The Apprentice 2, Episode 6 Extras: Business Models

There was no Saturday episode of The Apprentice 2 this week – NBC opted instead to air a very un-Trump NASCAR night. But fear not, faithful readers. We still have the extras from Yahoo to obsess over. This week, the extras focused more on the tasks than on the boardroom. Let’s look at what happened.

First, we see the men’s search for a designer. Wes says it’s critical to choose the right person. The guys meet Ilse, and think her style is edgy, but they’re impressed by her experience. The meet with Darren (the designer the women chose), and like his business sense, but don’t think his style is as interesting as Ilse’s. John says he figures all of the designers are talented, or they wouldn’t be there. Andy thinks Darren is the best choice, because he has sales in mind, and that’s the object of the task. John disagrees, and thinks that the designer’s senses of style is more important than their business sense. Andy maintains that choosing Ilse is a risk.

This scene is very interesting, especially because I maintain that by choosing an edgier, less accessible designer, the men really hurt themselves with the buyers. If John had taken Andy’s advice, the task might have ended very differently. I also wonder what would have happened if the men and women had wanted the same designer.

Next, we see an extended version of the men attempting to choose fabric for their designs. Chris admits that he’s overwhelmed by the number of choices, and says he knows nothing about fabric. He feels like he’s a little kid again, dragged to the mall by his mom. Raj brings an array of odd fabrics to Ilse, and John is generally clueless. Kelly is frustrated by the whole thing. He says in an interview that Raj is hurting more than he’s helping, Chris’s attitude is terrible (and to illustrate the point, we see Chris reading a newspaper while everyone else works), and that John is totally scattered and disorganized. As we saw in the episode, Kelly ends up taking over and whips everyone into shape. Kelly really did a fantastic job in this task. Even though he wasn’t in charge, he took charge when he had to and kept his team focused.

The women have a much easier time selecting the fabrics that they need. Ivana realizes that they work much more efficiently when Elizabeth isn’t around. Speak of the devil – Elizabeth is back, and she starts questioning the fabric choices, the design, the direction of the line – everything. She asks, “Where would you wear these clothes?” An exasperated Maria cries, “Everywhere!” After the argument ends (basically by Ivana shutting down Elizabeth), the women return to the Parsons School to get the seamstresses to work. Maria says that her goal is for everyone to be in bed by midnight, something they haven’t done since they came to New York. Maria really did a good job on this task. Not only did she win, but she made good use of all of her team members (including the maligned Elizabeth), and she planned so well that her team got some sleep. In past tasks, I wasn’t a Maria fan, but in this task, she did quite well.

The next day, the women finish up the final details before the show. Sandy says in an interview that they wanted to determine the pricing as a group, rather than have one person make that decision. Sounds like they learned from last week’s problem with Pamela. Jennifer says picking the right price is very important. If they go too high, the buyers won’t want to take a risk on the designer. As you’ll recall from the episode, while most of the team goes to the hotel to prep the models, Elizabeth and Lil Stacy stay behind to put together the line sheets and cut swatches. Elizabeth says she feels like an outsider and realizes she isn’t popular with the group. As the rest of the women strut down the runway playing fashion model, Elizabeth toils over the line sheets and thinks how much fun she would’ve had at the ball if not for her wicked stepsisters.

There’s a clip of the guys meeting the models, but we don’t learn too much from it other than the fact that Raj is a terrible flirt. He seems to spend a lot of time chatting up the models. Given the fact that Trump later calls him a “hound dog” who drove all of the women crazy, I can’t help but wonder if John would have fared better if he brought Raj into the boardroom.

Later, the men head over to the hotel for pre-show preparations. John talks to the head makeup artist about the look of the show, and everyone is happy with the resulting makeup look. Raj continues to flirt with the German-speaking model, and admits to hanging around backstage in hope of seeing one of them in a state of undress. Like I said, John might still be around today if he’d taken Raj into the boardroom. Raj tells the women that, with his smoking jacket, he’s trying for a Hugh Hefner look. When Kelly and his group arrive at the hotel after finishing up the important details of pricing and such, Kelly is very irritated to see that while he’s been working hard, Raj has been hitting on the women.

The candidates arrive at the runway for the show. The women are dressed to the nines (Jennifer’s hair, in particular, looks fabulous), but the men are going for a different look – most of them are sporting sunglasses. Jennifer says she’s afraid the buyers will be charmed by the group of cute boys in sunglasses, and Wes asks if they’re intimidated by them. When Mosaic’s models hit the runway, the women are more worried. Elizabeth says that she loved the first skirt. It’s the kind of thing she’d buy for herself. Sandy thinks the designs are risky, but that the risk might pay off. Lil Stacy says that the men’s fashions were really cutting edge, whereas the women went for choices that were more wearable. Will they have played it too safe? Isaac Mizrahi says that he preferred the men’s line, since it was edgier. Jennifer says in an interview that after losing so many times, the women are always worried at the end of a task.

We get to see more of the Hugo Boss party, and nothing much new happens. If you like contortionists or are intrigued by the idea of seeing Carolyn, George, and Lil Kim in the same room, then it’s fascinating. Otherwise, not so much.

Meanwhile, Mosaic isn’t having such a good time. They have what Raj describes as “crappy sandwiches” for dinner. Kelly says that the mood is somber, and everyone wonders who will go. Kevin talks about pricing. They doubled Ilse’s prices and added 20-30% to all of them, so we know that the men gave themselves a hefty markup. Apparently they didn’t learn from Pamela’s mistake. Andy thinks that John would be wise to go after either Raj or the two guys who were in charge of pricing. He doubts John will go after Raj, though, because the two of them are good friends. Wes thinks John picked the wrong designer. Chris is afraid of what the boardroom will be like, since they’re all getting along so well right now. Kevin thinks Raj should be the one to go. He’s funny, but unproductive, and really proved to be a distraction for Ilse when she was trying to work. Kevin would miss Raj, but “it’s business.”

John gets fired, and it’s nothing we didn’t already see on Thursday night. But we do know now that he made the final decision on Ilse and that he may have fared better if he’d taken Raj to the boardroom. Poor strategy on his part.

In his taxicab confessional, John says that he thinks he should have stuck around longer, but he has no regrets. He wishes the rest of his team luck and says he’s proud of his efforts.

That’s it for this week’s Apprentice extras. It looks like the teams are going to be reshuffled this week, so it’ll be interesting to see who stands out – both positively and negatively. See you all then!

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

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