The Apprentice – Who really won this season?

Quite an exciting finale from The Apprentice last night! At least, it seemed like an exciting finale until we got to the finale segment. But first things first.

Last week’s cliffhanger of an ending, when Clint seemed doomed by misspelled signs, was ridiculously overblown. Within minutes he’d calmly called the printer and negotiated to get the entire job replaced for $1,000. He didn’t even need to throw in the extra $400 they had in cash. I mean, I was glad Clint seemed to be in the clear, but hasn’t your heart been racing in fear for a week?

I didn’t understand how Brandy and her entire team missed the start of the tournament; everyone had to come through the front door, no? And who would kick things off if not for her? That was sort of weird. But I was pleasantly surprised by Kathy Griffin. I’m not a fan of hers, but she didn’t utter a peep of annoyance with Brandy’s team’s clear lack of an idea for what she should be doing to add to the experience. Personally I would have been really annoyed (as the headliner and as one of the golfers) doing those drive-bys that Stephanie had her on after Kathy missed her intro moment outside.

While Donald Trump was complaining about the fact that his team seemed to only be a threesome (how’d they pair some groups of fives while leaving others as threes?), what I noticed more was how insignificant Brandy’s loss of Liza appeared to be. Liza was off golfing, and Brandy didn’t once seem to suffer as a result of her “experts” absence. I’m glad, but it was interesting that again one of last week’s insurmountable mountains got smoothed out so easily.

Was Clint told that he had to do a buffet style dinner? All the talk about how inappropriate Brandy’s prizes were for the crowd would leave me to believe that the 500 people at the dinner were more “wait staff” type guests than “stand in line” diners. Did you catch a glimpse of Don Don on line with plate in hand? It must have been a requirement, because otherwise I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t have been a strike against Clint.

It’s funny that the winners of all of the prizes left behind the prizes themselves. There was nothing that could be done to Liza as punishment, but Brandy totally shouldn’t have taken the tongue-lashing for that. It could have been one of those life lesson moments for Trump himself — don’t always judge a book by its cover. He assumed that Liza was an all around golf genius because she played on the national team back in Kenya, but clearly the experiences aren’t equitable. At the very least, she has no idea how to shop for the wealthy.

Okay, so there we all were in the boardroom. I already knew that the old three hour results show was no more as 15 minutes remained on my recorded version of the episode. But I kept waiting for Trump to spin around to face a live audience, or at least for all of the fired competitors from the season to reappear … nothing. What happened? Where was the hoopla this year? Wouldn’t it stimulate the local economy to rent the theater, and pay for all the advertising, lighting and sound teams, etc. that go into putting on one of those spectacles? For someone who spent this season really giving back….

Seriously though, not that I didn’t appreciate it, but this season’s final boardroom was subdued in every way. Even the deliberations didn’t have much to them.

Clint talked about being involved in the Trump International Golf Links in Scotland, one of the most controversial building projects in existence today. I’m sure it rubbed Trump the right way, since he has so much invested in the project, but talk about something you should stay far away from.

Meanwhile, I was sure that Brandy had made a mistake by talking about learning from the next generation of Trumps. She even mentioned Eric! Yay! But I didn’t think that Trump’s vanity would allow him to acknowledge that his kids’ time is now. But he impressed me — as a parent he clearly is a different man, and I think we caught a very proud parent moment from him there.

Not that I think that’s the reason that Brandy won … I’m not sure why she won. No offense to her, and I didn’t think anyone deserved to be in the finale with Clint over her, but Clint’s the clear victor this season.

Then again, he doesn’t have to wear the crown of “Trump’s next Apprentice.” So maybe he still did win after all? What did you think?

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Dec 10, 2010 @ 13:00 EST5EDT