The Apprentice 3: Why Angie Lost

I think that if Angie had wanted to stand up for herself during this challenge, she could have. But I don’t believe she wanted to tell Alex that she couldn’t handle it all, so she just kept on doing and only tried to blame him in the Boardroom when it was too late.

The fourth rule reminds contestants that scheming and plotting usually don’t work. In this case, there was no hint of such activity, in large part because they were down to three people, all of whom would end up facing the firing squad.

Fifth is to play well with others, but stay professional. Generally it seemed that Angie did fine in this department, so we’ll move on.

The sixth rule says to focus on the long-term. This may have been difficult for Angie to do, because every week she seemed to be heading back to fight for her life in the Boardroom. Once you’ve gotten to the point where Donald Trump flat-out calls you a “loser,” your long-term prospects are pretty dim. You have to somehow distinguish yourself from your team and show that you were not responsible for any of the losses in order to have a long-term shot. Angie didn’t do that, in large part because she was responsible for some of the losses.

Seventh is to think outside the box, but not too far. While I have to admit that clothing for carrying laptops is outside the box, I think it went too far. Furthermore, Angie and her teammates never really figured out where “the box” was, from what we saw. They didn’t even know that cell phones were the most important piece of electronic equipment for most people. Was it Angie’s responsibility? That’s not really clear. It might have been Chris’, who was supposed to buy the electronics. It might have been Alex’s, who as the Project Manager. But Angie did not appear to bring that up as a major point in the Boardroom, and she should have.

The eighth rule says players cannot be one-dimensional. However, I want to take a moment to look at just one dimension of Angie – her presentation skills.

As we’ve already discussed, the Home Depot task was lost in large part because of the presentation. Angie was in charge of that task and decided what item they would feature in the presentation. She also failed to assign the person most likely to do a good job in presenting, Erin. This time around, she was again in charge of the presentation, and once again she failed. One part of working for Donald Trump is certainly that the successful applicant will need to be able to present ideas and projects to both internal and external groups. Angie showed that she could not necessarily be relied upon to do that, especially in high-pressure situations. Without that ability, she was not versatile enough to work for Trump.

Finally, we come to the rule that says players should use common sense. Frankly, the entire team failed in this one, and we’ve already gone over some of those screw-ups. Still, we’ve seen some egregious lack of common sense over the course of the season, and in comparison this week looked pretty good.

It came down to a decision between Angie and Chris. Alex had not done a good job as Project Manager, but Trump was still allowing him some latitude due to his earlier successes. Personally, I believe Chris should have been fired, but it was a close race. It seems that in this case, doing nothing was preferable to doing something poorly.

And that is where we find ourselves. Angie volunteered to do the presentation and all that was associated with it. She choked. Badly. She followed that up by choking badly again in the Boardroom. In baseball you get three strikes. In The Apprentice, you only get two chokes, and she was out. That is why Angie lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the Apprentice 3 Episode 11 recap:

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

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