American Housewife - Women in Business - Review: "Chloe Brown-Hamster"

Katie and Chloe are at each other throats' again this week! Will they both still be alive by the end of the episode? That's debatable....

Things seem to be going well for "Mrs. O's Lasagna." Orders are out the window until the Yelp reviews start coming in that is! Katie's suddenly gotten a load of bad Yelp reviews, all from people she doesn't know, all of whom have the initials CBM. (Can we just agree that Chloe is not very good at being stealthy?) Katie tells Angela and Doris about what's going on and they ask what might have ignited Chloe's latest stunt. Katie suggests it may have been Career Day at school, where the two said some slightly disparaging things in front of the kids about each others' businesses. (Chloe called Katie's lasagna "Poison in a Jar." In response, Katie told the class that Chloe's husband bought her the store to keep her busy.) While Angela suggests that Katie confront Chloe directly and talk it out, Doris has another idea - play dirty and steal Chloe's assistant Maria! Of course, Katie decides to go with Doris's plan.

Speaking of Maria, Principal Amblin still has a THING for her. When she comes to school to bring Penny her lunch, Principal Amblin attempts to ask her out, but ends up just staring at her "looking like someone who needed an EpiPen." (Anna-Kat's words, not mine!) Desperate to get their lunch periods lined up so they can eat together, Anna-Kat and Franklin strike a bargain with Amblin. If they can help get him and Maria together, he'll change them to the same lunch!

Katie goes to Chloe's store, where she finds Amblin attempting to ask Maria out - by mocking her voice and her face! Yeah, maybe don't take romantic advice from a couple of 10-year-olds! Unsurprisingly, Maria declines his invitation! But, when Katie asks her to come work for her, Maria happily agrees. With a little bit of coaching from Katie, she gets up the courage to tell Chloe she's quitting and even hands her the duster. (I wonder if Chloe even knows what that is?) Chloe puts on a spectacular, Broadway-worthy show of breaking down, screaming Maria's name repeatedly.

At school, a pissed off Amblin confronts Anna-Kat and Franklin about his romantic failures. He'll be switching their lunch periods back to separate times! But Anna-Kat has one more trick up her sleeve. When she gets Maria to admit that she's attracted to men who aren't afraid to share "what makes them special," she runs with it and brings Amblin over to the house while Maria's there. He's armed with a gift for her, a wooden bust of her face! Wood-working is his "special," and Maria actually thinks it's pretty cool, cool enough that he scores a date with her!

Oliver tells Katie that they can't afford to hire an employee with all the bad Yelp reviews tanking their orders. But Maria's got a solution to that! She knows all of Chloe's passwords, so she offers to go into her account and change the reviews to 5 stars. Soon enough, the orders are back on track and booming. They've even got a rush order from the poker club! When Maria goes to turn on the stove, she discovers it's not working, right as Greg looks outside to see the gas company! Apparently, they received a call from the "homeowner" that they were doing backyard renovations, hit a line, and needed everything turned off. It's no surprise that the name who called it in was Carmen Bolivar-Martinez, aka CBM.

Katie begs to have the gas turned back on, but the guy from the company insists he can't do anything but what the work order says without hearing from his boss, who's out till Monday! Katie decides to go down to Chloe's store and smash her electrical box. Thankfully Oliver beats her there. It's obvious that the feud is bad for business, and Oliver starts to put the skills he's learned at Teen Helpline to work to broker a truce. Chloe admits that their latest issues stem from Katie telling the kids on Career Day that her husband bought her store for her - which shockingly isn't true! Apparently, she worked for years saving up money and building her brand, even doing some time as a mall kiosk lady, before she was able to open her store. Katie admits that she may have prejudged Chloe and they agree that they both need to support each other as business owners, instead of constantly trying to ruin each others' businesses. Chloe even gets Maria back, albeit with some conditions for better treatment imposed, inspired by her new-found self-confidence from her brief stint working with Katie!

While Katie's going after her arch-nemesis and Anna-Kat's playing matchmaker, the last of the Otto women, Taylor, is supposed to be applying to colleges. Emphasis on supposed. She thinks the essay questions are too hard and has resorted to online shopping instead. When Katie discovers this, she bans Taylor from leaving the house until she gets her applications done. So Taylor gets another idea, and using the guise of attempting to "bond" with Greg, she gets him to answer her essay questions! And poor Greg is so desperate to hang out with her that he has no idea he's being played until Katie points it out to him! When Taylor comes back to him the next day, Greg confronts her about not trying hard enough on the essay questions and Taylor admits that she really has tried for months, but she honestly doesn't know how to say the right thing. The truth is, she wants to go to Carnegie-Melon because being on stage singing is the only time she's able to really be herself - it's what she cares about the most. Greg tells her that she's just found her perfect essay answers.

Random Thoughts:
-Best line goes to Anna-Kat, when Oliver is discussing being told by Teen Helpline that he always sounds like he's mocking people - "Some people have a punch-able face, you have punch-able voice!"

Do you think Katie and Chloe might finally being putting their feud behind them? Will Taylor get into Carnegie-Melon? Let me know below!