The Apprentice, Episode 8: Water World

Katrina jumps in and says that Ereka did a great job. Trump scoffs at her and says that she’s just trying not to get picked for the boardroom. Katrina swears she’s not, and Ereka agrees. She says the team asked her who she was taking, she told them, and she won’t break her word. Nick says no one asked him if he wanted to know in advance, and that he would rather have been surprised. Ereka thinks it’s only fair to give people some warning.

Katrina chimes in to say that Trump should not let Bill and Nick convince him that Ereka didn’t pick her because of their friendship. It was the wrong thing to say, as Trump immediately zeros in on that. He says she has an interesting strategy – she praises Ereka, then points out that they’re friends, so Ereka can’t possibly pick her. Katrina starts to protest, but Trump isn’t interested. He asks Ereka who is going back to the suite, and who is going to the final boardroom. Ereka chooses Nick and Bill. Trump says, “Katrina, go back to the suite. Your girlfriend Ereka gave you a break.”

Trump, George, and Carolyn talk over the possibilities. Carolyn says, “Nobody impressed me.” George thinks the decision is between Nick and Ereka. He says that Nick had no rapport with his customers. Outside, Nick asks Ereka a question about her chart, wondering who closed one of the sales. She says she split it between herself and Bill. Back in the boardroom, George says he thinks Ereka blew it, that she can’t control her emotions. Just outside, Ereka clutches her chart and says, “I’m extremely fair. I am looking and numbers right now and what I heard.” Numbers and what she heard? Those are two very different things. One is objective. The other can be filtered through her own opinion and the Best Friends Forever necklaces that she and Katrina just exchanged. Trump calls them back in.

Nick says that he has worked hard since they arrived. Ereka tries to interrupt him, but Trump is more interested in Bill. Trump says that Bill is just going to be quiet while Ereka and Nick fight so he can fly under the radar until one of them screws up. He puts Bill on the spot and demands that he choose which of them should go home. Bill doesn’t want to decide, but George says, “You’re an executive. You’re going to have to make some decisions which are very painful.” Bill is reluctant, since he has to live with the other candidates. Finally, he says that Ereka wasn’t receptive to his ideas. George makes Bill agree that Ereka is the one who should go.

Ereka says she is disappointed in Bill. Nick says he can handle the pressure of the job better than Ereka can. Ereka wants to know why she couldn’t manage a company, when she can manage Nick’s screw-ups. That makes no sense, as they are two totally different things. Bill says that he and Ereka generated more sales than Nick and Katrina. Carolyn points out that by that logic, Katrina should be just as responsible for the failure as Nick, since they were a team also. Trump thinks Ereka is just protecting her friend. Ereka says that she didn’t take Katrina to a boardroom because she didn’t take a leadership role. Carolyn thinks that’s just an excuse. Trump thinks it’s ridiculous to reward Katrina for her lack of effort.

Trump says that Nick’s performance in sales was terrible. Ereka, on the other hand, had no game plan, got frantic, and let her emotions dictate who she’d take to the boardroom. Ereka sees the ax about to fall and says, “Don’t say it, Mr. Trump.” But he does: Ereka is fired. Nick grins, then quickly looks serious.

On the way out, Ereka refuses to shake Bill’s hand, saying he sold her out. Bill says that she has a short memory. Trump says that he liked Ereka, but she was too emotional. He says, “That was a tough one.” Carolyn doesn’t think it was tough at all. Carolyn is my new hero.

Here’s my take on things. Ereka did let her friendship with Katrina dictate who she’d take to the boardroom. Remember, when she spoke to Bill, she said she talked to Katrina first. She and Katrina decided together that Bill would be the one Ereka brought with her. The team lost because of poor sales, and Nick and Katrina made up the weaker sales team. Nick didn’t do very well in the sales pitches we saw, but we didn’t even see Katrina speak. Trump was dead-on that Ereka made that decision based on friendship. I don’t believe for a second that she considered taking Katrina with her instead of Bill.

Did Trump make the right choice? I agree with George that the decision was between Ereka and Nick. Bill did a fine job and didn’t especially deserve the third chair. Nick did an absolutely abysmal job in selling. Ereka might have fared better if she had presented her case against Nick more rationally: he works in sales, he promised he’d be excellent, so she relied on him to get some big accounts, and he failed to do so. Ereka,on the other hand, didn’t do much better with her “we’re generating buzz” pitch. The fact that she was unprepared when Carolyn arrived and then broke down in front of her was incredibly unprofessional. And I’ve already said that she did indeed let her friendship with Katrina influence her decisions. Frankly, both Ereka and Nick would have been decent choices for firing. If I were in Trump’s shoes, I’d look at past performance. Nick was the project manager for the flea market challenge and did an amazing job, was a strong leader, delegated well, and made his team happy. Ereka was the project manager in the lemonade stand challenge. Although her team won, they were disorganized from the beginning, two of the members of the team almost got lost, and she nearly had an emotional breakdown before the challenge even started. While both Nick and Ereka had bad performances this week, Nick has more potential. Trump made the right call.

Next week on The Apprentice, the challenge centers on the world of fine art. Heidi and Omarosa’s rivalry turns to an “All. Out. War.” Awesome. That’s going to be a good fight. And for the first time, someone has a breakdown in the boardroom. So someone cries – big deal. I want to watch Heidi and Omarosa scratch each other’s eyes out!

Betsy is the Assistant Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached with any comments at betsyw42@hotmail.com.

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