At this point, the only ones I like are Lee and Roxanne. I guess Michael doesn’t bother me but he seems kind of ineffectual as a leader. As long as neither Charmaine or Andrea makes it to the end, I’ll be satisfied.
Why didn’t they take the deal with that business guy anyway. Even at $2 per sandwich that’s an additional $2,000. Or did they only have a maximum of 1,000 to sell?
Remember, the goal is profit, not revenue.
Lee did want to take the $2 deal but the PM refused to let him go under $2.50. It was her fault the deal fell through, not Lee’s.
Am I the only one who thinks the Gold Rush team is a little anti-Semitic. Maybe that’s not it exactly, but when you see the way they interact, you just get and got the impression that Lee and Lenny are not One of Us. For example, in the second show today, Lee mentioned that he had a problem with the price, and the rest of the team just ignored him. Now, putting aside the fact he was right, you get the impression that if it was Tarek who raised the price issue, they would have at least dealt with his concerns.
They just seem to have been marginalized from the start.
Yeah, they definitely don’t take Lee seriously – whether it’s anti-Semitism in its pure form, continuing snittiness about his taking off for major holidays whose significance they don’t understand, or just about his age, I don’t know.
I’m not a fan of his, BTW – he yaps. I don’t like yappers. The Boardroom thing last night where they both just kept talking and talking and talking at once – I would have fired both of them for making my head hurt.
Charmaine may be annoying, but she was on point about Lee’s immaturity showing. He displayed the same bad judgement that Hop-A-Long Cassidy did last season: showing loyalty to someone who doesn’t deserve it. That’s not sticking by principles. That’s just stupid.
Making friends and supporting them is alright, but not when that friend is incompetent. And Lenny was one of the worse PM’s the series has had. Michael drove me nuts with his over-analysis and indecision, but Lenny was on the opposite end of the spectrum with his lack of foresight.
Lee wasn’t listened to, and I think Leslie deserved to be fired. But he’s not working well with his team, and I think he only has himself to be blamed for that.
Lee’s loyalty toward Lenny was both misplaced and surprising. First of all, you have to do what’s best for the team, not for whoever happens to be your buddy. And second, was Lee aware that Lenny dismissed him as being “lazy” when Lee first chose to take off in observance of his Jewish holidays?
Both episodes were nearly done deals from the git-go. Lenny’s inability to lead at the meeting with the Ace hardware folks caused his team to miss the boat on the philosophy of the Boys & Girls Club and he insulted Ace Hardware by calling the stores “little.” He floundered through the task, blew the presentation and was a dud in the boardroom. (And Lee seemed to be cast in the Peter Lorre role of faithful yes-man. Spooky!)
Second episode was toast from the minute What’s-Her-Face Loser Girl (Is it Leslie?) priced that hideous sandwich at $7.99. Was she crazy? Birthdays don’t count in Trump-World.
I don’t like any of these doofuses. . . but the one who really scares me is Andrea. That woman is an ice cube. She is so into herself! I hope Trump boots her soon.
I am afraid I have to officially retire from doing the Raj Ratings. I just can’t seem to catch the show reliably. Sorry folks. I’m sad to hear that Lenny got the axe but it seemed inevitable as he slowly crashed through the show so far.
Did I not understand the measurement for success on the second task with 7-11? Was it the greatest profit or the greatest increase from same day last year? If this was a new product they were promoting (and it seemed that it was) how could they compare to last year? If it was profit, how could they get measurable results like “an increase of 900%”?
I like the objectively judged tasks much better but what exactly is the measure?
ronincyberpunk, thanks for giving it a whirl though. Maybe next season things will have settled down for you enough that you can give it another try.
[QUOTE=annieclaus]
Both episodes were nearly done deals from the git-go. Lenny’s inability to lead at the meeting with the Ace hardware folks caused his team to miss the boat on the philosophy of the Boys & Girls Club and he insulted Ace Hardware by calling the stores “little.” /QUOTE]
I can sort of see where he got that impression though. I know Ace has big stores on the scale of Home Depot and Eagle but around here, we don’t have any that I know of. Instead, Ace is generally affiliated with the old-fashioned neighborhood hardware stores. I don’t know where Lenny lives but if he’s only seen the name attached to mom-and-pop places, I can see how he could get the impression that Ace is “little.” However, all those mom-and-pops together across the country certainly would pull in a huge amount of revenue for Ace even if they didn’t have any big stores. Lenny should have realized that. Plus, Ace would never have gotten a chance to be associated with a task if they were a small, rinky-dink organization.
Lenny’s I’m-from-Russia-I-do-not-know-of-these-things excuse has gotten old. I got a bit irritated when he used it yet again. He’s been here 14 years. It’s time to get off that crutch.
I loved how Bill dressed down Michael. “You’ve been on this task for 12 hours and all you’ve done is pick out paint?” He’s a nice guy but leadership material, he is not. When Michael was at Ace, deciding on which shade of green to use, I thought he should have picked up some WD40 to lube up those rusty gears in his brain.
In the next task, I had to admire Lee’s initiative. He does need to learn when to talk and when to listen but he’s a smart kid. He’ll figure it out. Probably sooner rather than later too.
After he told Leslie and Charmaine that the managers were saying the price was too high, I thought it was dumb of Leslie to mention that he wouldn’t put his heart into selling now that she shot him down. She should have done something about it. The balloons she and Charmaine were blowing up weren’t so important that both had to do it themselves. If she really felt that he was a liability at that moment, why not let him blow up the balloons while they did the selling? At least that could have given him time to get back into the mood.
However, I like the way it worked out. He really proved her wrong. He was trying to sell on a big scale! So he was gone for 45 minutes. Did they really need another person at a small store like 7-11 trying to force people to buy something they don’t want? If Leslie had let him close the deal for the 1000 P’EatZZas, they would have been in fat city.
Even though it didn’t go through, Lee knew that Trump would appreciate his initiative because it is exactly the sort of thing Trump would have done himself when he was starting out. I think Lee is tired of being on the losing team and is really trying to think out of the box in order to get a win. He’d love to see his teammates do well but if they don’t want to do anything groundshaking, then he will do what he can to stand above them. Trump already liked him before this. Now he must love him. At this point, I predict Lee will be in the final two and probably will win.
Is Tarek the worst saleman ever? The P’EatZZa will “change your whole concept of reality?” Come on! And while we’re at it, is the P’EatZZa the worst product name ever? Sounds like you got a bit of Parmesan cheese down the wrong pipe just as you were saying it. I hate the way it’s spelled too.
Lee had a good point about the market being college kids as well, and how they should have priced accordingly. Because, let’s face it, the only people who could possibly want to buy, eat and digest those things are going to be drunk and/or stoned college students.
Just a few predictions:
Allie- too kewpie doll, doesn’t appear to have the chops to hang. Has done nothing necessarily noteworthy; will eventually drift out before the final 4. She and Bond-wannabe should just hook up and get it over with.
Andrea- cold and calculating, and arrogant enough that I think Trump likes her. She’s definitive and decisive, but the only problem is some of her decisions are bad. Baseball caps to promote those disgusting-looking pizza things that no two people pronounced the same? Please. Still, she’ll be in the final 4.
Charmaine- she’s an emotional roller-coaster & is unable to keep her mouth shut. When she was chasing after Lenny trying to get him to say goodbye to her, she was like a 5-year old desperately seeking daddy’s attention. She’s not used to people dissing her, which won’t serve her well in business. She’s gone.
Lee- smart and creative, loyal and principled. He talked Leslie into submission and he was right on point about everything he said. On the downside, he’s young and Trump might want him to get a little more real-world experience. Final 4.
Michael- the guy can’t make a decision to save his life. Calling Roxanne to ask if he could paint the pipes a different color? You’re the project manager, dude. Manage this one inconsequential little detail, whadda ya say? Goner.
Roxanne- average. Nothing terribly great, nothing terribly bad. She’ll drift into the final 4.
Sean- despite not having the arrogance and hubris that Trump seems to admire, he seems to be one of the more normal, level-headed contestants. He’ll be in the final 4.
Tammy- she’s filler at this point. She’ll project manage something and lose, and she’ll be the worst of all evils that led to the failure. Gone.
Tarek- he’s hanging by a thread. There will be a smackdown between him and Lee and Tarek will hit the bricks. See ya.
Wow, two in one night – I’m really going to have to scramble!
Okay, this episode came down to a simple question: Which is a worse trait in a leader, arrogance or indecisiveness? Let’s go to the point assignment:
Yet another episode starting with one team member in tears over the (prospective) loss of another team member and another team member trying to comfort her. I was going to ding Leslie, but she made a nice recovery by the time she was back in public, able to dismiss the loss of Bryce with just a shrug and ‘he is a good friend’ comment.
Lenny: -1 for deciding on a single activity focus AND most of all, for deciding on his theme before they even had a chance to hear what the judges were looking for.
Charmaine: +1 for realizing the importance of questioning the judges and trying to get Lenny to set the team to thinking about what they should ask.
Lenny: -1 for blowing her off. He’s decided single-handedly on what the answer will be, don’t bother confusing him by telling him exactly what the question is.
Lenny: -1 for making it utterly clear to the execs that he had NO interest about what they had to say.
Charmaine: -1 for screwing up the name of the Ace program. Zatharusta, er, Zarathustra, anyone?
Lenny: -1 for calling Ace Hardware “small stores” – good, let’s offend the sponsor/judge a little more.
[Off topic: this is the first time I’ve noticed Trump’s little business sermon being so misleading. “Be decisive or your team won’t back you” – clearly that rule was broken over and over by Michael, not Lenny.]
Michael: +1 for realizing the importance of knowing what exactly the client wants AND that it’s most important to satisfy the judges.
Michael: -1 for letting the meeting drag on too long. After three hours they’d finally settled on the main activities…and then they went on to spend hours more sitting around and discussing EVERY THING en masse. At least split into subcommittees and divide the details of given areas to various teams.
Andrea: +1 for stressing the interactivity idea.
Allie: +1 for realizing the impact of the time passing. She told Michael the store would be closing in 4 hours and that at least some of them should start shopping.
Michael: -1 for ignoring that and insisting everyone must stay there and debate color choices another three hours.
Roxanne & Tammy: +1 for finally convincing Michael to let part of the team go and start buying the electronics.
Charmaine: -1 for excessive whining – we should have hired professionals, we’ll have to put on two coats of paint, the trash is too heavy. No, none of that caused the team to lose, but it’s a real drag on morale.
Michael: -1 Even when he’s told they need a ‘fast decision’, even when it’s down to picking between three color samples…he still can’t make up his mind. Here’s a hint: it’s for KIDS. They aren’t all that judgmental over what colors go with what. Just pick something bright and lively and move on.
Michael: -1 for calling the other team to discuss paint schemes AGAIN. You’ve only discussed it for six hours already, obviously there are more details to chew over…
Michael: -2 for the way Roxanne, Sean and Allie were reduced to laughing at you. Yes, it’s rude, but clearly they’d gotten battle fatique over the color question and you’ve obviously driven them way, way beyond respecting your leadership.
Michael: -1 for general inability to make a decision. Showcased by having Bill point out that you’ve spent 9 hours to come up with the decision on what color to paint the walls.
Andrea: +1 for finally stepping up and assigning which walls and heating ducts will be painted which color, a decision that took her apparently five seconds. Yes, it’s rather bossy considering you weren’t the boss, but thank you for putting an end to the color question. If you hadn’t, who knows if Michael would have EVER come to a decision.
Lenny: -1 for doing the shopping with Lee. There was hard physical work to be done on site, and you took away two strong guys. At the very least, you should have stayed on site and sent Lee and one of the women.
Lenny and Lee: -1 each for the stupidity of giving directions from the back of the van even though you both admitted you couldn’t see anything. Duh – ever heard of the front seat? Or were you two so smitten with each other you couldn’t give up precious time huddled together in the back??
Michael: +1 for his presentation to the judges. He remembered their hot points “team work” and “interactive” and repeatedly showed how their product satisfied the hot points, and stressed the importance of having activities to appeal to children with different interests. You didn’t know that Goldrush was a one-trick pony, but that point turned out to be telling.
Lenny: -1 for insisting on doing the presentation, despite knowing others could do it more fluently.
Lenny: -1 for the bad presentation.
Lee: +1 for doing his best to bail Lenny out of awkwardness during the presentation.
Win/Lose points: Michael: +1 Your team won, but it was pretty much in spite of you. Lenny: -2 You lost, and it was maybe 95% your fault.
Reward footage: no points assigned.
Lee +1 for trying to prep Lenny for the boardroom. Loyal friendship AND you clearly have some grasp of what Trump wants, and doesn’t want, to hear in the Boardroom. (Good little politician, just as Trump says.) And agreeing to be one of the chosen victims in order to be there to advocate for Lenny was going above and beyond.
Boardroom:
Lenny: -1 for so adamantly refusing to accept the importance of pleasing the judges.
Charmaine: +1 for bringing up that Lenny failed to properly questiong the execs. That was the bottom line cause of their loss, and laying it at Lenny’s feet was strategic.
Lenny: -1 for saying ‘you weren’t out to please the judges.’ True, but extremely stupid. Best line of week to Bill: “You want to win?”
Lenny: -1 for not being able to articulate a good reason for having done the presentation himself – and this after Lee coached him on that very point.
Leslie: +1 for not displaying false modesty over your athletic skills. Hopefully Trump saw it as confidence in your own abilities rather than being deliberately confrontational. Trump seemed to take it in good humor – but look at what happens next episode…
Lenny: -1 for claiming your team was ‘conspiring against you’ and saying Tarek was ‘stabbing you from the back.’ Paranoid, much?
Lenny: -1 for flat out contradicting Trump over and over. Trump says “You chose a bad theme” you say “No I didn’t.” Again, you don’t seem to understand the importance of keeping on the good side of those who make the decisions.
Lee: -1 for saying Lenny did a “fantastic job” and that Charmaine was the one who deserved to be fired. There’s shading the truth to favor your friends and then there’s flat out delusional lying.
Lenny: -1 for admitting that you would bring Lee to the boardroom to advocate for you. A) You are admitting that you are refusing to bring ‘those most responsible for the loss’ and B) you are saying you don’t feel strong enough to stand up for yourself.
Selecting Boardroom Victims: Well, they didn’t actually go, but you picked them. Charmaine was at least arguable – clearly Tarek and Leslie didn’t do any worse than she did – but you didn’t even pretend Lee was a reasonable choice, so Lenny gets -1 for nominating Lee.
Final Showdown: None. There really was no question at all – the only one responsible for Gold Rush losing this time was Lenny.
Charmaine: +1 for Trump’s saying you had be right about all the points you made.
Scores for the Candidates
Name : points for this episode : cumulative points [win/lose record as PM]
Roxanne : +1 : +7 [1/0]
Sean : 0 : +6 [1/0]
Allie : +1 : +5 [1/0]
Andrea: +2 : +3 [1/0]
Leslie : +1 : +2 [0/0]
Charmaine : +1 : +1 [1/0]
Tammy: +1 : +1 [0/1]
Lee : 0 : -1 [1/0]
Michael: -4 : -1 [1/0]
Tarek : 0 : -17 [0/1]
[Added the PM stats this time, because they might start having significance. As of this episode, there are 10 apprentices still in the running. All but Leslie have had a turn as PM. Seven episodes: all seven winning PMs are still in the game. Of the seven losing PMs, only Tarek and Tammy survive. I suppose that is reasonable: this is a test of leadership, after all, and being PM lets both your skills AND faults show clearly.]
Fired:
Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : # episodes lasted : pts/episode
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:
Hmm. Charmaine might not be a zombie after all. We’ll see.
One thing I’ve noticed over and over in this series is that the male players seem to be really good at leaving the conflict in the boardroom. They fight it out, sometimes viciously, but as soon as they leave they all shake hands and hug and seem not to bear any grudges. Some of the women have managed to do the same, but others clearly take the conflict personally. (I don’t know if this is a natural trait – women being more emotional – or a training thing, with men having been taught not to show when they are hurt/upset.)
Anyway, Lenny was a big exception. His reaction to Charmaine seemed VERY personal. And I wonder about that thousand faces thing. Was there something between them (just a closer friendship, I’m not saying they were lovers) early on, so that he found her saying he was a bad leader as some horrendous betrayal he couldn’t get over?
Oh, and the answer to the question I posed seems to be that arrogance is worse than indecision. A team can ‘manage from below’ and work around an indecisive boss, but an arrogant one firmly keeps his team on the path to failure.
SBS
Yeah, instead of whatever the heck they were calling that thing, they just should have called it the “The Munchiewich”.
BTW, did you all notice that they said “in two weeks” during the promo of the next episode? Boooo!
This was a rather unusual episode. Very simple and straightforward. There were pretty much only two important decisions to make – what promo item to give out and how much to charge for the p’eatzza. (Or however that is supposed to be spelled/punctuated. I plan to call it the “P thing.”)
Point by point:
Michael: -1 for his reaction to being confronted by Allie, Andrea and Roxanne. They weren’t excessively abusive, and complainted about a single flaw: his taking way too long to make decisions. Instead of having enough self-knowledge to see they had a point, and maybe learn from it, he walked away and complained that they were picking on him as an outsider.
Charmaine: +1 for her private confrontation with Lee. She was right, he was letting his heart rule him, deciding based on who he was friends with instead of making cooler, more objective, more businesslike decisions based on facts.
Lee: -1 for saying he would continue to decide based on friendship and relationships. Lee, loyalty is good, but claiming black is ‘white’, when you know damned well it’s 'black, solely based on who you think is ‘really neat’ is not a “principal” you should boast about following.
Michael: -1 for volunteering to go to Goldrush. Your jump from a team that had won 3 times straight to the team they beaten came across as a childish act. A combo of “Well, I hate you too!” and “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone!”
Andrea: -1 for being proud of being a control freak. It’s good that you know you tend to grab for control over everything – but you should use that self-knowledge to try to controll your controllingness, or at least make attempts to disguise it.
Tammy: +1 for the sensible argument that give away cups would make sense in relation to a food promotion.
Sean: +1 for making the point that the cup might act to increast the sales of drinks, for extra income.
Andrea: -1 for simply insisting on the caps, giving no reason at all except “I think caps are better.” In fact they turned out to be a poor choice, apparently not being seen as a good incentive by the customers.
Lee: +1 for knowing the customers in the are were largely college students and thus they should tailor their efforts to students.
Leslie: +1 for picking the cooler as a give away. It was clearly a more desirable item than the cap.
Lee: +1 for asking the manager to take all the other sandwiches off display to highlight the P-thing.
Leslie: -2 for overpricing the P-thing. She said she spent several hours ‘researching the price point’ but clearly she wasn’t looking at the right comps. As George pointed out, the thing is basically two $1.75 slices of pizza with a bit of lettuce and tomato inside. $4 was a reasonable price, $8 was absurd. Actually, when I think of cold pizza I think ‘leftover’, meaning the price should be CHEAPER than the price charged for nice fresh hot pizza. Why should anyone pay such a premium for a cold, premade item when the same amount of money would get you decent freshly made sandwich from a deli, or even something hot and freshly cooked? Anyway, all of the team agreed except Lee, but the final decision was hers.
Lee: +1 for the early research he did on the proper price AND for bringing Leslie the info about the store managers’ reaction to their price.
Sean: +1 for suggesting (so far as we could see) the $4 price for Synergy.
Andrea: +1 for settling on that price.
From what we were shown, it looked like ALL of the apprentices worked hard at setting up the sales materials AND at the selling itself AND they all worked well together. +1 to everyone
Lee: +1 for attempting the Grand Sandwich Sale Coup. In the end it didn’t work, but it was audacious and showed initiative, same as doing the price checking on his own.
Win/Lose points: Andrea +2, Leslie -2. 997% vs. 608% increase is a significant margin of victory. Also, this was a task that was basically won or lost by the decisions of the Project manager, so they get full credit and full demerits for the outcome.
Michael: -1 for the irony of what he said about how he finally felt he fit in ‘even though’ his team lost. Uh, do you hear what you’re saying? If you don’t ‘fit in’ with the winners and do ‘fit in’ with the losers…what does that say about which you are?
Leslie: -1 for calling Lee’s attempted deal ‘shady.’ It was unsuccessful in the end, but not at all dishonest.
Charmaine: +1 for having Trump call you a great presenter.
Lee: -1 for not being able to sell his view of what the price should be AND for not going all out. He knew the price should be around $5, but only dared suggest dropping from $8 to $7. You need to be more persuasive and confident in your own ideas.
Selection of victims: You could make at least a weak argument that Lee wasted time, but nothing shown or said hinted that anyone else on the team did anything but work all out. So no points off for taking the wrong victim or failing to bring the right one. Leslie: 0
Charmaine: +1 point for the way Trump let you speak, and listened to you, after the selection of the boardroom victims had already occured. It’s not that you said anything new, wonderful, or amazingly persuasive, but that Trump seemed to be indulging you fondly. I think it’s definite that Trump likes you, and that has got to be worth a point in the end.
Lee: +1 for bringing up your initiative on clearing out the sandwich section.
Leslie: -1 for being totally overmatched by Lee’s non-stop flow of arguments. Yes, Lee was being obnoxious, but you showed that you were unable to be aggressive or commanding enough to seize control of the debate.
Lee: +1 for bringing up the point of targetting a price-conscious audience.
Lee: -1 for Trump saying he didn’t think you were being as impressive as you should /could be.
Scores for the Candidates
Name : points for this episode : cumulative points [win/lose record as PM]
Sean : +3 : +9 [1/0]
Roxanne : +1 : +8 [1/0]
Allie : +1 : +6 [1/0]
Andrea: +2 : +5 [2/0]
Charmaine : +4 : +5 [1/0]
Tammy: +2 : +3 [0/1]
Lee : +4 : +3 [1/0]
Michael: -2 : -3 [1/0]
Tarek : +1 : -16 [0/1]
Fired:
Name : Score in final episode : cumulative score : # episodes lasted : pts/episode
Leslie : -4 : -2 : 8 episodes : -0.5 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
Note: Leslie is noteworthy for losing with many fewer negative points per episode. I feel bad for her – yes, her team lost, and it was her pricing decision that was the critical problem. OTOH…that was one bad decision. Many other players are still in the game after making a bad decision or two. It was just rotten luck that her mistake happened on a task where it turned out to be so crucial.
SBS
No show next week because of NBC’s week-long event: Celebrity Cooking (or something like that).
I really enjoy the SBS Scorecard ™ every week! It’s a fascinating way to break down results; and due to the scrutiny you subject everything to as you score, you always end up being able to highlight something I totally missed.
This week, the stuff you illuminated for me was all about Michael:
I totally missed the implications of that dynamic ( :smack: ) – you’re right on target on that. As you were with:
Definitely dead man walking. It will be interesting to see what happens to him next time he’s in the Boardroom.
What kind of car was that?