The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Episode 4 – A Passion for Chicken Suits

Back at camp, Heidi dreads that she is going to have to bring someone into the boardroom. She’s thinking she needs to bring in one cashier and one marketing person, since they lost at point of sale and marketing. Aimee says that they sold as well as they could, given the lack of traffic. Heidi wonders what they could have done differently. Derek snickers, “chicken suits,” then says he’s laughing because he had to listen to Marisa (who we see putting on makeup) all day long. Heidi thinks they are there to run a business. Marisa is the only person she feels she has to manage. Kristine and Aimee agree that Marisa should go, for the strength of the team.

Kinetic goes to the Boardroom for the first time. The Pollo Loco executives think that marketing was to blame for the loss. The team gathers in the Boardroom. Kristine says that she came up with the recipe, and she doesn’t think they lost based on taste. Trump isn’t impressed with the fruit-chicken combo. Aaron thinks his team won based on price and quantity. Sean adds that Arrow did a good job of selling. They convinced people to order something different. Jennifer, Kristine, and Aimee didn’t do that. Jennifer thinks that marketing was weak. Marisa says that her “outside the box” idea was shot down immediately by Heidi. Sean says that the other team created a spectacle, showing that something different was going on. Marisa keeps trying to interrupt Sean by saying that’s what she wanted to do. Sean says their restaurant looked “like any other normal day.”

Trump asks Marisa who shot her down. She says that the entire rest of the team did, saying that people in chicken suits wouldn’t fit “the integrity of the restaurant.” Marisa points out, quite rightly, that a place called The Crazy Chicken doesn’t exactly take itself that seriously. Heidi rolls her eyes. Marisa thinks her idea would have been excellent. Muna says that Marisa needs to improve her listening, pointing out that she has interrupted several times. Trump says that Marisa does, however, have a great spirit. Like a moron, Marisa interrupts him, a point that Trump immediately latches on to. Muna says that they are a group, and Marisa is not a good team player. Marisa says that she’ll vocalize it when she doesn’t agree, and feels like she’s always dismissed. Heidi dismisses that idea. Heh.

Aaron thinks Marisa has a leg to stand on. Heidi doesn’t think they lost for lack of chicken suits. Marisa says that the team also shot down the name Bravado Bowl, which she says was Derek’s idea. Trump tells Marisa to take it easy. Aimee says that Marisa is the weakest member of the team. She has great ideas, but they all do, and she needs to let it go sometimes. Marisa says she needs to stand up for what she believes in. And she believes, apparently, in chicken suits. She thinks Aimee should be fired – she was the weak link. Well, that was random. Aimee argues that her job was drive-through sales. She thinks that Marisa is disruptive. Derek says that Marisa is the weakest, as does Kristine. Marisa says that they are ambushing her.

Heidi chooses to bring Marisa and Aimee back. Sean says he likes Marisa’s spirit and passion. Aaron says that he’s a sales guy, and he can’t tell who was in charge of sales. The three women return to the Boardroom. Trump asks Heidi what he should do. Heidi says that she’s taken the team to two wins, so she shouldn’t be fired. She brought Aimee back because she was part of the sales team. Was she in charge? No. Heidi says that she thought it was interesting that Marisa named Aimee as the one she’d fire. Aimee says that she tried her best to sell the bowl. Trump says Aimee wasn’t that great of a seller.

Marisa says that her idea was a good one. Heidi sighs that Marisa can’t let it go. Marisa doesn’t think she should be back there. Trump says that the entire rest of the team named her. Trump says she was in charge of marketing, but only seems to have come up with one idea. Marisa says that she had more ideas than that. Trump says that he has to go with what the rest of the team said, and they all named Marisa. Marisa is fired.

Trump says it wasn’t easy, and of course, the two viceroys agree that he had no other choice. Heaven forbid anyone should tell Trump he fired the wrong person. Marisa gets in the Cab of Defeat as Heidi and Aimee look on. She says that she thinks they’d have won if the team had listened to her. The restaurant has a mascot, and they should have used it.

On one hand, it makes sense to fire Marisa. Marketing is more than just the name of the product (which is certainly not the reason the team lost) or any one promotional idea. If the rest of the team nixed the idea of chicken suits, Marisa should have come up with something different. She should have had multiple ideas to push, not just one. The marketing ideas that Arrow came up with weren’t exactly revolutionary. They got some balloons and made banners, then followed that up with a sold sales effort. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, but it worked. As the person in charge of marketing, Marisa should have done more.

On the other hand, it is crazy to me that Kinetic’s sales and marketing efforts were as pitiful as they were. Shouldn’t the Project Manager take responsibility for the way the task was run? If Heidi didn’t like any of Marisa’s ideas, she should have put someone else on marketing, at the very least coming up with something other than free samples. She didn’t designate anybody in charge of sales. The team didn’t show the same kind of energy that Arrow did, and I think that goes from the top down. If I had been in Trump’s shoes, I would have asked Heidi a lot more probing questions than he did. Perhaps she, as the person in charge, should have used her staff to better effect.

There’s no Apprentice next week, but the task we’ll see in two weeks somehow involves bees. Get ready to enjoy the honey of victory and the sting of defeat. See you then.

Betsy Wasser is the Associate Editor of Reality News Online. She can be reached with any comments at betsywasser@gmail..com

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