[CarylB]

STAR'S ASS WAS GRASS ... AND MEAT WAS THE LAWNMOWER!!

Big mistake to assume just because a man is gracious, kindly, decent, and unashamedly in touch with his emotions that he will be a pushover and hasn't got a razor sharp mind and balls of steel! This was Star's biggest mistake in the series, and Meat hoisted her by a more effective petard, stitched her up like a kipper and delivered her to Trump on a plate. Yes, he's decent, gracious, kind .. but you don't remain successful for 4 decades in one of the most capricious and often obstructive industries in the world without learning how to fight for survival!

Marlee, who I rate highly as intelligent without resorting to skullduggery, decent and socially skilled, seemed less confident as PM. She's always been a good contributor and had a superb success on her first outing as PM. But that was a fundraiser, and she had clearly and wisely come prepared with a host of significantly big hitters lined up. On that task having agreed how they would organise themselves, she concentrated largely in rallying her donors .. a perfectly sound strategy in the circumstances, although I recall ASAP were only ready to open the doors a few minutes after the twelfth hour. This was a different type of task and she was less confident. Star had already said to camera that now the game had shifted to individual competition, and commandeering her usual contribution, wasn't being co-operative or collaborative. Her way or the highway .. over and over, and she didn't like Meat refusing to take her way. Increasingly crabby, she started lining up Meat and Marlee for the chop should they fail; firstly Meat for his creative input, and as back-up, Marlee for not controlling him. She developed an amazing and sudden inability to remember or even read the lines she'd scripted. In short .. an active campaign of sabotage .. the woman hosts some kind of chat show for heaven's sake, keeps telling us she's such a smart lawyer. Might have worked with the man she mistakenly assumed him to be, but she underestimated him in spades.

So to the boardroom.

In the first task of Episode 10 I was not convinced that Star's arrangement of her granite features into something approximating empathy was necessarily genuine, and I think I was right. She'd sat there imo confident that should ASAP lose she'd be able to throw an emotional Meat under the nearest bus and thus survive another day, probably so busy calculating the odds that she failed to hear his very accurate observation of her MO. Had she done this she might have given more thought as to what she would do if she found herself sitting on the losing team on this next task.

Her behaviour while waiting outside the boardroom was dismissive, arrogant, rude, and as soon as she found she was facing someone who would stand up to her, and persist without screaming like a fishwife, she simply cut Meat off, walked away, and dragged her damn credentials out one more time. Meat was ready, would not allow her to simply dismiss him, and stood both his ground and his experience.

But back once more in the boardroom she pulled out the same fiddle she's used successfully until now and started to play her usual tune .. and was completely taken by surprise as Meat brought the game-strategic equivalent of the NLE into play. Perhaps for the first time she was rattled, and Meat played her like Paul on a custom built Mark Katzen ... ably aided by George, who pulled her up when she tried to lie her way out of the fact that it was the voice-over that she had written which the clients had found wanting.

For the first time we saw Star on the defensive and looking desperate. She clutched feverishly at taking offence because Meat called her "sweetie" .. (although she claimed he'd called her "honey" which was untrue) .. bizarre given how insufferably condescending she has been so much of the time, and given she is in show business where it's a not uncommon word, and like "dear" used by men when addressing men as well as women .. remember Meat used it with Busey when he was trying to have an intelligent conversation with him to resolve issues after the first boardroom with Meat as PM? I thought as I heard him say it to Star, he's saying this just as he did with Busey .. trying to defuse the situation and stay calm when dealing with someone who is refusing to listen and rudely interrupting. And in the boardroom Meat made it clear this was why he'd used it.

Even worse, rather than simply stating calmly she didn't like being addressed in that way and moving swiftly on to something of substance, she huffed and puffed in a long tirade of faux indignation .. hardly likely to be persuasive to Trump .. (Loved George asking her how she could complain about being demeaned in a debate as she was refusing to argue ... and Meat's quiet "Thank you")

Whatever superglue has been bonding her backside to that chair, Meat had the solvent .. From the first boardroom he has been listening, watching, assessing, and he was ready. And all her rhetoric couldn't alter the fact she'd been responsible for branding .. "my strength!!!". While she'd been busy bear-trapping Meat over his producing the vignettes, he had been making sure she would have to stand behind her contribution. In her rather over-inflated opinion of her own strategic brilliance, she hadn't noticed the trap Meat had dug, and she stepped right into it. I'd imagine there were some high fives when he returned to the Johns :)

And so to the final four, a pretty strong chance of making it to the last two imo. Trump seems captivated by this big strong rocker who has a heart and is unashamed to show his emotions .. keeps looking at himm as you might an exotic and fabled creature of mystery :) And now he's shown he has balls of steel as well as a heart the size of Connecticut. No matter that Trump brings in advisors; he'll make the decision and I think he really finds Meat something special .. as do we of course, but we've known it for a long time. Trump has only recently discovered it, and I think he finds it compelling.

Even though he (Trump) is not gay, which is gorgeous and wonderful, but he's not .. inappropriate remark for this boardroom .. kerchinnnng

Caryl