I don't know if anyone else who saw The Apprentice on Thanksgiving noticed this, but to kick this week's episode commentary off I need to thank the cameramen and editors of the show for the shot of the squirrel sitting in the grass outside of the PepsiCo headquarters nibbling on what appeared to be some variety of snack chip. Awesome. Anyway, as has been the case a few times before, I didn't catch the very beginning but when I plopped onto my sofa full of turkey and quail eggs and flipped it on the three non-Massey members of Team Apex were just finishing up a conference wherein they all confirmed that they were on the same page concerning the hollow shell of manipulation that Jennifer has revealed herself to be. In fairness, it is a game, and she is by far the best at playing it, but you get the sense that she must have years of practice under her belt, because as Ivana may have shown a little later you cannot acquire such powerful skills overnight. In any case, when given the chance at the Trump marching orders meeting they sent her on over to mess with Mosaic for awhile, and what happened when the newly configured Mosaic got down to the bottle brainstorming and the massive revisionism that occurred between what we saw and how it was explained by the team in the boardroom was a sight to behold. Andy, of course, quickly ingested approximately eleventy-twelve quadzillion times the recommended dosage of cola, which then appeared to remain in his system for the rest of the task. In all likelihood, in fact, he will never sleep again until the inevitable reality series My Big Fat Obnoxious Heroin Dealer: 'Celebrity' Edition adds him to its cast and his hands-on approach to product identification reboots. I quickly need to add an aside which is completely irrelevant to the show I'm supposed to be concentrating on here: my roommate was reading me the cast of an upcoming 'celebrity' weight-loss series and one of the contestants is Wendy, The Snapple Lady. For the love of christ, all you TV moguls reading right now, if you've got to dig that far you really ought to shelve that concept and return to the drawing board. Which gets me right back on track, because when the rhyming pair of Andy and Sandy were at the drawing board hammering out their unfathomably horrendous solution to this week's task all that Jennifer did was sit quietly, play with a bottle cap, and utter one single word: "Sweet." How this was magically transformed into Andy proclaiming with apparent sincerity in front of the boardroom trio that she was by far the most creative, hard-working, and productive member of the team was the saddest display of brainwashing I have seen on TV since November 18, 1978. Also, not that this would have been enough to triumph over the additional adversity of opaque geographical shrinkwrapping, but how can anyone possibly claim that a sphere is ungrippable in a world where both Pom Wonderful and most organized sports are already in existence? That caramel colored elixir of the gods will rot more than your teeth, young Andy, as you further proved by the apparent belief that starving people can maintain their drive and focus solely on lettuce which you displayed when it came time to motivate the design team. I had grown to like you and am trying hard to believe it was solely soda talking, but you may have turned out to be the biggest asshole in the game (oh wait...) Back now to Team Apex, where Ivana broke out with what I can only assume was her attempt to hypnotize her male teammates a la Massey. For all her previous persuasive arguments that Jenn was all style and no substance it seems like she was just as seduced, in a different but equally disappointing way. Her initial proposition that you could put a hot dog in the hole of Kelly's bottle design was just awkwardly obvious, but her follow-up suggestion "or maybe a piece of a boob" blew right past the realm of endearingly clumsy and strongly hinted at full-blown psychosis (and starting to cry when she saw the completed bottle for the first time only amplifies that hint). To quote the dearly missed Lil Stacy, I feel sad for this, because I'm not sure if this is something clinical, and I am sensitive to that, but it was one of the most scary moments in my life. Actually, any sadness I may have felt was dispelled after Apex inevitably triumphed and received their reward (I planned to make good use of the Donald saying that this reward was all about speed, but my new idea for a reality show above already used up my quota of drug humor for this post), driving Lamborghinis on a race track. I don't have the entire quote written down, but Ivana Ma said that this was the first time she's driven a high-performance sports car since she "wrecked the Porsche my dad gave me when I was 16 or 17" (I wonder if that was also "almost like having sex"?) Anyhow, when it came down to the boardroom, Sandy made up for her poor speaking skills at their presentation by laying down an unstoppable barrage of invective against both Andy and Jennifer for the earlier collusion that Jennifer inadvertently let out of the bag, and once again the team leader that Classy Massey had seduced into targeting one of her female rivals instead got taken down himself. I just thought of this, but it's interesting that the last guy she screwed over in this manner, Raj Bhakta, was the other contestant in the television ad with Andy that they made look like the real final cab ride (forget what the product is now) - before I was just thinking that he had been picked because of some Indian cab driver stereotyping by the ad execs. I was going to put a (?) after inadvertently back there, but in her reaction shot she did seem like she was honestly a little stunned... she is so very good with deception, though. On one hand, Andy would seem like stronger competition for her than Sandy, but on the other she probably wants as many men around as possible since by and large they seem to lack the ability to see through her transparency like the women can (note that Caroline was the one who noted that she seems to have some strange power over her team leaders and got Trump to confront her about her under-the-radar flying reputation). Anyhow, I guess Kevin is the only contestant I like to any degree now that I also think would make a good all-around business leader (Sandy has obviously already found her perfect niche and demonstrated that she was very good at it on the bridal episode, but beyond that comfort zone she continually falters). My main question concerning next week's show is how they are going to balance five people, and secondarily, is Ivana going to get arrested or institutionalized after dropping her pants in public? We will see.