Apprentice US Stylee

As a keen viewer of the Sir Alan Sugar Apprentice Experience, I was intrigued to watch the US version on BBC3 the other day. It is very much the same format, only it is set in NYC with Donald Trump and his bizarre and scary comb-over as the entrepreneur in question. I suppose when you are that rich you could have a pile of dead mice on your head, loosely stitched together with raffia, and still no-one would say anything. As well as the splendour that is Donald, we have many scenes set in Trump Tower, which looks like a Vegas casino and is unremittingly tacky – still, they don’t have Amstrad’s rubbish emailer phones dotted around every scene, so in one respect they are actually LESS tacky than Siralan. Donald’s sidekicks are an older white haired bloke who seems quite normal and a younger blonde woman with an unmoveable hair helmut who never says anything and makes no facial expressions whatsoever. I am a bit scared of her, to be honest.

The contestants are the usual assortment of muppets and dilettantes – the main difference is that the production of the US version just comes across as really cheesy and juvenile – like at one point the male team were “brainstorming” and whenever they came up with a lame idea there was a comedy “boinngggg!” noise on the soundtrack. Hello, are we watching Rainbow here or something? Also, the editing is a lot more soapy, i.e. in the title sequence the Apprentices are all named and there is a shot of eacjh of them smiling or answering the phone or pointing at a flow chart or something. It is like the beginning of “Dallas”! There are also many shots of people making hacky faces and glaring at each other for no reason. (I actually approve of this innovation). Even the receptionist who says “King Donald will see you now!” had about three hacky faced reaction shots – FOR NO REASON!!!

The first time I watched it was in week three, so I don’t really have a clue about any of the contestants. The weekly task was to take $50k and stage a marketing event for a leading-brand-of-toothpaste’s new vanilla and mint flavour. Vanilla and mint? Vomit. PR shills for the Leading Toothpaste Company would judge the winner on how much buzz they generated. The men’s team (called something subtle like “Team Giant Penis”) wanted to put on a Dr Evil style Meellion Dollar sweepstake, but “legal” wouldn’t let them do it. Instead they just hired some circus freaks and jugglers and gave away toothpaste in the street. How boring. If I was Donald I would have sacked all them just for the sin of making jugglers feel useful for a day. The women (Team Ovary) decided to hire a celebrity and have an event with him brushing his teeth in the street with new vile sounding toothpaste. The celebrity was some New York sports bloke I have never heard of – someone suggested LL Cool J but he was rejected because apparently he was too “edgy”. Buh buh but I thought Ladies Loved Cool James??? Also, LL Cool J? Edgy? “Deep Blue Sea” was hardly like the fricking Cremaster Cycle, not even when LL Cool J rapped at the end and pretended that he was a shark. The women were clearly set to win due to their slightly better ideas but unfortunately they overspent the budget to the tune of $5,000 on flyers and promo materials and were thus declared the Losers. Doh, easy mistake to make, I suppose – if you’re a total idiot.

The two women responsible were a Jane Wiedlin look-alike called Maria, who had weird pencilled-in eyebrows and blinked a lot – she supposedly negotiated the price – and the budget manager; an Asian girl called Ivana (I bet she was only selected because of her name). They were both pretty dreadful and refused to even accept the idea that they could have been remotely responsible for the mistake. Blinky Maria: “I told the printer I could only spend $2,000 and he said he wasn’t sure he could do it for that price, and then he couldn’t do it! How is that my fault???” etc.

At this point the show got (a) really nasty and (b) really interesting. Team Ovary were so awful that they make UK Apprentice’s Melty-Face Adele seem like the voice of reason – it turns out that Stacy (the only black girl in the team, which was all white apart from her and Ivana) had had a minor freakout in week one and all the other women had decided that she was mentally ill and had teamed up to shun her and blame her for everything, even though she hadn’t done anything wrong since. Seriously, it was like Lord of the Flies in snazzy business suits. The team leader (some blonde with weird eyebrows) selected Stacy and Blinky for sacking and Stacy got the sack after a depressing scene where all the other women lined up to question her mental health and blame her for disrupting the task, even though none of them could give any examples of actual disruptive behaviour. Um excuse me, Ms Bridal Shop Manager – do you have a psychiatry degree to go with your ugly white meringue dresses? If not then shut up! It is possible that Donald’s Fembot Aide disapproved of the sacking, though it was hard to tell given that she is about as demonstrative as an Auton. Actually Stacy is better off away from those heinous bitches – it will be interesting to see who they turn on next.