The Apprentice 5, Episode 4: Don’t Squeeze the Charmaine

Synergy team members Roxanne, Tarek, and Allie hit the streets of New York looking for models. They spot an absolutely beautiful woman, and Sean walks over to her asking if she is free that evening to do some photography. Wow, he sounds like a total pervert serial killer. Inexplicably, she agrees. Maybe the TV cameras made her more confident that no one would find her in a quarry somewhere. Next, they need to find a guy who can play her dad. Allie finds hottie after hottie, none of whom have seen the far side of 30. Finally, they find a man who is 34 and say he looks like he’s 40. The man manages not to be horribly offended by that and agrees to take the job. Isn’t 40 a little young still?

Gold Rush is up to the same plan. Leslie, Lee, and Tarek need to find a model. They’ve ditched the idea of a guy and are now looking for a young woman. Tarek thinks it’ll take 2-3 hours to find the right person and get her to agree to it. They want someone with a wholesome, girl next door look. Unbelievably, they find someone right away. Tarek knows how creepy their pitch is, and gets in front of it, saying, “Can I ask you something that’s going to be totally shady?” They offer the woman $200 and a sporty outfit. She looks a little scared, but she agrees. They love the model, but Tarek isn’t so sure about the idea. It seems generic to him and not really risky. He hopes the other team isn’t more creative.

Well, he’s in luck, because I don’t think either idea is especially creative. We’ve already heard the generational message with “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile,” but Gold Rush’s idea doesn’t feel especially fresh, either. The winner of this task will be the team that executes their idea the best.

The rest of Synergy is working with a graphic artist, and Brent is all over her. He wants her to add a hand-drawn spoon to the image, for one thing. Tammy quickly gets him out of the way, saying that Andrea will handle it. Andrea says she’s worked on promotions in her job and has “a pretty good eye for it.” Brent has more suggestions, and Andrea’s irritation is obvious. In an interview, she says that Brent sucks the life out of everyone around him. She wonders if they should give him more responsibility, knowing that they’ll probably lose, but thinking that might give them a chance to get rid of him.

Brent is still pestering the designer, asking her if she could make the background a different color. Andrea shoos him away again. In interview, Brent says that the only thing Andrea is an expert in is “being an @#$hole.” He hopes that she and Tammy enjoy a cab ride together and enjoy smelling each other’s crap, because they both stink. It’s really venomous and creepy. Tammy tells Andrea that she loves her and loves the graphics. Brent seethes.

The rest of Synergy is at the photo shoot, and they’re thrilled by how well it’s turning out. Tammy emails them the graphics, and they are not happy at all. It’s a whole lot of orange background with a little heart cut out in the middle for the photo. There’s no way the photos Synergy has done are going to fit in that little space and look halfway decent. Tammy calls Sean and asks how it looks, and he hesitates to answer. Finally, he says he hopes they can do something different with the graphics. Time is running out, though, and Tammy says she needs the photos in five minutes.

Gold Rush is working on finding a shot of the model in which she doesn’t have “crazy eyes.” Charmaine isn’t excited about the way any of them turned out, but figures it’s too late now. Bryce thinks maybe they would have been better off without the model. They could just show 4 empty boxes of cereal. Charmaine doesn’t want to backtrack and is mad that Bryce never said something like that before. He says he thought of it just now. In an interview, Charmaine says she’s frustrated because Bryce came up with this idea in the first place and now won’t take ownership of it. She points this out to him and asks where his excitement went. He says it’s just not coming together well. In an interview, Bryce says he’s afraid this will all blow up in his face if they lose. He really doesn’t want to end up in the boardroom again. Charmaine says the time to question things is over.

The next morning, Gold Rush is on the road at 7:30 to do their presentation. Charmaine wants to do something simple to tie it all together.

Back at the suite, Tammy gathers together Synergy. Brent is not ready yet and is still ironing his pants. That’s pretty funny considering that he was in charge of coordinating all of their outfits. You’d think he could handle a task that simple, and yet he has apparently screwed it up. Andrea is beyond annoyed and says that Brent is enough of a drain anyway without making everybody late on top of it. Brent argues that he was up until 4:00 in the morning, which apparently somehow excuses him from being on time? The two of them have a brief shouting match that concludes with him calling her “an unappreciative you-know-what.” He says she doesn’t know how to keep her big mouth shut and should be locked up in prison. Huh? Andrea then destroys any good will I might have for her by saying that she is a multimillionaire and he only makes $50,000 a year. Woman, we do not judge anyone’s worth or success just by their tax returns. Boo!

Trump arrives at Post for the big presentations. Both teams are confident that they’ll win. With a flourish, the teams’ billboards- which are actually more banners than billboards- are unfurled. Charmaine goes first. Gold Rush, she explains, is going for the shock factor of seeing a healthy, attractive young woman pouring a box of cereal into her mouth. Trump asks the question I had, which is why is Leslie pushing a jogging stroller full of cereal? Oh, that’s because this is the “new addition to the Post family.” They hand out birth announcements, and it feels kind of tacked on. Maybe there was more to it that we didn’t see.

Tammy explains that they are showing the next generation of Grape Nuts consumers, with the “older gentleman” giving cereal to his daughter. Trump and George about die laughing at the idea that the model looks like a dad, much less the young woman’s dad. Then, Sean busts out a Powerpoint presentation about their ad. Ugh. I can’t stand Powerpoint anyway, and if you have to use it to explain the billboard then you’re in trouble. Sean’s presentation is kind of boring and he stammers a lot. Trump finally tells him, “I think we’ve heard enough.”