MONDO EXTRAS

The next task saw the return of Bradford, Stacie, Jennifer C., and Rob to help the teams renovate houses, each with a $20,000 budget. We watch a new segment where Apex removes a birds' nest from the air conditioner, and when a bird escapes, Jen provides a metaphor for her performance all season by griping about what should be done about it while waiting for Raj to be the one to actually take care of it. Oh, and Jen thinks he's doing it wrong. Aren't you shocked? The birds are relocated, no thanks to Jen, and life appears to go on as before with no great tragedy resulting. Trump now explains that unfortunately for Raj, he made the odd and unpopular decision to combine two rooms upstairs so that the four-bedroom house would now be a three-bedroom house. Apparently, Raj believed that everybody loves a huge master suite, but others were skeptical. Raj also had some other problems, in that when you add a bathroom, it should actually have installed plumbing when you're done. Apex went to the Boardroom...again. Raj made too many mistakes, and Trump fired him. Raj reflecterviews that looking back on the way he went out, he's not that upset. "I lost a real-estate task to a wedding planner," he says simply. "I deserved to be fired." Of course he also tells us that we haven't seen the last of him, and I really hope that's not true. I also suspect it's not true, but don't tell Raj, because I don't want to hurt his feelings. He would be fine on something like Hollywood Squares. Or if VH1 had a show about guys in canes, they could do a quick segment on him, as long as it was limited to men in canes from this year. ["He's in a commercial now, with Andy." -- Sars] Trump says insightfully that everyone liked Raj, especially because he was a weirdo. But the house wasn't handled properly, so that will do it for him. What a valuable insight.

Next up, a bridal shop. We see Sandy take Mosaic in hand in NBSF, even though Kelly is the PM. She tells them all about how to put the space together, and she points out where they have to lay sheets down and where they have to sweep so that the dresses don't get dirty, and how they need to clean the bathroom. Andy cheerfully takes on bathroom-cleaning duty, proudly showing off his accomplishment in building a toilet-paper pyramid for the brides to enjoy. He sees it as part of the "wedding experience." Well, sure. You won't see a sophisticated wedding venue without a pyramid of toilet-paper rolls somewhere. Apex, on the other hand, had absolutely no clue what to do, as PM Chris just kept telling everyone how hopeless it was. Oh, and they "advertised" with nothing but little flyers at train stations. In one of the greatest NBSF moments of the episode, we watch as a completely tin-eared Maria talks on and on and on about herself to a bunch of dress vendors who do not care one whit. It's one of those situations you have nightmares about, where you hear yourself talking and can't make yourself stop, except that Maria doesn't even have the sense to wake up screaming.