Oh, and something else, while we're on the women's campaign. To the degree that those ads are cool, they are mostly cool because of the quality of the photography. I have an extremely hard time believing that the women played a large role in setting up those shots, especially since what we saw them doing was a completely, entirely different setup of Katrina sitting on the wing of the plane with her legs almost wrapped around the guy with the big mock-up card. That seemed to be what they meant by "sexy," and it seems much more in line with how "creative" and "clever" these women actually are. Furthermore, the composition of the shots is still going to be largely the photographer's work, so...it's not that I don't think the print ads were good as far as getting people's attention, because they were, but I have to think it's mostly a credit to the photographer they worked with. I'm not sure what they told the guy, but he grabbed some really striking shots, and I find it hard to believe they dictated them really closely after starting with that stupid, pedestrian girl-on-the-wing business. I hope they sent him a thank-you note. Not likely.

Anyway, Donny sits around leering at the women for a while, sneeringly castigates them for "set[ting] the women's movement back about seventy years," and then he sends them on their way. I posit that there is a special place in hell reserved for a guy who will eagerly devour women acting like they have nothing to offer but T&A, reward them for it, and then put them down for it. The women seem happy. They don't really get the irony, I don't think.

Things are not so chipper at VersaCorp. Everyone is arguing right before the presentation. Nick explains in an interview that he is "the Zen master of presentations," so he was trying to give some advice to Kwame, who was planning to do part of the pitch. It seems that the guys' theme is "Marquis Jets: Redefining First Class," which I do think is a damn sight better than "Own It," slogan-wise. The guys file in for their presentation. Bowie is wearing a very nifty silver tie, by the way. Troy and Kwame pull a piece of red velvet and reveal...a photograph of a guy boarding a plane, handing a ticket -- or maybe it's his Marquis Jet card, come to think of it -- to a flight attendant. It is a seriously, seriously boring picture. If you're going to pull a velvet cover off a picture, y'all, it better not be...that. Kwame starts the presentation, and Bill says in an interview that he could tell that Deutsch was impressed with the work they did on the campaign. Oh, and then, we get my least favorite thing in the world. The scourge of the universe. The great agony of mankind. It's...PowerPoint. NOOOOOOO! The presentation starts with a screen saying, "Objective: To inspire motivation and expand consumer awareness through a targeted advertising campaign." Okay, first of all, there is no such damn thing as "inspiring motivation." At all. Second, isn't that the objective of every advertising initiative? See, it says absolutely nothing, and yet it says it in big letters on the wall. That is the curse of PowerPoint, people -- the notion that crap, nonsense, and vapidity sound a lot better if each one of them is a bullet point.