March 25, 2008
The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition finale (coming Thursday) is not just merely a battle between a reality TV show host and a country music singer. No, it is a battle of ideals, of world views, between good and evil, between the Old World and the New World, between rural and urban, between facial hair and non, between sarcasm and blunt truth. Trace Adkins, country music star, versus Piers Morgan, reality TV host. One British, one American, one arrogant and crass, the other modest and kind. You can understand why Donald Trump wanted these two men to duke it out on the season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice. While Carol Alt or Stephen Baldwin would have been worthy entries, they stood for nothing, they represented nothing. With Trace Adkins and Piers Morgan, an epic struggle is upon us.
March 21, 2008
The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition aired its penultimate episode last night and Donald Trump's behavior was peculiar. The first half of the episode was devoted to firing two of the final four contestants in an entirely arbitrary fashion. Trump brought in two “experts” (aka NBC employees) to interview each of the finalists. He listened to them on who to keep and who to fire after the interviews, and then went totally against their advice. I can't blame him (Piers Morgan needed to be in the final two), but why even have interviews if you're going to completely disregard the results?
March 20, 2008
For the first half of tonight's The Apprentice: Celebrity Edition, Donald Trump held interviews and an extended boardroom in order to immediately fire two of the final four contestants. It seemed like an arbitrary way to go about the last two firings – it happened in one night, right after the previous firing of Stephen Baldwin. After that, the two finalists began preparing for their final task – a star-studded celebrity auction. We'll see the auction go down next week in the two hour Celebrity Apprentice finale.
March 18, 2008
The two-hour second-to-last episode of The Celebrity Apprentice airs this Thursday and I could not care less about it's outcome. That's not saying I'm not looking forward to the episode. I am, but not because I'm invested in who eventually wins. Now that Omarosa is gone, and four worthy Apprentice contestants remain, my rooting interests have become muted. Since The Apprentice is now being played for charity, viewers aren't really rooting for specific people. To root for a contestant is to root for a charity and, by extension, to root for one charity is to root against three charities. That's not something I'm interested in. What I am looking forward to is all of the fired Celebrity Apprentice contestants returning to help the two finalists in one last task.
March 14, 2008
The Celebrity Apprentice has been an entertaining television show despite itself. I had no intentions of enjoying the series – the idea seemed a desperate attempt at reviving a dead show. However, The Apprentice ended up returning with a vengeance and, for the most, it's because Donald Trump and NBC got lucky. I know Trump has said on numerous occasions that he was overwhelmed with requests by celebrities who wanted to participate on The Celebrity Apprentice, but that's probably a downright lie – just look at the caliber (or lack thereof) of celebrities who were eventually cast. They got lucky because of the cast they did end up with, and the way they ended up interacting with each other. The newly fired Stephen Baldwin was a big part of this.
March 13, 2008
The Celebrity Apprentice was a flawed competition from the very beginning. Most of the given tasks have been predicated on who had the most high-powered contacts that could swoop in and hand over thousands of dollars in checks. The easy way to get around this loophole, of course, is to simply forbid the teams from calling their rich friends. Tonight on The Apprentice, Donald Trump finally made the game fair by not allowing the contestants to call any of their contacts. The task tonight involved creating and selling a sandwich for Quizno's.
March 11, 2008
The Celebrity Apprentice has been a success for NBC. The Apprentice was supposed to be a dead franchise, remember. But, thanks to the writers' strike and the gimmicky celebrity premise, the reality series returned with its most successful season in years and earned an early renewal for another celebrity edition, which will premiere next season. As we know from Dancing with the Stars, these celebrity reality shows like to find certain types of contestants and re-cast each season in a repetitive manner. On Dancing with the Stars, there are always a couple of athletes, always the random barely famous hot chick, and the funny old guy. They even cast Beverly Hills 90210 cast members in consecutive seasons. This got me to thinking about how NBC will cast the next celebrity edition of The Apprentice. It's been such an unexpected success that I doubt Trump and team will stray too much from this season's formula. So, I've come up with a complete bizarro cast for the second edition of The Celebrity Apprentice.
March 10, 2008
Omarosa.
Just the name conjures up a vast array of feelings for me. From the moment that the cast for The Celebrity Apprentice was announced, I couldn't believe that Omarosa was brought in as a contestant. First of all, no matter how you define the word “celebrity,” Omarosa isn't one. Admittedly, her presence on the first season of The Apprentice was part of what made the show such a hit in its early seasons. But, was that enough reason to put her on a show with real celebrities? Probably not, but it turned out to be a shrewd, if shameless, move by Donald Trump and Mark Burnett. Omarosa did exactly what they wanted her to do: create conflict.