The Apprentice 3: Why Audrey Lost

The fourth rule says that scheming and plotting don’t work, but you still shouldn’t show your hand. Audrey tried to scheme with Angie, which in and of itself might have worked if she was just looking for guidance. However, Audrey couldn’t even do that right!

It was obvious that she would be taking John and Craig into the Boardroom. This allowed both of them to figure out how to outsmart her there – which probably took them all of three seconds. But that wasn’t her biggest mistake.

Her big mistake was that after she went to Angie for guidance, she brought Angie into the Boardroom with her! From the look on Angie’s face, this was not one of the things they had discussed. What was worse was that when Trump asked why Audrey did this, she said it was because Angie was part of the marketing team. So she appeared to be putting blame on Angie! Fellow RNO writer Gil Sery brought up a good point to me, noting, “if Audrey had just answered with, ‘She was on the marketing team. She knows what went down. She'll back me up,’ Angie wouldn't have had a reason to turn on her.” Just a few little words could have changed Angie’s entire disposition. Instead, Angie turned on Audrey. Looks like we’ll have to add to this rule next time, noting that if you are going to scheme and plot, at least do it right!

The fifth rule tells contestants to play well with others. I think we can safely say that Audrey failed miserably on this one. Before this challenge, several of her teammates had singled her out as a weak link. By the end of it, it looks like pretty much everybody agreed with that characterization and none of them respected her.

Quoting from the rule: “You need to control your anger; you can’t allow your anger to control you.” Audrey failed miserably in that regard.

She also failed to focus on the long-term. Audrey was so concerned about proving to everybody that she was a leader that she didn’t consider the possible outcomes. She should have known that if they lost, she would have been blamed. And considering that nobody respected her, they were unlikely to win – especially given her “management style.” Audrey would have been well advised to take a breather and let somebody else be the Project Manager – and should really have considered it after John spoke out against her. She could have stepped back and then if they lost, gone to the Boardroom and calmly said, “Mr. Trump, I tried to lead this task. I wanted to lead this task. But smartass John thought I couldn’t. We failed, but if I had led we could have won.” Sure, it wouldn’t have been true, but nobody would have been able to prove differently.

Instead of thinking about the overall game in the long term, Audrey was focused on her immediate need to be recognized as more than just a pretty face. Then, she compounded this problem by oh-so-cleverly trying to set up others to take the fall if they lost (either that, or she really was so stupid as to think what she was doing was “leadership”). Bad ideas all around.

The seventh rule is to think outside the box. Magna showed how to do this when they went to various child-centered businesses with their flyers and coupons. Net Worth… didn’t. Sure, Audrey would probably blame that on the marketing team, but once again, she was the Project Manager, not them. She assured everybody that she could lead this challenge. But really, she couldn’t.

Eighth is to not be one-dimensional. You don’t know how tempting it is to say that Audrey was indeed one-dimensional – a pretty face and that was it. However, I won’t say that. I’ll instead just point out that despite all her claims of ability, there was nothing to back it up. She had no dimensions, no depth, no apparent abilities, and not much in the brains department.

Finally, we come to the rule that says players should use common sense. Wow. Where do we start? Actually, I think we’ve pretty well covered it in the previous discussions. Most of the things Audrey did could also show up here as violations of simple common sense. But I doubt Audrey had any sense – common or otherwise.

So where does this all leave us? Well, it leaves Audrey looking pretty bad in front of millions of people. As I said earlier, her coming fate was obvious as soon as the episode began. It was like watching a train wreck, Audrey just kept getting worse and worse, culminating with one of the worst Boardroom performances we’ve seen in quite a while.

Audrey wanted to prove she was more than just a pretty face. Instead, she did just the opposite. She was a horrible leader, collapsed under stress, and showed no sign of ability to think through problems – in some cases, to think at all! In summary, Audrey was a mess of an Apprentice applicant. That is why Audrey lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Apprentice 3 Episode 7 recap:

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

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