The Apprentice – Martha Stewart Version

I caught a news blurb that Markus was contemplating legal action against the producers of Donald Trump's "Apprentice" on the basis that the editing essentially made him look like an incoherent boob. He also challenged Donald Trump to a 10-minute debate on any subject, anywhere, anytime.

While editing can definitely leave out the other side of a story, I don't think editing here resulted in depicting an otherwise articulate Markus into a blithering idiot. From the very 1st episode when he led his team to a victory (but was the only PM so far not to get voted an exemption by his teammates), I was 99% certain this guy would never make it to the end. During the reward dinner with Donald Trump, his constant blathering prompted Trump to comment about "this guy never shuts up" (or something to that effect). Seriously, Markus may be a wonderful guy personally but I can't recall a more ineffective communicator ever on this show (although Sam from season 1 and Craig from season 3 had their moments.)

I missed that first episode. I'm a little surprised that Markus could lead anyone to victory.

I've only been watching The Apprentice for about a year.

I think last week's episode of Martha Stewart's Apprentice was the best I have ever seen for either show.

The way that winning team all fed off each other, came up with a fairly outrageous, admittedly goofy idea but made it all work and had a blast every inch of the way was a joy to watch.

I only became interested in The Apprentice to see how these people go about solving these problems in only two days time. That's not a lot of time to come up with a central idea, execute it, put all the presentations or marketing strategy necessary and make it work. Most of the time, the people doing this have no experience whatsoever, yet they plow their way through.

I don't care that much about the boardroom scenes. The only thing I want from them is that somebody doesn't get off unfairly. It's how each team approaches and solves problems which attracts me, and last week's Martha showed that in spades.

Markus challenges Trump to debate.



Marcus cries about his reputation.

I would love to see that other footage.

Martha said good-bye to Howie this week. Too bad he didn't step up and make an effort to learn a few basics about the product in order to present it. Jim had to step in and take over where Howie failed.

Wild Jim keeps escaping the bullet.

Donald "fired" two this week. The losing team was doomed from the moment they missed the scheduled meeting with executives. Accordingly, they lost their chance to find out what the executives thought was important with respect to the interactive display. The project manager deserved to be fired for that blunder.

Marshawn was supposed to present the display, but she didn't want to be blamed for the loss--so she told the PM that she didn't feel passionate enough about the display to make the presentation and that the PM should make the presentation. The PM didn't want to make the presentation, so Rebecca stepped up.

Just like Martha fired Howie for his lack of passion and failure to step up and make the presentation, Donald fired Marshawn. She shirked her duty to the team and was a big disappointment. Prior to tonight, I thought Marshawn had a good chance of making it to the final two.

Yes, Trump made the right decision this time. I still trust Martha to make the right decision more often, though. Trump comes up with some doozies sometimes. Yes, I agree. Marshawn didn't want to get blamed for the loss. What I don't understand is why she waited half an hour before the presentation to pull out-she might have gotten away with it if she had left a few hours.

RE: Martha.

Bethany surprised me that she didn't do better as a project manager, because she seemed to be such a good contributor even in losing causes. She was one of those whom I thought would go far, and she still might.

Bethany didn't do badly as project manager, it is just that she was outdone at almost every turn by Ryan. Ryan agreed to have put his best presenter alone in the spotlight, despite the best efforts of another member to jump in on the action. Ryan personally took control of the cameras-Bethanny relied on a technician-to make sure that his best presenter was the only one shown on TV-and the sales reflected it.

Bethanny, on the other hand, let a person whom she viewed as dull and non-charasmatic make half the presentation, and the charasmatic one, Jim, was put in at the last minute and walked out of frame once.

Not a terrible mistake. But once again, Ryan did it better.

Bethanny covered the bases as manager-remember, the previous project manager had no central idea at all to to their presentation, so the team was reduced to dancing on a truck platform and shouting slogans for the product. Ghastly. Bethanny had the central idea, she made the necessary change to get the personnel in front of the camera. She did everything relatively alright-but Ryan did it better.

But I don't think Bethanny deserved to go. Howie volunteered for the presentation-remember, he is a salesman who makes presentations all the time. He had all day to prepare for the ten minutes on air which would determine success or failure, and halfway through the day he still didn't know the name of the product!

This necessitatied an emergency change, which means they did not have the time to rehearse the presentation enough, which resulted in Jim walking out of frame, etc.

When Bethanny took Howie off the presentation, she saved her job. She did it with enough time so that the TV presentation was not a complete disaster, (although it not what it could have been), and put the onus on Howie, where it belonged. Howie was a strong contributor in the past, but this time he really dropped the ball.

I predict Randall and Ala in the Donald Trump "Apprentice" finale with Randall prevailing. I predict Ryan and Dawna in the Martha Stewart "Apprentice", with Ryan getting the slight edge to "win" the job.

Well, I'm glad to see that Amanda The Useless got the axe.

This woman was something. On last week's episode, the one with Home Shopping Network, right from the get go she tried to act like she was project manager, and bit by bit Ryan, the real project manager, had to maneuver her "out of the loop" to avoid a confrontation. Her final contribution to the winning effort was minimal.

I think the reason Ryan didn't confront her from the start was that he was afraid that she would pull the team apart.

This week, Amanda almost immediately decided to sabotage Marcela, the real project manager. For some reason, Ryan, who is emerging as a star, let himself get sucked into being her ally on this. Pity he didn't remember how Amanda was such a problem to him only a few days before.

If Amanda made a suggestion and Marcela decided to go in a different direction, Amanda then gave her no help in that direction. She deliberately pulled half the team apart from the other half. Then she relied on her lawyer's skills to tell the camera and, after it was all over, the winning team, how bad Marcela was, how it was a horror show, how she and Ryan were doing everything possible to get something done but it was just impossible with Marcela in charge, etc.

What a useless phony.

Im so sick of the apprehentice, its just such an unrealistic show. All the people who enter this show are egotistical maniacs who have nothing but blind vision for material wealth.

I'm sick of JIM! Admittedly with out him MS' Apprentice would be boring, but he's driving me bonkers!

I think Martha's people are more interesting than Donald's.

As far as Jim goes, for awhile I was beginning to actually like him a little, the way he bravely soldiers on despite the fact that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting the job. I mean, can you imagine anyone putting JIM in charge of a company?

But now Jim is really getting stupid. He's telling the people who are judging him how he is playing the game strategically, trying to get the best players out so only weak players remain. Who wants to hire a guy who openly admits that?

There is competition among people in a company, and the company presumably wants their employees trying to get promoted by outdoing each other qualitywise, not plotting the sneaky ways to bring down the best people so you get the promotion by default.

Now that Charles the Cigar Guy has heard Jim brag about his maneuverings, how can he or Martha ever take anything Jim says about another player seriously? They'll both discount what he says right away.

Incidentally, Jim has a record of 2 wins and no losses, but that is pure luck.

In his first win, the one where an auction was held of time spent with celebrities for the animal shelter, Jim's team simply had the better celebrities. The audience were well-off Manhattanites, and despite the picture at nbc.com, almost all of them appeared to be women over 50. Plus, since they go to the trouble to live in Manhattan, almost all will be interested in arts, Broadway and fashion trends.

Jim's celebrities were: Paul Sorvino & Amanda Sorvino, Susan Lucci, John Lithgow & Joanna Gleason, and famous designer Todd Oldham.

Marcela's celebrities were: New York Jets' quarterback Chad Pennington, Fran Drescher, Bruce Villanch & Jordan Ballard, and Merv Griffin.

The overwhelmingly female audience had no reason to know or care about the Jets' quarterback, and Bruce Vilanch was a Hollywood joke writer who only recently has made the rounds as a performer. Marcela's team was stuck with them.

Jim's team had Paul Sorvino-not that big a name but well-known on Broadway, which this auction audience is going to know. John Lithgow is well known from movies and TV, Susan Lucci is the queen of daytime TV, (remember, this is a female audience), and designer Todd Oldham is likely to be known by this audience as well.

Jim's team only won by 10% more money raised. But he had four performers with appeal to this particular crowd, Marcela's team had two. Jim lucked out.

In his second win, setting up a store to sell multi-beverage machines, Dawna took most of the allotted budget and gave it to a business setup company. Bethenny later gave the company some ideas to promote the store, and at the end the promotion people were reporting to Bethenny, not to Dawna who hired them, or Jim the project manager. Jim had less to do with the project than either Dawna or Bethenny.

So Jim just lucked out in the tasks he won.

Next week, the grueling interviews. The obnoxious Jim acts more like a cartoon character than a serious candidate. He can't possibly survive the interview process and end up in the final two.

Between Dawna and Bethenny, it's hard to say right now which one is the better candidate. They have both performed fairly well during the entire process. One of them will obviously outshine the other on the final task.

In the Donald's Apprentice, I really like the final two candidates: Randal and Rebecca.

I was surprised that Rebecca chose Toral to be on her team, but so far so good. Randal picked an amazing team. In fact, Randal's charity client seemed to be far more impressed with Josh than she was with Randal. At the end of Thursday's episode, Rebecca seemed to have a slight edge over Randal.

The cliffhanger: Rebecca's team lost their emcee; and Randal's team is facing rain that might ruin their outdoor event.

Debra - didn't the same big issues happen at the last apprentice? I know that at least there was a threat of rain too.

I like both Randall and Rebecca and I can tell Trump likes them both too - it seems he favored them from near the beginning.

from my POV Randal is falling quickly - he just made me sick last night

I don't know if he is falling apart completely, but he surely misjudged the number of man-hours it takes to set up the field.

That sponsor might have turned a little obnoxious, but sometimes people need a kick in the rear to motivate them to get over the trouble spots, and this sponsor correctly ascertained that Randal was going to say "Yeah, yeah, we're taking care of it" and then was going to find out that there wasn't enough time to get it all done at the end of the day.

So he jumped on Randal-perhaps the first time that Randal looked really bad in the series. But I don't think Randal is in free-fall yet. Just misjudged some time, which was rectified.

There is a challenge facing each. But it seems to me that you can control people a lot better than you can control the weather. There are a lot of people in show business who seek visibility-there is still a good chance of getting somebody. Don't forget, this is New York City. Outside of Los Angeles, there are more comedians and emcees there than anywhere else.


Don't ask me what Randal is supposed to do-putting together an indoor backup event is going to be tough. Rent an indoor arena and have everyone play basketball? Rent a hall and a DJ and have a dance?

I agree completely. In fact, it is just this situation that they came up with this interview process just before the final task. With Trump's Apprentice last year, Craig talked down to Kendra throughout the series-any male who talked that way to a female colleague would be in trouble in a big company. So Craig didn't make it through the final interview process, giving the series the chance to bypass sexual harassment issues.

The interviews give the series the chance to avoid certain controversial issues.





Bethenny was my favorite from the first show I saw, (the fourth), and I think that if both she and Dawna do reasonably well in the final task, like Tana and Kendra did last year in Trump's Apprentice, I think Bethenny will get the nod.

I admire Dawna for taking the project manager's job so often because she knew that Bethenny and Jim had become friends and she would be odd one out. That's a lot of pressure to be under task after task, and she handled it beautifully.

But Dawna just doesn't have much visible personality. The reaction of the two to Jim is indicative. During the last task, Bethenny told Dawna-when it comes to Jim, just agree with him and go ahead with what I tell you to do anyway. After the winning video was shot, Jim was hitting the champagne and Dawna was trying to get the staff not to serve him because she felt his personality didn't need any more lack of inhibition.

Bethenny, on the other hand, handles Jim beautifully. According to the website recaps, at one point she wrestled a phone out of his hands while Jim was pulling some shenanigan or other. During the single interviews the show throws in during the series, you hear Bethenny saying, "I think it is a joke the way everyone is afraid of Jim. When Jim acts up, I tell him to quiet down and he does it. When he goes off on a tangent, I tell him to knock it off and he does. I don't see what everyone is so afraid of".

Unless something really bad happens to her in the last task, I think
Bethenny is the clear choice, despite Dawna's analytical competence.

Just thought I would throw this in before the show airs tonight.

There was one scene last week where the show was actually unfair to Jim, making him look bad when he wasn't.

That was the shot where Bethenny was talking to the people from the airline for whom the video was being shot. Bethenny got them to tell him the hard facts on their target audience, mostly women over 40.

Then, they showed Jim asking some seemingly bizarre questions. Jim asked the airline, what clothing do most of the women wear when they fly your airline-is it pantsuits, business skirts, slacks, whatever? He went into some detail.

When they played this part, I began to wonder if Jim wasn't going absolutely crazy- perhaps indulging some phone sex fetish. The looks on the faces of his teammates showed the same thing.

But after it was over, and I thought about it, Jim wasn't so far off after all. Remember, he is a graphic artist-he thinks in terms of images. While the video had not even been discussed yet, Jim correctly figured that if a representation of a typical customer was going to be in the video-a good possiblility-Jim wanted to get the clothing right.

Especially among women, the target audience, clothes mean a lot. Making sure that the clothing of a typical flier is correctly represented is a way to appeal even more to a target audience, and Jim was smart to try to get that edge.

Once people decide you are a certain way, everything you do will be viewed through that filter. Jim has done and said many outrageous things, so this scenario is viewed as yet another example of inappropriate behavior. Once you think about it, though, his questions were designed to help the team put together a video that would appeal to the airline's target audience.

Again, I can't imagine Jim surviving the interviews after all the stunts he's pulled. But on this one incident, he was shown as being bad when he really was being helpful.