The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Episode 7 – Snoop Sells Out

Arrow meets Snoop Dogg. They have cigars and champagne, and Snoop encourages James to freestyle, and it’s pretty much as bad as you’d expect. Frank, some champagne in him, tries, too. It’s embarrassing. Stefani is impressed that they gave it a shot. Surya, she says, stood up against the wall like an idiot, despite the fact that he claimed to be a big fan of Snoop. She doesn’t know why he even bothered to go.

The song gets pulled together, and it pretty much goes to show what can be done in the mixing. It’s not going to be a hit or anything, but it’s not as painful as it originally sounded. Nicole says that their passion came out in the song. Snoop tells them to keep up the good work.

The next morning, Jenn says that it’s going to be between her and Angela. Jenn says they should have had more ideas. She thinks she did well, and they lost because of the creative, which was Angela’s fault. Angela thinks Jenn did well as a project manager, but that she made some “strategic decisions” that will be her downfall.

The candidates walk to the Boardroom. The Lexus executives said that the go-carts took away from the impact of the brand. They do note that Muna and Heidi made a tremendous effort.

Jenn says she’s surprised that they lost. They worked hard. Trump disagrees, saying for example that the signage was terrible, as was the theme. Randal says that the other team “completely conveyed luxury.” The other team’s event was much better looking. Jenn maintains that they worked hard. Angela and Derek did the signage. Derek says he only had five hours, which wasn’t enough time. He says that he takes some responsibility if people didn’t like the design, but that he had bad working conditions, which was not his fault.

Derek says he tried to make the signage convey luxury. Randal asks, if anyone made it seem to lack luxury, who that would be? Derek says it would be the person in charge of the customer experience. And who might that be? Derek names Jenn. As for the go-carts and illusionist, Derek admits they were his idea at first. Jenn says, in his defense, that there were no other ideas. Trump wonders why, as Project Manager, she didn’t have a bigger role in the creative.

Jenn answers that it was a huge event, and there was too much to tie together. Derek admits he probably couldn’t fit into one of the carts. Derek says that they were desperate for ideas, so go-carts were something off the top of his head. Trump says that you shouldn’t throw anything in off the top of your head. It would be easy to make a hair joke here, but I’ll just say that Trump doesn’t seem to know much about brainstorming. Derek goes on to say that Kristine said that go-carts were a bad idea, and that he agreed. He says he’s “white trash” and likes restaurants with “deep fried appetizers,” so he’s not a Lexus customer. Trump thinks it’s a bad statement to make about yourself. In fact, he doesn’t like it as a joke, so Derek is fired.

Well, I didn’t see that one coming.

Trump thinks it was a stupid thing to say. Derek shrugs, “Okay,” and leaves. Trump tells him not to use that expression anymore. Derek says that his strategy has been to keep his mouth shut in the boardroom. He didn’t do it in this case. He says he knew he was going down, so he decided to be a smart-ass, which Trump obviously didn’t appreciate. He notes that someone else is probably “getting the smackdown.”

Maybe as a white person who enjoys fried appetizers, I should be offended by Derek’s statement, but I really want be bothered by it and think Trump overreacted. I know, I know… if Derek had made a pejorative comment that was based on any race other than white, we’d all find it offensive and it would seem perfectly reasonable for Trump to fire him. But this just doesn’t seem as bad, especially given that Derek was being self-deprecating and funny.

Trump goes on to say that he doesn’t like the expression, not even jokingly. He says he still needs to fire the person responsible for the loss.

Trump tells Heidi that she is no longer “a superstar.” She says she’s disappointed that they’ve lost so many times. She notes that she and Muna were in charge of product knowledge and asks if that was an issue. Randal says that the two of them did an outstanding job. Muna thinks Jenn was good, but she wasn’t perfect. Muna says whoever was in charge of conveying the theme is responsible. Randal pressures her to name names, and Muna chooses Jenn. I am really enjoying Randal as a viceroy. He’s not trying to pick fights or sow discord, but rather is asking intelligent questions and demanding answers.

Heidi says that the presentation was not good. Jenn admits she fumbled it. She talks about the issues with the glare on the screen, and Trump asks her pointed questions about whether or not she’d rehearsed or knew the material. Jenn cuts that off (probably knowing that admitting she was winging it would not be a good idea), saying that she got positive feedback on her presentation. Trump thinks she looked like a stumbling idiot.

Jenn says that she’d blame Angela and Derek for the situation, both because of the signage and go-carts. As for Angela, was she responsible for conveying the luxury theme? She says she was, and that as a team, they did not do well. She says she was especially upset by the go-carts. She doesn’t think anyone on the team really liked them. Jenn admits that she approved the go-carts because they really needed something. Jenn says she relied on her teams, and the creative team did not come through. They were Derek and Angela, and Angela wasn’t there.

Jenn wants to ask Surya a question about their event. Trump starts giving Surya a hard time about not having said anything yet. Surya says he didn’t want to interrupt. Anyway, Jenn wonders if Arrow had any entertainment. Surya wonders what value the go-carts added. She says it was to add fun. Randal adds that go-carts do not say Lexus. Kristine says that the go-carts were Jenn’s decision, so she’d fire Jenn. Muna agrees that she’d fire Jenn. She wouldn’t choose Angela because Jenn’s presentation really was a mistake.

I wish we could have pursued Jenn’s line of conversation a little bit more. Surya (okay, Stefani and Frank) threw a very different event. There was no theme other than luxury. Instead of trying to find a gimmick, they just had the event catered with the best of everything, bought some flower arrangements, and had James set up that cool obstacle course. No illusionist, no go-carts, no other activities. It makes me think that, for one, Kinetic wasted a lot of time making their event more complicated than it needed to be. It also makes me wonder what Arrow spent their seed money on. But because less than half of the episode was devoted to the task, we don’t know.

Trump asks Jenn who she’d bring back. She says she was going to bring back Angela and Derek, and Trump says that he did her work for her. Does she want to bring someone else back? Jenn smiles and says, “Why don’t we just say Derek’s fired?” Nice try. Jenn says that Derek handled the signage and the go-carts. Trump corrects her and says that only she was in favor of the go-carts in the end. Randal chimes in that Derek opposed them after coming up with the idea in the first place. Trump gets upset, apparently, at hearing someone else talk, so he tells Randal enough.

Trump says Jenn was not an effective PM, she lost, the team didn’t have respect for her, and she did a lousy job. He doesn’t want to waste any time – she’s fired. Jenn says he’s about to fire her, but that it’s “really tough” to say that the rest of the team didn’t respect her. Trump basically says, fine, they respect you, and he fires her. Jenn smiles and says she’d seen that coming for a few minutes. She handles it with class and says that the rest of the team is great and tells everyone to have fun. Trump tells Angela it wasn’t her best. She vows to come back tomorrow.

As always, the viceroys tell Trump he made the right choice. Jenn gets a big group hug from the other women. Muna even offers to help her with her bag. Jenn says that people had fun on the go-carts, but she admits it wasn’t luxury. She says she was shocked that Derek got fired, and she thinks Kristine or Heidi is most likely to win.

As I mentioned earlier, I can’t really get behind Trump’s decision to fire Derek for using the phrase white trash. Maybe he botched the signage, but because Derek’s time in the boardroom was so brief, I don’t really know. Jenn definitely should have been fired for being the sole supporter of the poor go-cart idea. Interestingly, neither one of them seemed especially broken-hearted about being fired. If Trump wants to portray this job as the be-all, end-all, this episode sure didn’t help him.

Next Sunday, the promos promise us, the contestants will stop being polite. Looks like everyone is turning on Surya and that Kristine won’t win any popularity contests. See you all then!

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

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! For more news about this show, be sure to check out SirLinksALot’s Apprentice page!