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Week 1:
"Toying with Disaster"
Original Air Date: 9/9/04
When Donald Trump joins the eighteen candidates in the boardroom for the first time, he takes pause, before sitting down, to remark, “Nice looking group—wow.” And he’s right. Who knew the Ivy League had so many sharp lookers? We know we’re watching Trump TV when looks, brains, and money go hand in hand. The Donald splits the group once again into two teams of men versus women but then throws a new twist into the mix. Realizing from the first season that the position of project manager carried significant risk with absolutely no reward, he announces that the winning project manager from one week will be exempt from firing the next. When the group heads up to their lavish suite, razor-sharp assessments flow as freely as the champagne. Ivana Ma for her part writes Wes Moss off as too sarcastic to be trusted.
With no more bubbly to be had, the teams receive a letter from The Donald announcing that the teams will have to give up one member apiece to head up the team of the contrary sex. When it becomes clear that none of the guys are game, Bradford steps up and volunteers for the job. Great idea, he thinks… that is until he actually meets the women. “Who are you?” They instantly opine. “I’m The Bradford,” he flatly roars before drowning in girl talk. Pam, the towering blonde with a chiseled edge, will have none of it. “You guys need to bond,” she says before unilaterally deciding, “I’ll just go over to the boys.” Needless to say, no one objects, and she takes off and joins the men gloating, “My penis is getting larger with every minute.” What’s the next comment we hear from Rob? “I think she’s six foot nine.”
When the two teams must choose names, the personality that is Raj is uncaged. “British battleships are a great way to find names,” he says. But when Pam suggests “Empire,” Raj leaps at it and won’t let go: “Caesar would like it!” The team though has other ideas and votes for John’s oh-so-lame, politically correct suggestion of “Mosaic.” Raj in his fire-red pants thinks that it’s “tooty-fruity” and in an aside says, quite seriously, “It’s antithetical to my character, and I don’t like it at a fundamental level.” Despite how he chooses to put it, it’s hard to say he’s wrong. When Jennifer Crisafulli gets wind of the name, she heaves over in laughter. Wait until Trump hears about this!
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“Wow, that’s awful,” Trump says when they all convene at Toys R Us the next morning to hear about their first task. Pam though scores points with the big man by firmly backing her team’s decision in spite of his reflex dismissal. “The team likes the name.” But what Trump wants to know is why Raj has a cane. The man has two good legs on him after all. Pushing onward, Trump explains that each team will come up with a prototype for a brand new toy for little boys with the help of professional Mattel toy designers. A judging panel of three top Mattel executives will choose the winning toy based upon their own considerable experience and how real kids demonstrably react to the toys in focus groups. The meeting breaks up and the teams get down to work.
With Mattel logos plastered everywhere, Pam orders her men to “take off your ties.” Do you see any toy executive here wearing a tie? I don’t think so. So take them off. The wind-up men all obey. The team then brainstorms and bounces creative ideas off each other to find the right concept. Boyish-looking Andy Litinsky comes up with the idea for “Crustacean Nation” just a little bit too quickly. Somehow, it seems that he’s been knocking that name around for a while now, especially when he describes the story for his half-fish, half-cheetah action-figure creatures in considerable detail. The creatures will all feature any number of interchangeable appendages to make them more appealing to kids. Rob Flanagan, however, is clearly in new territory for himself when he suggests going with an electrostatic eel instead. The team roundly shoots him down, explaining that eels don’t have appendages, and Rob is content to sit back and roll with the punches from therein out rather than make any more waves.
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Nice looking group—wow.
