Saturday, December 18, 2004

More on the Apprentice finale

A lot of people on the 'net have been complaining about the pile-on that Jenn M. endured in the [i]Apprentice[/i] finale. I honestly can't agree with that.

Y'see, Trump had a whole bunch of people--Trump employees and past Apprentice candidates--comment on whether they'd choose Kelly or Jenn, and why. Not surprisingly, the vast majority came out in Kelly's support. Was this unfair to Jenn?

Hardly. Most of them had glowing things to say about Kelly, but they didn't speak negatively about Jenn. In fact, several said that both of them were strong candidates. Okay, so CFO Calamari did openly say that he didn't like Jenn at all (and stumbled over his words in the process), but he was the exception rather than the rule.

Some posters whined, "But by saying that Kelly is all these great things, they're also saying that Jenn isn't!" First of all, maybe they don't think she is. Second, it DOESN'T mean that Jenn doesn't have the qualities that they're extolling. It simply means that they recognize these qualities more abundantly in Kelly, or that they find his qualities to be stronger. It's hardly unfair to Jennifer at all.

"But why have that massive outshowing of support for Kelly?" they asked. "Is is really necessary?" Maybe not, but I doubt that the motive was to humiliate Jenn. Rather, it simply makes for good reality TV, and you can be sure that Mark Burnett wants to milk this show for all it's worth. I'd be shocked if the intent was to put Jenn in her place somehow.

Some cynics say that this was done to somehow justify Trump's choosing of Kelly. They say that Trump's mind was already made up, and that he wanted to justify it to the audience. That theory is just dumb. If he wanted to do that, he could have had the interviewees voice more biting criticisms of Jenn; instead, most of them commended her for her strengths. Trump and Burnett could also have shown more of her negative footage, such as the infamous scene in which she implicitly took credit for Ivana's idea.

So no, this wasn't especially unkind. A few of the comments made were unduly harsh, but the idea of having these people voice their opinions was not.