Toral Mehta, a 29-year-old investment banker from Philadelphia, PA continued to demonstrate her inability to work with her teammates during last night's The Apprentice 4 broadcast, and as a result, she became the fourth contestant to be fired by Donald Trump.
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The next morning, the teams met The Donald at The Trump Ice Cream Parlor to get their new task assignment. This week's task was to create a mascot for Dairy Queen's Blizzard ice cream desert and sell the concept to company executives. On the men's team (Excel) Clay Lee, who had clashed with his team in last week's winning effort, asked to be the project manager. Meanwhile on the women’s team (Capitol Edge) Toral, despite promising to step up her performance this week, only meekly volunteered to be the project manager and then quickly deferred to Felisha Mason when the later challenged her for the leadership role.
Things initially looked bad for the men's team as Clay picked up where he left off last task by irritating his team with a very dictatorial style of leadership. Not only did the 28-year-old realtor appear to frequently browbeat his team for not jumping fast enough to his requests, but he also often seemed dismissive of their contributions. However despite the internal squabbling, the men eventually came up with a genie themed mascot.
Over on the women's team, Felisha worked well with the outspoken Kristi Caudell and Alla Wartenberg, but was dismissive to most of the other contestants' contributions -- a fact that Jennifer Murphy, one of Felisha's supporters, even noted when her own idea to prominently display the DQ logo on their mascot was shot down. As the task went along, Toral and to a lesser extent Rebecca were completely ignored and their contributions minimized, a fact that even Caroline noted. In the end, the women's design was a large-eyed smiley face gadget wielding something that you would have to see to believe. They named the creation "Zip."
As the design moved from concept to actual implementation, buff Excel member Mark Lamkin, a wealth manager, volunteered to dress up in the female genie costume in what appeared to be the worst casting decision since the entire cast of last season's The Apprentice 3. Despite that, once he was in costume the Dairy Queen executives actually appeared to be somewhat amused by the oversized female genie with the soft serve hair, and the men's presentation went fairly smoothly.
Meanwhile, in contrast to Mark's willingness to take one for his team, Toral refused Felisha's requests that she contribute to the task by wearing Capital Edge's mascot costume. Claiming that she didn't feel it was professional or dignified, the smug investment banker repeatedly rejected the request -- a response that cemented her team's negative feelings towards her and resulted in Kristi donning the outfit. During their presentation, the Dairy Queen executives asked the women why there was virtually no branding on the mascot itself -- something that the team was unable to justify since by all appearances, hadn't been any good reason behind the rejection of Jennifer's suggestion.
After conferring briefly, the Dairy Queen executives selected Excel as the task's winner, sending the men off to a day at the ballpark with the New York Mets and the women off to their third boardroom in four episodes. Despite his many clashes due to his leadership style, the men rewarded Clay's successful turn as project manager by unanimously voting to grant him immunity for next week. .
In the women's boardroom session, Toral started off badly in her defense of herself, making several comments that, when challenged by Trump, were revealed to be largely half-truths and embellished exaggerations. Although it was clear that she was not the reason her team had lost the task, she never recovered from the missteps. The final straw came when a pressured Rebecca -- previously Toral's biggest supporter -- reluctantly recommended that she should be fired because "the team won't work with her on it, unfortunately." With Toral having failed to turn the subject back to the task loss, Trump decided that her behavior had been so egregious that there was no reason to have Felisha select two women to the final boardroom, opting to instead fire Toral immediately.
"She was divisive and I'm so disappointed in her because she's so smart," Trump remarked after firing Toral. Unhumbled by her firing, an arrogant
