It’s been an interesting week of season finales for several reality TV shows, including AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL, AMAZING RACE, and SURVIVOR. We’ll be getting to those soon enough, so bite your tongues on those for now, OK? Tonight, I have a few things to say about tonight’s APPRENTICE finale. And just to keep things safe for those who haven’t seen the episode yet, I’ll hide it all behind the break.

Fair warning: There are spoilers after the break and in the comments, I’m sure. Nearly 700 words to go.

Up until these last couple of weeks, I’ve been on the Randal bandwagon. Since fairly early one, he’s carried himself well. He’s friendly, smart, creative, a fellow New Jerseyan, the works. But in the last task, he dropped the ball several times in ways that are almost unforgiveable. On top of that, he always looked flustered. He hesitated when questioned by the clients. He hemmed and he hawed. The people who surrounded him were smart enough and industrious enough to pick up the balls he dropped and run with them, though, thus saving him.

On the other hand, Rebecca handled all of the strife without blinking twice. With every curve ball that came her way, she didn’t snap, cry, blink, or shrug her shoulders. She took each problem and solved it quickly. She utilized her team, led them strongly, and Got The Job Done. She had her own problems, such as not putting Yahoo in its place quickly enough about the donations, but she’ll learn. The important thing is, she didn’t get flustered. And THAT is important enough a quality to hire her. I was rooting for her by the end.

As to the final board room: They both annoyed me. Rebecca comes out of the door thinking she’s a rock star, and then goes through her business world niceties to an almost obnoxious degree. She sounds forced, like she’s reading a script and inflected too hard on people’s names as she shakes their hands. That’s never comfortable. Randall was a bit more subdued, but went into full attack dog mode at the table in front of Trump. Don’t get me wrong — that’s what Trump likes. We’ve seen it in the past. If you handle something maturely, he thinks you’re being weak. If you don’t bare your fangs and fight back, he considers you a coward. I thought Randall went after Rebecca a little unfairly, but was saved by one or two of Rebecca’s weak arguments, at least one of which caused me to chuckle.

The final straw came when Randall said he wouldn’t hire Rebecca because the show is not “The Apprenti.” (I looked it up in the dictionary. That’s not the proper pluralization of the word.) Now, on one hand I can see his point. The show is about one person. The show has also started tinkering with the format, though, going so far as to fire four people in one fell swoop, at least one of whom was likely strong enough to go all the way in the competition. (I would have hired Mark based on his performance in the final task.)

Also, it would have looked dubious of Randall to make a claim that hiring Rebecca would be a smart thing after he just spent the past five minutes telling Trump it would be the wrong thing.

But the competition at that point is over. You’ve proved your worth. And you’ve told Rebecca a hundred times before how good she is and how much you respect her. You just watched the final episode yourself. You can’t truly believe she’s not good for Trump. Randall rejected the idea of also hiring Rebecca because it would have hurt him. It was pure ego. Perhaps that’ll just be a big turn on for Trump, I don’t know. But I think it was selfish of Randall. The crowd booed him for good reason. Trump should have hired them both, and I thought he was actually going to do it BEFORE the board room began.

So Trump hired the guy I thought from darn near the beginning would be the victor, and I don’t feel terribly good about it. Weird. Usually, the one I root for for such a long time bombs in the end. Go fig.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 at 11:25 pm and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.