Trump's Apprentice

Televisionwithoutpity.com is the BEST site ever for anything relating to TV.

This week's Apprentice was good, but the summary recap of last week's nearly brought me to tears. Luckily, I saved it for you! Brilliant, this writer is like a friend I've never met:

The deathwatch into tomorrow from last episode's four-person firing is mostly memorable because of Adam's stunned, extreme glee at having stayed up "until midnight!" Next morning, Kelly Perdew shows up for no reason whatsoever and then the "decimated" Excel gets Randal back, making him PM in a desperate bid for existence. He and his new happy, destined-for-success group (Brian, Marshawn and Rebecca) create a stunningly uninteresting but very informative and well-crafted seminar on "Making Your Mark," and Rebecca and Brian continue to be Kristi-esque about everything, worrying quietly about their chances at success. As the winning team, their reward is to go shopping for Michael Kors clothes, and Rebecca tries on hideous space pants.

Capital Edge, on the other hand, now consists of Alla, Felisha, Clay, Adam, and Markus. Yeah. Adam is PM, and immediately gets stuck between the "Sex Sells" team of Clay, Felisha, and Alla on one hand, and the "I Am Crazy" team of Markus on the other. When he's not blushing and feeling funny about the ways his body is changing as he grows up, he's taking Markus out into the hall for hushed and pointless conferences about how Markus is pointless and cannot speak or do anything useful. "Sex Sells" takes over -- Alla controlling Felisha and Adam masterfully -- and creates a somewhat vague "Sex At Work" seminar which is either about: the trouble sex can create, ways to respond to sex happening near you, or maybe how to do it. Whatever they're talking about, Adam is utterly uncomfortable, and Markus is talking about something, anything, everything else.

The presentations themselves are similarly one-sided: Excel is boring to talk about because Marshawn (the public speaking consultant) speaks publicly quite well, Randal (the most likeable person in the northern hemisphere) is quite likeable, Rebecca is fierce and intense, and Brian is great and tiny. They do a fantastic job, because they are the wheat of Team Excel and Trump has already sent the chaff flying. Capital Edge, on the other hand, is…well, this is where things get both awesome and incredibly horrific.

Clay tells totally professional and wicked appropriate stories to a hundred strangers about co-workers he's wanted to fuck, asses he's admired, and how he likes to be spanked, and then misspeaks to the tune of calling Adam a "tight Jewish boy." The ten minutes of stunned silence that follow provide a unique environment in which to ponder this, the first of several whacked-out, crazy scenes tonight. Adam does not take it well, additionally mishearing it to the tune of being called a "tight-ass Jew." Which is a little different, and explains much of what follows, but in terms of the task was just the off-putting icing on a big old man-kiss of a gay wedding cake. During the presentation, Markus plays with a yo-yo, because he knows naught of either "Sex" or "Work."

After Capital Edge loses by a large margin, Alla pulls the puppet strings on first Clay's perceived anti-Semitism, then his terrifying gay sexuality, where he is a gay and has gay sex with other gay men. Unable to think quickly enough to deal with any of this, Clay is sure he's a goner until the final Boardroom with Adam and Markus, onto whom Carolyn finally is. She points out how he's lazy and does nothing but whine, which provides him the perfect opportunity to say "I told you so" at the end of the task -- not that he really got the chance, because Markus's team hardly ever lost, in spite of him -- and that she basically hates him. Carolyn and George get down on their knees and beg Markus to make sense when he talks (Trump: "You talk in riddles!"), but he cannot, and finally Trump fires him just to shut him the hell up. Which he cannot do, and continues babbling crazily long after the taxi has already disappeared from our view.

You'd think that Markus getting fired would be the best part. It isn't. The best part is in the Boardroom leading up to Markus's firing, where Donald Trump has some kind of neurological event and goes completely apeshit. And I mean to say that you have never seen this kind of behavior in your life. He first abruptly asks Clay if he's gay, acts stunned that Clay is gay, ascertains that Clay is therefore not attracted to women, clarifies that this Venn diagram excludes even women such as Alla, and then explains to us that this is why restaurants have menus: while Trump likes steak, other people like spaghetti.

Later, without even stopping to breathe almost, he: asks Adam straight up if he's a virgin (he is, but won't admit it), counsels him not to be afraid of sex because it is "not a big deal," posits that Adam will ten years from now be more "comfortable with sex," shares that sex has gotten him into "a lot of trouble" and cost him "a lot of money," discusses at length whether Adam is "soft" or "hard," and wraps up by telling Adam that there's "nothing like" sex, and that he should look forward to having it one day, in the creepiest, ickiest, most pervuncular way imaginable. Best episode of any show this side of Trading Spouses ever, hands down. But where I can see them.