Well, crap. After blowing off the Apprentice review last week I was planning to come back with a real nice one this week, but now I've left the notes I took last night back on my coffee table. Not that I had a whole lot of funny things to say... just like last season I'm finding that I've already written just about every snarky put-down I've got for these people over and over again. This year is even worse since I picked Kendra and Tana to be the final two many weeks back and by and large things have continued to progress exactly as predicted. And unless something goes horribly awry during the second half of this final task, things are going to finish exactly as predicted, too, with Kendra emerging victorious. The only thing I'm really curious about now is something that we're never going to see: how do they actually run these events that the Apprentice teams are theoretically in charge of? The video game expo isn't that big of a deal and getting the company names and the game mentioned repeatedly on national TV is all they probably care about, so if that event got completely screwed up it would be fine. But the NY2012 Olympics bid is a huge deal to the city, and there is no way that anyone is really leaving any aspect of that in the hands of Tana, Brian, Chris, and Kristen. I wish that they would, because I dread all the construction and bullshit that is going to result if New York were to land those Olympics, but there's no way they really did. So unless that event is just completely made up for the show, there is another non-televised team that is really running the thing, which the Apprentices would obviously be aware of. So one way or another this whole thing is 100% fake, which is not exactly a news flash but does make me wonder why I should care or be interested at all. This is my basic problem with most reality TV - this is called a 16 week job interview, but the job in question doesn't really exist (by they way, anyone else notice that unlike Bill Rancic, who they periodically trotted out last season, we have not seen or heard anything about Kelly since his win), the tasks to determine whether the "candidates" are qualified for this non-existent position are meaningless busywork, the decisions concerning who to fire are based on what they think would make the best TV... not only is it not a real job interview, it isn't even a real game. Call me crazy, but I would much prefer to see either honest-to-god reality (i.e., a documentary) or fiction that has a little time and craftsmanship applied to it. Anyhow, I'm repeating myself here too, but trying to swallow cheap and easy bullshit like this just makes me feel cheated after awhile. I'm not saying that I'm incapable of suspending my disbelief and being entertained by a reality show or that I'm never going to watch one again - actually they are kind of perfect for social viewing, when you can sit there and make fun of the proceedings with other people and not have to worry that you're talking over something important (since none of it has any importance) but when you're just sitting all alone in your apartment every single week with this crap like I am there's not much fun involved and it just becomes a pointless chore.