The Apprentice

I was at my friends house watching this, and it was the worst show I have seen in a long time. Uneventful, and lacking of any drama, I could easily slept through this. After I watched a couple of episodes I demanded my money back, which is crazy since I didn't spend any money to watch it. I wouldn't wish this on my enemy. I give this a 2, just for the fact that it gave Conan some material to make fun of Trump with. If your idea of a good time is to watch people act like they are the center of the universe, then this is for you. Otherwise this is a complete waste of time, not to mention money. Personally I would rather have a colon exam then watch this show again.

needs to retire. At first this was a good concept, as another reviewer mentioned. Now it is lame, overly scripted, and makes "America's Next Top Model" look creative. If you have cable, and get MSNBC you will notice in certain markets that Donny Deutsch follows this show. He typically (at least last year) re-hashes the entire show, with one of the lame no-talent losers, hoping for Omarosa-like fame. How sad is this?.

The earlier shows at least had educated contestants; I believe the show with Jennifer Massey going against (forgot his name) the male who won, was interesting in that she at least had class, a legal background, and attempted to participate in a mature, rational manner.

At this point, it is a sad commentary on American culture that Burnett continues to thrive with trash-TV; it is calculated tripe, like visiting Ringling Bros. Circus; where the animals are abused and tormented for fun. How much lower will entertainment get? Maybe next we can have Trump pretend to be Emperor Nero- and everyone can watch people being mauled by lions- imagine the ratings with all that blood.

I bet you Gene Simmons and Vincent Pastore negotiated in advance how many episodes they would be willing to appear in. Isn't just too contrived for Gene to switch to the ladies team and then throw himself on his sword? And Big Pussy? What the hell was that "look at me, I'm a rat!" double episode crap? All that cliché mafia banter- COME ON! The big names voted off just happened to already have received money for their charity and got a custom tailored exit. Hmm... This is not reality but staged drama! Mark Burnett's other show, "Survivor" also raised questions for me when Johnny Fairplay stages his departure when he clearly had just a short time before his child is to be born.

Yuk!

I am at present following the series in the British version on BBC 2. It's exciting and fun but once one starts to realize that this is the reflection of the real world out there it tends to make one despair. Those guys "in the fast lane" who or what are they really? Very shallow people who are extremely insecure in the sense that they are always trapped in the game of sucking-up to their superiors and/or treading on their inferiors. Their main concern is that nobody sees through their fake approach and this attitude alone consumes an enormous amount of personal energy.These are the guys and ladies whom when you catch them on one of those rare occasions when they're off-guard, will convince you that there is essentially nothing truly exceptional about their personality and that they are basically constantly frustrated by the nagging thought that the price they pay for their ongoing masquerade, might not be worthwhile at all. As to the concept of this "reality" game itself, one can remark that there are obvious shortcomings as to its effectiveness: granted that the idea of opposing two different teams in order to achieve maximum results is acceptable, one has to take into account that the "ego" competition between each member of both groups is so predominantly present that it is without any doubt detrimental to the concept of team-building in general and consequently also to the achievement of the preliminary defined objectives.On another level, one wonders if it isn't precisely this form of "work ethic" that has also contributed to the collapse of the financial urban jungle we are witnessing at present (previous sentence added April 2009)

I think the worst part of the Apprentice is that it takes an excellent concept (finding the next Apprentice by putting the contestants in real-world situations where they have to show project management skills and business acumen to survive) and places the dumbest contestants where intelligent, ambitious people should be. It particularly angers me that the women on the show are always chosen solely for their looks and lose their tasks because they are vapid, engage in cat fights and have air in the space where their brains should be. Of course, this has to be contrasted with the male contestants who are (usually) immature and have superegos, but at least have some sort of brain power. The blatant sexism on this show is obvious. But at least the concept of a reality show for the business world is engaging and you can feel slightly better about watching reality TV when it isn't about TV romanticism or really bad singers. Let's just hope that eventually they can find competent contestants to fit the bill on the show. Now wouldn't that be interesting?