Ordinary Gweilo

We all tend to complain about Hong Kong TV, but you have to admit that TVB does have a reasonably good record when it comes to popular US shows. Usually we have to wait months (or sometimes years) to see them, but not always – TVB Pearl started showing “The Apprentice” on Saturday nights before it had finished running in the States.

I’m not a big fan of reality shows, mainly because they are so, well, unreal – but also because the participants are so obviously false. I also find it very tedious when they try to create so much drama out of announcing who has won or lost – the producers seem determined to humiliate people to make it more dramatic.

I have no real interest in watching people trying to survive on a desert island or being cooped up in a house together (yes, Big Brother is back soon), but I did quite enjoy the first series of ‘The Restaurant’ even if most of the waiters were mainly taking part in the hope of boosting their careers in the entertainment industry. It was more real than most so-called reality shows because there were no prizes and no-one was eliminated, but obviously it wasn’t a straight documentary either, a clue here being that the producer was Mark Burnett (also the producer on Survivor).

There was a real restaurant with real customers and a business that could fail or succeed. What interested me was whether Rocco could get his restaurant up and running, and how he balanced his time between (1) being the celebrity chef who brought in the crowds, (2) being in the kitchen and (3) running the business, not to mention hamming up in front of the cameras. Rather surprisingly (but perhaps understandably) he didn’t spend enough time in the kitchen, and when he finally figured out that this was one of the biggest problems – and did something about it – things seemed to turn around. If only life was always that simple!

For me, the highlights included the food critic of the New York Post being given cold food and writing a predictably savage review, and one of the waiters doing a really terrible standup routine. It was also amusing to try and spot the plugs for the three sponsors (Coors, American Express and Mitsubishi cars). Apparently they (and not NBC) paid for the show, and in return their products were everywhere to be seen.

The Apprentice is more contrived, in that the contestants are competing for a job as president of one of Donald Trump’s companies, but it’s interesting to see how they cope with the tasks they are given. In a real life recruitment exercise it is highly unlikely that one person would be eliminated each week, and entirely possible that several people would be given jobs, but, hey, this is television and that’s what happens on ‘Survivor’.  Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed, Mark Burnett is behind this show as well. 

The contestants have been split into male and female teams, but unlike Survivor they are not physically separated, and appear to be living together in a large suite in Trump Towers. One of the more irksome aspects of the show is that it seems to be part of the deal that we have to be constantly reminded that Donald Trump is wonderful and extremely rich. Look, there he is in his helicopter flying over Manhattan. Look, there is in his chauffeur-driven limousine. Look, there is his hideously over-the-top apartment. Look, there is his young girlfiend. Look, there are all those buildings with Donald Trump’s name on them. So far we haven’t been given any clues as to how Trump got so rich, but maybe that comes later.

In the first episode the assignment was to sell lemonade on the streets of New York. The women seemed to spend the first couple of hours fighting and arguing with each other, but they were successful in the end – mainly because it’s easier for women than men to sell lemonade on the street. Sex sells. The men got on with things in a businesslike way, but made a terrible decision as regards location and suffered accordingly. However, it is entirely possible that if they’d got the location right they would still have lost – the program proved that men can be persuaded to pay $5 for a lemonade from a pretty girl and the men couldn’t compete with that.

In the second episode, the teams were asked to put together an advertising campaign for a company that sells timeshare on executive jets. The men’s team inexplicably decided to do this without meeting their client, and so they came up with a very generic (but quite sensible) campaign. The women’s team did meet the client and then came up with a horrible campaign based on the aeroplane as a phallic symbol. Both strategies were probably misguided, but the ad agency boss chose the women’s team as the winner. After that it was an easy decision for Donald Trump to fire the project manager for the crass mistake of not meeting the client – though the team wanted to get rid of Sam for sleeping on the job and generally being extremely irritating.

Well, they got their chance in the third episode, after deciding to make him the project manager.  The exercise was simple enough – to buy a list of items as cheaply as possible and be back at Trump Towers by 5 pm.  The men once again got things badly wrong – it should have been obvious that the price of a gold bar was not really negotiable, but a set of golf clubs, a camera and the leg wax were relatively expensive items for which a discount would surely be available.  However, Sam insisted on making the team leave Chinatown and buy gold – because the best price would only be available in the morning!  So when they finally set off to buy the golf clubs they hadn’t enough time to find a retail outlet that was willing to do a deal, whilst the girls found a small shop that was willing to sell to them at cost + $10.  The message was clear – get the cheap items and the gold out of the way, and then spend more time on the expensive items.  The men let Sam run the show, and he got it totally wrong, leaving Trump with an even easier decision about who to fire.   

Frankly, on what we have seen so far, Donald Trump would be crazy to let any of these guys run any of his businesses for even one single day, but he probably doesn’t care given all the good publicity it has generated for him.

Apparently there is a British version of “The Apprentice” on its way. The businessman will be Sir Alan Sugar, who has had an interesting up-and-down career but is nowhere near as rich as Donald Trump.  There is also another US series lined up with Richard Branson as the businessman, and the Hong Kong version with Richard Li is probably already in planning (but it will only be open to contestants with rich daddies).