The Apprentice LA - Episode 12

I was driving today, on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Sitting at the stoplight in the car next to me: Bill Rancic. “Bill!” I said. He looked over. “Hey!” he said. “Rough night the other night, huh?” I replied, “Yeah, it sucked.” He agreed—“I was pulling for you.”

I wish he had been there instead of Ivanka.

“I wish you had been there instead of Ivanka,” I said.

Then we both noticed that he was driving a shiny Porsche convertible and I was driving a dirty 1996 Honda Accord…LX. “This is what happens when you get fired,” we were both thinking.

And with that, the light turned green, and we parted ways (him with more acceleration).

And that will prove to be the theme of this week’s recap—what happens when you get fired.

So, continuing where we left off last week: the Dead Man’s Lexus.

So I’m sitting there in the car, trying to get my head around the fact that Donald Trump had just pronounced, “Tim, you’re fiahed.” Talk about surreal.

I finished my little speech about being fired on the fourth of July, and my dismay at being grayed out (this made Entertainment Weekly’s “quotes of the week” this week), and we drove for another 10 minutes to a landing somewhere and parked. I emerged from the vehicle and was greeted with open arms by 2 of the casting people and Liza, the therapist. That’s right—Liza, the therapist.

Liza is Mark Burnett’s go-to therapist, and has been on site for all of the Survivors, Apprentices, Contenders, and others. I vaguely remembered when I saw her that she had been introduced in those few days prior to the filming, and we were told she’d be there waiting to talk to the firees about whatever they wanted to talk about. “Uh oh,” I had thought. “The firees need therapy?”

So we all hugged, and they were pleasantly surprised to see that I was in a chipper mood—as I mentioned, I knew I had had a good run and hadn’t gone down without a fight, and the main thing on my mind was that I didn’t have to wake up for a task the next day. I was an easy case for them. From stories I’ve heard, they are often greeted with anger, tears, and depression. And on these reality shows, there is always a slight fear of having to watch for suicide—remember, Liza greets people who haven’t slept in a month and are not thinking straight, and some of whom are deeply upset about what had just transpired and what it would mean for them in the future. Bad combination.

So we got in a van and headed to the “Ponderosa” (the first season of Survivor, people who were kicked off the show were sequestered in a hotel called the Ponderosa—the name stuck, and ever since, Burnett people have used the term to refer to wherever the cast will be brought to upon exiting—there’s even a nickname. The “Pondy”). This was the same place we all were in the five days prior to filming (when we couldn’t interact with each other). Everyone who is fired is held there until the filming is over, and then the whole cast heads home the same day—this is because the press and message boards could easily learn spoiler info about the show if they found out who was back in the real world and when they returned.

On the drive, they explained to me the situation there. The Pondy was a corporate housing complex. Kind of like a hotel without all the service. But the rooms were nice, and everyone had their own room. Everything was paid for by Mark Burnett Productions, and the same people who cast the show were now in charge of the goings on at the Pondy—basically serving as camp counselors, handling the budget, keeping people in line, making sure that no one exited the premises unaccompanied, and maintaining a fun and cheerful atmosphere as much as can be maintained when dealing with a bunch of reality TV failures.

There was a room there, they explained, that they were renting out to serve as a common room for the cast—it was a hangout room, a venue for parties, a meeting place, and the place where, they told me, the whole cast gathered every three days to welcome in the latest firee. This was called “the flop.”

So they asked me if I was up for seeing everyone, and I said that I most certainly was, and so upon arrival, we headed to the flop.

We opened the door, and what ensued was yet another completely surreal experience.

There was dead silence when the door cracked open, as everyone anxiously waited to see who was behind it. I entered, and—chaos. Everyone was yelling and hugging me and handing me drinks. Some of them were disappointed to see me—apparently, of the remaining 7 cast members, I was overall one of the least hated, and some had been rooting for me as the least of the 7 evils. A lot of the Kinetic girls hated Heidi, and they didn't seem to be too many Kristine fans either. Kinetic also seemed to dislike James, and I think Surya’s stories had made people root against the rest of Arrow.

They were also surprised to see me. A lot of them had predicted they’d be seeing Kristine, Frank, or James, but not me. Part of the reason for this is that the last person to arrive was Angela, and all of the problems between me and my team started after she had departed—and before all of that, I had been an unlikely firee.

From my side, I was very excited to see everyone, but it was weird. First, it was like seeing a bunch of ghosts. Back up at the house, we talked about fired people like they were dead, and there was always an unspoken atmosphere of mourning following the departure of a teammate. Second, it was weird seeing them all together, like a bunch of campers at summer camp. Third, they were all in bikinis and cut-off t-shirts, and flip-flops—and I had last seen all of them in business attire. Fourth, most of them were drunk, and despite myself, Frank, Nicole, and James spending most of the filming intoxicated, I had never seen any of these 11 people drunk. Fifth, the only times I had seen the Kinetic people in the past, it had been under tense conditions—they were the enemy, and most of my interactions with them had been glancing over at them before resolution to try to get a read on whether they seemed happy with the outcome of their task. Suddenly, Jen, and Muna, and Marisa are drunkenly running over and giving me hugs. Plus, Aaron (who I was most excited to see of the bunch—love that guy) had his arm around Aimee. There was no Arrow. There was no Kinetic. Just a bunch of drunken, tan yuppies at summer camp.

When all of the chaos and hugging calmed down, the conversation suddenly turned to, “Tim, tell us everything. Immediately.”

So they all gathered round—them well-slept and well-fed, in their bikinis, with their tans, and their music—and me, in my suit, looking like I had just emerged from a battle, about 15 pounds underweight, deeply exhausted, and slightly delirious. And I told them the story of the past 3 days (Angela had them all caught up to that point). Right away, one of the girls interrupted, and asked, “Who was the winning PM for Kinetic?” I explained that it was Heidi. This received a chorus of “Fuck!”s from the former Kinetic ladies.

Whoa.

They were not fond of Heidi. My theory is that everyone comes back to the Pondy with their own bitter tale, and their bitterness is usually spread out among a number of circumstances and people. And as time passes, it morphs into bitterness purely at a few select people, and these people are almost always people still on the show—people who had outlasted them. And, because girls are the way they are, they tend to be much more bitter and spiteful than the guys. So, considering that 6 of the 11 people at the Pondy were girls, and 5 of those girls had been on Kinetic, and since it’s much more fun for girls to hate the same person together—what I found is that most of the bitterness they felt, at all the unfortunate and unfair circumstances, and all of the people that had wronged them during this process—most of that had been channeled collectively together, and directed towards Heidi.

This makes sense of course—she’s the prettiest girl on the show, she was Trump’s favorite Kinetic member to the point that even when one of the other girls was the winning PM, he’d focus on Heidi. She was probably overrated by Trump, and had gotten a lot of credit for the other girls’ work behind the scenes, and she had outlasted them all. Plus, there was also some legitimate basis for hatred—she had been pretty sneaky and actually had wronged a couple of them.

So I finished my story, and it was late so some people went off to bed, and I stayed up chatting with a few others. Eventually everyone went to bed except me and Aaron. I told him we had all missed him on Arrow, and he told me about his 3 weeks at the Pondy. As he was leaving, he said, “Whenever you wake up, come down to the barbecue pit, we’ll all be grilling.” Whenever you wake up, come down to the barbecue pit, we’ll all be grilling.

After waking up at 4am in a tent for most of the past month and eating a granola bar and 3 Red Bulls for most lunches, I just looked at him in awe.

So Aaron went off, and I was sitting there alone. No cameras. No microphone. No producers. No tents. No hedge. No Arrow. No Kinetic. No Trump.

Just me and the flop.

I went to my room, dropped my bags on the floor, and got in bed. I turned on the TV.

Sportscenter. I had spent 5 weeks without the Red Sox, or sports of any kind. This was bizarre. I sat there in bed, watching baseball highlights. Hours earlier I had been screaming about god-knows-what in the boardroom. What a weird night. What a weird month.

* * *
(that’s right, I put three stars there for dramatic effect)


I slept about 14 hours.

Upon awakening, things were surreal once again. As trite as this may sound, at that moment the whole thing actually felt like a big hideous dream. After sleeping more than I had in the past 3 weeks combined, I felt incredibly refreshed, a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time. I felt my stomach—no mic. Aahh. And there was no task. Aaaaahhhhhh.

I checked my voice messages on the hotel phone. I had missed my scheduled 9am appointment with the therapist (it was 1pm). Oh yeah. I called them and rescheduled for that afternoon. I threw on my flip flops and shorts and moseyed out to the pool. I stumbled over to the barbecue pit, where a bunch of the cast was lounging around eating. They all clapped when they saw me. They asked how I was doing. They told me what to expect as time progressed for me at the Pondy, with the wisdom of a bunch of people who had all been told “You’re fiahed.” There were all these stages they were talking about—relief, regret, boredom, depression, acceptance, bitterness, etc. etc. I told them that I was feeling just fine, pleasant even.

I said something about “Trump” and everyone immediately looked at me and explained that we don’t say the word “Trump” or “boardroom” under any circumstances, since there were a lot of people everywhere, and no one was supposed to know who we were or that we had anything to do with a TV show. The code words were “DT” and “BR”.

After a bit, I headed to my appointment with Dr. Liza. Everyone has a “day after” appointment with Dr. Liza. I went in and sat in the chair across the room from her. We chatted about things.

She’s a wonderful woman, of course. Comforting to the highest degree. She knew everything about me, simply by looking at the data from the 7-hour multiple choice psych test I had taken during the “Final 50” week 2 months earlier. And I mean everything. She knew about my childhood, and my fears, and hopes, and vices, and what type of girls I liked, and what type of friends I had. It was scary. But she knew all of it in a wonderful, comforting, Dr. Liza way, so it was okay. Sitting there, I began to question whether I loved her.

So we talked about the whole experience, and the future, and everything else. As I mentioned, I was an easy case, because I felt pretty good about everything. I had gone into it thinking of it like a game with a “nothing to lose” mindset, and I had done pretty well. Sure, in the months that followed, especially as I watched some of the episodes and saw from the outside how much I really, actually, could have won this thing if things had gone just a bit differently, I’d get frustrated at times. But at this point, I felt nothing but satisfaction from the whole thing.

After my meeting, a couple of the casting guys took me in a van back to the house to collect my stuff. When we go to the boardroom, we all bring our bag with one night’s worth of stuff. The next day, when everyone is out on a task, the latest firee is brought back to collect the rest of their stuff.

Walking around the house and the campsite that day was the first time I felt a sad about things. First of all, I noticed that the campsite was empty—everyone had apparently moved into the house. This sucked, because it made it official that if I had just survived that one last task, there would have been some kind of shakeup that would have gotten me out of the vulnerable position I had been in. Plus, the quietness there reminded me that everyone was out on a task (in Vegas as it turns out), and suddenly, now well-rested, I kind of wanted to be back in there in the competition. Kind of.

So I gathered my stuff, the whole time resisting the intense urge to poop in James, Steph and Frank’s bags, and got ready to leave. It crossed my mind to write a note to my old teammates, saying something along the lines of, “Miss you guys—good luck.” But then I remembered that they all had ruthlessly stabbed me in the back only 20 hours earlier, and decided against it. This led me to return to the pooping in their bags idea once more, but I again decided against that. I guess I’ll just leave, I thought.

As I was heading out, Jay Bienstock, the Executive Producer of the show, a guy we almost never saw during the process (though he was always there, behind the scenes), came downstairs and shook my hand.

Him: How ya doing?
Me: I’m doing alright. Long boardroom last night, huh?
Him: Hell of a fight you put up. For awhile, I thought you might actually make it out of there.
Me: Me too. But just too many arguments against me. It was fun though.
Him: Well you were a pleasure to have on the show. Thanks for everything. [Translation: You don’t know how happy I am that you got involved with Nicole. Seriously, you don’t know how happy I am about that. We are going to squeeze every drop of exploitation out of that possible.]
Me: I had a great time. I look forward to watching. [Translation: Please don’t portray me as a douchebag.]

And with that, I headed back to the Pondy. Though the next 24 hours were relatively uneventful, I learned a lot about life at the Pondy. Including:

--The casting team/camp counselors did a good job at maintaining a happy atmosphere. On the wall of the flop was a big whiteboard with funny private jokes and messages. Next to that was a big bulletin board with Polaroids of the cast doing silly things. There was a big calendar that included events like, “Dodgers game,” and “sushi dinner,” and “tennis tournament” on it—these events were voluntary, but most people went on them, I learned. Every morning at 10am a bunch of people met in the flop to make a run to Coffee Bean. Etc.

--Underneath the happy-go-lucky atmosphere that covered the surface, there was a lot of hard feelings, bitterness, and anger. Almost every time I talked to someone one-on-one, the conversation would eventually turn to their specific frustrating story. In fact, the only people I can think of that didn’t convey their own angry tale to me were Martin and Michelle. And the whole summer camp, “we all love each other” thing was limited to the surface as well. More than once, I’d be sitting around with two people, and when one left the room, the other would whisper about how everyone was annoyed with that person, or how that person was pathetic, or something. This was pretty amusing. Here was my roundup (abridged here):

Martin: Martin was the King of the Pondy—the Guardian of its gates. I cannot imagine how terrible it must be to be the first one fired, and arrive there to an empty flop—just you and the whole casting team, smiling and dedicating the next three days to cheering you up so you don’t kill yourself. And you know you have six weeks to sit there and wait for it to end, while everyone talks about this crazy once-in-a-lifetime experience that you didn’t get to have. Plus, everyone you’ll be spending time with over that period did better than you. Some didn’t do well, but only you were the First Person Fired. Just a completely abominable situation.

And no one could have dealt with that better than Martin. He had nothing to prove—he’s married, with two kids, and serves as the Assistant District Attorney of Atlanta, as well as being a professor. He’s not fragile, and has a strong sense of humor about himself and the whole process. I’m sure he was still crushed by how it turned out, but less crushed than anyone else would have been. He was a universal favorite of everyone there. The guy is charming, witty as hell, and just fun to have around. He had made a point to connect with everyone else there. It’s really too back he didn’t stay on the show longer—he would have been supremely evil and diabolical and hilarious had he stuck around.

He wasn’t really bitter towards anyone—though still in complete disbelief that Frank had beaten him in that first boardroom. He told me that in his Dead Man’s Lexus ride, he had said, “I hope Tim wins” (since I was the first person to announce that the Emperor (Frank) had no clothes (was a terrible PM), and I had defended Martin vocally in that boardroom).

Carey: Carey and I were never really friends, but I had a chance to talk to him a bit. His main bitterness was towards Michelle, from episode 2. Of all the lasting bitterness, I find Carey-Michelle the funniest.

Michelle: Michelle sightings were few and far between for. She had had a real hard time over the past month, I was told. I saw her a couple times, and as I mentioned a long time ago, the Tim-Michelle animosity of the Tour Bus Episode was mainly editing—she and I got along fine. So our interactions were perfectly friendly.

Marisa: I like Marisa. She was having fun at the Pondy, but definitely had a bitter tale to tell. Talking with her, I heard a story about El Pollo Loco, and the chicken suit, and how Kinetic fell victim to GroupThink, and how she was the only one who would speak her mind, and how then the Evil Sorceress Heidi decided that GroupThink would go against Marisa, and how Heidi was actually a huge lizard wearing a girl costume, and that she had seen her eating children.

Aaron: Aaron is one of two Type-B personalities in the cast (Angela being the other), and he had no bitterness or regrets whatsoever. He just felt lucky to be on the show in the first place, and was thoroughly enjoying his days at the Pondy. He was another unanimous favorite there.

Aimee: She had apparently come back to the Pondy hating Jen and Derek (remember the look of death she gave them at the end?) in addition to Heidi, Kristine, the moon, and oxygen, but after Jen and Derek both returned the following week, she decided to say “fuck it” with them and became good friends, and simply gathered all of that hatred and all of the rest of it and compacted it into a ball of murderous rage towards Heidi. This girl haaated Heidi. Fun.

Jen: Jen is great. Just a supremely fun girl—very sarcastic and funny, and hilariously bitter about everything. She referred to herself as a puppet, who had fallen into the whole Apprentice “I’m on a job interview” thing for 7 tasks before being kicked to the curb, and told me she wished she had been more like us on Arrow—meaner, more honest, more fun, more herself. She would have been a great Arrow member—problem was, she was on Kinetic, and you just couldn’t be like that on Kinetic. A lot of her anger was directed at Heidi, who she claimed had wronged her and betrayed her in the boardroom and had lost Bruce Willis’s watch in Pulp Fiction.

Derek: Another one who fully jumped into the “I’m at the Pondy—free vacation!!” mode upon arrival. He was only bitter in a funny joking way, and was full of one-liners and hilarious comments, like telling Muna that NBC would need to use subtitles every time she spoke, or coming up with the nickname “Homo-rosa” for Carey.

Surya: Surya was pretty frustrated by everything. When I got there, I tried to comfort him, and told him it was in his head, and that he’d be fine. He told me that the editors were going to have to justify him being fired after a 5-2 record and 2 PM wins. I told him he was crazy. I was wrong. He was exactly right. Poor dude. Needless to say, he didn’t have many good things to say about Frank, James, and Stefanie—the three that had just been flat out terrible to him. He was rooting especially hard against James, since according to him if James makes the finals, they will have to make him look good all season, and since he and James fought it out in his final boardroom, that would in turn mean an even worse edit for him (as you’d imagine, he wasn’t overjoyed to learn who the finalists were).

Muna: Muna was not taking things well either. She was very upset about the way things ended for her, and was very nervous about the edit she’d get. She despised Heidi (who you’ll recall did betray her in her last boardroom), and also Kristine for accusing her of being weak and annoying. She was very very hurt and angry about what had happened. I, for one, like Muna a lot.

Angela: Angela is one of my favorites in the cast—just a really cool girl. Her personality didn’t really come across on the show, but she’s great. She was freshly arrived enough that she hadn’t really fallen into the bitter, depressing Pondy mold yet. She really just didn’t give a fuck about any of it.

All in all, it seemed pretty fun on the surface, with a somewhat depressing undertone, and an overarching obsession with what was happening back where all the cameras were.

So, the end of my second full day there, we were told to meet in the flop at 8pm, and that a boardroom had just happened. Usually, a cycle was three days, so this was a day early (because, as I know now, the firings happened on day 2, right after the presentations, with no interview day in between).

So we all gathered, and waited. And the door opened—

And Heidi and Kristine walked in.

Wow.

First of all, those were the last two Kinetic members. The final four was all Arrow!

I had intense mixed feelings. My initial reaction was one of extreme pride. I had spent a month wearing “Arrow” across my chest, and had said again and again and again when we were 0-3, and 1-4, that this was a great team that was about to go on a run. Plus these were—or at least had been until 2 days ago—my four buddies. I was genuinely proud. Fucking Arrow!

Obviously, at the same time I was sad/angry to hear this. Two tasks earlier, before Nikki had been switched, that was my exact team. During the Softscrub task, the team was: Frank, Nicole, James, Stefanie, me. The five of us had won together and lost together, and it was a bit hard to take the news that the rest of them would all prevail to the end, minus me. Especially since I knew (and still do know) that I was a crucial part of that team, and that I had had a leadership role among those five. So, quite plainly, that part sucked.

It must have been exactly how Nomar felt when the Sox won in 2004, or Bledsoe in 2001.

My third thought was that I was happy Nikki was still there. I know, you’re thinking, “For Christ sake, she got him fired, when will he stop rooting for her?!” But trust me, the editing made it look worse than it was. Sure, her hideous decision to be angry at me after being moved was a nightmare, but beyond that, it was James, Frank, and Stefanie cleverly pouncing on this that got me fired much more than it was her. Also, I heard that all three of them eat kids.

My fourth thought was, “Holy shit—Frank made the final four.” This thought was shared by most of the people at the Pondy. Seriously, what were the chances of that.

So—I was all over the place.

Anyway, this welcome was not nearly as chaotic as mine. It was more quiet, and kind of awkward. Aimee got up and stormed out of the room, Jessie Spano in Showgirls style. Others of us sat down to hear the story of the last task. Naturally, I was riveted by this.

Those two girls looked beat. Heidi looked completely and utterly resigned, like someone who had spent the last 35 days doing Apprentice Tasks. They explained what happened.

I’m inclined to believe the general story was pretty accurately portrayed in the editing, since that was more or less the story they told.

They also told me that Nikki had been ice cold to the other three the entire night after they merged together in the house, knowing that they had all gone after me in the boardroom. In her mind, they had seriously wronged me. At the same time, the episode showed James saying to Frank and Stefanie, prior to the merge, “If Nicole doesn’t feel bad tonight, she’s heartless.” In their mind, Nicole had seriously wronged me.

So that’s nice. After I’m somehow disloyal to both sides, and both sides get angry at me, and I get fired because I’m thrown under the bus by both sides—at least both sides can blame the other side for my firing to ease their own guilt. At least I have that.

Then, I returned to my room to find my laptop stolen. Seriously. And we will never speak of this again for any reason.

So I woke up the next day, and we were brought into the flop and told that there were four finalists this year, not two like every other year, and that the next day four of us would be called back by the finalists to help on the final task (usually there are six called back), and that we had to meet in the flop that night at 6pm for the announcement of who had been called back.

My immediate thought: Frank was in the finals?

My second thought was the realization that my time at the Pondy would be short-lived, and that I would undoubtedly be heading back into the gladiator pit the next morning.

The adventure continues.