The Apprentice 3, Episode 1 Extras: The Blame Game

At Net Worth’s Burger King, John assures his teammates that they’ll be working with Burger King employees, not by themselves. He says that he split the team in half, sending half to train and half to work on marketing. Chris, one of the trainees, says that this is a humbling experience - he’s a millionaire, and now he’s flipping burgers. I’d love to see Trump flip burgers. That would be awesome. Sorry, that’s my train of thought getting away from me. John assigns Tara to work on the fliers. Brian says that John is doing a good job as project manager. Tana suggests the Las Vegas trip, and everyone gets excited. Net Worth meets with Russ to get approval; he seems fine with their ideas. We see the shopping expedition, where Kristen says that Brian is making too big a deal out of his Viking hat. Maybe she’s just jealous. She doesn’t have a cool Viking hat.

After the task, Net Worth gets ready to go to dinner at the 21 Club. There isn’t much new stuff here. John is impressed to be eating with one of the world’s most powerful men. There’s storytelling and swearing and toasting.

Magna heads to the boardroom. Todd says that his strategy was to divide the team; he wanted to have more people in the restaurant than there were working on marketing. Trump asks why there still weren’t enough people working the cash registers, a.k.a. point of sale or POS. George points out that Net Worth had three people on POS. Carolyn proclaims the promotion “horrific.” George says that he didn’t know what Magna was trying to promote. Danny argues that the people knew, but George says that’s news to him. He thinks they should have done something like report numbers to impress George. He didn’t know what they were doing until he had to dodge a ball. Yeah, I’m thinking that throwing a ball around on a busy New York street wasn’t the most brilliant idea.

Danny claims that looking like a street performer was the point. I don’t know many people who would by food from a self-proclaimed street performer. Todd says that Danny was abrasive. Trump asks if Danny respected Todd. Danny claims that he did in the beginning, but Todd blew his trust. Trump asks who appointed Danny in charge of marketing and Danny says that he suggested himself. Trump says that Todd shouldn’t have let Danny do that. Todd makes a good point that he didn’t know his teammates well enough to know who was the best for the job; Danny made sense. Trump asks Todd why he blames Danny when he himself was the leader.

The discussion turns to fashion. Trump asks Danny if he plays the guitar when he goes into his own boardrooms. Heh. Danny argues that his dress has nothing to do with anything, but Trump counters that it does. Either Kendra or Stephanie (I haven’t been able to distinguish everyone’s voice yet) says that you have to know your audience. Danny says that when he works for Trump, he’ll dress however Trump wants him to. Something tells me that he should be using the word “if,” not “when.”

Erin is asked for her two cents on Danny. She thinks he dressed inappropriately and would fire him. Trump asks if she believes this even though Todd was a bad leader. Carolyn asks if Erin thinks Danny is the reason they failed the task. She agrees, adding that Todd managed her “superbly.”

Everyone starts pointing fingers at either Danny or Todd. Trump thinks that Stephanie is selling Danny out, but she’s allowed to be disappointed in his performance. As we saw, the promotion was Danny’s idea, so it’s not like Stephanie is blaming him for her failures. Yeah, she said she’d go after Todd, but this is The Apprentice, after all. It’s not like no one’s ever blamed someone after saying he or she wouldn’t. Stephanie wishes that someone would have listened to her ideas. Bren would fire Danny. Kendra says that she would fire Todd, since he didn’t have any control over Danny. Donald asks if Danny is controllable. Kendra says that she could have controlled him, but Todd didn’t. She also blames their failure on the fact that Todd was away from the marketing team; she thinks that he should have met up with Danny and Stephanie.

Alex would fire Danny because he might be unmanageable. Danny disagrees (of course), arguing that he listened and took advice. Todd chooses Alex and Danny to go to the final boardroom.

George and Carolyn give their opinions, and Todd, Alex, and Danny return to the boardroom. They get into the discussion of whether or not Alex is to blame for the problems in the restaurant. Trump tells Todd that part of being a leader is dealing with difficult people. Sometimes the most difficult people are actually brilliant. Yeah, we’ll see about that.

So, Danny was a disaster, but Todd is fired. And that’s that.

Todd is “bummed,” but he hopes that some good things will come from this opportunity. He feels that Danny sold him out and notes that everyone else blamed Danny. The one time Trump didn’t go with the popular opinion, huh? He does recognize that the task was ultimately his own responsibility, though he still blames Danny. He wishes everyone luck and thanks Trump, George, and Carolyn. Todd is disappointed in himself and has to go get a job.

Next week, the candidates may be paying a visit to Heartbreak Hotel.

Jenn Brasler is an aspiring writer from Falls Church, VA. You can e-mail her at luckyjenn@hotmail.com. She’s trying to decide whether to use her powers for good… or evil.

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