The Apprentice

About the Show

The show started with sixteen contestants, eight men and eight women from around the United States. Each had been successful in various enterprises, including real estate, restaurant management, political consulting, and sales. During the show, the contestants lived communally in a makeshift dormitory in Trump Tower until being eliminated one-by-one throughout the show. Elimination took the form of one contestant being "fired" by Trump at the conclusion of each week's episode.

The contestants were originally divided into two "corporations" by sex, which would compete against each other each week in a task assigned by Trump in a boardroom at the opening show. Each team would select a project management for the week's task. The men choose to name their company "Versacorp" and the women choose to name their company "Protegé".

The winning team would receive a reward, while the losing team would face a boardroom showdown with Trump and two of his associates in order to determine which team member would be fired.

Elimination would proceed in two stages. In the first stage, Trump would confront the losing team and require the week's project manager to select two additional team members which the project manager believed were most responsible for the loss.

The rest of the team would dismissed to the dormitory suite, and the project manager and the two other selected members would face a final confrontation several minutes later in which Trump would fire one of the three.

Contestants

Weekly summary

Week 1

• Air date: January 7
• Task: Starting with seed money, purchase supplies and sell lemonade on the streets of New York.
• Result: The men choose to sell in the Fulton Street Fish Market, whereas the women stay in Midtown and use the promises of kisses to sell lemonade for five dollars a glass.
• Winner: Protegé Corporation (women), by 3-1 margin of earnings.
• Trump's comments: The men are excoriated for choosing a horrible location.
• Dramatic tension: Sam, one of the members of Versacorp, begins to get on the other's nerves by his crazy antics, including fruitlessly trying to sell a single glass of lemonade for 1000 dollars.

Week 2

• Air date: January 14
• Task: Both teams are to design an advertising campaign to sell private jet service, which they must pitch to the owner of the company.
• Result: The men design a functional campaign with photos of the cockpit and a passengers designed to illustrate the utility and convenience of the service. The women design a campaign showing depicting parts of the aircraft in black and white artistic shots with sexual overtones and pitch it to the owner wearing flight attendant outfits.
• Winner: Protegé (women)
• Trump's comments: Trump is aghast that Jason, the Versacorp project manager, did not meet with company's owner at the beginning and thereby learn that he wanted a flashier campaign.
• Who Gets Fired: Jason.
• Dramatic tension: Sam further aggravates his team members and is exoriated for taking a nap on the floor during the afternoon.

Week 3

• Air date: January 22
• Task: The teams are given a scavenger list of items which they are required to purchase during the day at the lowest possible total price.
• What happens: In a "put up or shut up" maneuver, Sam is appointed project manager by the men. He splits the men into two teams, with him and two others staying back at the suite to perform reconnaissance by phone and over the web. The women split into two groups, each of which goes into the city. Sam, believing that it is important to purchase the gold bar early in the day, directs the men away from other tasks to purchase it, but they are unable to buy it with any discount.
• Winner: Protegé (women)
• Trump's comments: Trump is disgusted at the men's failure for the third week in a row and Sam's incompetence, especially in regard to the decision to send his team members aware from other tasks to buy the gold bar, which would have a very small discount compared to the other items on the list.

Week 4

• Air date: January 29
• Task: The teams are required to collective manage the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Times Square on successive evenings, with the performance judged by the increase in profits over the same day the previous year.
• What happens: The women go first, and choose to focus on increasing alcohol sales. On the next night, the men keep several of their members on the sidewalk hawking coupons and sell basketballs autographed by Kwami, who is African American, with the tacit assumption that he is a basketball star (although never stating so). Nick gets disgusted at the ploy and is attacked by his teammates and Trump for his lack of enthusiasm.
• Winner: Protegé (women)
• Trump's comments: Increasing alcohol sales was the key, which the men missed.
• Who gets fired: Bowie, mostly by process of elination.

Week 5

• Air date: February 5
• The teams are reorganized by "merger", with the names retained but now mixed by sex.
• Task: Starting with seed money, the teams are required to purchase items and sell them at the greatest profit return at an open-air flea market.

External link

• Official NBC website

Referenced By