The Apprentice 4: Why Rebecca Lost

The sixth rule tells players to focus on the long-term. Since this was the final task, it didn’t apply so much. However, the seventh rule – understanding the challenge – did. As already mentioned above, Trump & Co. didn’t seem to think Rebecca fully understood the challenge. She did everything to impress the Yahoo execs, but the charity was relegated to the back seat. She had one banner for the charity compared to what seemed to be dozens for Yahoo, plus the whole party being Yahoo-themed. She could have found room for more charity information, logos, etc. Sure, she had the spokesman for the charity speak, but again, it was just that once and not woven into the very fabric of the event like Randal did with his.

I have to wonder if the point of the task was ever fully explained, though. Who was running the show? It seemed to be Yahoo. This was not just a general charity event like Randal’s was. This was specifically an event tailored to impress Yahoo’s VIPs and clients. I can certainly understand that they didn’t want them hit up at the party. If it was supposed to be a general charity event, then obviously the Yahoo execs didn’t know that either, so I can’t fault Rebecca too much! Plus, we have no idea how much money actually was raised because we were not informed how many people sent back donations in the envelopes provided.

The eighth rule tells applicants to be creative, but not insane. Rebecca showed a great amount of creativity in theming the whole party towards Yahoo. Purple and white everywhere, Yahootinis, glowing purple ice cubes – you name it, she had it. As George said, she didn’t miss a trick.

Ninth is to not be one-dimensional. I think Rebecca proved to everybody that she has many, many talents. She can lead, she can be creative, she did whatever it took to move forward throughout the series and in the final task.

Finally we have the rule that says to use common sense. Some might say it should have been common sense to raise money at a charity event. As I’ve already described, I cannot agree with that. I think Rebecca made good use of common sense throughout the competition.

It seems I’ve said almost entirely good things about Rebecca – but she still lost. How can that be? We’ll go over more in “Why Randal Won,” but there are several reasons.

First, no matter what I think, Trump believed Rebecca muffed the whole point of the final task. He didn’t seem to hold it against her too much, but he definitely brought it up a few times. Second, while she does seem to be a good leader, Randal seems to be a great leader. Her 1-2 record could not compare to his 3-0 record. The comments of other applicants on the show overwhelmingly favored Randal as a leader in favor of Rebecca.

While I would argue that Rebecca is more creative than Randal and handled stress a bit better from what we saw, there is a reason that “Show Leadership” is the first rule. If Rebecca had not been matched up against Randal, I think she would have won. If she had been in season three, for example, I think Rebecca would have easily taken the Apprenticeship. But Rebecca’s leadership skills could not hold up to Randal’s. That is why Rebecca lost.

Normally, the “Lost” columns end with the above sentence. However, Rebecca had another chance to pull a pseudo-win out of this one. Donald Trump asked Randal if he thought Rebecca should be hired also. As we all know, Randal said no, there should only be one Apprentice. It’s hard to say exactly why he said it, though some have already surmised it was pure ego while others believe he simply was pointing out that in a game like The Apprentice, there should be only one winner. At this point, we don’t have enough information to explain fully why Rebecca lost the second chance.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our Apprentice 4 Finale recap:

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

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