Sorry this is late. The truth is, I fell asleep about halfway during the original showing, and what with all the other season ending stunts going on, it wasn’t until today that I watched it. Which says something bad about the show, I fear. I mean, I’m probably one of the people who has been paying the MOST attention to this show, and I wasn’t even curious enough about who was fired not to wait two days.
Oh, well. On to the points:
Lee: +1 for the truth behind someone saying “Trump must really like you” for you to have survived so many boardrooms. You’re a brash New Yorker – traits Trump is quite comfortable with. There are psychological studies that show we are biased in favor of people who have similar traits to us, whether we realize it or not.
Tammy: -1 for lack of leadership. You failed to get your team to agree on an idea and you failed to make them feel like valued parts of a team. Yes, as PM you had the final say, but it came across as you fell in love with your initial idea and simply would not listen or consider any differing ideas.
Tammy: -1 for the overall stupidity of what you did. You NEEDED the whole-hearted efforts of your team, you knew you didn’t have it, and you simply bulled ahead with your own idea. You would have done better to spend a couple of hours in discussion, if need be. Talk over their ideas, maybe adopt some points, maybe even find a third idea that was better than either. The team is a lot more likely to help you if they feel you’re not treating them as hired hands who have to shut up and do what the boss demands. If nothing else, you could have pointed out to them that the best way to advance in this game is to force the OTHER team to go to the boardroom. Even if they hate your idea, making it come out as best possible is in all three of your best interest.
Allie: -1 for primping in the mirrors. Get your mind on the job!
Allie: -1 for not backing your leader when she was explaining the idea to Bill. Disloyalty is a no-no. Even if you don’t want to display enthusiasm for the idea, you could at least listen raptly and attentively.
Lee: +1 and Sean: +1 for what looked like great cooperation with each other.
Roxanne: -1 for not being able to say when the sign would be ready. That’s a pretty basic fact for you not to have asked about.
Roxanne: -1 for complaining about the look Tammy gave you when you didn’t know when the sign would be ready. In light of constant looks you and Allie had been exchanging that was just too royally hypocritical of you.
Actually, another -1 each for Roxanne and Allie for all those rolled eyes/raised eyes/raised eyebrows or whatever you want to call them AND for nitpicking over exactly what you were doing. Call it what you will, you were making it clear to those around you that you thought your PM and/or her ideas were stupid. Bad teammates!
Tammy: -2 for your announcing that you wanted it be “About me.” Oh, such a great way to get the others on your side. “Hey, you know this competition we’re all in? I want to grab ALL the glory for myself, and you all should shut up and bust your ass to make ME look good.” It didn’t take a mindreader to hear how the other two greeted this: “You want all the glory? Then you can take all the blame when we lose, bitch!”
Sean: -1 for not having a better back up plan. From the moment you got that call saying the floor would be arriving SEVEN HOURS LATE you should have been scrambling for options on what to do if the ceiling didn’t arrive either. And it wouldn’t have been that hard – that store had the same dropped grid ceiling almost every store has, and they all hang signs and display items from it all the time. Get one of the extension platform things, mark out the ellipse on the ceiling. Attach hooks to the grid following the ellipse as best possible with lengths of fishing line hanging down from each. If the ceiling arrives in time, fine, it’ll take only moments to pull the hooks off if they are in the way of the ceiling installation. If the ceiling isn’t there when you need it, simply hang the wraparound sign from the handing lines. So simple. What else did you have to do during that seven hours?
Lee: +1 for realizing the importance of pleasing WalMart by displaying the addons and their prices and such.
Roxanne: -1 for inadequate signage. I don’t think it was deliberate sabotage – you clearly had ordered the signs prior to the ‘It’s all about me’ confrontation – but the sign was too small, too inconspicuous, utterly boring text with no graphics. Not at all a match for a gee-whizzy thing like the XBox.
Roxanne: -1 for you snarky attitude in the confessional: so what if the sign isn’t great, you won’t listen to complaints??? Since when isn’t poor performance something too gripe about?
Lee: +1 for knowing you had to hang the wrap around as best possible NOW instead of waiting vainly. Bad was better than nothing at that point.
Tammy and Sean each +1 for their presentation – well delivered.
Allie: -1 for saying you felt better about your team’s job now that you knew the other team had had problems. Reasonable enough to feel that way, but more disrepect to your team when there were plenty of ‘We worked hard and we hope the judges liked it’ type comments you could have made.
Tammy: -1 for not having prices and such clearly displayed. You were so in love with your Academy Award theme you totally forgot the real point is to SELL STUFF.
Win/Lose pts: Sean: +2 Tammy: -2. A clear and unanimous declared victory, and it really all came down to the chosen idea rather than performance by the team.
Interesting reactions when Trump says he’ll ‘see the losers in the boardroom’: Roxanne looks serious, Allie frowns, Tammy had an almost Mona Lisa-ish smile. HUH???
Boardroom:
Tammy: -2 for repeating about how it was all her ‘vision’. And you had to notice how tight her voice got, and how shrill. Raising your volume is fine, but raising your pitch shows you’re on the defensive and expecting things to go bad for you. And then you said that not having the price displayed was your failure as the PM.
Allie: -2 for denying that you rolled your eyes only to have Bill and Ivanka contradict you.
Roxanne: -1 for Tammy’s comments about how you create drama and have been riding on Allie’s coattails. Not that we saw this, or heard about it before now, but the fact that the editors included negative comments about you is telling. That isn’t the way they generally edit the winner.
Roxanne: -1 for Trump saying you didn’t get along with people. Again, the opposite of how winners are shown.
Allie: -1 for not having a good answer to Ivanka’s question about what you did. Clearly not much, creatively, so why not say: Tammy was so intent on having the entire project be her vision that she wouldn’t delegate meaningful tasks. We did the scutt work, such as putting together stands and other items for the display.
Allie: +1 for having Roxanne call Allie the more diplomatic of the two of them? Wow. That is so not how they were edited up until this episode.
Allie: +1 for having the sense to keep her mouth shut as much as possible. It was pretty clear that the fault for this failure would inevitably fall on Tammy, and Roxanne was leading the battle to make that clear, so trying not to draw any unnecessary attention to herself was sensible.
Tammy: -1 for Trump saying you were in over your head.
Tammy: -2 for the whining. Twice you complained that everything on you in the end. Guess what? That’s what being the manager means, that YOU are the one in charge and have to make the hard calls.
Tammy: -1 for Trump saying you had no control over your team.
Tammy: -1 for Trump saying you didn’t have your team’s respect.
Tammy: -1 for the final ‘bad leadership’ and ‘your design stunk’ comments from Trump.
Allie: -1 for the mis-timed effort to suck up to Trump with that ‘no more eye-rolling’ comment. Maybe you just wanted to say you recognized a fault and would fix it, but it was the wrong time and Trump was in no mood to hear it then.
Scores for the Candidates
Name : points for this episode : cumulative points [win/lose record as PM]
Sean : +3 : +14 [2/0]
Lee : +4 : +11 [2/1]
Roxanne : -7 : +9 [2/0]
Allie : -6 : -2 [1/1]
Fired:
Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : # episodes lasted : pts/episode
Tammy: -14 : -9 : 12 episodes: -0.5 pts/episode [1/2]
Michael: -4 : -7 : 11 episodes : -0.6 pts/episode [1/0]
Tarek : -1 : -15 : 10 episodes : -1.5 pts/episode [0/1]
Charmaine : -10 : -4 : 10 episodes : -0.4 pts/episode [1/1]
Andrea: -6 : -1: 9 episodes : -0.67 pts/episode [2/0]
Leslie : -4 : -2 : 8 episodes : -0.25 pts/episode [0/1]
Lenny: -17 : -17 : 7 episodes : -2.4 pts/episode
Bryce : -12 : -11 : 6 episodes : -1.8 pts/episode
Dan : -12 : -12 : 5 episodes : -2.4 pts/episode
Brent: -9 : -14 : 4 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Teresa: -10 : -11 : 3 episodes : -3.7 pts/episode
Pepi: -6 : -5 : 2 episodes : -2.5 pts/episode
Stacy : -7 : -7 : 2 episodes : -3.5 pts/episode
Summer: -12 : 1 episode : -12 pts/episode
Notes: The coming attractions showed a runway plus Trump said there would be three more episodes. Which could be:
From 4 --> 3 – putting on a fashion show/charity event?
From 3 --> 2 – some every man for himself assignment?
From 2 -->1 finale.
Or maybe the entire losing team gets fired next episode, that then they split the final contest into two episodes.
Wow, this week the women suddenly went from golden girls to witches. Tammy clearly deserved to be fired – the problem was the basic concept, and that was all hers – but the other two rang up impressive negative scores, too.
In contrast, Lee had a stellar episode. He didn’t draw even a single negative point from me this time.
Prediction: Well, Roxanne didn’t exactly start spewing pea soup, but instead of being edited as a beautifully controlled, well-spoken woman she got described as a trouble maker, a brown noser, a coat tail rider, and on and on. I really don’t think they would show us the ultimate winner in that completely negative a light this close to the end, so Roxanne is now a Zombie. Allie tumbled, too, but not nearly as badly, IMHO, even though Roxanne has a better score pointwise.
Well, I did say that momentum towards the end would count, too. Better to be coming on strong from behind (like Lee) than standing still, and worst of all is to suddenly nose-dive.
Right now I’m expecting Lee to beat Sean in the final two, with Allie going out at third and Roxanne at fourth.
SBS