‘Apprentice’ incompetence leads to big layoffs

Excel, on the other hand, apparently thought that amusing themselves and their customers by playing with baseballs was all that mattered. While they constructed an impressive baseball diamond in a store, they covered it with a huge batting cage, turning it into a carnival instead of a store. Parents lined up so their kids could hit balls, but few people bought anything. While a few members of the team worked to sell items, the entire setup wasn’t conducive to selling anything at all.

Shortly after bragging about how she’d easily sell all of the radar guns in stock, we saw footage of Jennifer M. crying out, “Pretzels! Hot dogs! Lemonade!” She sold no radar guns because she was too busy selling food, even though that had nothing to do with the task. Mark might as well have been squirting mustard onto hot dogs, as he just fed baseballs into a machine and ignored everything else.

Bill Rancic, sitting in for George again this week, did everything except hit Mark in the shin with a bat to make him realize that he wasn’t helping his team sell products, but Mark remained oblivious. “How are the rest of your teammates?” Bill asked. Mark replied, “You know, I’ve been so damn focused here, I don’t even know.”

The rest of the team didn’t know, either. James, one of the four who was fired, delivered one of those prescient lines editors love to include just to make the person look like a twit. “It’s no doubt, it’s a sure thing, it’s a home run with this task,” he told us.

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How, exactly, could he have thought they would be successful? Why do the candidates always think they have great ideas that are so obviously awful to viewers?

Most of the 70 candidates that have appeared on the show’s four seasons have more personality than business savvy, and that’s why they were cast for a reality show that fundamentally exists to entertain viewers and enhance Donald Trump’s bottom line.

But this season, tired of incompetence, Trump hand-picked all but one of the 18 candidates and insisted he was impressed by their potential and skills.

Perhaps it’s just the editing that makes the candidates and teams look worse than they actually are, because producers show us only the worst — and thus most entertaining — moments. But complete ineptitude has been a theme from season one. Perhaps the most obvious example was the decision of teams on “The Apprentice 3” to create advertisements for body wash that featured the suggestive washing of a cucumber and a jogger lathering up his face.

There’s a third possibility. Perhaps “The Apprentice” offers a lesson to all viewers that people aren’t very good at analyzing themselves or their behavior, especially not when they’re in high-pressure situations. Watching at home, our omniscient perspective allows us to recognize that a train is coming long before any of those involved realize they’re tied to the tracks.

Andy Dehnart is a writer and teacher who publishes reality blurred, a daily summary of reality TV news.

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