The Apprentice 4, Episode 2 Extras: Accept Your Ego

Trump asks for George and Carolyn’s opinions, then brings Chris and Markus back in. Trump thinks it’s amazing that, out of everyone on the team, these are the two guys in the boardroom. He points out that Mark even admitted his mistakes. Chris says that they all moved forward as a team, but he had to reel Markus in. The marginalization issue is discussed and Trump notes that Markus always blames everyone else for treating him badly. George gets Chris to admit that he marginalized Markus. Chris thinks that Markus is a good person, but he has problems working with the team.

Trump tells Markus that he talks too much. Chris calls himself a good leader who can lead his team to victory. Except… you didn’t. Capable or not, you lost. He blames Markus again. Carolyn says that she already told Chris the team failed because of their problems with creativity. She wonders if Chris’ decision to leave Mark behind and bring Markus back was personal. Chris says that it was for the good of the team. Trump says it wasn’t personal, it was business. Chris supports his decision not to bring Mark back because he agreed with Mark’s ideas. Mark’s mistake was also Chris’ mistake. Trump says that this leaves him with a difficult decision.

Markus was a disaster, but Trump asked Chris to make a business decision and he made an emotional one instead. Markus was not the reason the team lost, and, in fact, he was the only one who spoke up that they were making bad decisions. Chris is fired.

In the cab, Chris says that he’s upset. He hates losing, especially when he knew that he was the strongest member of the team. He’s glad to go home and see his wife, but he wishes it weren’t so soon. Chris says that he’ll call Trump on Monday morning and ask if he can be part of the organization. Yeah, that’s the best thing to do after you fail a job interview – call and beg for a job.

Blah, blah, great opportunity, everyone says this. Chris appreciates the comments he got from Trump, Carolyn, and George. He doesn’t think Markus will last. He gives his boat metaphor. Chris thinks that Markus could talk himself to sleep. Okay, that’s funny. He claims that he does like Markus. He’s made some good friends, including Josh, Randal, and James, and he liked the women. He wishes good luck to everyone.

In Chris’ exit interview, he says basically what Melissa said last week about thinking that he is qualified to be the apprentice because he thinks he has all of the qualities Trump is looking for. He learned a lot of those qualities from athletics and became successful at a young age. On the Lamborghini task, Chris thinks that his strength of trying to outwork everyone was evident. Okay, except… YOU LOST! Gosh! Chris says that he likes to take control and be in charge of everything. However, executives have to let go sometimes. He thinks that they lost because they didn’t “keep it simple, stupid.” No, you lost because your ad sucked and the women’s was better. However, he says that “any PR is good PR,” and people would look at their ad because they would want to figure out why the I in “Italian” was small.

Chris says that he and Mark both made mistakes; he couldn’t completely blame Mark, so he turned the blame to Markus. Yeah, that makes sense. The more Chris talks, the more I think he’s an idiot. With an uppercase I. He marginalized Markus because he couldn’t risk the team’s success on giving Markus a lot of responsibility. Markus was the weak link, so Chris brought him to the boardroom hoping that Trump would see that. If he’d brought Mark, things might have turned out differently. No kidding, Chris. Did you just realize that now?

Chris thinks that he’s a better businessman than Markus. Shocker! He wants to spin his loss into a victory. I’m not sure how he’s planning to do that, but good luck. He says that the 18 candidates were like “monkeys in a cage” (fortunately, he doesn’t say that he was the alpha male) and they could either hate each other or love each other. He managed to become friends with everyone, including Markus. Chris wants people to know that he’s strong-willed, driven, successful (except that he LOST!), and honest. He made the honest choice to bring Markus to the boardroom because he wanted to put his team first.

Next week: Why is Jen W. doing push-ups for a grandpa?

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Jenn Brasler is an Associate Editor of Reality News Online and an aspiring writer from Falls Church, VA. You can e-mail her at luckyjenn@hotmail.com. She’s going to try to stop channeling Napoleon Dynamite now.

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