The Apprentice 2: Why Kevin Lost

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here for a moment. Many people have complained that Trump knew what Kevin’s résumé looked like coming into the show, so it shouldn’t have played a role only when Kevin got to the Final Four. I agree. I similarly have a problem with criticizing Sandy for lack of corporate experience or Andy for his age. All of these factors were in evidence before the show ever began, so why bother to cast them as contestants if they never had a chance? The answer, I think, is that although some candidates may face larger obstacles, they all have a chance. Kevin had to prove that he could handle leadership and working outside of school. Unfortunately, as we have already discussed, he did not exactly wow people. If he had, he likely would have stayed despite his lack of job experience.

Getting back to our regularly-scheduled review, the fifth rule says to be loyal. Kevin showed a good amount of loyalty to Ivana when they both agreed not to go after one another in the Boardroom the previous week. However, he still managed to debate well and show himself to be the better contestant. Frankly, though, loyalty (or lack thereof) didn’t have much to do with his firing.

The sixth rule is pretty much left by the side of the road when it comes to the interviews. There are no game plans and nobody to blame, so there is no hand to show before the Boardroom.

So we’ll move on to the seventh rule, playing well with others. Kevin did a good job of this, getting along with the various odd personalities we saw along the way. As mentioned already, he even stayed up late into the night to help Elizabeth with the NYPD ad, and did what he could to support her in the face of her total lack of leadership.

The eighth rule says to focus on the long-term. Unlike some people (like, say, Ivana), Kevin did not do anything to create big problems later just because he thought he might lose the task at hand. He played significant roles in some of his team’s losses, such as setting the pricing in the fashion line task and recommending the contractor in the home remodeling challenge, but he managed to keep himself in the game nevertheless.

One place Kevin failed was in his thinking process; that is to say, he was not really shown to be an outside-the-box kind of guy, and thus didn’t succeed with the ninth rule. Many of the things Kevin did were smart, but I can’t think of one that was really a homerun swing.

The tenth rule is simply to use common sense. Sometimes, Kevin failed at this – such as when he decided on his own to cut the price of M&M candy bars. Mostly, though, Kevin had a fairly decent head on his shoulders. However, in the end he needed to use a bit of that common sense to anticipate what the interviewers would ask him and find a way to account for it. Maybe he did anticipate it – we can’t be sure; but we do know he was not able to allay their fears.

Kevin had a strike against him going into The Apprentice 2 because he had a lot of schooling and a very little real world experience. In order to overcome that issue, Kevin had 13 game weeks to convince Trump that he was the person who should be the next Apprentice. Kevin won both times he was Project Manager, but both of those wins could have as easily been attributed to problems on the opposing team. And when he wasn’t Project Manager he did not show an excess of sought-after skills.

To use a baseball analogy, Kevin was no MVP. He had some hits, he had some strikeouts, and he dropped the ball a few times. But Kevin was missing the clutch homerun that would send his team to the playoffs. He never hit the ball out of the park. Being a decent player – in baseball or The Apprentice – might get you near where you want to be, but it won’t get you a job as clean-up hitter, or as Donald Trump’s Apprentice. That is why Kevin lost.

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

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