The Apprentice Retrospective: Season 1 - Episode 1

I recently rewatched basically every season of the apprentice, so I wanted to start off my coverage of every season of The Apprentice. First off, disclaimer: I do not agree with the politics of the host, but he is a charismatic TELEVISION PERSONALITY so off his TELEVISION PERSONALITY alone I will give him props when he does something good. Episode 1: Meet the Billionaire So before I delve into the review, I’m gonna explain how this will work, first I will recap the episode, highlighting fun moments and the boot, then I will say how I felt about the eliminated player. Then once that’s over, I will say who my episode MVP is (The best character of the episode) and then we will move onto the next episode, so on and so forth. Recap: Trump introduces the New York setting, it’s fine, he’s actually a pretty good host, which is good. I'm ignoring the politics for this retrospective, this is purely just a review of the TV product and as that goes, Trump is a great host. The team divisions arise, the winning team will be safe, the losing team will be up to be fired, they will all face Mr. Trump in the boardroom and Trump will fire someone by the end of the episode. We get intros to people. Jessie starts us off, having a marketing firm and selling real estate with only a high school diploma. Kwame is next, who graduated Harvard with a solid degree and now works as an investment manager for a wall street firm. Then we have Ereka who learned the ropes of Business from her parent’s pizzeria and now works as a marketing manager for one of the largest cosmetic brands in the world. Then we get Troy McClain who sacrificed his education to take care of his mother and his disabled sister and he’s now the president of a linen company. Amy had stock options worth millions but lost them all in the dot com bust and works in the high tech industry. Next is Bowie Hogg who works in sales for a delivery service. Next up is Kristi who works as an investment property owner and a restaurant owner. Next up is Dr. David Gould who worked as a doctor, finishing med school and works as a healthcare venture capitalist. Omarosa is next, who is probably one of the biggest names on this cast, but I didn’t know her well, at the time was working as a political consultant and even worked at the white house for the president. Nick Warnock is next, the hardest working salesman in Los Angeles, California as he so boasts, he has no salary, if he doesn’t sell, he doesn’t eat. Katrina is next who is in the top 3% of realtors nationwide and was only 23 at the time. Sam is director of business development for an internet company he co-founded. Heidi is up next who is a senior account executive for one of the largest telecommunication companies in the world. Next is Bill Rancic, who founded the cigar of the month club and turned it into a multi-million dollar operation. Next is Jason who built a real estate development firm from the ground up and rents 39 units to low income families. Next is Tammy who was a top stock broker for a firm on Wall Street. Tammy immediately decides to not speak to anyone, disliking everyone there for communicating even non verbally and says the only person she needs to impress is Donald Trump. Troy then talks about liking the fact they’ve all been given a chance by the Don, but he wants to earn the American Dream like everyone else. Donald Trump then invites them all in and introduces George Ross and Carolyn Keptur. The teams are the Men vs the Women. The format is introduced with each team needing to pick a project manager who will be the team leader for that challenge. Sam talks about how he wants to get to know Trump, he’d meet him anywhere at any time, even with his girlfriend, as long as it’s not in the boardroom. Everyone parties and enjoys the suite. Tammy talks to people complaining about why they are being friendly to the men, they don’t need to communicate with the “enemy.” Bowie starts talking about the women, claiming they’re smarter than the men give them credit for, but also states that if they try to screw him over, he’s gonna screw them over ten times as much and that his mind “works like that” so he could “pull it off.” We then see Dr. David Gould talking about changing from being a doctor to Wall Street. We then hear Sam talk about how impressive David is but that he can’t relate to David and that entrepreneurs shouldn’t spend so long in the classroom and that they should be sweating and hungry in the class and when they hear an idea, they go out and do it. Omarosa pulls the women together for a meeting, repeatedly calling them as some of them ignore her, then talks about how her skills are motivation and pulling people together in a group and tries to bring the women together. Bowie pulls together the men for that team. Both teams have to think of a team name. For the women, Omarosa complains about the fact that with a team of 8 women, it became a 3 hour ideal to even just pick a name. They all brainstorm as the men are mostly quiet and just fuck around, the women come up with Donald’s Darlings (Ick) and the men decide on Versacorp (Versatile Corporation) pretty quickly and are all down for it, except Nick who thinks it’s not flashy enough and says he doesn’t think Trump will like it either, calling it “dumb and corny.” Ereka steps up for the women and proposes “Protege” which immediately catches on and says if she believes in an idea, she will absolutely let it be said, whether it sinks or flies and will fight for her ideas. Eureka later hears that they will be going to the stock exchange, which she finds overwhelming. Katrina says the women need to win because this first task will set the precedent for the rest of the game. Nick says he doesn’t know what the task will be but also doesn’t care much, he knows his team can do it and that the game’s been on for him since he got off the plane. The first task is revealed, they will be selling lemonade. Troy steps up as project manager for the men and Ereka steps up for the women. Both of them say their team names, shocker of the year, Protege is the better name, wow! Notable moments for this challenge since this is getting long winded: the women immediately argue with one another with Tammy vouching hard for a table while Ereka wants to focus on the product. Omarosa comments on Ereka being emotional and says she’s a liability and irrational. Kwame picks the harbor as the location, thinking tourists would drum up business. Kwame then spoke to a vendor to get him to let them borrow stuff for no charge in exchange for drumming up business for them, getting a free cart, free cups and free ice. I love the cut from the men having fun riding the bike and getting stuff done to the women still arguing over an hour in, really showing what team is actually enjoying themselves out there. Amy and Kristi split off to avoid the group and get the product, hoping they could do a good job with it. Troy keeps his team positive, which Bowie comments on as a positive attribute to him as a leader. The women get lost and have to find each other again, an absolute mess of a team, Omarosa makes fun of Ereka for being a terrible manager. Amy and Kristi start selling without the other women and actually do a pretty good job. Tammy takes a break to go get herself a lunch, much to the dismay of her team. Omarosa takes Tammy under her wing and tells Tammy to just try to connect with the women and reach out and participate, she’s really trying to get Tammy on the same page, but Tammy just does not gel with this cast. David tries to market and annoys people, and his team wrangles him in like a lost puppy, which Nick in particular is pissed off at him for. Trump makes fun of the men’s poor location planning, which falls to Kwame, but Kwame also did good work to help them get set up to begin with. Bill gives his first one liner, saying they’re “dying a slow death out here.” Sam is annoyed with Kwame for picking a piss poor location. George goes to the women and gives them praise for upping the price to make better profit margins, joking that he’d pay for the lemonade and the girl, which doesn’t age well, but is kinda funny from a like, old geriatric man, Kristi uses sex appeal to help sell the lemonade, giving her number to guys as well as the lemonade for the price, helping them sell more. Heidi does the same, she is really funny in the confessional too and in conversations, cracking jokes about “making money on the street” which are quite amusing. They end up using the moniker of sex appeal and sell a ton of lemonade. Bill tries to take over talking to Troy. Sam tries to get a woman to help him sell lemonade, which is funny but doesn’t go well and then he tries to sell lemonade for a thousand dollars, which everyone dislikes but I find to be incredible TV, especially when it ALMOST WORKS. They all meet back up in the boardroom where Trump declares that the women win. The women enjoy the comfort and then we go back to the boardroom for the men’s elimination. At the boardroom, Troy picked Sam and David as the other people. The men highly target Sam, but despite this, Carolyn massively vouches for Sam, saying he never stepped over the legal limit. David is being a pompous douchebag and thinking he’s safe no matter what because Sam is erratic, and Sam continues to fight an uphill battle as David randomly tosses in the fact he wouldn’t trust Sam, which Sam refutes. Sam somehow ends up staying despite a pretty disastrous episode while David leaves, still cocky on the way out, he’s smart but he doesn’t do anything, he just doesn’t fight for it. Final thoughts on David: He just didn’t leave enough of an impact on me, I think he was cocky and a bit pompous and arrogant despite the fact he nearly got a guy on a bike to crash trying to sell lemonade, at least Sam had gusto and tried. David is just, not my kind of character, he’s not villainous enough to leave an impact or enough of a douche for his downfall to be satisfying, he’s just kind of a bland pompous guy. Episode MVP nominees: Omarosa, Tammy and Sam, but in the end I have chosen… Episode MVP: Sam - Sam was such a great flameout this episode, the fact he didn’t go home is insane, he has such a snarky attitude to him, he’s a great villainous underdog who doesn’t get the respect of his team but he’s such a smarmy jerk that you understand why, he’s just got such a fun energy and the fact he survives in the end is a huge benefit to the season as a whole.