The Apprentice

The Apprentice - 215,000 applicants, 16 shortlisted contestants, featuring in 15 episodes, 1 getting fired every week, finally 1 getting hired. Whoever wins the Apprentice gets a chance to run one of Donald Trump's companies and to make enough money for 2 generations. The 15 episode Business reality show aired on NBC every Thursday @ 8 P.M CST, features Donald Trump assigning tasks ranging from selling a lemonade to renting Marquis jet for a day. One task very week leading to the poor performer (1 every week) getting fired. The performance was judged based on inputs from rest of the team mates but the decision on who to fire was solely made by Trump. All the episodes were packed with action and real drama. I don't know how much of it was edited/censored. The final episode aired today live on NBC. It was indeed a tough decision. The competition was tight between the two final contestants - Bill Rancic, a Chicago entrepreneur and Kwame Jackson, an investment banker who worked for Goldman Sachs. They quit their high profile jobs to participate in the TV show least knowing what was in store for them.

The Apprentice is Bill. He heard the words "You're hired". The final episode didn't have the trademark words "You're fired". Bill is the apprentice now, with a lucrative salary of $250,000. For a while I thought Kwame would get hired. Kwame's laid-back attitude under high pressure and good performance despite a not-so-good team as Bill's appealed to me. He never once showed signs of tension or nervousness. He also did not get to the nerves of his people by checking on whether the job is done or not every 10 mins. As George said, these are traits that come handy in the long run . Perhaps the biggest factor that got him fired was his faith in Omarosa. It is really surprising that given a choice of people one would have chosen Omarosa and Heidi. Kwame's choice of his team members costed him the job. Bill was smart enough to have chosen ALL the best people - Nick, Amy and Katrina - all of whom were recently fired.

Bill's performance was good as always but as his teammates said he was getting on to their nerves by following up on everything too frequently - it was probably the pressure to perform well.

Once Bill was hired, he was asked to choose between two amazing offers. He had 3 minutes to make the decision. The first one was to supervise the operations of Trump International Hotel that would rise where Chicago-Sun times stands today, thus redefining the Chicago skyline. The second was to oversee operations of a Golf Course in LA. Both were (supposedly) equally challenging but as on would expect Bill made the obvious choice of staying @ Chicago with the Trump International Hotel. Last August, when I first read about this project there was a mention that the initial plans (before 2001) were for 107 floors making it among the tallest buildings in the world. However for obvious reasons, it wouldn't stand so tall now.
NBC.com web site is probably experiencing high traffic now after the "The Apprentice" show is over as the response time is significantly high.

Added this section on 04/17/04
The Other side of "The Apprentice":
BBC's view
Views of a blogger

In other news, in exactly 2 weeks from now, dad would be here.