As for The Apprentice, as much as Troy keeps making huge strides, Nick has floundered and fallen in my esteem.

His cockiness for thinking himself the Super Salesman wouldn't be plain smugness if he had actually performed well, and given what was shown in the episode, he's made plenty of rookie sales mistakes. (I should know what those are!) It was sweet sweet schadenfreude when he was spewing slogans to one potential customer who then was all, "I'm a nightclub owner, it's all just water to me." And and and when he was negotiating with a distributor...

Nick: "We like to sell by the truckload. How'd you like to try out our truckload special?"
Distributor: "No thanks."
Nick: "Okay, we can sell by the pallet..."
Distributor: "No. I'm just not interested."
Nick: "At least buy a case."
Distributor: "What am I going to do with a case?"

Nice job of dropping down, chump.

Also, don't forget how easily discouraged he can be (remember when he all but took himself out of the game because of the Troy/Kwame gambit?), his inability to own up to his mistakes, etc makes him a very low catch for Amy. The only thing that saved his bacon was Ereka's complete lack of leadership skills.

Troy is fast becoming a superstar though. Cunning or dirty, he got the right apartment last week, and this week he all but bailed out his team when he realized whatever it was he realized (I'm stupid so I didn't quite understand his revelation -- point is it worked).

Amy meanwhile hasn't been nearly as impressive, though it's not to say she's not doing well. Rather, she's standing in one (first?) place while Troy is taking out huge chunks from her lead.

Omarosa is mental. Continuing to do something she said she wouldn't do and then acting righteous after receiving reprisal is self-delusional. It's not even entertaining.

(Ok, maybe a little.)



If Ereka had had a better hold on her emotions, she would've stayed and Nick would've been fired. But her decision to bring in Bill to the meeting was a disastrous move completely informed by her friendship with Katrina. While Bill's betrayal/getting even with Ereka might've been splitting hairs (her criticism a week earlier really wasn't such a big deal -- Bill wasn't (and isn't) going to get fired), she took his criticism on an unwarranted personal level. I saw the gears working in Bill's mind when Trump asked him if whom he would fire if he were the boss; his final decision was strategic, (correctly) picking the person who would be fired. So when she refused to shake his hand (smarmy on his part, but a classless response from her), she made what she said was merely a strategic decision into a personal issue.

All the banging and sawing in the boardroom almost made me think I was losing my mind. I was thinking that the audio on my TV was on the fritz but at the same time it sounded like it was coming from the broadcast; combined, these two impressions created a schism within my cognitive and sensory functions and left me physically disoriented. A surreal moment.