It's fucking midnight. Synergy has all returned to their rec room, with the exception of Leslie and Tammy, who may or may not be on this show at all. I can't even remember what team Leslie is on! ["I didn't know this season had a Tammy, I don't think, so you're ahead of me, at least. This is what happens when you have a Brent black-holing all the available screen-time light for four episodes." -- Sars] Bill comes in and Michael shakes his hand, because that's all he knows, and then starts talking about how they'll be "working all night," like that's a fucking good thing. As any good manager will tell you, "I worked all night on this" is less a sign of your devotion and more a sign of your inability to perform your tasks in the time allotted, which is why you gotta use that shit like nitroglycerine if you're going to use it at all. Rule ONE. And you better be damn sure you've got the extenuating circumstances to back it up if you do. Bill's like, "So...what the fuck have you been up to, then?" Michael's like, "Oh, well, we were at Ace Hardware!" Bill points out how they met the execs at 11 AM, and now it's midnight, and Michael "explains" that this is because they were "trying to figure out" what they needed to purchase. Allie and Andrea watch uncomfortably as Michael farts around and tries to sell this concept. Bill's like, "So you're going to...paint the room? And it took you nine hours to figure this out?" He turns to Andrea, knowing she'll talk shit: "How's he doing as a PM? You're undefeated." Andrea then puts on a little play called I Really Hate It When You Ask Me If I Like Your Haircut Because I Don't Wanna Be In That Position If I Don't Like It And Especially In This Case When It Looks Like Shit Because I'm Such A Nice Person That It Makes Me Want To Commit Anxiety-Related Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf, and mumbles that Michael is "uh, not that, um, he's fine, we really need to start working and we're going to paint," and Bill's like, "Don't non-answer a non-answerer, we know our own," and Andrea interviews about how she was trying to "convey telepathically to Bill" that "for the love of God, please don't make me say what a nightmare he is in front of him." Say what you want, I think I'll always pretty much love Andrea no matter how much of an asshole she is. Sympathy for the Devil and all that.

Andrea and Sean work out what color everything should be, and Andrea complains to him that "everybody says I'm a dictator, Sean," but that generally that's what's required, and really, "Not even a dictator: a decision-maker." And I can't disagree with that either, because even though she expresses things poorly, she's still right about the idea. Which makes the cruise ship task more interesting, because that's her mode, and it's only truly awful when she's wrong about whether she's "helping," because when she's right, she's right, and has every right to stick her thumb in the soup. And I don't like how, helping or not -- and cross-apply to Charmaine, too -- she's still going to be portrayed as this virago who bosses the men around. It's a lost-in-translation issue, which is a communication flaw and not a power-relationships one, like everybody seems to think. Neither Charmaine nor Andrea accounts for the communication dynamics at issue when they offer their forceful opinions, which is a guarantee they'll be seen as unhelpful and working against the team effort -- whereas logically, nothing could be further from the case. Which isn't really praise, because management is like 90\% communication dynamics and only 10\% logistics, because people are weak and need to be hugged and petted. But in this cast, it's mostly the relatively FUTR people -- Allie, Tammy -- that seem to have a balanced skill set in that regard, which of course presents its own prohibitive problems. Ask Leslie, if you can manage to Where's Waldo her out of the Type-A scenery. They start painting -- Sean, of course, has a tiny British orgasm about what a "fantastic" green they're using, and puts his arm around Tammy's shoulders. With a Trading Spaces quickness, the room is painted, and Sean interviews that they finished, "after many hours," but could still lose if the Rushees' room is "much nicer, which is easy to conceive if they don't have someone as inept as Michael leading them." Today is Sean's lucky day!