Niki Tehranchi

Apprentice Recap, Season 10, Episode 6, Thursday, October 21, 2010

It was fitting that the men dressed up as Ancient Romans for the task this week, because the Boardroom became a veritable Gladiator's arena.  But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

The challenge this week was to raise the most money by organizing pedicab tours of New York.  You know, those horribly anachronistic and humiliating carriages attached to humans instead of horses.  At least, they were not pulling them on foot, as I have seen before, but on bicycles.   

The men of Team Octane decided to go for humour again by dressing up as Centurions and wisely decided "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" by sticking to the Trump building to target tourists.  The women also went back to a past success, the ice cream task, by donning pink T-shirts but made a not so wise decision to use their sex appeal by putting on tight, itty-bitty shorts and calling themselves "Babes on Bikes." 

It was very cringe-inducing and demeaning to see some slimy guys ogle the tight bums of the young women of Team Fortitude, like they were Hooters waitresses instead of college grads and business women.  Not a shining moment for the women's team.  Which is too bad, cause I was really rooting for Kelly, the Project Manager.  Kelly did a lot of work in last week's fashion show challenge that earned a win for her team, however she did not toot her own horn, leaving all the glory to Project Manager Stephanie and emcee Brandy. 

But the worst mistake Kelly made was appointing Canadian Stephanie as the scout who would choose the best location in New York to attract lots of sales even though she had Brooklyn-based Mahsa on hand to lend her expertise.  If there's one thing that you ought to know working for a real estate tycoon like Donald Trump, it's the golden rule "location, location, location."  The girls chose Wall Street on the premise that this would be where the guys with the most money would be.  Have they not heard of the recession?  Not to mention that local New-Yorkers, busy crunching numbers in their head and trying to hold on to their job like a sailor holding on to his boat during a shipwreck, would probably not waste their time on a cheap tourist gimmick.

The women ended up making a third of what the men made even though they were 6 against 4.  Well I should say 3, since Crazy Dave can't really be considered as a teammate, but more like a Virus, as Steuart said.  And if you think that moniker was funny, you should have heard Clint come up with the best Boardroom line since Mahsa's infamous Titanic takedown of Nicole:

"Dave couldn't get a job as an Oompa-Loompa selling Gobstoppers!"

Clint, you just went up ten notches in my book.  Anyone who can quote Roald Dahl so breathlessly is a friend of mine.

The girls predictably started tearing each other up, trying to assign blame as soon as the men left.  Mahsa wisely stayed very quiet while Kelly, Stephanie and Liza gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and roared their terrible roars. 

Although I criticized Mahsa's abrasive approach in the first episode, fearing that attracting negative attention to herself would lead to an early exit from the game, I am beginning to see an interesting strategy.  Her St Valentine Day Massacre or should I say "Mahsa-cre" of Nicole early on was akin to being the newest convict in prison, where you immediately pick a fight and beat some random other prisoner to a bloody pulp as an effective preemptive strike, leading the rest of potential attackers to stay weary of you.  It is quite clear nobody wants to pick Mahsa to be in the final three in the Boardroom because they are just afraid of her. And I think in this task, even though she did a great job in sales, she definitely had potential to be blamed because she should have given her input as to the location, being the only one out of the group to actually live in the vicinity of Manhattan.  Rockefeller Center, as she mentioned, would have been an infinitely better choice of location leading the women's team to a potential win. 

As it turned out, Kelly was unfortunately fired.  And so we move on to week 7...

The Apprentice airs on NBC thursdays at 9/10 c.