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I must admit, I watched the first Apprentice all the time. It was really cool to see all the little things that Trump would pull on these guys and how he would define business success. Plus, there were a lot of people on the show who were generally likable, like Troy, and there were people who were easy to hate, like Omarosa.

The second one I watched off and on. The beginning revealed to me that I would find almost nobody in the cast of "business" people that I liked. It seemed like they tried to throw together people using the casting tactics of the Real World. Also, yelling != drama, and there was way way way too much yelling and bitching. Somewhere the drama became more important than successful or interesting tasks. Not to mention Trump continued to make dumbass decisions like keeping around people who obviously had no idea what the hell was going on. By the end I wanted to shoot both the candidates for the final job.

Now there is a third one. Seriously? How many jobs can we make up for these people? I liked the original idea of a long crazy job interview, but I'm questioning if this was a sound move. There are two reasons why I think this is a bad idea. One is that Trump is becoming extremely overposed, and the timing of releasing these things so close together is stupid. I suppose there is the whole, ride it while it's hot philosophy, but I would think a longer break would make people care more when it came back. Two, they are specifically going out of their way to cast people who are there for the drama, not because of sound business tactics. In the first one, you got the feeling they were there for a job, and that people were qualified. By now the job seems secondary to "Will that bitch ever shut up?"

I heard reruns of CSI beat the show, is anyone here watching it?

Welcome to Reality TV.

Do you realize how many people Trump employs? Even if he were making them up as window dressing positions, it would still be a net gain for Trump, given what he must make from the show alone. You can always add a figurehead into the mix.

If it's not window dressing, Trump's endeavors employ thousands, and he is always taking on new projects.



There are any number of highly qualified MBAs or accomplished executives that he could select for these positions. However, hiring those folks in private doesn't pay the bill to polish his gold-plated suite in Trump Towers. The Apprentice does, and the Apprentice needs ratings....so I'm positive the producers have some influence in selecting the candidates, and probably even over some of the decisions.

Take Sam and Omarosa in the first season...neither one should have lasted anywhere near as long as they did. But they brought ratings...hell, I stopped making a point of watching each week after Sam got fired. So naturally, when Sam and Omarossa turned out to be the most talked about people on the show, the producers said "let's get more people like THAT".

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

Granted, you need conflict. An hour of watching people sell shit on the street isn't going to float itself. However, you also need heroes in addition to the shit-flinging monkies you bring in. And to top it all off, you don't need to make every person on the show a raving nutjob in either extreme. They aren't balancing well.

Trump doesn't do it for the money, otherwise he would be doing something else.

He's doing it because he's an attention whore.

The man speaks truth.

I always get a kick out of the face he puts on for the "screenshot" they do when cutting to commercials here. From his expression it seems like he just dropped his icecream and he's putting it on for his mum to buy him a new one.

Hmmm, I think "attention whore" is the first qualification required for participating in any reality TV whatsoever.

The Apprentice disease is spreading TO OTHER PROFESSIONS.  Watch out for a new NBC series during February sweeps- "The Lawyer" It'll feature Roy Black (apparently a famous attorney) firing associates at a new firm.  Professor Dershowitz said in class the other day that he was actually offered the job, but had never fired anyone in his life and didn't want to start- and that's a man who likes publicity.  So being fond of attention is necessary, but not sufficient.

Ok that's just ridiculous. I hate lawyers anyway, why bother watching a show about them? Unless they are dumping them into big tubs of acid or something.

Note: This means lawyers as a group, not individuals. It's what we refer to as a "generalization" here. Thanks for your time.

Name dropper.  

Roy Black is down in Florida and is moderately famous. He represented William Kennedy Smith back when and a bunch of other famous Floridian idiots.  He was a regular in the OJ talking head rotation.

Personally I really want to see this show just to watch eager associates get fired. Hopefully it will knock some sense into them.

I get all the lawyering I need from Boston Legal.  If all law offices were like that, I'd want to be a lawyer too!  Yow!

Bruce

<Boston Public>
James Spader is an acceptable source of man-love.
</Boston Public>

Welcome to the Reality TV schedule:

Season 1: Many regular people are thrown together in a weird situation.  Hilarity ensues.  Personalities emerge.  It turns out regular people can get pretty weird.

Season 2: Success.  Producers get conservative.  Throw some obviously weird people into the mix to make sure it's not boring.

Season 3: The show's a major part of the network's portfolio.  Producers get extremely conservative and throw a freak show together to make sure it's interesting.  Show gets boring.  Viewers leave.  Producers don't learn lesson.  

Lesson: It's interesting watching normal people freak out in weird circumstances.  It's not interesting watching bizarre people freak out in weird situations.

(A Simple Life addendum: Apparently it's interesting to watch bizarre people freak out in normal situations.  I never got into it).

The problem is when you try to distill the formula you end up with something contrived.

I suppose the idea is if X type of person is really entertaining, just cast them ALL to be X type. But it doesn't work that way.

I watched a fair amount of apprentice 1 and 2. The apprentice 1 people were much stronger overall. And, despite what NBC kept telling us, the women were hotter as well. (I'll take Kristy ? over any of the season 2 women)

You would figure if they were going to get stupid, vapid, annoying loud people, they could at least make them hot women.

There were a number of people on apprentice 1 that seemed competent. Maybe not always the best at the job they were given, but I could imagine them being good at something at least. The people on apprentice 2 seemed like they would be awful at any task.

Yes, preferred season 1 over 2.  Seems the public agrees - ratings were down in #2.  I had a lot more fun analyzing who he was going to fire in the first season; the people were more competant, and his decisions seemed based more on actual performance than the stupid reasons he came up with in season 2.  Fired a guy because two women got into a catfight?  Eh?  Whatever.

Ratings whore.

Yes firing the national debate champion because he was getting outshouted by two screaming bitches was the end of all rational decisions on Trump's part. Not that there were a bunch beforehand either. Still Trump couldn't believe the national debate champion was getting beaten like a rented mule by these two angry women. I wanted to say, have you ever seen a debate, Trump? They don't consist of two people trying to be louder than the other. That's how bullshit lawyers and talking heads on the news networks "debate" and nothing gets done.

So he fires the guy to keep on Jen, who of course gets thrashed at the end by almost everyone in America because she's a complete idiot/bitch.

Of course, if people were able to guess by their resume who would win after the first or second show, no one would watch anything until the final show to see if they were correct. By bringing in some idiot decisions and stupid whores, people are shocked and angry to the point they will watch to see what other stupid-ass mistakes are made.

So basically its a train wreck? I could see that. And yet the effect that kind of entertainment has on the populace is fleeting at best. I just saw that tonight the show is 1.5 hours long. Seriously. Um, it was an hour last season. There are shorter and probably more entertaining movies out there for that kind of time commitment, and they lack commercials.

EDIT: kind of time, not time of time

Reality TV is ALL based on the trainwreck principle. And yes, it is a very short-lived thrill. Why do you think they keep churning out MORE different shows? Most reality TV can't sustain 1 full season's worth of shows, much less 3-5, which is why they keep trying to come up with NEW SHOCKING ideas, like "Who's Your Daddy?" and "WifeSwap." Of course, the fact that they cost a fraction to make per episode when compared to dramas, comedies or things that actually take a modicum of creativity to come up with helps too.

Aye, they fill the show with clips of previews of what's coming later in the show, and what happened earlier. It's pathetic to the point that you have to keep watching to see any of the substance of the show. I know this from my x-job where I had nothing to do but watch TV that didn't have cable and only got one station in clear, and thus had to watch the Bachelor or die of boredom.

All in all, they might make pretty good shows if they were kept to 30 minutes. But then they would be shown at 2pm with all the other soaps.

Tonight's episode (with the motels on the Jersey shore) was easily the most entertaining of all three seasons. We had quitters, screamers, f-bombers, catfights, and the hippie dippie tech executive dropping his Desiderata mojo all around the fringes. Brilliant.

These people are fucking batshit crazy, and watching them implode and have emotional meltdowns is priceless entertainment.

Plus, trying to predict what Miss Alli (http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show.cgi?show=125) is going to say about these lunatics just adds to the fun.

I don't watch this show but I saw bits and pieces of it last night.  When I turned on the channel, some lady was screaming at someone to "shut the fuck up!".  Another woman was wandering the streets of some shitty little town in a daze.  She might have been looking for the nearest mental health clinic from what other's were saying.  I wandered off for a bit and came back at the very end of the show where some bloke was telling The Donald to fire him, which he did.  

I don't think I'll bother watching anymore, but it was kind of interesting.   I have to admit that most reality TV leaves me a bit cold and I can't even watch the ones where you have to eat bugs to win.  Bleah.