Here is an interesting review of the program after the end of the season, from the Chicago Tribune:
`The Apprentice' leaves a hollow feeling
By Steve Johnson
Tribune television critic
Published April 18, 2004
It was hard to keep track of the deceptions revealed in Thursday night's "Apprentice" finale, so quickly did they come.
But what ought to be easy to remember, the next time you find yourself deciding whether to devote a series of hours to one of the prime-time game shows that gets labeled as "reality TV," is the hollow feeling you're left with after it is all over.
More often than not, instead of fireworks there is a toy pistol, a flag and on the flag the word "BANG!" Sometimes it says, "BANG, sucker" to drive home the point.
Yes, Chicago cigar peddler Bill Rancic proved to be the best polisher of Donald Trump's apple, winning NBC's television contest among 16 Trump supplicants, and that provided a jolt of civic interest and, for some embarrassing reason, pride.
It was certainly fascinating -- and more than a little bit chilling -- to hear Trump boast that he would "redefine" Chicago's skyline with his latest not-at-all symbolic edifice, a 90-story hotel-condo complex on the Chicago River site now wasted, in architectural terms, on the Sun-Times building.
I'll even admit to having been interested in the allegedly decisive event-management battle between Cigars Around the World Web site founder Rancic (golf tournament at Trump course) and his rival, New York investment manager Kwame Jackson (pop concert at Trump hotel), as it unfolded on tape Thursday.
"The Apprentice" is an extremely well-made show, thanks to executive producer Mark Burnett's ability, proved through cycle after cycle of "Survivor," to cast potential heroes and villains and to craft compelling characters, conflicts and stories out of raw videotape. Give him 15 minutes early on, and he'll probably get you for the whole hour and the whole series.
But if you watch an artificial thing such as "The Apprentice" closely enough, you see, beyond the modern business-world crucible Burnett seems to be presenting, a series of little frauds.
Thursday's two-hour finale, in fact, revealed more shams than you'll find in a model-home master bedroom, nearly as many as are in a department-store linens section.
Sham: the "romance" between contestants Nick and Amy. This was hyped shamelessly by Trump and the series through the latter half of its run, to keep sex in play after most of the buxom female contestants had been eliminated. The alleged dalliance, we learned Thursday, turned out to be a little dating and one kiss.
Sham: the finale's Jessica Simpson "concert," as it was billed. When the bubble-headed singer left the Atlantic City stage, she hadn't broken a sweat. This concert seems to have been more like a few songs for a charity event and/or a reality-TV show, designed to bring in the popular and, in some eyes, comely star of her own reality series (MTV's "Newlyweds").
Sham: the finale's job choice, presented to Rancic, live on TV. He was told to pick between two Trump projects to head up, the Chicago tower or a California golf course/residential development. But as the videotape lovingly displayed the wonders of each project, you realized this wasn't about the choice. It was about Trump as Ron Popeil, commandeering NBC prime time during what would prove to be the year's third-most-watched TV event to pitch two of his products. It's not the man's hair that merits so much commentary; it's his chutzpah.
Sham: the job itself. The promise was always that the winner, in addition to a $250,000 salary, would head a Trump business unit. But if Rancic's stogie site is anywhere near as successful as his own hype implies, then a quarter-mil is probably a pay cut. More important, beyond certain symbolic resonances, who really thinks that selling smokes on the Internet (and seeming more competent than 15 other people who desperately wanted to be on TV) makes a guy qualified to erect Chicago's fourth-tallest building?
Sometimes a cigar salesman is just a cigar salesman, and Trump said as much, all but admitting on the show that the contest was a sham: "You're going to have plenty of supervision on that building," he told Rancic and the live TV audience. "I don't care if you're president or not."
Sham: the event being billed as a live broadcast. Sorry, but Donald Trump reading from cue cards after more than an hour of material taped last fall doesn't really fit the definition.
Sham: that Trump has anything to teach about business in such a forum. He's a good character, because he's so monumentally full of himself, but did he ever say anything interesting or insightful during the run of the series? I can't recall it.
Sham: the notion that excellence of any kind was proved in the show's little moneymaking tasks. Trump kept insisting on how great and talented everybody was, even the demonstrably deceptive and unskilled Omarosa, but the only really clever idea I saw in the three-month run of the show was to sell advertising on the rickshaws the contestants had to operate.
Possible sham: As competent and comparatively down-to-earth as Rancic seemed to be, did Jackson, an East Coaster, really have a chance against a guy from a city in which Trump is building a new skyscraper? It's worth thinking about.
Burnett, in an uncharacteristic error of showmanship, drew attention to all of the artifice Thursday, when he chose to suddenly reveal that the final boardroom scene, where Trump picked his acolyte, was happening on a stage. Walls peeled away, the crowd cheered, and we in TV land were forced to contemplate the ways in which we had been manipulated.
He was directing our attention to the man behind the curtain, and suddenly -- BANG! -- the reality of this and any future such Oz seemed many degrees less enchanting.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
[NOTE: I bolded the "sham" headings because they appeared in bold in the print edition, but not on the website.]
EDIT: Added text of article to post.
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