Friday, October 29, 2004

I went into last night's episode of The Apprentice fully prepared to accept the new lack of feistiness and enjoy the show just as much as usual, but though it was pretty entertaining, the main thing that stuck in my head at the conclusion was Donald's line after his premature firing: "That was a no-brainer, and it's done". The absence of Stacy Rotner doesn't really come into play here, it's just that as soon as Elizabeth Jarosz was selected as Apex team leader you knew that they were going to lose and that she would be the one to get fired this week. If her previous performance in the position didn't have you completely convinced of this, their very first team meeting should have cleared up any doubts for you, when she went against her own anti-military-theme opinion and caved in Raj and the rest of her team. "We did not have a strong creative idea and I cannot get behind something that I don't believe in," or whatever she kept saying in the boardroom and taxicab was the most delusional bullshit we've heard out of a contestant yet, because what she ended up getting behind and presenting was exactly the idea she could not get behind. Over on the Mosaic side, the tagline from last week's 'scenes from next week' finally had some connection to reality, as the young guy actually did step up and show what he was made of. He quickly came up with a great idea for the campaign, and did not listen to the condescending Maria or let her take over the team like she was dying to do. He stood firm against a constant onslaught of calls to sex things up from the rest of his team, led them firmly through the execution of his vision, and in the end they had what I think is the first product resulting from one of these tasks that is actually polished, powerful, and professional. I thought it was as good as anything the humorously named Donny Deutsch and his regular team might have done themselves, except that it wasn't shot on film and looked a little cheap, but since they didn't have much time and it was really just a pitch for their campaign (even though it did end up getting aired in Times Square) using video seemed okay. Maria, Kelly, and the rest seemed to have a pretty shallow notion of sexiness, too, at least with the Hummers and hotbodies they were suggesting. Saving lives, helping people, making your family proud, (not to mention walking around armed and dangerous)... why anyone would think there was a need to sex that up further with some fake, glossy veneer is beyond me. Back to Apex: Kevin continues to be the most impressive man on the show (though I'm much more favorably disposed towards Andy after this episode), staying up to help out his incompetent team leader in trying to present her own, much better, vision to the team, then finally getting tough and firmly refusing to take any more of her wishy-washy crap after she caved in yet again once the sun came up. Jennifer once again unveiled her intense dislike of the physically similar Elizabeth with some very sharp criticisms in the boardroom discussion, and one the funniest moments from the show was when someone said something about Elizabeth needing to be less of a pussy and Jenn said, sotto voce, "I don't think she can help it". Raj, with his armchair army-lovin' la-la-la-la-la idiocy has now fallen out of favor with me. And the rest left no impression whatsoever. There are two other issues to be addressed here before I leave. First, I'm beginning to think that before long everything Donald and his two cronies say on the show is going to consist of looped lines added in post-production. The jarring change in tone and shots of the back of their heads has been noticeable on occasion before, but now it's becoming as rampant as kudzu. Lastly, it was cruel enough to have to hear that next week "Stacie's Back!" and know that it was not the desired Stacy who would be returning, but to follow that up by saying that three more of the fired would be seen again and none of them were Ms. Rotner was a pretty low blow. But I can take it, and will be back again next week to see how Scary Stacie managed to claw her way back into the fold, and whether Jenn C. now looks like Katie Couric did on Today this morning.

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