Okay, get ready to pretend that it’s Friday, December 3rd for a few minutes of this Wednesday, December 8th, because the dark and stormy work clouds have parted at least momentarily here and it’s time for some hastily slapped together commentary for last week’s episode of The Apprentice. There were a few questions that I had before the episode started, and the first of these – “What will Jenn M. do now that there are no more men on her team to bewitch” – was quickly answered when she and Sandy returned to the suite and sat down for a team huddle. Sandy Ferreira has always felt left out, unnoticed, and underappreciated during the course of this game, and thus when Jenn suddenly became her only teammate/special chum she was almost just as suddenly quite enamored with the classy lady. Massey did not lose any time in capitalizing on this, maneuvering Sandy into the vulnerable position of team leader, a brilliant move which both made Sandy feel appreciated and respected and allowed Jenn to continue flying under the radar. Of course, Sandy had already proven herself a nervous, crying mess in her previous stint as team leader, so she was also more than willing to only be given the title while Jenn called all of the shots for the remainder of the episode. The downwardly spiraling poor little rich girl, Ivana Ma, seemed to fully understand what Massey had accomplished as soon as the Donald was told that Sandy would be the team leader, as shown by the look of complete despair in her reaction shot. Basing the task in a chocolate factory reminded me that I recently compared Mr. Trump’s increasingly orange complexion to that of an oompa-loompa, and led to speculation on the effects of constant exposure to chocolate on one’s skintone. Unfortunately I was reminded by a mention of the horribly misguided Tim Burton/Johnny Depp remake of Willy Wonka the other day that oompa loompas are only fictional characters, which kind of neutered that theory. The slapstick shenanigans during the candy-making sequence were very fun to watch, but the only item that I noted as worthy of comment was Ivana referring to the candy bars as her babies. It was basically the same thing as when she cried upon seeing the completed Pepsi design the week before, a personification of objects which in light of her burgeoning all-around loss of sanity starts seeming a bit more unsettling than it might otherwise. Anyway, after the Ivana-baby inspection team had finished their cold-blooded slaughter of the innocents, Team Apex were off to sell their remaining offspring on the mean streets of midtown, while the M&M twins (Massey/minion) headed down to Wall Street. There are two basic ways that a person’s physical beauty can affect other people’s perception of them. One is the well documented tendency for people to perceive beautiful people as more intelligent and competent than more ordinary-looking folk, a perception probably enhanced by the confident self-assurance that they usually possess from having grown up with this power. Additionally, people have been shown to be much more likely to give money to a stranger on the street if they are particularly attractive, assuming them to be good and trustworthy people based simply on aesthetics; it just gives people a greater sense of self-worth to be associated with them in any way, and these were the effects which were affecting Sandy last week (as well as the people who spent $5 on a candy bar that is well-stocked in every corner store in town – which reminds me that I much enjoyed my favorite remaining candidate, Kevin Allen, telling everyone that this bar was not sold anywhere else – I guess if only 5 people in the entire world were authorized to sell the bar and they had to approach you on the street in order for you to buy one it would make it seem very exclusive and desirable, but evidently not enough for anyone to actually buy one from him until he cut his price down to $1… ok, refer back to what came before this parenthetical sidetrack before continuing). I mean, the idea of two similar-looking women dressing up twinsies when going out as a sales team is a fine idea, but also a completely obvious one, and heralding J.M. as incredibly creative based on this singular piece of evidence shows either a) confusion as to the definition of creativity or more likely b) a sublimated desire to scurry back to your bridal shop and begin preparations for the Mrs. and Mrs. Massey wedding (another quick sidebar – it was amusing when Sandy was getting giddily excited during their dress-up party in the morning and said “Ooh, you know what, I have glitter dust in the other room!” and you could hear a whole world of non-plussed balancing act wheel spinning that was going on inside Massey’s head in her reply of “really?”) The other way that beauty can override logic in the mind of its observers is over-amply personified by Ivana, thinking that people are intrinsically shallow and idiotic just because they are pretty. I’ve traditionally been victim to this nonsensical ideology myself, which is quite obviously rooted largely in jealousy, and is just a different way of expressing the same stupidity. Of course, Ivana adds the additional wrinkle of hating both Jennifer and Sandy because they are blonde, which is something that has never made any sense to me as either an attraction or something to be jealous about, so the whole sexy/stupid blonde stereotype thoroughly baffles. Of course, I guess it is almost exclusively a hair color produced in chilly northern climes, so cultures based a little closer to the equator where everyone has dark hair probably view it as a little more magical than someone from a town whose annual summer festival was Sauerkraut Days might. In any case, just being blonde and wearing a skirt does not in any way make you look like a stripper (and adding that part about ‘and not a classy strip club, I mean one of those places like in Texas with peanut shells on the floor’ is a nice reminder of the sheltered sense of elitism lurking in this lady whose daddy got her a Porsche when she was 16). No, a much more accurate methodology for the quick identification of any cheap strippers who might be in your midst is to keep your eyes peeled for a person who walks up to men and tells them that they’ll drop their skirt for $20. My favorite quote of the episode was from Caroline in the boardroom: “You weren’t selling candy bars. Honestly, what were you really selling?” Caroline has proven to be the level-headed voice of reason perched on Trump left shoulder, while lurking on the other side of his huge heap of hair-engineering is the lecherous George, who clearly finds something appealing in the notion of a female who has unequivocally demonstrated the willingness to take off her pants in order to get ahead. The final boardroom came down to a fascinating series of repetitive variations leading to an inevitable but dramatic resolution, the predominant leitmotif being Donald telling Ivana she always loses or asking her why she always loses followed by Ivana looking angrily upward and to her right, upward and to her right. It was almost what you’d call high art (or, now that I reread that last sentence and think about it, a lot more accurately ‘almost like having sex’ than driving that Lamborghini was last week). Now that I’ve said that my name for the new move that Donald busted out for the firing sounds a lot more crass than I had intended it to be – since he forcefully slapped his palm down on the table and then pointed his fingers in a ‘kapow’ type motion I had thought to dub this Cobra-cousin the Slap Bang, but now I’m going to refine that on the fly to the Slapshot, which is so much better anyway that I’m feeling idiotic for not coming up with that in the first place. So that’s the episode, see you back here next week (or hopefully in two days, should the slack life continue here at work).