrong. So were they. Really, really wrong.
I don’t understand why the men’s designer wasn’t done in the morning…the lead sheet (is that what they called it) seemed like a nice extra for the women’s designer to have done, but having the clothing finished seemed like a basic. Why wasn’t it even cut by the next morning?
Still, it was the right firing. The management just wasn’t there - and John failed. (You could see it in several scenes where Kelly took over for them…I’m really liking Kelly and Kevin (even though he blew the pricing))
Mullinator – your post is one of my favorite things about Friday morning. Bravo! (Brava?)
Gotta join in the chorus of WTF on Raj’s attention-seeking – he went down several points in my estimation, and I’ve really liked him since week one.
Am I the only one who thought the women’s clothes were somewhat decent? Granted, I could never wear a backless dress or one of those mini-suits, but I could imagine other humans wearing them. In my mind, the choice of fabric made a huge difference. The women’s fabric was attractive in color, weight, and texture, so that even dresses that were unremarkable looked decent.
The men went for fabric that was heavy, plaid or busily patterned, and schlumpy looking. If you can make a runway model look dowdy, you clearly suck at fashion.
I think this task did measure qualities of a good manager. If John had involved himself in pricing, had evaluated the cost of the fabric, had consulted with someone who knows about fashion, they might have won (or at least not gotten their asses handed to them).
John was fired because his boardroom strategy sucked. He didn’t play the game right, and he’s the 3rd PM in a row to play politics instead of trying to get the worst performer on the task fired.
I didn’t see it either. Maybe they are saving it for Saturday’s episode.
The guys were totally hopeless yet there was no “unravelling”. They just lost, badly. Even in losing badly, they still looked good. Was it me or was Kelly a better PM on this task then John was?
I am not one to judge fashion. Everything I see on runways ( and there was a lot of it around recently since it was Fashion Week) seems downright unwearable. So the guys should have won because their clothes were the ugliest clothes I have seen.
The show is becoming boring and predictable. Team loses, project manager gets fired, ho-hum, what a surprise.
The task seemed to be similar to the art show from last season, and offered a similar lesson - go mainstream. The women were looking for designs for clothes that they would actually wear for a price they’d actually pay, and by and large got them. Their designer was less avant-garde than the men’s designer, and that worked to the womens’ advantage at the end of the day.
I think the guys might have been better served by trying to do a quick poll on their designs to see if they were things that women might actually buy. They knew they were playing at a disadvantage, but didn’t adequately compensate.
The lesson was know your market, and although the Donald made it sound like it was all about price, it was really all about knowing your customers and offering products they might actually want to buy. A store like Ann Taylor, for example, targets a specific group of women and offers clothes that they actually want and need. One would be hard pressed to call Ann Taylor’s clothes terribly imaginative or cutting edge, but one would be hard pressed to say that they aren’t a great business success. The men chose a more eccentric designer than the women, and did not do anything to check their designs against reality. I think running an impromptu market analysis would not have taken much time and would have given them a better gauge of what their market was looking for.
The other thing I wanted to say – I’ve got “Apprentice Women” as one of my players in the fantasy TV league – for the first time in four weeks the “Apprentice Men” (who my opponent had) get more airtime.
:mad:
Masonite makes some interesting points about the vagaries of the fashion world, but I don’t really think the mysteries of what constitutes good fashion had dick-all to do with this task. Models and other crap aside, the bottom line of the task was to sell clothing to department stores. That was the absolute bottom line, and the guys missed it entirely.
Instead of stopping and thinking, “Hey, department stores are going to be buying this stuff for resale to the general public, so we need stuff they can actually sell,” they heard “fashion show” and “models” and stopped thinking with their big heads entirely. Instead, they focused on what the news services show of the big fashion unveilings (which is always the couture and never the pret-a-porter) and what would be “really hot”. Whoever said they lost this task in the first two hours was absolutely 100% right. They lost as soon as they picked Helga and her atrocious couture designs. (And her stuff was atrocious by either standard–not edgy enough to be good couture, and far, far too fugly to be salable as ready to wear.)
Trump asked the guys where they thought they went wrong, and the guys generally seemed to think it was the pricing. Since the guys were all so focused on the pricing, that’s what we mostly saw them discussing. I’m sure at some point they discussed how entirely inappropriate the clothing was for the task at hand, since these boardrooms tend to last a few hours. But if the guys weren’t actively arguing about it like Jenn C. was about her damned decor, the discussion wouldn’t have made very entertaining television.
I think Kevin was correct that the task was lost when John chose the wrong designer. I suspect this was a pretty big break for the designers as well, so they wanted to put their best foot forward also. As evidence, the designer the women chose worked his butt off to have everything done. The men could have done much better with a designer who worked equally as hard, despite their own incompetence in the field.
Although John tried to pin the pricing debacle on Kevin, it was Wes who came along and said “jack those prices up” on everything. Then when Donald and Carolyn were obviously annoyed with Raj and John didn’t bring him into the boardroom, he made yet another critical mistake.
John failed miserably and was rightly fired.