TVSquad

And, we're back.

(S05E09) After a lovely respite last week, The Apprentice has returned to Monday nights to torture entice us with the confusion and the back-stabbing that is the corporate world. Just to review, Synergy has gone on a four-week rout against Gold Rush. In the two episodes before the break, Lenny and Leslie were let go from Gold Rush, and now the rest of the team members are ready for a bit of revenge.

Do they get their revenge? Will your favorite person be fired next? Is that real hair on Donald Trump's head? Am I asking too many questions?

All that, and more, will be answered as you click ahead to the toxic waste dump known as The Apprentice. 

Poor Leslie. They had her birthday cake all ready, but she never showed up. Lee was the one who walked through the door, to Charmaine's disappointment. Lee told the others that he was raring to go as project manager to win one for Gold Rush.

This week's task was to create a limited-edition souvenir guide of Ellis Island, proceeds going to help refurbish the historic landmark. It was sponsored by a national mortgage company that, apparently, owns the American Dream. Gee, it's nice to know that major corporations are know taking ownership of some of our basic concepts. George and Carolyn were both out this week, so Trump's son Don Jr. and daughter Ivanka took the overseer positions.

Lee (Gold Rush) and Allie (Synergy) were project managers this week. Lee split his team of four up, with half going to Ellis Island to take pictures, while he and Charmaine tried to drum up some bulk sales. Allie took her whole team over to the island so they could take the tour and get some pictures as well. Andrea, who has increasingly become the thorn in Synergy's side, had nothing but criticism on Allie's leadership styles and decided to tell her about it. In front of the other team members. That was swift.

You could pretty much tell that Synergy did not have their stuff together for this task. For example, after taking copious notes during the tour, Tammy left her notebook on a desk in the main processing room. Allie and Tammy went back to retrieve it, and missed the boat off of the island. Gee, they could have left the notebook there and gotten all of the tour information off of that newfangled product they call the Internet. In another example, Andrea displayed her 'expert graphic design' capabilities by producing a pretty crappy cover for their souvenir book. Allie needed to make some drastic changes to make it presentable for sale.

On the other hand, Gold Rush had it together this week.  Lee and his team got up nice and early to stake out positions at the boat queue in Battery Park, where hundreds of tourist waited to ferry over to the island. Synergy was late and ended up overlapping Gold Rush. So, Allie decided to sell their books over on Ellis Island itself. Now, I would have fired everyone on Synergy at this point for not looking at another obvious place to sell their guides: New Jersey's Liberty State Park. Transportation to Ellis Island is also provided from this area as well.

Since most of the island's visitors bought books from Gold Rush, Synergy had a hard time selling their guides. Andrea didn't help; while a good leader, she is not a people person and her sales were dismal. An hour before their task ended, Andrea informed Allie that she was an expert in bulk sales and thought she should work on that. Hey, where was that idea SEVEN hours ago? After watching all of this, you got an inkling that Gold Rush would win.  They did, with double the amount of profits that Synergy made. Their reward was to play golf with VJ Singh and Trump himself.

While Gold Rush was out on the links, Allie and her team members (sans Sean) were plotting against Andrea. Meow, it was rough! Name calling, threats of violence. I had to check and make sure I wasn't watching a female episode of The Apprentice. Meanwhile, Sean took the safe road by not taking any sides in the matter.

In the boardroom, the claws were unsheathed against Andrea. Allie, Tammy and Roxanne all blamed her for the poor performance and agreed that she wasn't a people person. Don Jr. and Ivanka took Andrea to tasks about all of her 'expertise' in sales and graphic design. Andrea had to admit that she was not an expert at them, but an expert at hiring salesmen and graphic artists. Once again, it would have been nice to know about this ahead of time.

Trump agreed with Synergy women that Andrea did not work well with others and was surprised to hear that she was not the star of the team. After listening to all of the arguments, Trump sent Andrea out the door.

Next week: Love, baby!