The Apprentice 2: Why Kevin Lost

Kevin was good enough to make it to the Final Four. He had a 2-0 record as a project manager, though he did have a few negatives come up in recent weeks. But after going through four interviews and a short portion of a Boardroom session, Trump sent him packing. Surely it can’t be something as simple as too much schooling, can it? Let’s find out as we look at why Kevin lost.

This week’s columns are a bit different than the usual ones, because so much of the two contestants’ firings are based purely on interviews or what might have been going on in Donald Trump’s head. For example, some people have said Trump fired Kevin because he didn’t want it to look like a repeat of the Bill/Kwame finale from last season. Hopefully, this is not the case, and we’re going to treat it as much like a usual firing as possible. That means we will look back at What ‘Apprentice 2’ Applicants Should Have Learned to see where Kevin went wrong, not just in the interviews, but in other challenges as well.

The first rule, of course, says to show leadership. As mentioned, Kevin did have a winning record of 2-0. However, Sandy went 2-0 as well and Kelly went 3-0. The only one with a lower record was Jen, at 1-0. Nobody was left with a single digit in the loss column from being a Project Manager.

So how did Kevin show that leadership? The two projects he won were Crest and Levi’s. The Crest challenge was based off of a slimmed-down version of Andy’s cash prize giveaway idea plus circus performers – and we’re not really sure who thought of those. But the fact is that it didn’t matter because Mosaic won by default when Maria overspent Apex’s budget. It’s hard to give Kevin a lot of credit for that one.

The Levi’s campaign was really driven by Ivana, who came up with the fit wheel idea. However, Kevin did channel that energy well and focused the group. Still, I wouldn’t exactly call it a stunning piece of leadership, especially since the opposing combination of Maria and Wes pretty well self-destructed. Hmmm, maybe that’s Kevin’s secret to leadership – make sure Maria is handling details on the other team.

One thing Kevin also did on the Levi’s task was a large part of the presentation. Unfortunately, he was sweating profusely during the entire time he was talking. In other words, he was unable to stay cool under fire.

However, that was but one time out of many. In several other cases, he showed that he could indeed stay calm and focused, such as when he had to help Elizabeth avoid a coup. Still, I have to wonder if one highly-sweaty moment might not have stuck in Trump’s mind. (Before anybody e-mails me, Trump was not there for the actual presentation, but I am sure he heard about it or saw the tapes.)

If that’s the way he behaved in front of the Levi’s judges, I have to wonder if there wasn’t also some of that in the interviews, which were designed to cause stress. Kevin needed to have good answers to questions about his college, but from what we saw, I wouldn’t rate them very highly. For example, when he was asked if he was going to be a lawyer, since he’s in law school, he said no. Um. Then why are you in law school, Kevin? Contrast this to the way Kelly seemed calm and prepared when he was asked why he had worked for so many companies in a short time.

The third rule says to have a backbone. Here, Kevin did fine, standing up for himself both on tasks and in the Boardroom. Looking once again at the NYPD ad challenge, when Elizabeth had become a spineless mess, Kevin helped her as much as he could and then stood up and said he wasn’t going to take it anymore.

Sometimes, he had a little too much backbone, such as in the M&Ms challenge. He took charge without consulting Ivana. He told the candy makers what to do, and then later decided on his own to lower their price. Sure, Ivana should have reined him in, but he never should have forced her into that position.

Fourth we have a rule that says you can’t be one-dimensional. For Kevin, we are going to look at this rule a little differently than usual. Kevin did show that he had a variety of skills, but one thing he didn’t have was real-world experience. He had gone to school. A lot. But the interviewers and, eventually, Trump didn’t see that as enough.

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here for a moment. Many people have complained that Trump knew what Kevin’s résumé looked like coming into the show, so it shouldn’t have played a role only when Kevin got to the Final Four. I agree. I similarly have a problem with criticizing Sandy for lack of corporate experience or Andy for his age. All of these factors were in evidence before the show ever began, so why bother to cast them as contestants if they never had a chance? The answer, I think, is that although some candidates may face larger obstacles, they all have a chance. Kevin had to prove that he could handle leadership and working outside of school. Unfortunately, as we have already discussed, he did not exactly wow people. If he had, he likely would have stayed despite his lack of job experience.

Getting back to our regularly-scheduled review, the fifth rule says to be loyal. Kevin showed a good amount of loyalty to Ivana when they both agreed not to go after one another in the Boardroom the previous week. However, he still managed to debate well and show himself to be the better contestant. Frankly, though, loyalty (or lack thereof) didn’t have much to do with his firing.

The sixth rule is pretty much left by the side of the road when it comes to the interviews. There are no game plans and nobody to blame, so there is no hand to show before the Boardroom.

So we’ll move on to the seventh rule, playing well with others. Kevin did a good job of this, getting along with the various odd personalities we saw along the way. As mentioned already, he even stayed up late into the night to help Elizabeth with the NYPD ad, and did what he could to support her in the face of her total lack of leadership.

The eighth rule says to focus on the long-term. Unlike some people (like, say, Ivana), Kevin did not do anything to create big problems later just because he thought he might lose the task at hand. He played significant roles in some of his team’s losses, such as setting the pricing in the fashion line task and recommending the contractor in the home remodeling challenge, but he managed to keep himself in the game nevertheless.

One place Kevin failed was in his thinking process; that is to say, he was not really shown to be an outside-the-box kind of guy, and thus didn’t succeed with the ninth rule. Many of the things Kevin did were smart, but I can’t think of one that was really a homerun swing.

The tenth rule is simply to use common sense. Sometimes, Kevin failed at this – such as when he decided on his own to cut the price of M&M candy bars. Mostly, though, Kevin had a fairly decent head on his shoulders. However, in the end he needed to use a bit of that common sense to anticipate what the interviewers would ask him and find a way to account for it. Maybe he did anticipate it – we can’t be sure; but we do know he was not able to allay their fears.

Kevin had a strike against him going into The Apprentice 2 because he had a lot of schooling and a very little real world experience. In order to overcome that issue, Kevin had 13 game weeks to convince Trump that he was the person who should be the next Apprentice. Kevin won both times he was Project Manager, but both of those wins could have as easily been attributed to problems on the opposing team. And when he wasn’t Project Manager he did not show an excess of sought-after skills.

To use a baseball analogy, Kevin was no MVP. He had some hits, he had some strikeouts, and he dropped the ball a few times. But Kevin was missing the clutch homerun that would send his team to the playoffs. He never hit the ball out of the park. Being a decent player – in baseball or The Apprentice – might get you near where you want to be, but it won’t get you a job as clean-up hitter, or as Donald Trump’s Apprentice. That is why Kevin lost.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other Apprentice 2 Episode 9 articles:

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

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