Well, I've finally watched this week's Apprentice episode, though I'm not so sure that it was exactly the same episode you might have seen if you watched it on Thursday. See, there were 15 bonus boardroom minutes, but the show was still only an hour long, and I'm pretty sure that they accomlished this by breezing over the actual task part of the episode pretty rapidly, because the show I saw seemed to be almost all boardroom. Even so, I've heard from other viewers that the crazy Crest lady was not in evidence in the version they saw either, and though it's understandable on Proctor & Gamble's part to quash any mention of the incident, I am still extremely disgruntled about that ("New Crest Vanilla Mint: Feel the Seizure! " Yeah, perhaps it wouldn't have made for the most effective brand positioning , but it could have easily knocked off Wake Up With The King as my favorite ad campaign... well, maybe, I do really love that King. And this one.) Speaking of love, my warm and friendly feelings for Lil' Stacy went through some shaky moments during the course of the episode. She spoke much more than ever before this week, and that nearly caused her to lose my affection, as I did not initially agree with the words that were coming out of her wee mouth. I had been becoming somewhat impressed with Jennifer M. and her level-headed and persuasive attack on Elizabeth when from out of the blue Stacy R. went after Stacie J. , when Stacie hadn't done anything that really seemed to doom the project in any way this week. They didn't get the toothpaste the night before, but it seemed like they had toothpaste at the fairly lame event they put together, so no harm done as far as I could tell. I think that Jennifer has to go after Liz, though, because it is very hard to tell them apart, and she could easily end up getting accidentally fired for something Elizabeth does, or something Sandy does for that matter (who totally got her Mike Piazza suggestion snagged by Jenn C. without putting up any fight and then called Stacy R. 'Little Stacy', both of which earn her no points in my book, though I did enjoy when she said "I would not have a person like that working in my bridal shop" and I suppose I have been commenting on my honey's size constantly myself, but not in front of her, and that is an important disitinction, I think) . I have some suspicians that the name similarity may explain some of Lil' Stacy's desire to eliminate Stacie J., too. Before going any further, just so it is on the record, I still hate Ivana and Andy very much, and this week's most disappointing 'road not taken' was Pamela's terror-iffic idea to pump vanilla fumes into the subway system. Since the reports were that the homeless woman meltdown happned to the team in Washington Square Park, I'm going to speculate that Pamela was behind that idea, too, as long as I'm being forced to imagine what actually went down by the weak-willed, advertiser-bullied producers of this show. Back now to the firing of Stacie J. and why I've decided to stick up for my lil' darlin's decision to drag her into the mix and divert the attention from the people who actually screwed up the worst this week, the other 2 in the boardroom and Ivana. It's because the smallest contestant was looking at the larger picture, and deserving or not, Stacie J. was scaring the populace even more than Pamela gassing the MTA would have. It was one of Stacy R.'s 'most scary moments in her life' and no one gets away with scaring my girlfriend, even if she is being a little overdramatic, along with everyone else, about the level of insanity displayed in Week One by Stacie. Plus, she said, "I feel sad for this? Because I'm not sure if this is something clinical, and I am sensitive to that," and her sensitive nature could easily explain her getting most scared more easily than might otherwise seem believeable. Additionally, Stacie's resemblance to Scary Spice probably caused her to become associated with Scariness on some unconscious level, and first impressions are hard to shake. In any case, I am loyal, faithful, and true once I have pledged my heart to a woman, and feel terrible now for having ever wavered in my support for Stacy's brave decsion to bring this disquieting incident from the past out into the open in an attempt to heal her spooked team. Thank goodness Elizabeth was able to head off signing the controversial and equally spooky LL Cool J to shill for Crest, or this Apprentice episode would have had me cowering under my bed with a baseball bat right now. I see that the next episode is on Wednesday this week, so barring any more dinner cruises I will return on Thursday with 2 more cents.