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Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Apprentice: Alex Gets His Dream Job After Trump Fires Him

The Apprentice - The Complete First SeasonTonight’s task on The Apprentice was to sell ice cream on the streets of New York City. Now remember this is not Celebrity Apprentice, so the teams had to rely on $3-5 sales for an ice cream sandwich. Some New Yorkers told them exactly where they could put the $5 ice cream. The sales figures were still pretty sweet. I could live on a total of $3100 in day in ice cream sales.

Dave volunteered to be the Project Manager (PM) on the men’s team, Octane. While Poppy stepped up for the task on Fortitude.

Though Poppy was the PM on paper, Stephanie showed the team her aggressive sales style. She doesn’t seem to understand that not everyone can do the hard sale, and not everyone wants to hear one. Her mantra, “Suck it up!”
Liza was by far (at least edited) the worst sales person. She was never seen yelling or confronting a possible buyer like the others. However, Liza is the one who came up with the idea to brand the team in uniforms. This was priceless. She also went and picked out the uniforms.

The men seemed slower with David in control. There was no major drama, but they just seemed to be like little boys with a lemonade stand in the front yard. They were cute, and that got them some sales. James appeared, and admitted to being the worst salesman in the bunch. My guess is that crazy smart lawyer has always relied on his excellent grades to get him great jobs. How dare he not know how to sell things. At least that’s how Trump made it sound.

James is a thinker, and a slow thinker at that. He does over analyze every decision. A great trait for a lawyer. Not so good for a team trying to outsell hot women with ice cream bars. However, James was the one who came up with and chose the costumes for the group to look more cohesive, and it worked.

The women had a delightfully evil play in the last three minutes of task time. They took their remaining ice cream bars and swooped in on the men’s team cart and gave away their ice cream. Of course no one bought any ice cream in the last three minutes from the men since the women were giving them away and saying, “keep your money!” Brilliant, evil genius.

In The Apprentice boardroom, Trump stirred the drama like Jeff Probst at a Survivor Tribal Council. Immediately he asked Poppy who the weakest player on the team was, without even knowing if they had lost.

Poppy hemmed and hawed and finally said Liza was the weakest sales person. OH NO SHE DIDN’T! Liza took it personally and came out like a fuzzed up kitten with its claws out. Liza tried to put it back on Poppy, saying Stephanie had managed the task. True, but smelling blood in the water, the entire team chimed in to throw Liza collectively under the bus.

Donald Trump barely let Liza defend herself before the cackling got to be too much. “Liza, you’re fired!” ...long pause and a collective gasp, “I’m only kidding. I’m in some kind of crazy mood...” Wow, that was really bizarre, and kind of funny.

Trump asked the women if they thought they had an advantage over the men since they were all beautiful. Most said “no”, of course. These ladies did not try to use their feminine wiles to gain sales, I will give them that. Trump replied, “If I had the choice between any of you and Dave, Dave wouldn’t stand a f***ing chance!” We get it Trump, you’re straight. Again, weird mood.

Mahsa was asked if she thought they won, she said, “I know we won.” Trump went aggressively against her, “say you don’t ‘think’.. you don’t know anything...” Probably an early attempt to shut down her dominant personality. I think it worked. Mahsa got Trump-slapped.

The men collectively threw James and “puppy dog” nice guy Alex under the bus. When they found out they lost the task ($1500 to $1800), both were called back to the boardroom with Dave the PM.

James showed his ability to defend himself well. Alex could not compete with the aggressive ways of Dave and the rest of the men on The Apprentice. Trump said the magic words, “Alex, you’re fired.”

In a flash forward, we see Alex has gotten his dream job in construction management. Nice. In case I forgot to mention, Donald Trump said he would look into offering Nicole, last week’s cut, a position with the Miss America Pageant.

Do you think Donald Trump fired the right person tonight on The Apprentice? Who do you think will be the next to go?


Catch up with the first episode if you missed it here:
The Apprentice Premiere: The Recession Season


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