How much money do the groups have to spend to get their ideas into practice?
Could Nick, Amy and Kat’s team have raffled off the car and deducted the cost from their profits?
Did the other team give everyone in a line a free spin and a chance at $1,000? If so, that had the makings for a bad idea, unless the wheel was, um, fixed.
I don’t think the belly-dancer/circus thing was a bad idea – that’s why you go to Las Vegas, to see things that you won’t see in the mall on the weekend. All they needed to do was get people’s attention, get them in their line and make sure they were playing with their team’s ID cards. Old farts on vacation will follow a bejeweled navel anywhere.
Why does Amy act like this thing with Nick is one-sided? That’s not the way we’re seeing it. She’s definitely flirting with him. I lost respect for her last night, sleeping on the bus, saying she said she didn’t remember who thought up the promo, stealing people from the VIP line, and then sending Nick upstairs without a second thought. Does she think Nick is going to lay down his life for her in the board room next time?
Has anybody else been overwhelmed by the imagination of these people? The Crossfire and tiger were just the last in a long list of thoroughly uninspired stunts: Planet Hollywood was a disaster due to lack of imagination, the flea market wsa a disaster due to lack of imagination, for one team the rickshaws were a disaster due to lack of imagination. So much of business depends on promotion and marketing and surprisingly that seems to be the weakest point on both teams.
Oh, I don’t think Amy sending Nick up was a bad move at all. In fact, it was the only sensible move.
On the projects, you want to work with the strongest people - you can’t get fired if you don’t get called to the boardroom. Nick is obviously the better candidate compared to Katrina–a useless waste of human flesh–and Amy knew that if she made it to the next week, she’d have much better luck winning with Nick than with Katrina–and that’s not even going into the personality clashes.
Once in the boardroom, however, you send up the stronger candidates and you go in with the weaker candidate - it increases your chance of coming out of the boardroom heading up. If it was Amy vs Nick, say she has a 50-50% chance of coming out alive. But vs Katrina, she knew she had a much better chance - say 80-20% - of coming out alright, because she had 10 weeks of spotless performance. While all Katrina did for 10 weeks was shake her booty when things weren’t going her way. I wouldn’t hire her (or Assoroma) to clean my toilet. In fact, the only person fired so far who I would hire in a heartbeat - Heidi, oddly enough.
Simple strategy, and her ‘thingfling’ with Nick wasn’t an issue. I don’t think Amy would hesitate to pull out the knives on Mr. Smarmy if it came to it - although I wonder if Nick would be as willing to do so to Amy.
The car was a mistake on two levels: 1) the prize they were giving away – $300, or rent the Crossfire for the weekend – wasn’t much of a draw; and 2) as we saw, people see a car and some raffle tickets and assume they can actually win the car. When they find out that the prize is worth a lot less than a new Crossfire, they get disappointed. Of course, if they already signed up to gamble it doesn’t matter much, but it’s interesting to note that Amy’s team lost because they attracted a bunch of penny-ante gamblers – the kind to whom $300 would be a big deal.
Of course, I don’t know that it was a GIANT MISTAKE, but it wasn’t a particularly good idea.
Also, atrain is exactly right in describing why Amy was right to send Nick up to the suite, romance or no romance.
When Team Loser started stealing all the other teams ideas, I thought, “All’s fair…”
But when they tried to recruit customers out of the other team’s line!!!, then I cried foul. I loved how Troy moved them on.
However, when they tried to recruit the VIPs, I thought, “Hey, open territory, just like the gambling floor or the lobby.” And I thought that Bill had no right to throw out the ‘hookers.’
But it was then revealed later that Bill arranged for exclusive hunting rights in the VIP lobby. So, not only did Bill come up with a fantastic idea, but he anticipated the possibility of stealing from the other team and headed that off. Excellent play.
Also, I had a dream about Bill last night. It wasn’t erotic, just disturbingly friendly. And we were in a swimming pool together. Hmm… anyone know where I can pick Bill in an Apprentice betting pool?
Sure, but what happens when some of his hires don’t work out, lack certain skills, or don’t play well with others? He can fire them (manage them out), but if you do that every time you have an employee with a problem, you’ll have to spend all of your time hiring and training replacements, your organization will become unstable very quickly, and those with enormous potential will never have the opportunity to express it. A great manager is who one who can also manage people up – help them to smooth out their rough edges, gain the skills they need, and contribute to the team. That’s the skill set which I have yet to see Kwame demonstrate (Troy has it in abundance).
Yeah, another less than admirable feature in an otherwise likable chick. Whenever the subject is broached, Amy just kind of shrugs and says, “I think Nick has a crush on me.” But the footage you see of the two of them at any given moment shows a girl who’s ready to put the quarter in and ride that boy like a drugstore pony.
Someone mentioned Troy’s “slick” apartment trick from a few episodes back.
I never understood what was so slick about it. I don’t see what advantage he gained from the situation. It ended up a coin toss anyway, didn’t it?
In fact, I didn’t see any way anyone could get an advantage out of the situation–they were told to “negotiate” but not given anything to negotiate with. All they could do was sit there and talk about who wanted what, and how was that supposed to make any difference?
Flipping a coin was all they could ever do anyway.
Although, I was thinking maybe they should try to draw up a contract ceding percentages of profits or something like that, but it never even occured to them to do that so I imagine they weren’t supposed to be doing anything like that.
Anyway, can anyone explain what was so “slick” about the “trick” and why the other person got so mad about it?
Troy overheard Kristy talking about the apartment she wanted. He wanted it too, but didn’t let on. Kristy couldn’t get Troy to say his choice of apartment first. Finally, Kristy came up with a plan to write their choices on paper and reveal the paper simultaneously. Kristy wrote down her choice. Troy wrote down “I want what you want” as a semi-joke. Apparently, this so unnerved Kristy that she was rattled and upset about it all the way to the boardroom.
I used the word “slick” because it was smoothly and masterfully done. He played her like a fiddle with one hand and quietly and unobtrusively flipped her off with the other. It would have come down to a coin toss if he’d written down the address he wanted, so the end result was the same way, and she would have argued and bitched for hours before it got to that point. He saved them some valuable time, got them to his desired end result (coin toss), and made his opponent absolutely, utterly lose her shit (which resulted in her wasting valuable renovation time pissing and moaning and stewing over it all), and he did it all in one fell swoop, without ever compromising himself or his ethics. If that’s not slicker than greased owl shit, I don’t know what is.
Kuntrina was pissed for a couple of reasons: 1) she never got an opportunity to use her only viable negotiation tactic–flirting, and 2) things didn’t go exactly how she wanted them, and Kuntrina is always pissed when things don’t go her way. Troy’s had enough opportunity to study her that he already knew these things about her, and he used them (ethically) to his advantage. Like I said, slicker than greased owl shit, my man Troy.
NBC puts up the dossiers for each task on their website, which includes the amount of seed money for each task. The casino task included $2,000 of seed money.
The dossier also explains why both teams approached the problem in similar ways: they were required to construct a “game of chance or skill” as part of the task.
Dewey, aha! Thanks. I’ve often wondered how the teams managed if all they had were the very basic, general instructions that we see Trump give them on the show.
I just watched a clip of Katrina on Today w/Matt Lauer. Changed my opinion of her somewhat, although I haven’t seen many of the Apprentice episodes. Among other interesting comments was her statement that editing is the reason Amy seems to be the golden girl and that she’s not that great in actuality. I’d be interested to know what those of you who have seen most of the episodes think about what she had to say. Check her out here: http://msnvideo.msn.com/video/default.aspx?
Okay, I’m finally here. (Had to watch skating last night, didn’t see The Apprentice till I got home tonight.)
Good commentary, all.
Only thing to add – Kuntrina was on both Extra and Access Hollywood tonight accusing Amy of sleeping with Nick during the show and with another contestant (Bill? Kwame? surely not Troy!) since.
It’s interesting, as Trump himself pointed out, that the women were so dominant at the start of the show, but that the men have been picking them off one at a time ever since.
Did she say how she came to know this? If she did, I would assume it was either from Amy herself, which would indicate she’s with all the other “fire-ees” in the hotel, or from one of the three mentioned above, who would have to have been in the hotel with her and the other fire-ees, thereby disclosing a future firing.
Excuse the dumb question, but are the contestants kept out of the public eye until the shows have been aired? Is that what Starving Artist meant by the firees being together in a hotel?
On the first page, I said “Okay. Is everybody satisfied now about the hair?”.