Magna speculates on who’s going to be fired. Tana thinks it’s Bren’s time to go.
Alex and Bren arrive in the suite to hugs all around.
Alex says that when they lost Chris, he lost a close friend.
Bren thinks he’s lower than whale crap in Trump’s eyes.
Bren says he bit his tongue in the boardroom, and he’s tired of tasting blood.
Bren and Alex go out to celebrate. Alex and Bren are both a bit surprised that they’ve become best friends.
Next morning, they get the call. Trump wants them in the office right away.
The Don is meeting with Staples execs when they show up.
Their task: create a new product that will make office life easier by cleaning up clutter. The team that creates the most innovative product wins. Kendra is exempt, and The Don notes that after Kendra, it will be the final four and no more exemptions.
Bren says now it’s survival of the fittest.
NET WORTH
Alex takes on project manager.
Bren will run focus groups to find out hat people wants.
MAGNA
Craig is project manager for Magna. He asks them to write down all their ideas.
Kendra notes that she and Craig have a dysfunctional relationship. She decides to keep her mouth shut on this task.
NET WORTH
Bren and Alex go and meet with a design shop to develop some ideas.
They begin calling some Staples executives to get some ideas. Their phone dies as they begin the conference. Alex can’t reconnect with them. He begins to think they should have met in person.
The Don says if you can’t control your subordinates, you’re a bad leader.
MAGNA
Magna goes to meet with the Staples executives.
Tana thinks meeting with the judges is important.
Kendra says the benefit of meeting with the execs was learning they didn’t need to invent something new, just improve on something.
Tana and Kendra begin asking people what they need.
Tana thinks that people want stackables.
Kendra notes that Craig didn’t participate in the focus groups. She has no idea what he was doing.
NET WORTH
Alex and Bren try to organize a focus group. Alex hands Bren a Yellow Pages and has him call people to get ideas.
Bren thinks the cold calling is a waste of time. Alex tells Bern to get two answers, as two is a group.
MAGNA
They head to Smart Design to design something.
Craig says that Kendra was set on the stackables but couldn’t conceptualize it. They decide to make a square of stackables, portrait instead of landscape.
NET WORTH
Alex and Bren are still trying to figure something out.
They finally design a table that will help clear the office clutter.
They meet with the designers and go over their design. Bren says Alex is better at describing their ideas.
MAGNA
Craig and Tana clash about the folders. They can’t find any vertical folders. Craig says he envisioned filing loose papers rather than folders.
Craig says he’ll explain it to Kendra slowly, which sets Kendra off. She tells him she’s offended he would talk to her that way.
NET WORTH
Alex and Bren show up and their table is complete. It looks good.
Alex and Bren are ecstatic. Bren says he’s a natural pessimist, but he’s got some optimism this time.
MAGNA
Kendra shows up with some new folders. She and Craig immediately get into it. Kendra says Craig talks to her like she’s 6 years old. Craig says that if she thinks he’s talking to her like a child, it’s because that’s how he talks to his kids. Tana keeps out of it, trying to concentrate on getting the preparation ready.
Kendra says her and Craig are like a marriage gone bad years ago. They fight but know how to put on a happy face for others.
They begin their presentation. They have 4 stackables on a Lazy Susan, with space in the middle to stack things. The presentation goes OK.
NET WORTH
They begin their presentation on the Pack Rat.
Alex thinks everyone likes the design. But people have issues with the open and close clear top.
The Don shows up. He asks the Staples execs, and they said that Magna’s product went over like hotcakes, while Net Worth’s had issues. So the winner is Magna. Their reward is breakfast in the Rainbow Room with George and Caroline, so they can get to know them better. And either Alex or Bren is going home.
Next morning, Magna goes to breakfast with George and Caroline in the Rainbow Room.
Craig says it’s important to get to know George and Caroline out of the boardroom.
Kendra says George and Caroline joking and getting to know them was very special.
Tana says it was an experience to be with the best.
George says he’s known The Don since The Don was in his twenties, while Caroline’s worked for him for 10 years.
Bren and Alex go out for a cup of coffee. They agree to own up to their faults, but both agree that they had the better product and decide to stand up for what they made.
Alex tells Bren that it worries him that they won’t see each other for a while after this.
BOARDROOM
The Don strolls in wearing a pink tie. Only The Don can pull that off.
The Don says that their design was a monstrosity. Bren and Alex say that they both think it was great.
George and Caroline begin to rip the design apart. Caroline says that the Staples execs think the design was only good for children.
Caroline says that they should have had a focus group. Bren says they didn’t have much time. Caroline points out that Magna was under the same time crunch but was able to. They also rip the decision to hold a conference call with the Staples execs rather than having a face to face. The Don notes that they would have been able to maybe get the Staples execs to like them, which could have helped in the judging.
George says he’s embarrassed that these two guys are giving lawyers a bad name. He rips Alex for getting the process backwards. You don’t design a car, then ask people what they want. Alex says he depended on Bren to get the focus group and Bren dropped the ball.
The Don says they both did a lousy job. He used to think that Alex was a star, but he sees now that Alex really isn’t. And he’s going to have to get rid of someone.
The Don asks Bren why he should stay, and Bren says he works harder. Alex says no one works harder than him. He doesn’t take a lot of risks, but he’s better than Alex with people. The Don says that no entrepreneur can be adverse to risks. Bren says he took a risk by quitting his job to come to New York. The Don says everyone took that same risk.
Alex says he’s been a risk taker all his life. He was a top 25 world ranked skier in high school. He went to study archaeology in Israel. He’s the biggest risk taker of anyone in the competition.
Caroline says that Alex is killing Bren and Bren isn’t really fighting back. Bren says that they both made errors of equal magnitude. The Don says that he doesn’t want someone that takes risks unnecessarily, but any good entrepreneur takes risks. Bren says that he’s learning how to take risks. The Don says that he knew he would have to train the winner, but he expects to deal with someone on a high-school entrepreneurial level, not kindergarten. And Bren’s in kindergarten. So, Bren, “You’re Fired.”
Bren and Alex hug in the lobby before Bren grabs a cab. The Don says Bren’s probably a great lawyer, but he’s just not an entrepreneur.
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