Episode 7: Dupe-Lex

In the current tumultuous political climate, significant media attention is being given to Donald Trump's real estate holdings. I was wondering when one of these challenges would involve real estate. Based on the dumb title, I'm guessing real estate is involved here.

Ten candidates are left. Jesus. This season isn't going to be over any time soon.

Heidi and Omarosa return to the suite from the boardroom. Heidi is furious at Omarosa for saying she was unprofessional back there. In all fairness, it was pretty shitty. Let's see if this impacts their team camaraderie.

The teams are to go meet Trump at Trump Park Avenue at 9:00 am. It looks like a luxurious condo development, currently undergoing renovations. Trump is on site, discussing the “big progress” with one of the job superintendents, and there's a lot of footage of cranes going up and down and freight elevators rising up the side of the building. Based on some light Wikipedia reading, it appears that Trump still owns this development and it remains relatively successful.

He meets with the teams on site, and gives them a small surprise. He demands that they even out their numbers. VersaCorp has seven people, Protege has five. Trump gives Protege the chance to select a person to bring over to their team. They select Amy, which seems very intentional, since it pulls her and Nick apart. Is it just me, or does everything this show does seem ad-hoc and completely improvised? They spent five episodes with uneven team numbers, and now every chance Trump gets, he's going to have them even up? Very inconsistent!

Trump brags a lot about how all these rich people are going to come and buy the condo units when he's done renovating the building, including a thirty-five million dollar asking price for the building's penthouse.

For the challenge, the teams will each be shown apartments in Brooklyn by a realtor. There are a total of two apartments being shown. Each team will purchase one of the apartments and rent that apartment out. The one that gets the highest rent wins. The task is simple, while also making no sense once you think about it logically. First of all, you can't buy property in seventy-two hours. That's actually impossible. So clearly this isn't a realistic scenario. Furthermore, two apartments, even if they are across the street from each other, are going to get vastly different rents depending upon their condition and their size. I'd like to think this show would somehow make this contest fair, but based on my experience so far I seriously doubt it.

Nick is bummed out about Amy leaving his team. I think at the end of his little headshot he said that Amy reminded him of his mom? That's weird, yet somehow adorable.

Katrina and Troy are elected to be the project managers. The two of them take a taxi over to their first apartment, which looks like it's in Carroll Gardens or Park Slope or something on that side of Brooklyn. I guess Williamsburg wasn't cool enough yet in 2004. This apartment is being called “Court Street” by the show. It's pretty dumpy. Very small kitchen, extremely crusty bathroom, and boring hardwood floors.

The second apartment is being called “Third Street” and is way nicer. It's still a little dirty, and has a small kitchen, but the floors were pretty nice. In case you haven't yet figured it out, I like hardwood floors. In spite of my opinions, Troy and Katrina still call this apartment a disaster. However, Katrina admits, in a phone call to her team, that she sees the potential in this property.

Troy gets on the phone with his team and they also decide that they want Third Street. Troy and Katrina are at this point forced to confront each other. Neither person wants to budge. Katrina suggests that they write their potential offers down on a piece of paper and show them to each other at the same time. Katrina writes a serious answer, which is not shown to the viewer. Troy writes “I want what you want.” It's pretty obvious that the two of them are on totally different levels of seriousness.

Katrina calls Troy a “sleazeball.” She is very upset. This whole interaction has resolved absolutely nothing. With no other options left, it literally comes down to a coin toss. Troy wins the coin toss. Katrina is still upset. So, to recap, Troy gets the Third Street apartment and Katrina gets the Court Street apartment. There is a lot of TV magic going on here, since obviously you can't just walk up to a property and buy it, no strings attached. It's unrealistic. There would be other people bidding on these properties. And if Katrina had really wanted Third Street so badly, she could have outbid Troy. Most of this was probably pre-ordained by Trump. Or as I like to say – rigged!

Speaking of unrealistic situations, the teams have two days to renovate the entire apartment. It looks like the teams will be responsible for all of their own labor. We cut to Protege, working overnight, and Omarosa is calling for a meeting every twenty minutes or so. She is accused by her teammates of stalling so that she doesn't have to “get down and dirty,” which is most certainly true.

Now Protege is back in the Trump Tower condo. Heidi is on the phone crying. She's talking to her dad. He reveals to her that her mother has been diagnosed with Stage 1 Colon Cancer. She's completely destroyed. She has to decide whether or not to stick around for the rest of the competition.

Black Screen Moment. “God is in the Details.” That's how Donald capitalized it, not sure if it's right, editors? [note: the editors never answered me] “Many times, you hear the expression that God is in the details. When people come in to buy something, especially very rich people, they see details. If something is wrong, they see it! And it reflects in the price. That's why I'm up early in the morning to check every detail of my construction sites. It's a little bit like someone selling their used car and not washing it. You could spend ten dollars washing the car, and get another two hundred dollars for the car. And I've seen guys! They sell cars that are dirty! And I say, that guy is a loser.”

Up in the morning to check on his construction sites? Now he's only up early in the morning to tweet!

Team VersaCorp has a discussion over what they should charge for rent. They're throwing out numbers like 1600, 1700, and Tammy just starts ranting about how they probably won't be able to rent the apartment in two days because there are so many apartments in the city. Tammy is never on the same page as anyone else. She's constantly causing disruptions. Will she be the person to be fired this week? I'm curious to see if she actually does anything productive for this challenge.

Heidi's mom is getting operated on this week, but Heidi has decided to stick around and “be strong.” She says her mother explicitly told her to stay. Meanwhile, Omarosa is just laying on the floor while others around her are working. She says her head hurts. She is not pulling her weight with the renovations. Heidi calls her worthless and useless. Omarosa goes “outside for some air,” and immediately, she starts playing basketball with these two little kids! I guess the headache went away.

Tammy does something! She gets a general contractor to come in and help them renovate the apartment. Only $1500 for everything. They put new cabinets in and renovate the bathroom.

Protege has actually done a lot of good work on their own. They put new tile in in the kitchen and bathroom. The apartment looks nice. Not stellar, but nice for forty-eight hours of work.

Now we're on to the rental showings. Protege's initial rent showings don't go well. Not a lot of people are showing up.

VersaCorp's apartment looks really nice as well. That general contractor hire was clutch. Still though, their showings aren't going well either. There's only three hours left to rent out the apartment.

With forty-five minutes left, a person comes up the stairs, and she clears the credit check for VersaCorp. They need her to sign the lease right now. They ask her first what she would be willing to pay. She throws out the number $1600 and Bill negotiates her up to $1650. Can you imagine getting this apartment for $1650 a month today? Holy crap. Anyway, the lease is signed.

Protege, meanwhile, doesn't believe they're going to find a taker. A woman comes up right after that and says she needs an apartment ASAP. She signs all the papers. She has rented the apartment. No price is given though, which seems strange.

I find it hard to believe that both apartments would not find a renter until forty-five minutes were left in their forty-eight hour window. That TV magic is strong here.

The teams go back to the suite, and they're all cleaning up. Omarosa is still upset because her head hurts. I will emphasize that Heidi's mom is dying from cancer, yet she soldiers on without complaining. Ridiculous.

The teams enter the boardroom. I'm excited to learn who won this competition, because going into it, I have no idea.

Trump walks in. He's wearing a pink tie. He is yelling a lot and wants to get right down to business.

Apparently the metric we are using for this competition is an increase in rent, not just who could get more rent. That makes more sense. Anyway, VersaCorp, with Court Street, got a rent of $1650, and the original rent of the apartment was $1500.

Protege got a rent of $1525 for Third Street. However, the original rent of the apartment was $1200. Therefore they won the competition by a fairly large margin.

Katrina, upon being told that her team lost, immediately lashes out and tells Trump that Troy “didn't play by the rules of the game.” Here, we get a great overdubbed Trump saying “WAIT, you mean in picking the apartments?”

She says Troy was being unethical. He then accuses her of being emotional and attacking him personally.

Trump says “business in New York is a tough deal.” Katrina counters, “Would you ever do business with someone who acted unethically?” Trump basically says yes, which should come as no surprise.

As the winners, Protege gets to spend a night at Trump's house in Westchester, which he describes as the “most beautiful house in New York State.”

Trump confronts Heidi after the boardroom scene. He says she may go home if she needs to go home to her mother. Heidi makes it very clear that she wants to stay. It's weird to see Trump be kind to somebody. They must have needed many takes of that scene. I didn't hear any overdubbing there though.

I believe this is the first time Troy and Kwame have been on a winning team. They are up at Trump's absurd estate in Westchester County, and they get to have a picnic out on his lawn. The house is essentially a medieval castle. It's completely ridiculous.

Katrina and Ereka, meanwhile, are furious with Tammy because in the boardroom, she told Mr. Trump that their team got “duped.” Saying that they were duped, to them, implies that Troy followed the rules and tricked them fair and square. They feel very strongly that they are on the right side in saying that Troy didn't play by the rules. I'm not sure if anyone in charge here actually cares about playing by the rules. Trump certainly does not.

Katrina has a formal negotiation of who she wants to bring into the bottom three with her. Bill is a strong candidate since he was in charge of negotiations for the rent, and he didn't really try very hard. He let the tenant choose her own rent, essentially. Nick says the onus falls on Katrina because she picked the more expensive, nicer place. Meanwhile, the tension with Tammy gets stronger and stronger. She keeps insisting they got duped. I think she's right, by the way. The rules to these contests are kept so vague. I don't think you could actually have any grounds to say someone cheated at them. Trump probably likes it that way too.

In the boardroom now, Carolyn wants to know why Katrina didn't just handle the negotiations herself, since she's a real estate expert. Why did she delegate to Bill? Even Bernie doesn't understand. Katrina states that she was in charge of the renovation aspect of the work, and that she didn't want to be in charge of both that and the negotiations.

Bill says he could have gotten more money with more time or more qualified people showing up to the open house. Katrina says she could have gotten more regardless.

Trump asks why Tammy went so viciously against her own team. Why does she keep emphasizing this “duping?” So that this episode can have a clever title? She says it's because she didn't like her team's attack on Troy's credibility. She thinks his maneuver was smart.

Tammy, Bill, and Katrina will be going back to the boardroom.

When they reenter, Trump brings up all the bad blood flowing around. He names Tammy as one of the sources of this bad blood, for her comments on the team and for her loyalty in general. Katrina interrupts and said she brought Tammy in for other reasons. She says she has to babysit Tammy because she is constantly an interruption. She says Tammy is always bringing the team down. Tammy responds that Katrina is just pointing fingers because she failed as project manager. Katrina is being very dramatic this whole time. I wouldn't say Tammy is being any more down to earth, however. Trump says Katrina should have obviously been in charge of both renovations and negotiations. Trump also calls Bill a bad negotiator. Regardless of those things, Trump says Tammy got in the way of her team. He calls it obnoxious. And he fires Tammy.