The Apprentice 5, Episode 6: Feels Like an Arby’s Night

Charmaine cries in the elevator on the way up to the suite. I don’t think we’ll be seeing much more of her. We return to the Boardroom after the commercials without seeing any Trump-viceroy deliberation. Bryce explains that although Charmaine and Tarek did the jingle, he didn’t bring them back because he approved the music and lyrics. Without Charmaine and Lee, he’d have had nothing. They lost as a team due to lack of creative ideas. I disagree, but we’ll get to that.

Lee, they agree, had nothing to do with the task, and Trump makes it pretty clear that he’s not about to fire Lee for practicing his faith. Bryce says that he has to stand up for what he believes in, and that he knows Trump wouldn’t fire Lee. Seriously, his bringing back Lee makes no sense.

As for Lenny, while he didn’t do anything wrong, Bryce says he didn’t do anything. Carolyn says that the lyrics missed the mark. Bryce takes responsibility for that. Carolyn thinks he should have brought in Tarek and Charmaine and can’t understand why he didn’t. Bryce explains that because everyone worked hard, he’s bringing in the two people who contributed the least. He adds that he will not throw anyone under the bus. Carolyn thinks he’s pretty well asking Trump to fire him. Trump says it was terrible to bring Lee back, and Bryce suggests he send him back to the suite now. Bryce should have brought in Charmaine and Tarek. Bryce is fired. Trump tells him, before he leaves, that he has great potential.

Trump says that he didn’t like that Bryce brought Lee back. Lenny, sure, but he should have had the other person be Charmaine or Tarek. Carolyn and Bill agree that it was an easy firing.

In the cab, Bryce says that Trump and the viceroys don’t scare him. He thinks that no one else would have been as good of a hire as he would have been. He adds that it wouldn’t hurt Trump to listen once in a while. Heh, awesome.

This was an interesting week. Although Charmaine wished no one would get fired, there were actually several good choices on the team. Bryce thought they lost because they lacked creative ideas. I disagree. No one said that they liked the music better on the first jingle; the executives mainly preferred Synergy’s version because they got in all of the key messages.

Gold Rush lost due to a lack of attention to detail. Did they know how important it was that only Arby’s offered all natural chicken? They sure could have, since the other team got that information from their meeting with Doug and Debbie. But because Gold Rush showed up late, they probably didn’t get the best out of them. Or maybe in their haste, they missed that detail. For that mistake, you could either blame Charmaine, who made the appointment, or Bryce, who had a strange lack of concern about the timetable for someone who was supposed to be in charge. As for the lyrics, Charmaine and Leslie wrote them and missed the key point, then their boss approved it. Lenny contributed nothing to this task. And although he didn’t get in the way, he didn’t even help by, say, getting everybody lunch. I wouldn’t have liked to see Lenny get fired for this task because Trump is not hiring a jingle writer, but the fact is, he didn’t contribute, so I’d have understood if we said goodbye to Lenny this week.

Lee gets a pass this week since he was unable to participate. Leslie contributed to the lyrics, but not to showing up late at the meeting, so she squeaks through. Tarek handled the music and did a fine job- he was not the reason they lost. That brings us to Charmaine and Bryce. Charmaine really screwed up by scheduling the meeting when she did and not trying to foster a sense of urgency to get the team out the door. She also should have made sure that detail was included in the jingle. Bryce, as the project manager, should have been aware of both of those things, but he wasn’t. And his attempt to place any blame whatsoever on Lee for not participating was inexcusable. Trump is hiring a manager, and I would certainly hope that he’d prefer not to hire someone who’d discriminate in any way against someone who is practicing their faith. Ultimately, I liked Bryce, but Trump make the right call.

Betsy Wasser is the Associate Editor of Reality News Online. There is a decent chance she’ll have a beef and cheddar for lunch tomorrow. She can be reached with any comments at betsywasser@gmail.com

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! For more news about this show, be sure to check out SirLinksALot’s Apprentice page!