The Apprentice – If youth is a negative, what about Ivanka and Don Don?

In merely the latest showing of Donald Trump’s dedicated effort to help the downtrodden one apprentice at a time, last night The Apprentice refused to be done in by silly things such as conventional wisdom, airing a new episode mere hours into America’s turkey-induced nap. Either that, or the savvy Trump figured 10:00 pm was the sweet spot for airing a new episode, between after-dinner naps and Black Friday excursions. Personally I appreciated the show’s dedication to its loyal viewers.

Once again we were faced with edits from last week that we’d never seen before; did you know that Brandy felt she’d been marginalized last week? I knew that was true two weeks ago with the perfume task, but on last week’s commercial task I thought she played an active and fully participatory role. The producers need to double check what they shared with us last week before signing off on those “Last time” montages.

With the teams stacked three against one, Trump went back to his men versus women strategy and moved Brandy over to Liza’s team. I was surprised, because this felt like an extra task which is normally skipped — with four contestants left, the show generally goes into interview mode. As dumb as that is, how else do two people get fired at once?

The challenge this week was a QVC sales task, with Clint going up against the floundering Liza. Her mission was to prove that she could hack it. This time her ability to do so went up against Brandy’s continued non-committal attitude. I liked her and I still do, but I find Brandy refusing to give concrete answers to questions way too often. She thinks the expectation to do so means she’s being set up for a fall — see the perfume task — but I say it’s just part of being a member of a team. You should be expected to contribute.

The men dominated the negotiations, but only insomuch as they got what they wanted; who’s to say that they got the better end of the deal? Okay, so the women could have used more time to practice — Brandy only scored once as a speaker, so why keep using her? — but obviously the women chose the better product. At the very least they made a better decision on price, which made the negotiations irrelevant.

But it’s unfortunate that profit was the only thing that this game came down to in the end. Clearly the men were out-strategized, but Liza did a terrible job as a project manager … or at least as a producer. In fact, she admitted as much after Brandy’s segment was over. Her past productivity has been nothing to write home about, so her failure as a project manager — if not in winning the task, then in being a good player of the game — should have gotten her fired before Steuart, who was cut from the losing men’s team.

Barring that, at least the finale should be Brandy versus Clint. I think it’s Clint’s “job” to lose, but there’s no question that Brandy is the only other contestant left who’s qualified to still be playing the game.

We’ll see who’s still standing on next week’s first installment of the two-part finale. But no matter who it is, I’ll be there.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 26, 2010 @ 12:30 EST5EDT