I happen to enjoy watching The Apprentice. Well, I did this season anyway. I felt like it was as fun as the first season--because sadly the last two "seasons," if you can call them that, were boring and I'm pretty sure B and I lost interest along the way.

But this season was fun/funny to watch primarily because of the unexpected firings, four people here, two people there. It was a contrived deviance from the previous shows, but it was entertaining nonetheless. With all that firing, Trump seemed primed to hire two apprentices last night. But he didn't. The contestants were down to Rebecca, a 23-year old financial journalist who had a broken ankle 12 of the 13 weeks, and Randal, a 33-year old Rhodes Scholar with 5 academic degrees from institutions such as Oxford and MIT. Then Trump threw me for a loop and said, "Rebecca, you're outstanding. Randal, you're hired."

(Snipped from MSNBC)

The band struck up The Apprentice theme song and Randal leapt up, hugging his friends in the cast. How could this be? What about Rebecca? Then Trump called for Randal to return to the table repeatedly. Trump, ever the showman, was just trying to squeeze out a little bit more melodrama before the double-hiring.

At least, that's the way it appeared.

"If you were me, would you hire Rebecca also?" he asked Randal, and we all knew what was coming next. After getting the nod from Randal, Donald Trump was going to make Apprentice history and hire Rebecca too.

But then Randal, who has perhaps played the game with more integrity than anyone else in four seasons of The Apprentice, and who
earned the respect of basically every other candidate in the suite this season, surprised everyone.

"Mr. Trump, I firmly believe that this is 'The Apprentice,' that there is one and only one apprentice, and if you're going to hire someone tonight, it should be one," Randal said. "It's not 'The Apprenti,'
it's 'The Apprentice.'"

For some reason, this impossibly lame and aggressively selfish argument convinced Trump, who kind of shrugged and said,
"Okay, I'm going to leave it at that then. I think I could have been convinced, but you feel that's the way it should be, I'm going to leave it that way."

Now MSNBC is blaming/blasting Randal, titling their articles: 'Apprentice' winner refuses to share title. And including headers in their article called: Selfish when he could have been selfless.

I was all for Trump hiring Rebecca, or hiring both, but I can't deny that Randal was exceptionally qualified, and yes, "It's no question, they're both stars, and I think either one of them would be an excellent choice for the organization," said George in the final boardroom. I liked the way Rebecca seemed to be a younger, female version of Trump, except you know, she has grace and carries herself with dignity. Which makes me think that Randal is not the one to blame here...

Trump made several arbitrary choices last night. First, if he felt he "could have been convinced" why not just hire both and blow past whatever Randal had said? But suddenly, Trump was a Bible-belt born Baptist and what Randal said was taken for the gospel--why say that? He could have probably said any number of things including, "Hey, where's the can? I gotta take a wiz." "I'm hungry, let's eat!" "El gato en mis pantalones." "Watashi wa hambugaa." Just about anything else would have worked. But merely uttering the phrase, "I think could have been convinced..." makes Randal instantly the bad guy instead of sucking up the blame for asking such a stupid question and leaving the decision up to such a spontaneously selfish answer.

Of course, I think Randal made a horrible choice, and of course I instantly lost all respect and liking for him. I wonder how he feels going from one of the most-liked people in America to one of the trolls. But I think Trump should be dumped right there beside him. Because ultimately it was Trump who made a series of bad moves that made the evening play out to its final selfishness.

Labels: television, the apprentice

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