There's a weird echo on the crow of the cock as morning dawns; Frank cooks as James explains to him how he's going to have to "think about a lot today," because tonight he'll be fighting for his life. Aaron is...boring. James tells us how the boardroom is kill or be killed, you have to "go in fighting" and be "fierce" and "proactive" and Aaron's going to have to "go for the kill" and he also, per James, needs to kill the kill-kill killer kill of killing. Aaron and Tim look unbearably hot through this whole part, I should say. Aaron tells Tim that at least Surya is coming back for sure, because of the whole "I'm all about branding" part of his behavior. And I completely agree. By setting himself up as the expert and then refusing to say anything of worth, Surya has created a lose/lose situation for everybody, because he's going to feel like his ideas were unheard (when what they were, were not ideas) and thus he was not responsible for anything, while Aaron correctly feels like Surya claimed ownership of that part of the task, and then didn't perform. Now, this is all inside the box of Aaron's poor management, but it's a more even choice than they have been. Both Aaron and Surya deserve to be fired this week.

Actually, you know what? No. Frankly, Tim and Nicole screwed them. It was a sales task and they ran off. They meant to help, it didn't end up helping, but either way they lost manpower. Marketing was not at issue here: once you're in the store, your marketing is restricted to traffic, basically, barring outside signage (which we don't know if they had that) or off-site marketing (which neither team did, as far as we know) -- it becomes about salesmanship at that point. And now, again, this is inside the box of Aaron's poor leadership. So Aaron deserves to go home, which we already know he's going to, but for the wrong reason -- his quietness in the BR last week -- which pisses me off, especially since on the purely surface level we're losing someone who is AWESOME to look at in favor somebody that grows more annoying with each passing second, and whom even the show seems to kind of hate.