Ordinary Gweilo

I think the word is hubris. 

In week 2 of the latest Apprentice, the men’s team were delighted when they were told that the task was to develop an advertising campaign for Lamborghini.  What could possibly go wrong?  Chris works in advertising and the rest of the team are all, er, men. Throughout the task they exuded confidence, and yet they came up with a dull and confusing campaign that they roceeded to explain in minute detail.  "Here’s the car, and here’s water, which could kill us and yet we need it to stay alive" (I paraphrase slightly).

The official scapegoat was Markus.  In the initial meeting, Chris the project manager (he works in advertising) told everyone to be quiet and just listen to what the client said, but Markus insisted on floating his idea for a slogan ("smooth as silk").  The client shot it down in flames.  Then Markus was asked to direct the traffic, but proved to be a bit too exacting for him.  Then he pointed out that a picture of a Lamborghini painted green and the slogan "green with envy" was confusing, but by this time no-one was listening to him.

Meanwhile the women got off to a bad start by failing to meet with the client, but they came up with a much more visually arresting commercial than the men, and they all dressed in black for the presentation.  The client was impressed.

The client didn’t like the men’s presentation, and found the ‘Green with Envy’ slogan confusing, at which point Markus piped to say that he agreed.  I think I might have fired him on the spot for that, but somehow he survived.  The men lost.  Someone would be fired.

Back in the boardroom, Chris placed the blame 100% on Markus.  However, he failed to justify this decision, and Trump was convinced that the bigger problem was the quality of their creative ideas.  Actually, I think it’s a tough call, because Markus is obviously a weak link but was he really the reason they lost the task?  Chris needed to be a whole lot smarter and put his case more strongly.  Instead he was shredded by George for not giving a straight answer when asked whether he had sidelined Markus – the correct answer being that Markus had messed up twice and couldn’t be trusted.

I think Trump got it right when he said that Chris had made an emotional decision in blaming Markus.  He could have got away with it if he had given strong reasons and managed to disguise his feelings, but he failed to do that.  Trump is looking for a corporate manager, and Chris demonstrated that he wasn’t shrewd enough for that role.

By contrast, in week one Melissa was fired for pretty much the same reason, but it was an easier decision because her defence was that she "couldn’t work with women".  Perhaps men put up with her obnoxious behaviour because of the way she dresses, but I rather doubt it.  She was so obviously not a team player that she had to be fired, though Christie was a weak project manager and would almost certainly have been fired if Melissa had not drawn attention to herself in that way.  It never does any harm to keep a low profile.

Nothing much seems to have changed this time round, just a few subtle alterations.  This series the project manager only gets immunity if the team votes for it – I thought that this was just a roundabout way of getting rid of this rule, but in week two the women voted for their project manager (Marshawn) to get exemption.  Also, it appears that the project manager can no longer choose to bring in 3 people to the boardroom –  but for the first 2 weeks the PM has chosen to bring in only one person.  I thik this made sense as far as Christie was concerned, but why didn’t Chris bring in Mark?  Trump was obviously unhappy with some of the creative decisions and might well have fired Mark if he had been given the chance.

It still puzzles me that the contestants can be so naive when it comes to the tactics of the game.  Haven’t they learned anything from watching the earlier series?