Apprentice: Mid-Life Crisis versus Corporate Scandal

For this week's Apprentice, I half-tried to do one of those live-blogging things that real bloggers do. Half-tried meaning I took minimal notes on stuff I thought was funny, while watching it on TiVo a day late. I have no real overarching point this time around, just a few observations.

First of all, "the Russian" as he is called (a.k.a. Lenny which is a name only ever heard on the Simpsons and in Of Mice and Men) is truly awesome. He's like a New Jersey/mafia type version of Borat of Ali G fame. In early previews for this season, he even claimed that he would "crrush" his opponents. Last night his accent was in full force when he claimed that the task was "more simple than the whole earf." Aside from his entertainment value, he's actually been a good candidate so far, in tasks and in the boardroom. Unfortunately because of his foreignness he's being sidelined already. Even Trump calls him "the Russian" instead of by his real name (although he also called Pepi "Pepe" but then again so did everyone else including Ivanka and who really cares anyway). The previews for this week advertised "Two teams... two problems" but it was really only one time with lots of problems and another team with no problems whatsoever. I hope Lenny lasts. At least for now.

Obvious point: Brent is the new Markus. He babbles constantly and lives in a dream world. I know the only reason he's still around is because it makes for good television and I don't really mind that. Sometimes I prefer to see smartish, normalish people get fired instead of the real screwups because it makes me feel safer - the complete idiots will get fired in the end no matter what (it's like Jim on the Martha Stewart Apprentice), and at least in the meantime you get your satisfaction from Trump firing someone who deserves to be fired. Although, his firing two people at once all the time now sort of takes the guessing game out of the firing. It used to be that he had to make a decision between, say, 4 bad candidates and there were a lot of nuances involved in the firing choice. Now, it seems like he's getting to the point more. At least he did this week - Stacy was a complete idiot for targeting Brent. It made her look like a whiny little girl, and Trump called her on it right away. Meanwhile, Pepi could have argued well enough in the boardroom to save himself, but he let himself get walked all over and wasted his time arguing about Brent. He was a sure goner. I love Donald Trump sometimes. And Ivanka did a great job as well. She's very articulate. I wonder if she and Carolyn hang out.

So far I think Season 5 is going very well... The only downside is, of course, that the prizes are really bad now (reaching Martha Stewart Apprentice levels). At least a third of the prizes in each season involve working with a nonprofit for the day. Sure, I realize that giving back to the community is a good thing and all, but this is Trump we're talking about. The show should pay homage to success and excess, and have more prizes like they used to - free pearls and floating in null gravity and driving race cars.

In fact, the only good part about the prize this week was imagining an entire Apprentice show full of candidates who were once on top of their field and then for one reason or another ended up collecting unemployment. You could have one team of people who had sort of self-destructed (felt like they lost purpose in their I-banking job, finally told their wife they were gay and uprooted their life as a result, had a midlife crisis and lost all their money in a bad investment a la Pacey Witter in Season 6 of Dawson's Creek) and another team of people who had been fired, whose start-ups had gone under, whose company had been caught in an Enron-style scandal, and so on. I am envisioning something like the "Book Smarts" versus "Street Smarts" season. Ooh, I can just picture it. The drama!!!