The Apprentice S01E11

Oh, the clip show. The bane of the Burnett watcher, the baby's breath in the bouquet, the filler in the dog food...it's inevitable, I guess. Clips away, people. There's no getting around it.

"Nyeeeeeeeh, nyeeh nyeeh nyeeh," a muted saxophone laments as we approach New York City by plane. Trump voices over, as we observe the Statue of Liberty ("Hey, lady, we're putting in a big fountain -- you're fired!"), that ten weeks ago, he brought sixteen candidates to the Big Snapple (as it will be called in the new era of naming rights) to compete for the opportunity to be his very own apple-polisher. Er, "apprentice." We see candidates telling Robin that they're there to see Trump, including Sam. Hi, Sam! Taken any good Zoloft lately? They move into the suite. Boyfriend Bill moves in on my cold, otherwise dead heart. There is a montage. Lemonade! Rickshaws! Prostitution! Oh, no, wait, sorry -- Planet Hollywood! Only six candidates remain. The Kwame! The Amy! The Nick! The Katrina! The Swoonmeister! The Troy! For whatever reason, at this point, we see Trump do a Nixon right into the camera, complete with jowls and V-sign. Pretty funny, assuming he was doing Nixon on purpose. If not? Well, suffice it to say the Inadvertent Nixon is a bad development in the aging process of any man. He promises that he will be sharing highlights with us, as well as a small sprinkling of things that we haven't seen before, added just to make sure I have to write this recap in order to cover the season properly.

Money-money-money mooo-ney! Sometimes I think the only people who really got how cool and fun this show was going to be were the people who worked on the credits.

We return to Trump Tower and the Boardroom, where we see new footage of the contestants introducing themselves to Trump. Trump also reminds us of who George and Carolyn are, in case you've forgotten. And shame on you if you have. The introductions the candidates offer for themselves don't really tell you anything you don't already know, except that they do it in such a boring fashion that it's not surprising that the editors left this part on the cutting-room floor and replaced it with a stupid montage. There are a couple of interesting moments, though. You know, Katrina said in another of her intros that she was ranked in the top three percent of realtors nationwide, but in this intro, she claims to be ranked third. Just third. She's the third-ranked realtor in the entire country. Why did she cite that statistic differently the two times it was offered? Assorama also comes across completely staged and unconvincing, overemphasizing that she grew up in the rough projects of...Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown, Ohio has projects? I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm...just saying. She also, interestingly, says she's "completed [her] masters degree and [her] PhD studies," which is quite the gloss, considering we now know she doesn't have the PhD yet, and she's ABD at best. It's not technically a lie, but it's a stretcher, for sure. None of my friends referred to their PhDs as "completed" anything until they were done, and when they were ABD, they said so. She also throws in her "I worked for the president" line, which again, is technically true, but it's pretty well-established at this point that the president couldn't have picked her out of a lineup, so as she has been known to do, she's giving a technically true statement that gives a very false impression.

In other introductory news, I still love the part where Amy says she used to be "worth millions." Paper, dear. When it's all paper, you're not worth millions. The biggest asshole of the intros is Jason, who proudly says, "If they're one day late on rent, I start the eviction process, because that affects my cash flow." It's not just the fact that he jumps on the eviction process quickly that grates -- it's the fact that he does it with such glee. He's awfully young to have determined that the most fun you can have with your clothes on is screwing the less fortunate. Trump gruffly tells Jason that "you also have to have heart." Jason looks stumped. Nick reminds us that he's from "Los Angeles, California, via Bayonne, New Jersey." What the hell is with Bayonne, anyway? It's a veritable reality show contestant factory. Heidi introduces herself as "Heidi from Philadelphia," which explains why I thought she was from Philadelphia. Jessie reminds us that at seventeen, she started a marketing company. She reveals that she does, in fact, own a farm, and is not living off of football. Tammy says she's thirty-six, which makes her older than Carolyn. Interesting, huh? Sam, of course, tells Trump that he's crazy. Well, that Sam is crazy, that is, not that Trump is crazy. Although either would work, and Sam admittedly doesn't say it in quite those words.

The teams are divided boy-girl, and they're told about selecting PMs. Remember how they went to the suite, and the women named themselves Protg, and the men named themselves VersaCorp? Then it was off to the New York Stock Exchange, where they learned they would sell lemonade. Trump insists that the men had a "terrible location," and David's methods were unconventional, if by "unconventional," you mean "criminal, according to many definitions." Sam tried to sell lemonade for a thousand dollars a cup, because...well, did I mention "crazy"? The women, meanwhile, were "smarter," according to Trump, because they just found themselves a good location and sold lemonade the old-fashioned way -- by offering kisses to go with it. The women won the task. Yay, free love! (Not "free," technically, but hey, at least it comes with lemonade.) The men went to the Boardroom, where Troy took David and Sam to the Boardroom, and Sam made a really weird speech and thanked Trump for telling him to shut up. David said he wasn't so good at sales. Sam sucked up so hard that he turned himself inside out. David, on the other hand, had done nothing and admitted he knew of nothing he could have done. Not the most inspiring moment of self-defense in reality show history. So he was gone. Bye, David!

In the one consistent bonus we're really getting, which is the post-exit-interview interview, David says that "the only real prize is first prize," so if he was going to lose, he's glad he didn't stay around any longer. It's an understandable theory, particularly if you're a big quitter.