The Apprentice (spoilers)

This week's episode shows why the premise for this show is a complete load of horseshit.

1. The "task," once again, is to design advertising for one of the show's sponsors. So far, that's what all the tasks have been. Clearly this is driven by NBC's desire to pander to its sponsors rather than any nonsense about which of these people is capable of becoming the CEO of a company.

2. The rules for the game force the participants to engage in completely unhealthy management practices which, in the real world, would be counterproductive. This week was the best example so far: Bryce, who as far as Gold Rush goes appears to have been the best project manager so far (in terms of getting actual cooperation out of his team), doesn't believe that their loss was any one team member's particular fault, and there's no reason to believe that he's wrong. They came up with their concept and they pitched it and it got beat. It was a cute little jingle but the scary Arby's execs (the guy, in particular, had staring ping-pong-ball-like android eyes) liked someone else's better. Shit goes down that way sometimes. If you were running an advertising company and one of your teams lost EVERY presentation, or 60% of their presentations, then maybe you'd fire them. But you wouldn't do it over one pitch, especially if you thought that everyone was pulling their weight and you liked what they came up with. Believing that everyone worked well together and that they came up with a good product, Bryce still has to pick two people to scapegoat because the rules demand it. That's fucked up.

3. In both boardroom scenes, Bryce et al.'s attempts to take the high road are foiled as Trump and his lackeys attempt to badger them into turning on each other. The Trump team either fails to get or refuses to acknowledge the fact that Bryce basically doesn't think anyone should be fired and has selected Lenny and Lee because the rules forced him to pick someone and he didn't want to punish Charmaine and Tarek for having finally done their jobs for once. So, of course, he gets fired for bringing the 'wrong' people back to the boardroom, because nobody is willing to admit that in this case, anyone would have been the 'wrong' person.

4. Bryce says at one point in the second boardroom scene that "if you want a jingle writer," then sure, he should be fired. In his exit interview you can see how disgusted he is with the whole setup. I don't know what he thought he was getting into when he signed up, but he's right: nothing about this show has anything to do with your ability to be an executive. Sean appears to be great at coordinating the writing of jingles, but you'd have to be insane to hire him to run your company. Bryce's attempt to actually be a decent manager and stand up for his employees gets him fired. In fact, the setup forces it: if you are a good manager, and your team loses, *you will always be fired.* If you are a crappy manager who wants to blame peons for your own fuck-ups, then you survive.

Ah well. Next week I should save that hour and do something else with it.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

I wouldn't want any of those people in my office, including Trump.

What bothers me is my boss LOVES it.