I think this was the most entertaining episode so far in the season. The teams were given a task to conduct a ten minute presentation as well as a live Q&A session to promote the Buick Verano in front of a live audience as well as a live twitter crowd. The winners would be determined by Buick executives on who they felt did the best job in promoting the product as well as how well the teams were in engaging the audience. The project manager for the men was Adam Corrolla and for the women it was Debbie Gibson.
Right from the get go Trump was disappointed that Michael Andretti wasn’t the project manager considering his background. However, the main point that was raised was that Andretti wasn’t really a marketer and so Adam seemed to be the better choice. For direction the men decided to go with a crowd heckler theme where during the live presentation team members would pretend to be people who were super negative about the vehicle only to then have Adam prove them wrong. The women’s theme was as if they were looking for the best spokes model for the product and so one at a time each team member would give testimonials about the vehicle.
I think the men’s team had one of the funniest moments where Penn Jillette was pretending to be a guy that felt there is no way that car could fit a man his size. Even though he was able to sit in the front seat, he then tried to say there is no way the trunk has a lot of room and so he was challenged to put himself in it which he did and sure enough he fitted in. The women’s presentation seemed a little more traditional such as showing how the car is good for a family vehicle. There was one interesting part where Aubrey was faking that she had a family member die in a car crash and was saying how if it had more airbags like in this vehicle things would have been different.
In evaluating how the teams even the executives were hammering Andretti it seemed for not playing a bigger part in the task due to his name. Overall, their conscious seemed to be that his name carries so much weight in the automotive industry that him speak highly about a product would go very far in attracting potential clients. That seemed to be the biggest factor in the task for one reason or another as the women were chosen as the winner.
The boardroom was interesting as when Adam was asked to bring back two people he said he wouldn’t as he wanted to take the blame for the task. Usually the person would just get fired. However, this time for some reason Trump said that he was left no choice as a result and that everyone would have to go back to the boardroom where he would now fire two people. Not surprisingly, Trump fired Adam the first since he did lose as well as the decision to not bring anyone back. For the second person Trump was still glued to the fact that Andretti wasn’t the project manager. There were debates that the task was supposed to be about giving a good presentation in promoting the product. However, it just went back and fourth on how Trump felt that Andretti should have been more involved because of hi name. As a result, he was fired as well.
Thinking about it, to me that firing had more of a commercial reason I think in terms of the show. To me personally it felt like Trump wanted to try and milk Andretti’s popularity for ratings. Therefore, maybe this task was designed for a person like him in the get-go for that. When that didn’t happen well I can see why he would hold a grudge of sort. Just my theory of course but it would make sense.