The Donald was starting to lose me on The Apprentice. The incredible over-commercialization, Donald’s massive ego, and the complete ineptitude of the contestants was getting to be too much.
But The Donald won me back last night.
Following a reshuffling where each team was allowed to select three people to shuttle over to the other squad (and the men couldn’t dump off Markus quickly enough), the newly-intergendered (and now Markus-free) Excel team went on to suck down the biggest asskicking in the history of the show, actually causing the sporting goods store they were dispatched to create an “interactive sales event” for to LOSE sales.
So the contestants haven’t gotten any better. But the upside is that Trump apparently knows this too. Come Boardroom time, he stripped the Project Manager of his right to nominate people for firing, sent up the guy who was exempt (Brian, and, once again, the Vote For Exemption is more an issue of asskissing than any kind of assessment of the P.M.’s ability) and the two players who didn’t abjectly suck (Rebecca and Marshawn), and told the remaining four (Mark, Jennifer, the aforementioned P.M. Josh, and James) to go out into the hall.
Upon calling them back in, he let them try to shove each other in front of the bus for a while (hey, at least Trump knows what makes good TV), and then canned the lot of them. Wave of the hand. Yer all fired. Get the hell out of my office.
THAT was what brought me back. Making the four of them cram themselves in the Yahoo Cab Of Shame was just the icing on the cake. About the only way it could have been better would have been if the doorman went out of his way to hit them in the ass with the door.