Ok, Apprentice 3, Episode 2, Take 1; much like last season this is not going to provide you with a thorough recap of all the action, you can just go to NBC if you need that. After witnessing the candidates move and speak, some of my initial assessments from just looking at one photo of them have altered and some have not. For instance, if I had seen Alex Thomason in action (or if he were a little more faux-hawked or wearing the get-up that he donned for the interview segments last night) rather than calling him 100% non-descript I would have opted for 70% gay. Audrey Evans really didn't look anything like her headshot on the show and probably wouldn't make for a good entertainment reporter anyway because she's got one of those voices that sounds like you've been up all night sitting on the hood of a Z28 in the Casey's parking lot drinking Old Mil and chain-smoking Camel Lights and your Quiet Riot t-shirt was not warm enough to keep you from catching a bit of a cold. This voice was used to great effect in complaining about Brian O'Goomba (since making my initial assessment of Brian I have discovered that he is in fact Irish) ripping out all the toilets in the Surfside Motel: "14 toilets that people SHIT IN... your ass doesn't know the difference!" John Gafford does indeed have one big old head but you couldn't tell from his photo that in addition to a little too much yeast this doughy mass is crammed full of catchy sayings, which I imagine he's been squirreling away up there in large cities like Detroit, Atlanta, and St. Louis while preparing for this moment in the spotlight. His two gems from this week were "Stop pointing the finger and start pulling the thumb" and "You screwed the poodle, bro, and you screwed the poodle with me". I think that was just a metaphor for Brian's incompetence, but if not I am very disappointed that NBC's censors did not allow that scene on the air. I'm not sure whether John fancies himself the Vince Vaughn of the group or if that's just my own fancy (well, it's not just my fancy, as I saw on Sunday that The Venerable New York Times also refers to John as having a "Vince Vaughn, old school charm", though they fail to add "with a face which brings to mind an institutional-sized jar of Hellmann's flesh-onnaise") The two candidates that I found myself liking the most (aside from my initial pick Craig "Peaceful Feet" Williams, who seemed just as likeable in person as I thought he might be but did not get a whole lot of airtime this week) turned out to be Angie the Fitness Badger and Magna team leader Michael Tarshi. Angie got on my good side by first calmly trying to get bitchy reality veteran Kristen to quiet down and stop complaining for a few minutes before getting right in her face and screaming "SHUT the FUCK UP!" while Michael just seemed like an okay David Puddy type who made me smile when he was consoling Verna after her "comeback" and started a sentence with "Martin Luther King said..." (and I think his website may make you smile some more, I recommend taking a few moments to rock out over there - if you are ready for the takeover, that is!) Verna did not look as much like she had suffered a little brain damage in the womb as she did in her crappy headshot but her actions this week did prove there is something amiss with that grey matter because she had a complete break from reality before trying to take a complete break from reality tv (“My body was mentally exhausted, my mind was mentally exhausted”). And she would have made it, too, had it not been for the cast member who seems to have shockingly taken over the reins from Lil Stacy to become my special Apprentice lady-friend this season, Caroline Kepcher. I had become impressed over the course of last season with this sensible voice of reason and her ever more frequent smiling, but I had never even considered the possibility that I could ever become tv-smitten with this executive vice-president and COO, she's really not my type at all. But then when she showed up at the motel and was trying to keep from laughing at the team for not removing the plastic bags from the mattresses before putting the bedding on them - "It's kind of crunchy" – well, type be damned. I would have liked to have seen what she said to Verna after she lured her into her car to drive her back to the motel (or what the crew did, as the difference between her uncommunicative state before stepping into the ride and the way she was acting by the time they pulled into the motel parking lot suggested a scene like the one in The Wall where they shoot Pink up with speed before the show). In the boardroom later when Donald said “But I heard you made a great comeback, and there’s nothing I like more than a great comeback” I think he mentally continued “And there’s nothing I like less than a big lawsuit, please do not jump out of my truly magnificent apartment building before I am able to fire you.” The teaser up on the NBC website, “Next: For the First Time Ever, Someone Quits! Don't Miss the First Five Minutes!” suggests that he might not have to worry about Verna much longer, however (though would this not be the second time ever, since she already quit once?) Who else… Danny is one of your hippier hipsters, of the sort you often find signed to Elephant 6, and is indeed pretty annoying with his self-consciously wacky antics. Kind of a cross between Andy Dick and Mo Rocca (I would start referring to him as Mo Dick, except I’m afraid that as soon as I did I’d start getting excited emails on the tipline from a confused Alex Thomason going “WHERE? WHERE?”) and I think he must have smuggled some reefer up to the suite, perhaps sewn inside that ascot, because he was totally high, at least during his interview segments. His website features some Beatle-esque indie pop which confirms my E6 pigeon-holing of this joker, plus the design will transport you back to the kute and krazy days of 1999… it’s a real toss-up between Danny and Michael for most awesome web presence so far. Brian’s site isn’t quite in the same league but does have a certain charm all its own (and lets us know that he is very much in love with Erin Elmore). I thought it was unnecessarily cruel of Trump not to just fire him as soon as he said he ought to be fired rather than dragging out the inevitable, letting his teammates yell at him and causing him to look even more idiotic by arguing “A good leader never gives up” right after he had just given up, saying of the mismanaged task "It could have been a galliant trip", and then, having tired of making up new words, topping fuckin’ Chris from last season by letting some tried and true expletives fly right in the boardroom (from this episode, at least, the current crop of candidates seems to be fucktasticly potty-mouthed). It did give young Chris Shelton a chance to pipe up in a nervously unmodulated yelp to defend himself against charges that he had said he knew all about hand-on construction techniques (charges that I’m not so sure anybody had leveled against him yet), leading to Angie the Fitness Badger deciding that maybe he ought to get fired instead (most likely because she was sitting right next to his unprovoked loudness and as was demonstrated earlier in the van this lady strives to maintain peace and quiet at all times). In Shelton’s bio he states that he “sees himself as a young Donald Trump” and I think the reason for his needless outburst was that he was afraid that the boardroom would end before he had a chance to make his hero notice him. If I slip up and refer to somebody in coming weeks as Mark David Chapman, this is the candidate I will be referring to. Who have I missed here… oh, Kristen. I must admit that she turned out to be right when she was demanding that they set up a budget before going any further since Brian ended up blowing most of their money on toilets (“Can’t renovate and not get toilets”) without one. She kept repeating “I don’t do business that way but that’s fine” but I don’t think she really thought it was fine at all. In spite of being in the right on the budget issue, though, her loud and abrasive bitchiness is undoubtedly going to lead to her getting murdered in big city X just like she was in small town X a few years ago. And I think that’s all I have here, none of the other candidates made enough of an impression this week to warrant notation, so this will conclude the inaugural Apprentice 3 coverage and for the love of god DO NOT MISS THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES this week (especially since I have plans this Thursday and will be missing the whole show… if any readers out there want to TiVO it or something for me to watch later that would be swell).