The Apprentice 5, Episode 3 Extras: Teed Off

We start in the suite, right after Brent and Michael return from the boardroom. Sean asks Brent if he was asked who he thought should be fired. Brent doesn’t think Sean needs to know what he said. Sean tells Brent that he thinks he’s playing the game a lot smarter than everyone thinks. He’s intelligent, and pretending to be a little crazy is part of his strategy. Interesting theory. I can’t decide if it’s a good one or if he’s giving Brent too much credit. Sean thinks that Brent is trying to drive everyone crazy before he knocks them out. He adds that everyone should be afraid of Brent. Especially Stacy, apparently. Brent interviews that everyone underestimates him but Sean is starting to catch on. Brent tells Sean that he’s a “nuclear weapon” in the boardroom and will be around until the end.

After the Trump Lesson of the Week, we see Gold Rush brainstorming for their task (and not coming up with a theme). Next we see Synergy at the park, trying to set up an archery area. Sean isn’t sure why he’s been assigned this job, since he doesn’t know much about archery. Brent seems to think that he does, though, because he went to sleepaway camp for eight years. Michael, who may soon exhibit so much intelligence that everyone will completely forget about his bathrobe idea last week, decides that archery is too dangerous and they shouldn’t go ahead with this. He interviews that he’s working to make sure there are no big errors on the task. So it looks like Synergy had to scrap two ideas, the archery and the skeet shooting. I’m surprised no one brought that up to make Gold Rush look even worse.

Gold Rush is setting up at the park with about an hour left before the dealers are to arrive. Apparently Tarek and Bryce have gone out to get golf stuff. Way to leave it till the last minute. Charmaine and Leslie are talking about how Theresa is stressing out and they’re not nearly ready. Tarek and Bryce return and Theresa tells Tarek that she needs him to come through for her today. Too bad he didn’t tell her the same thing.

After the Gold Rush generator/jump on Lenny fiasco, we see Synergy’s golf-cart racing event and Gold Rush’s generally-disastrous event. The next clip is of Synergy’s reward but it won’t load. Just imagine more sharks.

Boardroom time already? Tarek says that Theresa was a good sergeant but not a good general. What’s with the military metaphors this week? I bet Lenny liked that one. Tarek continues that Theresa made some critical errors, including spending $25,000, about half of the budget, on a rotating stage. Why didn’t they leave this part in the regular show? It’s pretty important. Theresa says that if Tarek hadn’t done so horribly in his role in charge of the creative stuff, maybe he would have told Theresa what to spend the money on. I’m so glad Theresa was fired. Tarek was in charge of creativity, not the budget. And he wasn’t the project manager. Shut up, Theresa.

Theresa keeps interrupting Tarek and he notes that this is the reason he can never express any thoughts. Theresa says that Tarek always needs to have his ego stroked. Trump asks Charmaine if Tarek is as smart as he thinks he is. Charmaine says that he’s intelligent, but that’s different from being a team player. Trump notes that Tarek is supposed to be a genius but he makes dumb mistakes. Tarek doesn’t think he made any mistakes on this task. Theresa tries to bring up the golf problems but Tarek says that they didn’t have a theme. Theresa says she would have fired him on the spot. Bryce backs Tarek up but Bill brings up the golf again, because he and Carolyn just can’t get off of it this week.

Trump wonders if Lenny or Tarek was the bigger disaster. Theresa says it was Tarek, who asks why she said she would bring Lenny to the boardroom if she feels that way. Carolyn brings up the golfing again, and Tarek should really announce that Theresa didn’t want him to buy fake putting greens. Lenny thinks Trump should fire everyone, including Dan and Lee. Lee says that he didn’t decide to check out on this task; he didn’t want a freebie. This is something that’s a part of his life. Trump says that he doesn’t think Lee and Dan had a choice. Lenny just isn’t as religious as they are, and that’s okay. He respects Dan and Lee for not doing the task. I do, too. And I don’t think it’s a mistake that the producers scheduled a task to fall on Rosh Hashanah.

Charmaine tries to defend her choice in comedians, and I still think it’s a little fishy that she wound up with one who was on an NBC show. It turns out that she paid Cory $1,700. She was so not worth that. Trump asks Lee who should be fired. Lee admits that he can’t choose based on this task, since he wasn’t there, but he thought Theresa did well the first two weeks. He has “trust issues” with Tarek and the golf was bad, so he’d go with him. Leslie says that Tarek and Bryce saved the golf event, but the presentation was bad. Bryce would fire Lenny. He and Theresa jump on Lenny again. Dan speaks up that he could see Tarek running one of Trump’s businesses. Trump is surprised, since Tarek made so many mistakes, and wonders if Dan has been seduced by Tarek’s Mensa membership as well. Bryce practically says, “Say nice things about me, too.” Talk about needing an ego stroke. Theresa decides to bring Lenny and Tarek back with her.

Bill thinks Theresa should go. Carolyn thinks Tarek should go. I think she’s actually personally offended by how bad the grass looked. When Theresa, Tarek, and Lenny return, Lenny says that he did his job and should get to stay. Tarek agrees and says that Theresa should go because she was a bad manager. Trump thinks Theresa should have brought Charmaine back. Theresa says that Tarek was worse, but as she reveals later, she really just wants to protect Charmaine because they’re friends. Tarek says that Theresa can’t think he’s that bad if she entrusted him with all of the creative responsibilities. Theresa wonders what he even did. Tarek pulls out his ace, the lack of theme.

Carolyn finally brings up something other than golf - the fact that the models had no knowledge about the car. She thinks that Theresa, as the leader, should be held accountable for the problems. Theresa says that she trusted her team and delegated responsibilities to them. Okay, but that means nothing if you don’t follow up. She tries to blame Lenny again because he didn’t get the generators, but Trump says that’s not the reason they lost. Theresa says that Lenny was a liability and she was already having to deal with the golf issues. Bill thinks his ten-year-old nephew could have put together a better presentation. Can we please stop talking about the golf?

Tarek says that he had a lot to deal with. Theresa challenges this claim because, according to her, Charmaine did everything. Then why didn’t she bring Charmaine in? She’s just digging herself deeper and deeper. Tarek says that he was trying to brand the product, and I’m glad he said that, because that was the point of the task. Trump says that everyone else on the team seems to like Theresa. Tarek says that leadership is different from being a project manager; she may have been a star on previous tasks, but not on this one. Theresa says that she saved Tarek on the first task by selling so much. She does remember that they lost the first task, right? Tarek says they couldn’t even find her on the second task. Theresa repeats that she was a star. Tarek taunts that she has to be the star of everything. That strikes me as true. He adds that she spent more time putting together her outfit than she did on the event.

Lenny thinks Trump should fire both Theresa and Tarek. Bill says the models were awful, in which case Bryce, imparter of the car wisdom, should be in the boardroom. I think if Theresa had brought Bryce into the boardroom, he and Tarek would have double-teamed her and she would have been out anyway. Trump thinks that Charmaine should be in there because she hired the models. I don’t agree - yes, she should be held accountable for the horrible comedian, but her job was finding the models, not telling them what to say. In addition, Theresa only gave Bryce the job of teaching them 20 minutes before they were supposed to start. No matter how well Bryce had done, he only had 20 minutes, and that’s Theresa’s fault.

Despite Tarek and Lenny’s problems, Theresa made too many mistakes to count, so she’s fired. I think she would have been fired even if Charmaine had been there. Hiring a bad comedian is nothing next to all of the ways Theresa screwed up.

In the cab, Theresa blames her team for the loss. Of course. She says that Tarek let her down and then blamed her. He’s been in the boardroom twice and she’s been a star twice. Yeah, twice. Not this time. Tarek has “escaped” and Theresa doesn’t think he’ll last much longer. She also doesn’t think the team will be happy when he and Lenny return to the suite and she doesn’t. She regrets not bringing Charmaine in and isn’t surprised that she went for friendship over her desire to be the apprentice. Theresa thinks Lenny is “inappropriate” and will bring the team down again. She rocks, basically, and Trump lost a potential asset. This won’t be the last he sees of her. Doesn’t everyone say that? I probably won’t even remember her name by the end of the season.

In her exit interview, Theresa says that she thought she could be the apprentice because she’s multitalented. She has about three jobs, which is scary. She thought being a psychotherapist would help, but no luck there. She did the best she could. Theresa talks about the bad comedian and how she trusted that Charmaine would pick someone good. She adds that Lenny dropped the ball and Tarek was a disappointment. She thought bringing Lenny and Tarek to the boardroom would ensure that she would stay, but now she realizes that she should have brought Charmaine instead. She thought she could blame Lenny, but her plan didn’t work out.

And then, amazingly, Theresa takes responsibility. She admits that she was fired because she made a mistake. We may have a first here, ladies and gentlemen! Maybe it’s because she’s a psychotherapist and understands cause and effect and all of that. Theresa liked Bryce, Charmaine, Lee, and Dan. She’s happy to go home to her husband and her multiple jobs. She liked being able to reiterate that she can accomplish whatever she sets her mind to. So she set her mind to coming in fourth? Good job! Theresa says that she had a good time and everything happens for a reason. She hopes good things will come from this.

The preview for the next episode makes me mad. Synergy is meeting up to go work. It looks like Tammy (who?) might be the project manager. Brent isn’t ready to go and is holding everyone up. Andrea interviews that he’s already a drain on the team, and making them late is a big deal. Andrea confronts Brent, telling him that he was late on the last task, too. Brent says that that was because he was up until 4 a.m., doing things for her. He says that she did a horrible job on the task and calls her an “unappreciative you-know-what.” Brent interviews that Andrea won’t keep her mouth shut and should be locked up in a prison. If only we could put people in jail who won’t be quiet. Andrea sarcastically says that Brent helped her, then says that that’s why she’s a multimillionaire and he makes $50,000. Hey, Andrea - I make even less than that. What do you think of me? Everyone who’s not dead to me, take a step forward. Not so fast, Andrea.

Next week: Shut up, Andrea.

Jenn Brasler is an Assistant Editor of Reality News Online and an aspiring writer from Falls Church, VA. You can e-mail her at luckyjenn@hotmail.com. She can’t believe no one else sees how horrible Andrea is.

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