Actually, I think it was more, “Jennifer is making more money because they’re ho-ing it up. I’ve got to make more money than them, so I’ve got to out-ho 'em. How can I out-ho people who are already dressed like strippers in some cheap dive? I know…I’ll offer to actually strip!” It goes back to that “only one solution to a problem” thing I was talking about earlier. She got it locked into her head that the only way to get the prices up was to ho it up, just like she got it locked into her head that the only way to beat the men at the ice cream task was to dump her restaurant sales in favor of street sales in Times Square, and then got it locked into her head that it was essential to keep the carts together.
jebert, I agree that based on that one scene all season, they do seem to like and respect each other. But don’t show me one scene all season and expect me to get all choked up about their big fat Daman-and-Pythias friendship. Ain’t gonna happen. With Troy and Kwame, we watched them do friend-type stuff all season long. People had a chance to get invested in the relationship, which was pretty easy because they seemed to have genuine affection for one another (which is a far cry from liking and respect, imo). With Kevin and Ivana, if there’s anything beyond liking and respect, I haven’t seen it. TPTB haven’t given me a chance to get invested in their friendship, if the friendship even exists. As such, expecting me to give a rat’s ass about Ivana and Kevin having to go up against one another is really, really reaching.
I forgot completely about Sandy’s lack of formal education, blasted! Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, I definitely like her more than Jen.
I have to still disagree that you really don’t need personality to do well in an interview. You can get by in an interview by staying cool, but you have to build some sort of connection with the interviewer, and I think Jenn’s distance could be a problem. As far as her turning into a little girl, I doubt it will happen as well, but I dare to dream. i just don’t like the woman, and for my sexist comment of the day, I was disappointed by her legs.
Ivana was dead last night from the time she let Kevin take over the manufacturing process without saying a word to him, something Donald seems to abhor. And if you are going to drop trou for money, at least have some fairly attractive undergarments, those were hideous.
Interesting thing about Kelly is, as strong a competitor as he’s been, he may not have the verbal prowess required to skirt the wolves come boardroom time. At least twice now they’ve attacked him when he’s said the wrong thing- first about supposedly “inflating” his dog-groomer task performance (I always thought he just made a bad guess), and last night with the pricing comment that George jumped all over. Could prove to be his Achilles heel.
Trump: “So Kelly, why did the team lose this week?”
Kelly: “I eat babies. I MEAN well, we had several factors working against us, Mr. Trump . . .”
Eh, I wasn’t exactly saying Kevin was smart, I’m just saying thatI see where he’s coming from. Actually, one summer I worked at an overpriced concesion stand on Lake Michigan, and I know you can always find people to pay ridicuouls prices for crap. It’s just that many black people are less inclined than many white people to do so (there were plenty of white people who were also like, “$2 for a bottle of water? Get real”). Given their state of dress (sporty casual, no theme) and their location (outside a subway), Kevin probably figured $1 to $2 was the most reasonable price they could hope to charge. Ivana had a chance to try to stop him: she didn’t tke it. When she found out about Mosaic’s $5 pricing, se could have moved her team to a different aea and upped their price. She didn’t. Sucks for her!
Why are they doing street tasks before the Final Four? And why are this year’s contestants so dumb that they don’t work the connections they made on previous tasks? Interesting-I did some research on M&M Mars and apparently they make both Whiskas and Pedigree (I was wondering if they were a Yum! brand which means they could have set up some dog-and-pony show using Pepsi whom they already worked with). Get some animals, some free pet food samples, set up in the park and create a buzz for families so you attract kids with fuzzy little dogs and M&M bars. Candy for dogs and babies! Do something, geez. Then even if you lose to the Power of Boobs you can put up a good argument for the fact that you tried and used a more creative technique. I thought last year’s hamsters were mediocre, this year’s candidates are bordering on moronic.
One thing they don’t seem to do at all is set up meetings with upper-level executives. I was never much of an Amy Henry fan but I thought it was interesting how she worked the Apprentice link to be able to meet with the president/upper level executives of tasks where they were assigned to particular companies. That way she could always just call back later and they would actually remember her (worked on the rickshaw task). I missed the first ten minutes-did the Apprenti do any research on M&M Mars? Did they send anyone to talk to an upper-level executive about doing more than doing first-grade street selling? I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body and even I can think of that.
No, they popped 'em straight into the factory and told 'em to get hustling, near as I can tell. With a production deadline, and only being able to use the bars they themselves produced, they could ill-afford to send people off for meetings then. Still, Jandifer managed to set up a promotional van and driver, so they must’ve talked to someone in the corporation.
Although, I read on the TWOP boards that Ivana claimed on the Today Show that they made the takes longer-to-process bar which was mistake number 1. If Ivana were intelligent, creative and efficient (which she’s not) she would have used the down-time for setting to ask for a quick meeting with someone for something.
The one thing I did like was that the hamsters were put to work on the factory floor. My father has been working for the same corporation for 35 years now (he’s an inventor) and he told me that during his apprenticeship (the first year) they made him actually work on the floor as a foreman so that he could get a better sense of what he was managing and the industry.
Which sort of bears out the whole unrealistic nature of the task. It kind of treated the pricing in a vacuum. But in the Real World, M&M/Mars competes against Nestle, Hershey’s, etc. The pricing for M&M/Mars’ products has been driven down to a certain level, and the game is all about building brand loyalty and gimmicks to draw in new customers. It’s volume volume volume. Kevin’s instincts, therefore, were very right for the real world in which candy bars are sold. They were not right for the artificial situation presented by this task, where your “competition” was only the other person selling these bars and where the goal was to maximize revenue from a finite supply of bars. Truth is, that’s not how M&M/ Mars approaches their business. If it were, they’d be out of business because the public doesn’t want to pay more than a buck or two for a candy bar. And they know that.
It might have been a more realistic task for them to develop an entirely new candy bar and then try and sell that with gimmicks. But that would have been far too similar to the ice cream task.
Another more realistic candy task might have been to run the production line for a night to produce candy bars. Whoever produced the most saleable candy bars wins. Or vary the sizes and say that whoever produces the greatest retail value of saleable candy bars wins. It’s all about optimizing the production process, an actual business skill. Not an exciting skill to film, and less opportunity to put Sandy and Jen in miniskirts, but a skill nonetheless.
Ivana’s incredibly bad judgement was clearly panic driven. She figured that losing the task meant she would be booted because a) she was the PMs and PMs take a lot of the blame (as they probably should) when they lose; b) She was going up against Kevin who I think she honestly viewed as strong; c) knowing what has transpired in the boardroom before where she has been told before by the Donald that he doesn’t particularly like her; and d) she had lost before and Kevin had not. So in her mind te only way to escape was to win and then she made the insane decision to out whore the M&M twins. So I can actually see how she got so desperate, but the ironic thing is that it seems like Kevin might very well have been the bootee on the pricing if Ivana had been less freakish.
As for Jen and Sandy, I stick by Sandy, because I think Trump is suspicious of Jenn. I know he likes fancy degrees but I also think he puts a lot of expectation with it and I just get te feeling that he thinks Jenn hasn’t been surviving, but not taking any chances. Sandy is smart and assured and I just think she will prevail over Jenn. TIme will tell.
If Ivana hadn’t stripped, I still think she would have been fired.
Kevin’s price cut would not have made a difference.
It seems as if Team Underwear did not sell all of their merchandise, while Team M&M sold everything.
Even if Team Underwear HAD sold all their merchandise, AT Ivana’s price, they still would have been creamed by M&M…mmmmm…CREAM M&Ms!
I think Kevin could have easily argued that he HAD to cut prices to move merchandise in that area (which Ivana selected).
Trump stated that he thought the three person team should have produced MUCH more candy than a two person team (though most of the candy was probably produced by the experts). If Team Underwear had outproduced the girls by a substantial market, they could have gone with lower prices, and greater volume.
All of these variables point to Ivana. I don’t think Kevin would have been fired and I don’t think there was ANY way Team Underwear could have beat the M&M Sisters.
It was a crappy challenge for this late in the game.
And yet I do have proof that Ivana upped her price and was able to sell candy bars at a higher price – not for as much as Team Sandifer, but more than we were ever shown. My mom had friends who were in New York last summer, standing in a line, and figured out that these were season 2 Apprenti. Everyone else in their line was ignoring them, so my mom’s friends called out that they wanted a candy bar, and Ivana came running. Sold them two for $5, which probably means she was able to up her price to one for $3/two for $5 at some point during the day.
They also took this photo of the team, which someone on TWOP identified as possibly Battery Park. I have no idea how far that would be from where they started selling originally.
My mom hasn’t yet responded to my query on whether Ivana dropped trou for the friends. And they’ve got the candy bars in their freezer to sell on eBay.
Oddly, Jenn was accused of flying under the radar, but it really is Kelly who has never been under direct, intensive scrutiny in the boardroom. We have no idea how he will perform when grilled and roughed up by an interviewer. If the grooming task and last show were any indication, he might fall hard next show. Ooooh, something to look forward to!
You’re kidding, right? Jenn obviously has a talent for creating connections with people she needs to impress in a short time. Why else would every PM go to bat for her in the boardroom? She even won over Sandy, who was ready to scratch her eyes out last week. Why was Jenn so successful in the QVC task, so impressive to the Levi’s guy? Because she comes across as trustworthy, efficient, confident, and smart. She has a great personal charisma, which thought you don’t seen it, has been demonstrated again and again on the show. I suspect she’ll ace those interviews.
Wake up. Sandy is the one who is mercurial, emotional, and easily frazzled. I think those interviews are going to kick her ass, and I actually feel sorry for her, because she turned out to be not a bad player after all. Not Final Two material, but decent, definitely in comparison with some of the other women I could name.
I don’t completely agree with you on Jenn, as you know – but I definitely agree with you on Sandy. She’s gotten infinitely further than anyone expected – and truly on her own merits. She’s hardworking, creative, and cooperative – but she’s not mature enough to be playing in the big leagues. (I don’t think that’s just about education – Troy was much more together than she is.)
And Mama Tiger – that is way too cool! Thanks for sharing!
Mama Tiger they were hanging out by the Staten Island Ferry terminal, which is a very high foot traffic area, and right beside Battery Park. Wall Street (also known as Flasher’s lane) is about five minutes north.
I’m thinking Kevin and Kelly deliberately decided to drop the prices in order to get Ivana fired. They knew what she was useless if thrown into a panic, unable to get anyone to do as she said, so they just threw the game.
Cool photo! I didn’t realize that Kelviana were actually dressed alike. I had noticed the M&M logo on Ivana’s shirt but not the guy’s, and I totally missed the M&M logo on the caps.
That’s definitely Battery Park. The brick-like structure you can see in the background (over Kelly’s left shoulder) is Castle Clinton. They appear to be on the walkway leading to the departure and disembarkation point for the ferry to Liberty & Ellis Islands, which is a very high-traffic area, especially in the summer. It’s just a few blocks (five minutes or less) from the section of Broadway where they were shown on the episode.
I agree with watsonwil that Ivana’s team lost the task in production. Had she any brains, she would have realized that Jenn and Sandy had a distinct advantage in street selling. Ivana should have gone for volume and a realistic price. However, after the production day finished her team only had 323 bars compared to Mosaic’s 290.
The stripping was just painful to watch. I couldn’t believe I actually started feeling sorry for Ivana after that. I hate her. Really hate her. But I had a hard time watching a woman get so desparate and reduce herself to that.
As for the prospects of the four remaining, I don’t have a clue who will make the finals.
I doubt Sandy will move on, which is a shame. I didn’t like her at first, but she’s seemed really gutsy and tenacious in recent tasks. Unfortunately, her lack of education shows in the way she presents herself. Plus she stumbles over her words when she’s nervous. I can see interviewers having doubts about whether she’d be able to command respect in a position of authority over seasoned associated. I think the actual job offered is probably more of a sinecure, but they’re pretending it’s not.
Kevin seems sharp, but there’s that sweating thing and the fact that he tends to shout when he gets excited. That could lead to the same kinds of doubts the interviewers may have about Sandy–can he command respect when he’s sweating or shouting like that?
Jenn can come across as really sharp or really plastic depending on whom you ask. It all depends on how she comes across to the interviewers. My guess is some will love her and some will hate her.
Kelly is just an unknown. I reallly haven’t seen much of what he’s done for good or bad. I know some people think he just coasted on this last task, but I don’t know if he really did or if he just didn’t have any good TV moments. He got blasted by Trump after the dog washing task and by George in this last task. Personally, I don’t think Kelly meant to exaggerate on the dog task. However, what matters is how it comes across to Trump, and I wonder if Kelly is all that good at giving Trump the answers he likes. He hasn’t shown much evidence of that so far. What I don’t know is if Trump really doesn’t like Kelly’s answers or if he’s just trying to put everyone on the hot seat in the boardroom.
The previews showed Jenn snapping “do you even know what a lawyer does” to someone. That’s probably Sandy. Don’t Kevin and Kelly have their JD’s or at least are working on them?
