BFFL Best Friends For Life

All good things must come to an end I guess. I remember when The Apprentice first came on the air, the show was great. The contestants were seemed varied and viable. The rules of the show made sense. Several of the potential winners seemed to be people that any corporate exec would be happy to hire.

Fast forward a few years to a show that has completely lost all of the things that made it work. I was suffering through this season, hoping each week that the show would regain some sense of its former quality, but instead, it seemed to get worse and worse.

Let's start with the contestants. With a "over a million applicants", you would think that they could find better contestants. I am in a position to hire people, and from the start I thought "I would never hire most of these people". Over time, the contestants have become more immature, more scheming, less cooperative and generally less likable.

If it had just been a season of bad contestants, I might not have bothered to blog about it, but the contestants were just the tip of a very big iceberg...

With the show's move to Los Angeles, the producers apparently felt that it was time to shake things up and change the rules. Unfortunately every change seemed to be another nail in the show's coffin.

The first change was the new rule that winners slept in the mansion and losers slept outside in tents. I have to assume that they thought this would be entertaining, but it was just strange. It created an uneven playing field between the teams since one team was well rested and the other team was tired and desperate.

Next came this rule that the winning project manager would stay project manager on subsequent projects until they lost. How stupid is that?? First of all, how does that give anyone a sense of how well the other contestants are as leaders/managers? Second, what kind of motivation is it for the team mates when they know that they can never be project managers as long as they help their team win? With these first two rules, the contestants have two choices: (1) Help one of the other contestants look good and build a track record or; (2) sleeping outside in tents and cooking on a hibachi.

If that was not enough, the producers decided that the winning project manager would sit next to the Donald during the Board Room. This idea may have seemed good on paper, but the winning project managers almost never uttered a word (shall I even comment on the fact that George and Caroline were replaced by the Donald's daughter and son?). Having the PM's in the board room was a waste of a seat.

I tell you all of this so you understand that I was already disappointed in this season before the most recent episode, but as they say in the infomercials "but wait, there's more"....

In this second to last episode (apparently), they were down to the famous "final four". The show started normally enough. There were 2 teams of 2 people each. There were no Project Managers.

This is where the weirdness began - the four candidates went to a "cocktail party"with the 5 previous "winners" of the show. This is the first time that we have seen many of them since their wins. During the cocktail party the only questions that the candidates were able to formulate was "What was it like for you when you go to the final four?" No one asked the big question: "What the hell have you done since you won??" If they did ask, those questions and their answers were edited out of the show (makes you wonder).

After the cocktail party, each team spent the episode performing their task to the best of their ability. After the task, the executives from the company involved in the task weighed in on the candidates. This is where the train went off the tracks.

At this point, I was looking forward to a board room, seeing one person fired and the lead up to the episode with the corporate interviews. After the corporate interviews, one more person would be fired and the "final two" would be given a huge task with an impossible time frame and the help of several former candidates....

It seems that I would be again disappointed.

Instead of someone being fired, Donald told the Final Four to go to the mansion and pack because they were going to go home to wait for the live season finale, where one of them would be named "The Apprentice". Huh?? We have four candidates and we are just going to pick a winner on stage without another task?? This feels like the network went to Donald and said, "hey, we need this time slot. See if you can wrap this up in one week instead of 3."

I guess I shouldn't complain. As bad as this season has been, I should be happy to see the end come quicker than expected. It's always sad to watch a show grow old and die...