Last night’s hour was not the best episode of The Apprentice. I’m not sure if it was the tasks, or the remaining contestants, or both, but I was a bit tuned out for most of it.
The teams were tasked with creating 30 second commercials for AT&T Mobile TV and FLO TV … I guess my first problem was that the product sounds kind of dumb. We exert so much energy attempting to increase the amount of time we spend entertaining ourselves as it is; do we need live streaming TV on our phones as well? I just can’t think of a time that I would benefit from that.
Both commercials were kind of bad, but Stephanie and Liza’s was plain awful. And so it was even funnier listening to Stephanie going on and on about the job she’d done and how it would let Trump know how much of a superstar she was. Sure thing. There was no question that Steuart’s team won hands down, but the boardroom between Stephanie and Liza wasn’t so simple.
Here’s the thing: no one’s wrong about Liza being a weak link. But I find it annoying how from week to week Trump will alter which qualities he considers good and which he considers bad. Although I guess that’s nothing new with him. The sycophantic way that his kids repeat after him is gross, but everyone wants to cash in when Trump moves on. Fine.
But with regards to Liza, she definitely camps out in the background waiting for the rest of her team to get toppled (and she completely failed her assignments last night). What was worth noting was that in the scenes from last week that aired at the beginning of the episode we actually saw her vocalizing her disagreement about the bedazzling, something that had been mostly missing from last week’s edit. So clearly she’s saying something. But as much as you can blame editing for how it has the ability to shape our perception of each character, I believe that if she was vocal enough it would be impossible to ignore. So she’s not speaking up.
It’s interesting that everyone questioned whether Liza wasn’t strong enough to get her ideas heard. Last week Trump would have been berating the project leader for not listening to good ideas. Or how about questioning Liza for only being combative in the boardroom — Trump loves that! Come on.
But that’s how the game is played, and sometimes people like her sneak through because they hang back. My problem is that she’s managed to sneak through to the final four, joining strong contenders like Steuart, Clint, and Brandy. She totally doesn’t deserve to have made it this far.
And yet the tricky part about last night’s boardroom was that Stephanie deserves to have made it this far even less, albeit for different reasons. She’s always shown her strength, but she’s also not a pleasant human being, and to experience her on the show is to suffer somewhat. So who should make the semi-finals? Someone who’s not a good enough player, or someone who feels like sandpaper in our wounds?
I’m going to say the former, but only if we get a guarantee that Liza’s done for hands down in the next cut. Because if she somehow manages to sneak past any of her fellow semi-finalists … well, I don’t have any recourse, but I’ll shake my finger vigorously at Donald Trump. Look out!
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Nov 19, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
