The Apprentice: Los Angeles – Why Carey Lost

Who wears short shorts? Carey wears short shorts. They’re such short shorts, he likes short shorts! With apologies to The Royal Teens, we have to wonder – is Carey’s affinity for short shorts the reason he was fired? Or was there more to it? Why did Carey lose?

We’ll answer that question by going through What ‘The Apprentice: Los Angeles’ Applicants Should Have Learned. “That question,” of course, is why he lost, not why he likes short shorts.

The first rule is to show leadership. Unfortunately, it’s not clear at all how Arrow ended up with Nicole as the new project manager after Frank was deposed last week, so we don’t know if Carey attempted to get the job.

However, what we do know is that Carey took on a leadership role by taking over the design of the men’s swimsuits. We also know that at the end of the Boardroom, Carey showed that he understood how important leadership is to winning The Apprentice. He was talking about how Michelle refused to contribute to the price discussion, and said if you want to be a leader, you need to be decisive.

We’ll go over decisiveness a bit more later, but one part of the first rule discusses taking a stand as a leader. “If you’re going to be blamed for a loss, make sure it’s a loss that you created.” This generally is meant for project managers, but it also applies here.

Unfortunately for Carey, the example used in the rule goes back to Kwame, who had some positives under his belt, so he wasn’t fired. This being only the second task, there was little else Trump could have looked at. And we also need to recognize the note that comes after that paragraph, which says, “when you take a risk, it needs to be an intelligent one. Tara in Season 3 failed to understand the point of the PS2/Graffiti challenge and led her team to defeat.” It’s actually quite similar here, but we’ll address that in more detail later.

The second rule tells players to stay cool under fire. Carey had no problems at all in that regard. He didn’t show any particular signs of stress and handled himself well.

So we’ll quickly move to the third rule, which says applicants need to have a backbone. Once again, Carey did well – in fact, he did too well. Carey was in charge of the men’s bathing suit line. He believed there existed a market for the very small pink men’s bathing suits. When he was questioned by his teammates, he insisted that he knew what he was talking about and stood up for himself. He continued to stand up for himself in the Boardroom, when questioned by Donald Trump on the same issues.

Fourth is the reminder that scheming and plotting doesn’t usually work. Carey did well yet again here, as he specifically told the others that he wasn’t going to spend time jockeying for position. And from what he saw, he didn’t.

Carey’s streak of “good job” characterizations extended to the fifth rule, which says to play well with others. The only person who he didn’t seem to get along with was Michelle – and nobody particularly appeared to like her!

It’s difficult for me to say how Carey did in terms of the sixth rule, focusing on the long-term. We just didn’t see enough of him. I can say that the Trumps reversed course from the previous week in this regard. Last week, they sent home Martin in part because Ivanka kept saying how he wouldn’t fit in with the company. This time, they focused on Carey losing the task for them and didn’t really talk about how he would do with the Trump operation.

But the seventh rule is where it all really fell apart for Carey. It says players need to understand the point of the challenge, and Carey pretty much admitted he didn’t. In the Boardroom, he told the Trumps that he wanted to cater to gay consumers, and he knew there was a market there for his products. But Ivanka correctly pointed out that the task wasn’t about catering to consumers, it was about catering to the buyers who were there, watching the show.

If this had been a different sort of task, where Carey could have tried to convince the buyers that this type of swimsuit had a market, it might have been different. But that wasn’t the case. Carey himself admitted that, in retrospect, he realized this. Unfortunately, realizing that you caused your team’s loss after it has already occurred is simply too late.

The eighth rule also comes into play here. It says to be creative, but not insane. Nobody could argue that Carey’s design was not creative. But it went too far – he liked it, but barely anybody else did. This was not a cutting-edge fashion show or Project Runway. He needed to provide items that were going to have immediate buyers.

Ninth is to not be one-dimensional. Carey seems like a bright guy who has a great future ahead of him. But he diverted his team down a path that led to sure loss. He called it taking a risk, but Trump rightly pointed out that some risks are worth it while others aren’t. This was not the type of leadership and creativity that Trump is looking for.

Part of the reason is that Carey simply did not use his common sense, thus violating the tenth rule. Just because he liked an idea didn’t mean it would sell. There are many things that I like, but that doesn’t mean there is a huge market for it (and no, a swimsuit like the one Carey designed would definitely not be among the things that I like!). Common sense has to dictate that a sales task needs to bring in sales, not try to change marketing perceptions.

In the end, that is really where Carey went wrong. He showed some good leadership skills and stood up for himself and his ideas without being a jerk about it. But he took his team down the path that led to loss. At the prices we heard tossed around, it appeared Arrow sold only about six men’s swimsuits. Six! That’s embarrassing. And it all occurred because Carey had his own ideas about what the swimsuits should look like, and allowed those personal thoughts to dictate his designs rather than aiming for high sales. His failure to truly understand the nature of the challenge meant his team is spending more time outside – but he isn’t there to share it with them, because it’s also why Carey lost.

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

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

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