The Apprentice 3 Special: Recapping the Recap

Before I start this week’s recap, I’d like to thank all of you who emailed me last week with your support after I broke up with my imaginary boyfriend John. Don’t worry about me, dear readers – an imaginary TV boyfriend is not that hard to get over, and as the song goes, my heart will go on. I’ve been coping with it by eating imaginary ice cream and singing “I Will Survive” with my imaginary girlfriends.

And now, welcome to the once-a-season Apprentice clip show. In this episode, we review what’s been happening for the first nine weeks, but also get to see never before seen footage, interviews with the fired candidates, and the occasional insight from Donald Trump himself. I’m going to highlight the things we haven’t seen already. If you really want to review everything that happened so far this season, might I recommend reading all of my old recaps on the archives?

Donald Trump, in a voiceover, reviews the application process for the candidates. We see Tara standing in line for her interview, Alex taking a written test, and an exhausted Angie saying that her interview with the producers was “not easy.” All of the candidates sent in tapes, and we see a bit of Angie’s. She’s standing in front of a whiteboard with the three reasons she should be on the show – she’s a single mom, a “helluva business woman,” and very creative. Next we see a bit of Brian in a pinstriped suit taking about how Trump needs him, then Michael calling himself “a sexy moneymaking machine.” Man, Michael had some self confidence, didn’t he? Finally, we see Danny, clad in a pink polyester leisure suit, doing a song and dance number (literally) about why he wants to be The Apprentice. If I worked with Danny, I’d think he was fun for about a day and a half, then he’d annoy the life out of me.

Nine candidates remain, and Trump tells us a little bit about each. For example, I had no idea Erin had a fiancé serving in the Marines. Alex grew up on an apple farm. Tana is one of the top Mary Kay saleswomen in the country. Craig has four daughters and is a part-time firefighter. Kendra founded her own real estate company. Bren specializes in narcotics prosecution. Angie sold her house to start a Curves for Women franchise. Chris is a self-made millionaire, which is impressive considering how young he is. Stephanie is an expert negotiator, which means you’d think she’d have done better in shutting down my ex-boyfriend John in negotiating good packages for the charity auctions last week.

We start with the first episode and the Burger King challenge. Net Worth begins by watching training DVDs and learning how to put together burgers. Chris says it was easy to learn… as we watch Brian mess up. Angie says in an interview that if this whole Trump thing doesn’t work out, she could always go to Burger King. Fans of the movie Waiting for Guffman recall Parker Posey saying, “There’s always a place for me at the DQ.” John and Tana load balloon into the van. Tana has a weird technique that results in their losing all of the balloons. At Magna, as you may recall, Project Manager Todd was pretty hands off, the team couldn’t handle the lunch rush, and Todd was fired. In an interview, Todd says he was disappointed to be the first to go, and prefers to think that he came in 18th of all of the people who applied to be on the show.

Our next stop on memory lane was the motel task, where Trump says Brian made a big mistake right away by buying new toilets. At Magna, Erin and Verna clash over whether or not Verna can give Erin some cash without their project manager’s specific approval. In an interview, Erin says Verna just slowed her down.

Meanwhile, Bren and Danny go out to get furniture. Bren is impressed because Kendra found a place they could get all of the furniture they needed - $13,000 worth of stuff – for only $7,000. That will add fuel to the fire of all of you who’ve been emailing me predicting Kendra will win. However, the place is two hours away, and Bren and Danny get lost. As they wander around the mid-Atlantic region, they talk about how lousy their project manager Michael is. For just $3,000, they could have had the furniture delivered, but Michael, who still didn’t have a budget, said it was too expensive.

Net Worth loses the task, and Chris completely loses his cool in the boardroom, yelling at Angie for criticizing him about whether or not he could do renovations. None the less, Brian is fired. In an interview, Brian says Trump should hire him back. I don’t see that happening. Now for some interesting new stuff – the story behind Chris’s big blow-up at Angie in the boardroom. His reaction seemed really out of whack to many of us watching this the first time, so it’s interesting to know the story behind this. After the boardroom, Angie tells some teammates that she was freaked out by his short fuse. Chris overhears them talking and explains that he was mad because Angie didn’t tell him ahead of time that she’d be critical of that. Oh, come on – she is under no obligation to show you her cards. Angie says that Chris has a real temper, and he apologizes for blowing up. She then apologizes for not warning him in advance. The two of them hug on it, but things aren’t completely resolved. Chris is still insulted that Angie didn’t talk to him beforehand, and Angie is still a little afraid of Chris’s temper.

Verna, meanwhile, is cracking under pressure. Danny wants to be sensitive to her problems, but the rest of the team doesn’t agree. Stephanie suspects that she’s just trying to get out of the work. Erin says that the rest of the team is physically sick too, but this is the time to work through it. Michael says that not everyone can handle the pressure. In the end, Verna quits, but Trump meets her the next day. She tells him that she wanted to show him how great she could be, but it was harder than she thought.

In the next task – Nescafe – Danny frustrates his team by being slow to make decisions. But after the task is over, he tries to cheer them up by singing songs from “Magna: The Musical.” The rest of the team smiles, but I bet inside they’re thinking, “I can’t wait until Trump fires you so I don’t have to listen to this crap anymore.” Danny, as you recall, does get fired, and to the surprise of no one, sings in his post-show interview about how he’ll grow from the experience. Bye, Danny. Please don’t bring your guitar to the finale.

The next task is the commercial for Dove body wash. Magna comes up with the cucumber porn commercial, and really, the team should have known it wasn’t the best idea when it came time to explain the concept to Carolyn. Kendra starts, and stammers all over the place because she’s so embarrassed. Michael tries to step in, and Carolyn looks shocked and horrified by the idea. Indeed, she says it’s a terrible idea. In the end, no one wins, but Kristen is the biggest loser of all and gets fired. In an interview, she says she thought she was doing well, but apparently not.

In the Airstream trailer task, we learn that Audrey was in charge of the money, and through an accounting error, lost $71. Tana says that she did all of the math by hand in long columns on a piece of paper. We already know that Michael had a hard time selling massages, but we learn that Stephanie did, too. She tries to hustle people on the street, and when they say no, her response is, “Aw, come on!” Bren says that her selling was more like whining and begging. Stephanie, he says, is a detriment to the team, whereas Michael, for all his laziness, basically doesn’t affect the team at all.

After Magna loses, the team plots against Stephanie. Erin says all she does is cover her own butt. Kendra would prefer lazy Michael to negative Stephanie. Bren says in an interview that during the Apprentice process, he has started smoking again for the first time in years, which says a lot about the level of stress he’s under. Despite the team’s efforts to ditch Stephanie, Michael is fired. In his final interview, he says that his team ganged up on him. Considering that they ganged up on Stephanie, I’m not sure how right he is.

We don’t get to see much new in the graffiti task, just that Bren looks absolutely silly in the white suit that protects his clothes from the paint. Tara gets fired, and in an interview, says she conducted herself well, but that there’s always room for improvement.

In the mini golf task, Audrey over-delegates and doesn’t take ownership of anything. But at Magna, we learn that Erin and Kendra are clashing. Erin thinks Kendra micromanages, and Kendra seems equally frustrated by Erin. Audrey gets fired, and in an interview, says that she really admires Donald Trump and has what it takes to work for him.

Next, the teams re-shuffle. Kendra sends Stephanie and Erin over to Net Worth. Then, when Trump asks Chris who he’d like to get rid of , he tries to send Stephanie back. Too funny! He ends up sending over Craig and Tana. Later, in the suite, Tana tries to further the re-shuffle. She wants Erin to move her bedroom to the other side of the suite so she’s with Net Worth and Tana can be with Magna. Erin says no, and in an interview says she thinks Magna is secretly trying to get rid of her and Stephanie but won’t tell her directly. Regardless, she’s not moving.

My ex-boyfriend John tries to dominate the negotiations in the charity task and pitches the same idea to every celebrity. Gene Simmons agrees to appear on Net Worth’s show, and Stephanie fawns over him and asks to see his famous long tongue. He complies and acts predictably skeevy. John is fired for messing up the negotiations. In an interview, he says that he played with honesty and integrity. He probably also says how much he cherishes the time we had together and that it’s better to have loved and lost and all of that.

Nine candidates remain. Who will be the next Apprentice? Well, that’s up in the air right now, since early front runner John is now out of the picture. Several people emailed me to say that they think it will be Kendra. I don’t see that happening. Although Kendra has been great in the past few episodes, before that we hardly saw her at all. I think that if she were in the final two, we’d have seen more of her in the editing. I have my eye on Alex, Erin, Tana, and Angie. Once we get down to the final four, I promise to write up a full analysis and my prediction of who will win. Read it, my friends – I correctly predicted both Bill and Kelly would take the title.

Next week, the teams do a Home Depot related task for a “great reward.” And who would sass Donald Trump? Speculation at RNO Manor is that it will be either Chris or Craig. That’s possible… but it might also be the negative Stephanie. We’ll find out on Thursday! Oh, and make a note – the show starts half an hour early so that NBC can premiere the American version of The Office. I don’t know if the show will be any good, but I can say that the BBC version of the show is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Betsy Wasser is the Associate Editor of Reality News Online. There is no Betsy Lesson of the Week this time around because there was no Trump Lesson of the Week. You can email her with your comments at betsyw42@hotmail.com

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