It’s turning into a late night for both teams. Claudia starts to feel sick. She asks to go home, and the rest of the team lets her go, except Annie, who thinks it shows a lack of commitment. The men’s team won’t let Tom help with anything, but he keeps trying to help. He makes legitimate points about the name (“It’s a bra size!”), but it’s too late in the game, and the rest of the team doesn’t take him seriously—or even listen to him at all.
The next morning, it’s three hours until the presentation, and Scott asks the rest of the team to sit out (especially Tom) while Clint, Jesse and he bang out the script. The men’s team is entirely on edge, and can’t decide who will present the pitch. Clint turns out to be bossy, and Jesse gets frustrated with his ego. The women are also down to the wire. Brande and Annie run down the dirty Manhattan streets (Brande barefoot—yuck!) trying to get there with as much time as possible. Meanwhile, the men ask Tom at the last minute to present because he is quirky and has energy, and he points out that all of a sudden now they want his help, when yesterday they wouldn’t let him do anything. Tom wants to help touch up the script before he reads it to the CEO, and Hershel calls Tom a liar for saying that he wasn’t given chances to write it yesterday.
The teams assemble to give their pitches to Donald and Tony, the Zappos CEO. Athena goes first, with Claudia speaking. She starts off strong, and introduced Natalie, who is Mizz Z, complete with a massive Z-shaped lightning bolt. Claudia narrates the comic of a woman who is frustrated by bad customer service, gets sucked into her computer and turns into a superhero champion of good customer service. Claudia stumbles through the words, and she worries that Donald will notice that she crammed for this. Donald asks Natalie about what she thinks about her outfit, and she says she wouldn’t wear it pretty much anywhere. The rest of the team worries about that comment.
Next, the men’s team presents. Tom introduces the character Meghan, who represents every woman at her best (I may be biased, but I think they picked the perfect name for this one). Meghan gets tired and has no time to shop and nothing to wear. Zappos transforms her into EEE. Tom has enthusiasm as he presents, but you can tell he doesn’t believe in the silly name. After the presentations, Tony tells Donald that he likes that the men’s team focused on the customer, but he didn’t like the focus on the letter E because Zappos has an opportunity to own the letter Z. He likes that the women focused on the letter Z and captured the core values of the company, but they seemed to stumble.
The teams collect in the board room, and Donald asks Khloe and Scott about their experiences during the challenge. He asks Tom about their conflict, and Tom blames Scott for being unorganized. Scott says that every time he put Tom on a task, he derailed the team. Tom says he wasn’t given opportunities, and Scott starts to laugh. Erin says she saw that everyone on the men’s team wanted to be the leader, and she blames Scott for not putting everyone in line. Joan says that while at first their team was chaotic, Khloe grew into her PM role. Joan blames Annie for not giving her respect for her writing experience. Annie tries to talk over Donald, but he doesn’t let her. Melissa claims to have come up with the idea, but Claudia and Khloe. Donald asks Natalie why she told the CEO that she didn’t like the outfit, and Donald then asks why Brande wasn’t the one in the sexy outfit. Donald tells a weird story about him trying to pick up Brande back in the day, and he seems to have a bit of a bias in her direction.
Donald shows each team the opposite team’s comic and to point out the differences. The women are impressed by the men’s character, but not the name. Tom recalls how often he tried to change the name. Donald reveals that Zappos picked the women as the winner (no surprise here). Khloe wins $20,000 for her charitable organization, and Trump dismisses the women, who have won their second challenge in a row. They celebrate with more champagne.
In the boardroom, Donald tries to distill where the fault lies, and it’s clear that Scott and Tom are in hot water. Scott admits that Tom fought him about the name EEE, but says he fought him on everything. Donald asks Hershel whom he would fire, and he says Tom. He clearly despises Tom. He asks Brian, who says whoever came up with the name should be fired. Dennis says he’d fire Scott for being too soft as a PM. Jesse says he would fire Clint, and Donald is blindsided by that choice. Tom pipes in and says that Clint wanted to argue and fight with everyone, and Jesse agrees that Clint’s argumentative nature hurt the entire team. Clint says that he would fire Tom for undermining Scott. (Is it really undermining if he was making good points about the horrible name? Okay, I admit it. I have a bias for Tom. But the women’s team agrees with me that he’s weird but smart.) Scott knows it’s him or Tom, and he asks for Hershel to come as the third to be his advocate. Hershel is less than thrilled, since that means he has the possibility of being fired if he says something wrong. Donald dismisses the rest of the group.
Tom, Scott, and Hershel remain, and rehash their differences. Donald dismisses Hershel after his piece about Tom being a distraction, leaving Scott and Tom in the room. Tom says that Scott should be fired because he couldn’t control the team in a creative meeting. Erin says that it all comes down to the name, which was all Scott. Scott dodges the question of whether Tom was adamant against the name. Scott says that Tom should get fired because Tom seems to be here to perform and play. Tom says they are both there to fight testicular cancer, and he’s serious about winning.
Erin sticks with her idea that the EEE name is the big miss, more than anything else, and Donald agrees. He fires Scott. Trump reminds Tom that he has a lot to live up to next week. Scott leaves, and in his car he admits that he is bitterly disappointed in himself, but he’s also optimistic and thankful about his future and family. “C’est la vie,” he says.
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-Meghan Carlson, BuddyTV Staff Writer
Image courtesy of NBC