The bitch brigade wastes no time on finding something and someone to complain about. I can almost see them, sitting there thinking, " Damn! It has been a few hours since we picked on someone, we gotta do something about that." This week's easy target? Can I have the envelope please? Why it's Rachel! Coral and Nicole pick on Rachel for being shy. Not so much for being shy in general, but for being shy when it comes to their jobs. Since a big part of what they do relies on interacting with the public, Rachel is struggling. They poke fun at Rachel mainly because she didn't recruit anyone for the focus group. Rachel tries to laugh and smile through it all but when she's alone (well, alone with millions of viewers that is) she admits that it bothers her how the girls will hold on to something and not let it go. Nicole and Coral, ones to hold onto things? Funny, I hadn't noticed that before...

Coral and Nicole hate their jobs. This isn't something that I feel or something that is implied. They both state it clearly; "we hate our jobs." Then again, these girls seem to hate just about everything with the possible exception of themselves and African American culture. Nicole expresses not wanting to do a job she hates like her mom did. She saw her mom getting up to clean houses and to be a waitress and how it killed her mom to have do something she didn't want to do. Let's see; house cleaning...working with famous recording artists. Waiting on tables...living in a mansion in New York for free. Did anyone else look up the word deluded in the dictionary and find Nicole's face? I thought so.

Once again it is established that the housemates have zero respect for one another. Namely this lack of respect is a gender difference and mainly it's everyone not respecting Nicole and Coral because they don't respect anyone but themselves. There I said it. Kevin and Mike talk about how their friends will call and how they know for a fact Coral is rude to them. The proof? The fact that their lives are taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. I mean it's all right there in the opening credits. Has been for years. We see a clip of Coral answering the phone and Mike's friend asking if Coral knows where he is. Coral responds, "I don't know. He's not my child." She then hangs up all pissed saying she's not a secretary. Ironically people with attitude's like Coral's traditionally fail to rise above secretary status. I'm just saying...

Lori is crying. She knows no one is getting along and she also knows why. It's because everyone has strong opinions and no one is willing to bend. Lori puts it all together quite eloquently actually. It's amazing how much sense Lori can make when she's not talking about undying passion for Kevin or her music.

Now Rachel is crying. She must have confronted (see said something with even the slightest bit of question in her voice) or just slipped out how hurt she was about the way Nicole and Coral picked on her with the shyness thing. Nicole and Coral tell her it's cool, that they just won't play with her like that anymore. Rachel gets more frustrated because that's not what she's saying. Nicole interjects with something like if you can't take it, don't dish it out. If anything, this all makes Rachel feel worse, not better. Her point is that she likes to joke around but that the girls, especially collectively, don't see how mean they can get. Of course that qualifies as criticism directed towards Nicole and Coral and we all know by now that they ain't having none of that. Rachel says she doesn't want to end up on their s**it list like Malik and Kevin. Nicole assures Rachel that unlike Malik and Kevin, she respects her for being honest and that is why it's not the same. Rachel sniffles a bit and nods her head. She feels a little bit better. That feeling doesn't last very long.

"As weird as it is, it's so much more positive out on the streets of New York City," exclaims Kevin. I don't know about all of that white boy, but I'll give you that it might feel that way. Have a guy rob you at gunpoint and then see how Coral and Nicole even at their absolute worst are still just small potatoes. In an oddly misplaced bonding moment we see the boys have a good old-fashioned snowball fight. I like to call this the calm before the storm because before you know it, it's back to the same ol', same ol'.

Rachel is forced to whisper to talk to Lori about her true feelings. After all, if the girls saw Rachel "talking behind their backs" there would surely be hell to pay. Rachel makes an interesting point. She said how they keep telling her that they are her friends, but how she never had friends who made her cry like that. Rachel also realizes that they are going to end up isolating themselves but then again, they really won't care.

While the rest of the gang is at work, Nicole and Coral decide to go shopping for the night's festivities. Originally the plan was that they were going to come in late but then they got a page from Lori that they didn't have to work street team that night and that they didn't have to come in, emphasis on have.

The execs at Arista decide to reward the five of them with Outkast tickets for working so hard "the past week." Well, Nicole and Coral get wind of this and instantly the snakes are let out of their cage. Focusing on the fact that Lori paged them telling them that they didn't have to come in and Kevin confirmed it, Coral and Nicole blow it up to be the betrayal to end all betrayals. Chill kids. This ain't Dynasty. There was no sinister plot. You guys must know your slackers. You're just bummed you didn't get the tickets.

Lori and crew make the argument that yes; they might have told them it wasn't necessary they come in, but that they have always had to work a minimum of 20 hours. Also, if the rest of them hadn't come home, obviously there was still other work to be done. I'm sorry but their minimum is only 20 hours and they still can't hack it? What else are they doing every day that's so damn important anyhow? Besides thinking up ways to torture their roommates that is.

In front of the vultures Kevin all but melts into a puddle of useless crud. Instead he saves it all up for the confessional where he admits that he never would have asked the execs if Nicole and Coral could have tickets too. Not only is that unprofessional it's unnecessary considering it is glaringly obvious the housemates really feel they didn't deserve them in the first place.

The cobras seem to go to everyone individually and tell them how disappointed they are. They even go back to beating up poor Rachel who didn't contact them to begin with saying that she should have if only to give them the 411. Coral boo hoo's how she feels really close to Lori and Rachel and wants to hang out with then when the show is all over and that they should be looking out for her because that's what friends do. What friends do. What I do know is what friends don't do and that is pick on their friends to the point that they cry and are afraid. At some point Lori even mumbles something about just giving them the tickets (?!) to which the vicious duo assures that wasn't the point. What they wanted was to have tickets too and to have been their to share the experience with their roommates. Excuse me while I hurl.

The venom vixens go to their bosses and, in my humble opinion, only dig themselves into a deeper hole. Coral says her piece and just like Elvis, Coral has left the building. Memo to Coral- you don't need your roommates to make you look bad. You do a pretty good job of that all by yourself. Nicole commits a few no no's of her own transparently focusing on the ticket getting and not the time earning. The execs explain why they gave the tickets to who they did and how it wasn't just about that afternoon. This is when Nicole begins making outrageous and desperate claims that everyone who stayed late and put in extra hours were really there goofing off and checking email and that she didn't feel, "morally right" doing that. Not only did you just diss your "friends" in a far worse fashion than you feel they did, you made an invalid argument about what they were and weren't doing considering you weren't there in the first place.

Coral announces how hard she is going to work from now on to prove her point. She also confesses that in the past, she has had a less than stellar job performance and how she wants to change all of that. All the more reason to not blame others if you know this is a problem you have.

Kevin decides to hang with friends and not go to the Outkast concert and instead offers his ticket to the devil's disciples. If only one of them really did want the ticket that would have been sweet to watch, but alas, neither one took the bait. Instead some other anonymous dude goes. I wonder if he felt like he won the lottery. Either way I'm sure somehow, some way he worked harder for the tickets than Coral and Nicole ever did.

Janet Branagan is a freelance writer and pop culture addict from New Jersey.

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