The Apprentice: Who Will Be Fired in Episode 12?

We’ve been watching The Apprentice for 11 episodes (plus a recap) now, and it’s becoming clearer and clearer who the true front-runners are. It’s also apparent that Donald Trump is firing people not simply based on the most recent challenge – as happened early on – but on their overall abilities shown during the show to date. With this in mind, RealityNewsOnline is beginning a new column that looks ahead at the next episode of The Apprentice to see if we can determine who will be fired next.

Two episodes ago, Troy and Heidi went to the boardroom to face Trump and his minions. Troy was the project manager and had failed to think of alternate income sources, thus allowing his team to be slaughtered. He could have also been in trouble for sending his friend Kwame back to be safe even though it could be said that Kwame did little to help the team’s cause. But Heidi was fired for not showing overall leadership skills while Trump saw those skills in Troy.

Last episode, Amy went to the boardroom for the first time, and took Katrina along with her. Amy did not do a particularly good job with this challenge, and could have been in trouble for that. Furthermore, she sent her “boyfriend” Nick to be safe and could have faced some problems for that as well. However, Katrina was fired due to a build-up of issues from previous challenges on her side plus a bank of positives that Amy had built up previously.

Thus, in both recent firings we can see that the decision did not come down to one specific instance, but an overall balance of pluses and minuses for the candidates. With this in mind, let’s look at the two remaining teams:

First, we have Protégé, now made up of Troy, Kwame, and Bill. These guys can win when they work well together. Unfortunately, we’ve seen several times that Troy and Bill don’t work so well together on some occasions. Even while they were winning the casino challenge last week, Bill was still complaining. And in the end, it really was Bill’s strategy to target the VIPs that did the job.

With this in mind, if Protégé goes to the boardroom, who will be fired? I’ll start by predicting who the project manager will be. My bet is on “newcomer” Bill. Kwame was the casino project manager and Troy was the one before that. While Bill was the project manager for his team in the rickshaw challenge, that was on Versacorp, not Protégé. Plus, Bill will want to prove that he is really the brains of the outfit.

If Protégé loses, Bill will likely take Kwame to the boardroom. He may not particularly agree with Troy, but he has got to know by this time that Troy is the golden boy and he has a much better chance of beating Kwame, who seems to mostly be coasting more than anything. Barring any huge errors on Bill’s part, I believe that Trump will agree – if Protégé loses, Kwame is gone.

Over on Versacorp, now reduced to the dynamic duo of Amy and Nick, some things are pretty easy to predict. Nick will be the project manager since Amy just had that task. If they lose, it seems pretty obvious that both will go to the boardroom. Nick has been there a lot more times than Amy has, and when she was there her first time she didn’t exactly do a terrific job – it was her work in the field that saved her, not any fancy footwork in the boardroom. On the flip side, because Nick has been there more often, that means he has also failed more often. Even after last week’s boardroom, Amy still has a lot of kudos built up on her side. She was the first one picked by Nick when the teams were originally shuffled, and then she was picked twice as the person to move to a new team when further reshuffling was necessary. Plus, since Nick will be the project manager, he will be more responsible for losing this time around. So if Versacorp loses, I think Nick gets the boot.

However, I think it will be Protégé going to the boardroom. Normally, I won’t necessarily predict which specific team will win or lose because there is generally no way to know. But in this case, I think Nick and Amy will work well together, but there is still some tension between Bill, Troy, and Kwame. That may lead to Protégé’s downfall.

So will it be Protégé losing and Kwame being fired? We’ll find out Thursday night!

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! And take a look at the rest of the site. You can find all of our recent articles on this show at our The Apprentice page and take a look at our sections on Survivor: All-Stars and Celebrity Mole. You can even buy reality show stuff at our Reality TV Store!

For more news about The Apprentice, be sure to check out SirLinksALot!