The Apprentice

For the first couple of seasons, I thought The Apprentice was a highly engaging and exciting show. The combination between reality TV and a 16 week job-interview was innovative, and the producers of the show managed to keep the show relevant and not too "out there".

The new season 6 is nothing more than a big joke and it has absolutely nothing to do with business - at all. In the earlier seasons they used to put a lot more emphasis on the business-related tasks - now the focus is mostly in the boardroom where the contestants are expected to do EVERYTHING to keep them on the show (that means lying, trash-talking, backstabbing etc.). The boardroom can be entertaining to watch, but it's entertainment at it's low-point - Sometimes you wonder if you are watching a repeat of an old Jerry Springer episode. The tasks on the show are, at most, boring and mostly a showcase for the companies who are dumb enough to pay NBC for the publicity. And what is the deal about half of the contestants living in tents in season 6? That is just plain stupid and has nothing to do with business in real-life.

I have absolutely NO respect for any of the contestants this season, they all seem like idiots to me. In earlier seasons at least some of the contestants had a bit of integrity, now it seems like the contestants would kill their own mother to keep them on the show. It also seems like Donald Trump's massive ego becomes bigger and bigger for every season that pass by and to be honest, I can't see why anyone with a common sense would want to work for him. His rationality in the boardroom mostly doesn't make any sense at all and sometimes it seems he just like to trash people for what it's worth.

R.I.P The Apprentice. Please NBC, for God's sake, get the show off the air as soon as possible. It's just too embarrassing to watch. The Apprentice was once a great TV-show, but now it's just a big fat joke.

How can Donald Trump be so clouded in his judgment? He expects, when putting a new leader in a group of bickering women with little backbone, that she should immediately know what their expertise is and to be able to assign them in the tasks instead of her asking them what they each felt their best skills were and that she was going to hold them accountable for that. I thought she did a great job of taking that group and making three times the sales as the men. At the end of their tasks, they were all working as a team and for a minute they forgot about stabbing each other in the back. But when it was time to get ready to go to the boardroom, no one had a clue as to what integrity was, or what a good leader they had. She tried to explain her strategy to Donald but he never seemed to want to really LISTEN to her. I have noticed this in other shows. He likes to interrupt and in my estimation acts as a bully. Yeah, he can do that with the money he has. But does that say anything about his character? People can make money and make themselves powerful that way, but that does not make them a big person. And thats what really counts. After seeing this last episode, I was not sure what to do - - - laugh at the farce that this show has now become or to be ashamed for the women, and ashamed for Trump.

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?

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)

Even the tagline says it, "It's nothing personal, its just business" Finally there's a reality TV show that shows contestants the true meaning of a dollar. Not by falling off a bridge, eating worms, taking off your clothes, but by learning the ways in business. Donald Trump is the host and also producer of the show, he puts these young kids(over 20) into tasks that they must complete if they want to succeed into the next level. If they make it, they stay for upcoming episodes while Donald tells the others, "You're fired!" I love the fact that there can be a reality show without hurting anybody's feelings, and that Donald Trump gets to the point. I love the fact that its a success and it can teach other people about the business world. This beats the hell out of watching 'Friends', 'Frasier', 'Will & Grace' and others.