Ordinary Gweilo

Well, season 3 of The Apprentice is coming to an end on Star World, with two women (Tana and Kendra) the last two left standing.

I have to admit that around week 11, my shortlist would have included Tana (and Bren, Alex and Angie) but not Kendra.  Somehow she and Craig seemed to have coasted through as the weakest members of the team that kept winning (Magna).  They were helped by the way that their more high profile teammates got picked to join Net Worth and then seemed to fall apart when they got there – the best example of this being Alex and Bren messing up the Staples and Solstice tasks.   

To be fair to Kendra, she did a very solid job on both those tasks, and I suppose that she met my criteria of keeping a low profile and then performing well at the end.  The Apprentice is mainly about surviving – one bad mistake and you’re history.  I felt sorry for Angie, who became very flustered doing a presentation and got fired as a result – unfairly because Alex had failed to do any market research and Chris lost the credit card, so I doubt that even the best presentation in the world would have won them the task.

Ah, Chris.  There always seems to be one contestant who Donald Trump seems unable to fire, but normally it’s an attractive woman, not a tobacco-chewing bloke.  However, Trump really has been spoiled for choice when it comes to finding people to fire – some weeks you felt that he could have got rid of 2 or 3 of them without any problem. 

Bren looked impressive early on, but the fact is that Trump wanted an entrepreneur, and here was a District Attorney with precious little commercial experience who actually admitted that he had problems taking risks.  Alex also looked competent, but he was way out of his depth when it came to strategy, and hilariously out of touch when it came to designing products that customers might actually want to buy.  The desk trolley he and Bren dreamt up for Staples really was a classic of its kind, and the clothing wasn’t much better.   

Tana looked like a likely winner for a long time, but somebody really should have told her that a little humility goes a long way.  As the series has gone on, she seems to have become increasingly convinced that she was the best contestant, forgetting that the ultimate prize is a job in the Trump Organization, where arrogance might not exactly be the quality that they value most highly. 

This year the interview stage was mercifully short.  After all, with Craig still in contention, it must have taken fully five minutes for the interviewers to reach the conclusion that he was a gibbering idiot and absolutely had to be fired, so there was no point in prolonging the agony. 

And, having finally escaped from the nightmare of working with Craig, Kendra turns out to be a more formidable contestant than expected, and her quiet competence is an interesting contrast with Tana’s eccentric style of "leadership" (yes, they may be idiots, but they’re also your team members).  Maybe, for once, there is genuine doubt about who will win.