I Watched “The Apprentice” So You Don’t Have To
A true story of my six-day binge-watching journey into the reality TV world of Donald Trump
Let me start off by saying this: never binge-watch The Apprentice.
The show’s brand of petty tension and low-stakes drama is perfect when taken in the week-to-week doses for which it was intended. But I definitely do not recommend trying to watch as many episodes of The Apprentice Season 1 as fast as possible.
I watched it all in six days.
But with the near-nonsensical election cycle in full swing, I might as well have been watching it 24/7. Seeing Donald Trump screaming on my newsfeed everyday made me both passively irritated and actively curious. Was he always this way? Surely his entire career couldn’t have been built on the same blind insanity that his campaign seemed to rely on. (Welp.)
And so, to satiate my general curiosity and do a service to the American public, I went to my local record store and bought the first season of The Apprentice. It was tucked away in the near-empty basement of the store, untouched and waiting for me to stumble upon it. I took the DVD in my hands and marveled at it.
“This is it,” I thought to myself. “The key to understanding Trump once and for all.”
I opened the cover flap, and a shrill, grainy voice shouted at me. “YOU’RE FIRED!” I was terrified, to say the least, hearing the voice of Trump as I stood alone in this record store basement. I looked around to see where the startling sound was coming from, when I realized that it had come from the DVD itself.
The front flap opened like a musical greeting card. But instead of a bouncy bunny singing “Happy Birthday,” it opened to a photo of Donald in the boardroom, exclaiming that you were deemed unfit to be his apprentice.
I hated it. I needed it. I bought it.
And I watched all of it.
Entering the boardroom
I should say that I’ve never watched The Apprentice before. The only things I really knew about it were that Donald Trump was ostensibly the star and/or the host whose catchphrase was “You’re fired” (a phrase that I now have continuous nightmares about), and at some point in the early 2000s, someone named Omarosa became a cultural juggernaut.
And so, I decided to embark on my binge-watching journey the way that Trump tends to walk into most situations — blindly. I resisted spoilers and think pieces, and refused to read any current reports and articles that tied Trump and the election to the show.
Day 1 — September 8, 2016
The Apprentice theme song sucks. If this had been Trump’s official campaign theme, he would have lost the election months ago. In my capacity as a music critic, I think that it sounds like a J.Lo impersonator singing over those songs you hear during a porn title screen—kinda sleazy, and uncharacteristically upbeat.
In my post-viewing research, I discovered that the original Apprentice theme song was “For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays, which — for reasons unknown in multiple DVD boxset collector forums — was changed for the DVD release of the series. (In July 2016, the O’Jays issued a cease and desist letter to Trump’s campaign for using its songs on various parts his campaign.)
Getting past the theme song, the rest of episode 1 (“Meet the Billionare”) is a standard reality show pilot. You get an introduction to all the contestants (8 men and 8 women with varying backgrounds in business) and an explanation of the game and format (men and women are split into teams to complete in different tasks assigned by Trump, lead by a team-voted project manager; winning team gets a “reward,” losing team sends three people into the boardroom; one person gets eliminated).
The prize? A starting contract to run one of Trump’s many companies.
Their first task is to sell lemonade on the streets of New York, getting down and dirty and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and all that. The women charge $5 a cup, while the men struggle so much that Sam — one of the most irritating contestants in the series — tries to sell a man a cup of lemonade for $1,000. He tells the guy, “I’m giving you my word that if you write me a check for a thousand dollars for that glass of lemonade, that you are going to experience the American dream.” And the guy basically looks at him like he’s crazy and walks away.
Now, if I was a different type of person, I would’ve stopped watching then and there. Sam had summed up the Trump mentality in one convenient little interaction. My research was over.
But my obsessive personality took over. I was in it for the long haul.
Unsurprisingly, the women won the challenge, to which Trump said:
“Women, as a treat, you’re going to see the nicest apartment in NYC. My apartment.”
Flash forward to Trump’s gold-encrusted apartment and Melania floating down the stairs to greet the women victors. There’s a montage of toasting champagne and Trump saying things like, “If you’re really successful, you’ll all live just like this,” and the women gushing about how they aspire to be as successful as Trump someday.
Someone gets eliminated at the end, but the first round eliminations of any reality competition really don’t matter. No one ever remembers the first one out—only the last man standing.
It suddenly occurs to me that I have over 14 hours left to watch, and I’m so overwhelmed that I don’t watch another episode until 2 and a half weeks later, on the day of the first presidential debate.
Day 2 — September 26, 2016
I invite my friend, Krista, over to watch the first presidential debate. And because I’m somewhat of a masochist, I force her into watching episode 2 (“Sex, Lies & Altitude”) immediately after.
The contestants are brought to an ad agency where they have to make a print and commercial ad for what I can only describe as “Uber for jets but only for really rich people.” The women (having named themselves Protege Corporation) decide to have a really sexual photoshoot where they make the planes look like ballsacks and vaginas, while the guys (named VersaCorp) do something kind of boring and uncreative, so much so that I don’t remember what it is. (They lose the challenge.)
The challenge itself is super boring, but it’s at this point in my watch-journey that I develop a strong hatred for a few key contestants:
- Tammy (pictured above), who got into trouble for taking a lunch break while all the other women were still selling lemonade on the streets.
- Sam (pictured below), who curls up and sleeps in the office while everyone else is working, then later denies taking a nap to Trump’s face while there is literal video evidence of him doing so.
- And Omarosa (pictured later, over and over again), who claims that the phrase “the pot calling the kettle black” is a racial slur. She also really hates Tammy’s advertising plan and calls it “Tammy’s testicle ad,” which is catchier than whatever catchphrase they actually came up with.
By the end of the episode, Sam, Nick, and Jason (the project manager) were sent to the boardroom, and I was sure Sam would be fired for literally taking a nap on the job. But when Trump fired Jason, whose faults were significantly less than Sam’s, I screamed so loud that my roommates had to come check on me and say, “Wow, it sounds like you’re really invested.”
Krista said, “That was actually pretty interesting!” before leaving my apartment. She could leave. I was stuck in this world for another 13-plus hours.
Day 3 — September 27, 2016
I watched three straight hours of The Apprentice.
I watched all three hours while slumped in my bed, trying really hard to stay awake and in denial that I was becoming irreversibly invested in this whole thing, like an undercover cop in 21 Jump Street or White Chicks.
Of the three episodes, episode 4 (“Ethics Schmethics”) easily became my favorite of the season. Each team is given one night to manage the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Times Square and try to increase their revenue in comparison to its revenue the previous year.
(The whole Planet Hollywood angle is hilarious to begin with, because forcing these poor reality show contestants to try and increase the profit margin of a franchise that has filed for bankruptcy twice and closed over 100 locations worldwide, with only 9 locations remaining in its 24-year business history is more than selling a few t-shirts can salvage. But like, at least movie memorabilia is cool!)
The women are given the first night, and they blow it out of the water, as usual. They promote themselves as “Shooter Girls,” sport some semi-revealing Planet Hollywood merch, and peddle shots to all the guys at the bar.
By second night, however, the men are still totally desperate, because the best idea they could come up with was to walk around Times Square handing out discount coupons like a homegrown rapper trying and failing at handing out his mixtape to unsuspecting tourists. Taunted and intimidated by the women’s success, they come up with ridiculous ideas to push the merchandise into the hands of unsuspecting tourists. The best (or objectively worst) idea they come up with is what I’ve decided to call The Kwame Jackson Initiative.
When the men realize that their revenue is on the downswing, fan-favorite and charming Idahoan Troy comes up with an ingenious idea: to set up a table outside of Planet Hollywood where Kwame Jackson will sign autographs, giving tourists the opportunity to get Kwame Jackson-signed Planet Hollywood merchandise.
Now, who exactly is Kwame Jackson? Well, he’s a contestant on the men’s team, and that week’s project manager. Or as Troy advertised to unknowing tourists: “Kwame Jackson: New York man, works on Wall Street!”
So Kwame spends hours signing basketballs and baseballs and taking photos with little kids who have no idea who he is, but assume that because he is behind a table soliciting autographs, he must be famous. They charge retail price for all the merchandise that Kwame signs, essentially charging for a product (the merch) by adding an additional and supposedly valued product (the autograph) at no extra cost.
It’s fucking genius.
And the men still lose.
Day 4 — September 29, 2016
With the goal of making it halfway through the season, I watch three more episodes in rapid succession.
It’s a dizzying experience to say the least. The challenges all start to bleed together, mostly because Omarosa is a consistent annoyance through every single one.
As contestants filter in and out every episode, I start to figure out who I’m rooting for:
- Troy, who is a self-made mortgage broker from Idaho. His down-home charm and excessive Midwestern politeness is such a calming break from the irritating, corporate-esque tear-downs that make up the most dramatic parts of the show. He also wears a black-studded cowboy hat into meetings. It’s iconic.
- Nick, who is a copier salesman from Los Angeles. Up until this point, he somehow always ends up in the boardroom despite being one of the strongest members on the men’s team. I’m rooting for him so hard, because he’s pretty charming and the combination of Trump’s pity and Nick’s own resilience is compelling, in the way that only works on reality TV. (Also, by this point the men have lost so many times that they have to restructure the teams so that there is an even amount of people on each team, breaking down the gender division and finally giving Nick a fair shot at being on a winning team. Yay!)
- Heidi, because she’s a fast-talking, badass, foul-mouthed woman from Philadelphia who isn’t afraid to talk back to Omarosa. I’m almost sure that she won’t win (because the idea of Trump hiring a woman to head-up one of his companies on national TV sounds too far-fetched, even for reality TV), but a girl can dream.
In episode 6 (“Tit for Tat”), each team is assigned various celebrities and are tasked with pitching and negotiating an “experience” with each celebrity to be auctioned off. Among those early-2000s, big-named stars were Rocco DiSpirito (celebrity chef and star of NBC’s reality show The Restaurant, who was subsequently sued by his financier), Kate White (former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, who, according to Omarosa, “did something for Hillary’s campaign” for US Senate), the entire cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (remember them?), and Carson Daly (who is generally always hanging around).
My favorite moment of the episode is when Versacorp is meeting with Carson Daly and they try to negotiate a backstage pass-type experience, but Tammy keeps bringing up Daly’s friendships with other celebrities — such as Tiger Woods — making it seem like there was more value in who he knew than what his own “celebrity” status could offer them. Throughout the entire process, Carson looks super offended, but does nothing of consequence, because he was probably under contract to appear by NBC.
Episode 6 finally establishes some kind of romance plot in the series, and it’s between my boy Nick and Amy. They mention in separate interviews that they both find each other interesting and at some point are sitting at a bar and talking about baby names. I mean, it’s about time. Six weeks in warped reality TV time might as well be six months. I am marginally invested in this half-baked romance.
The turning point for the entire series, though, is episode 7 (“Dupe-lex”) where each team is tasked with finding a fixer-upper apartment, fixing it up, and renting it for the highest price. At the top of the episode, Heidi finds out her mom has colon cancer, and there’s one of those dramatic shots of Heidi crying on the phone while the camera is positioned really far away as not to invade her privacy but also to get all up in her private life. She tells her mom that she’s willing to quit the show and come be with her in Philadelphia, but her mom is insistent that she stay and seize this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Meanwhile, Omarosa, who is on the same damn team as Heidi, gets hit by a tiny piece of wood or plaster at the construction site (and I’m talking tiny, folks) and spends the entire episode complaining that she has a concussion. She shrugs it off at first, then progressively makes the situation worse and worse by refusing to participate in construction work and other tasks because she has a massive “headache.” It’s later revealed by Trump that Omarosa goes to the hospital and they find nothing wrong with her, although she insists on having a concussion and using it as an excuse to basically do nothing in the subsequent episodes.
In episode 8 (“Ice Escapades”), each team is tasked with trying to sell pallets of Trump Ice — Trump’s signature bottled water brand — to vendors throughout the city. There’s not much I can say about this, because the image of the Trump Ice delivery truck kind of speaks for itself.
Day 5 — October 3, 2016
It’s midnight and I decide that I need to finish the series in the next two days. I have six episodes left, I’ll just watch as many as I can tonight and then leave the remainder for tomorrow.
I’m weak and only watch two episodes, one of those while half asleep.
In episode 9 (“DNA, Heads and the Undead Kitty”) Omarosa finally gets fired after crying in the boardroom next to Heidi, who has barely shed an on-camera tear since finding out her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Omarosa, on the other hand, gets completely chewed out by Trump after her continuous fake concussion allegations, and leaves the show with one of the most bizarre post-elimination interviews I’ve ever seen:
“I would encourage them to open their minds and hearts to differences and diversity… and more importantly, to remember no man is your friend, no man is your foe, and every man is your teacher.”
— Omarosa (and your next Pinterest-worthy inspirational quote)
I over-exert myself with excitement about Omarosa’s elimination and end up half-asleep for most of episode 10 (“Wheeling and Dealing”) in which each team is in charge of a fleet of pedicabs. I truly couldn’t tell you what happens here, but in the end, Heidi is eliminated. I’m kind of sad about it, but she seems excited to go home to her mom. I’m excited to go to sleep.
Day 6 — October 4, 2016
Tonight is the night! I only have five episodes left and I decide to tackle them ASAP. I bribe my friend Krista with ice cream and invite (read: force) her to be my emotional support in the final hours, and to hold my eyes open in case of any accidental sleepage. The VP debate is also going on, but I feel as though my civic duty to finish my “presidential research” is more important.
The middle episodes leading up to the finale all kind of suck, mostly because my favorites are slowly eliminated and I feel marginally less invested. A highlight from this bleak time period is during episode 13 (“The Price is Height”) when someone tries to bring notes into the boardroom to prove their case to Trump, to which Trump replies: “I don’t like notes.” My article notes now look like this:
But the end is near! In episode 14 (“Down to the the Wire”) they pull the mid-season American Idol trick of eliminating two people in one episode. The first 10 minutes of the episode are a rapid montage of the final four — Nick, Amy, Bill, and Kwame — being viciously interviewed by some of Trump’s key constituents. At the end of the dizzying sequence, Nick and Amy are quickly eliminated (but still very much in reality show love), while Trump introduces the final task.
Bill and Kwame each construct a team of past contestants to help them run one final, major task:
- Bill (who came out of nowhere and weaseled his way into the finals) along with his hand-picked team of Nick (yay!), Amy (how romantic!), and Katrina (she’s fine) are put in charge of managing a celebrity golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, New York.
- Kwame (who has been a solid contender throughout) and his team of Heidi (yes!), Troy (double yes!), and Omarosa (dammit) are in charge of managing a Jessica Simpson concert at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
And yeah, one of these things is not like the other.
The episode ends in a cliffhanger, where Bill is panicking because the weather forecast predicts rain (gasp!) which could potentially ruin his entire event. Kwame, on the other hand, is doing really fucking well until he decides to put Omarosa in charge of making sure Jessica Simpson gets from the airport to the hotel. And guess what she does.
She loses Jessica Simpson.
Omarosa — who faked a concussion and cried in the boardroom in front of Donald Trump — lost an entire human being, effectively putting Kwame’s chances of winning at an all time low. At one point, Omarosa says:
“I have lost the biggest rock star in the country!”
And I truly don’t know what’s worse: that Omarosa lost Jessica Simpson or that she thinks that Jessica is the biggest rockstar in the country. Granted, this was 2004, 2004 was one of the greatest years for music! Kanye West released The College Dropout in 2004! “Yeah!” by Usher came out in 2004! Even Jessica’s own sister, Ashlee Simpson, released Autobiography in 2004, which is arguably better than anything Jessica has ever done! Omarosa had really crossed a line here, and I was deeply, deeply offended.
Of course, the situation was diffused immediately and anticlimactically. Turns out, Jessica’s people arranged for her to be picked up, which wasn’t communicated to Omarosa’s people. It did, however, give them the perfect opportunity to crossover with the filming of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica, with Nick Lachey opening the door to a flustered Omarosa and a frustrated Kwame.
Both events end in a way that is extremely boring, and Bill and Kwame kind of just sit around and reminisce about the journey they’ve had on the show and how much they hope they win. Then, both finalists are called into the boardroom, where Donald Trump will finally speak those magic words: “You’re hired.”
He hires Bill Rancic on the spot, and I’m not at all surprised, because Omarosa really messed up Kwame’s chances with losing Jessica Simpson and all. I’m ready to call it a day and return to my regular life of watching literally any other television show, when something earth-shattering happens.
The walls of the boardroom come apart, and it is revealed that Trump, Bill, and Kwame are actually on a soundstage in front of a live studio audience.
What. The. Hell.
I screamed and sat upright as the set shifted into a new set-up, with Trump on the left and a two rows of chairs for the returning contestants on the right. So many thoughts were racing through my head: Was the whole thing shot in front of a live studio audience? Was any of it real? Had I entered the Trump Twilight Zone?
After some quick Googling, it turns out that this “big reveal” was part of the season finale live show. The whole series was filmed months in advance (as per reality TV protocol), but the final deliberation was reenacted live the night of the episode’s airing. All the past contestants were invited back for a quick “Where are they now?” Q&A session, and a casting call for the next season of The Apprentice closed the episode.
But all I could think about was that image of the boardroom falling apart, the illusion of Trump’s business-dominated set coming undone at the seams to reveal that it was all an act, all for show. I wondered if Trump had spent the entire election waiting for the walls to fall away, for someone to remind him that he had been doing it all for show, and that being President of the United States was a real job, unlike the jobs he was offering to the winners of all 7 seasons of the non-celebrity Apprentice.
Oh yeah. It turns out that the winners of The Apprentice, who were promised high-paying positions as presidents of a Trump company, were actually hired as publicity spokespeople, “using their ‘Apprentice’ celebrity to promote Trump.” In fact, Brandy Kuentzel, winner of Season 10 and the final season of non-Celebrity Apprentice, wasn’t even given a job by Trump. By then, the show was already doing so poorly due to Trump’s own bad publicity — the birther issue, and pretty much every other thing he did before 2010 — that they scrapped the live season finale and just left Brandy in the dust. At least Bill Rancic had a second life as a reality TV husband, which proved to be more fruitful than any position Trump ever gave him.
So, what did we learn?
Upon watching over 15 hours of The Apprentice on DVD (I couldn’t even begin the bonus materials), I learned two things:
- I will watch and become slightly-to-completely invested in any reality TV show because I am a sucker for low stakes and petty drama.
- From the start, The Apprentice was already rife with problematic Trump logic — the theme song lawsuits, the involvement with bankrupt companies, the extra layer of artificiality in a reality that was never quite reality to begin with. And so anyone who watched The Apprentice when it originally aired shouldn’t be surprised at what Trump has done throughout the election. He’s simply regurgitating his “best practices” from the show, because as far as he’s concerned, the walls could fall away at any moment, and it could all be over until next season.
And did I mention that Trump hired Omarosa as his campaign’s Director for African-American Outreach?
Yup, this is the reality we live in.
