Desperation starting to show on ‘Apprentice’

Once the first task of the season was revealed to involve promoting a new sandwich at Burger King, one didn’t have to wait long before the first joke of the “college dropout”/“flipping burgers” variety made its offensive appearance, which made it all the more satisfying when the Book Smarts team got stomped. The second episode had one Book Smarts-er, Verna, completely cracking under the pressure, finally just taking off and wandering around New Jersey before Carolyn had to go after her with a butterfly net; Verna spent the rest of her time on the show acting as though she was on barbiturates and finally just up and quit at the top of Episode 3. The episode went on to feature altogether too much of Danny, Book Smarts’ polyester-clad troubadour, and mercifully ended with his termination and last (we hope) freestyle acoustic rap.

(And, just as an aside: both the tasks Magna has lost so far have rested on Danny’s stated gift for creative thinking and brand management, but for an alleged “Marketing Technology Firm Owner,” Danny completely sucked at everything advertising-adjacent. If his time on the show hasn’t lost him a few clients, there is no cosmic justice.)

Clearly, we’re being manipulated into pulling for the Street Smarts team. They work well together and appear (at this early stage) to be a group of very talented, capable people. Furthermore, the first two “Apprentice” winners — Bill Rancic and Kelly Perdew, a couple of college-educated white dudes – didn’t exactly change the face of corporate America, so if one were a gambling sort, one might start sizing up the women of Net Worth as the season’s likeliest winners.

Whichever of this season’s crop of Apprentices does win will probably be just as deserving as any other reality-show winner. When it’s all over, though, that winner may regret not having the chance to hit a home run without a corked bat; certainly, it would have been more interesting for the viewers to watch a fair match where all the players were competing to the best of their ability instead of wasting so much energy measuring their di…plomas.

Tara Ariano co-created and co-edits Fametracker.com and Television Without Pity.com.

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