The Apprentice Twins

So many shows, so little time. Even though I got to watch a lot of shows this weekend, there are still some left that I haven’t watched. And before you go on thinking that all I do is watch TV, I did plenty of other things this weekend. I saw Nathan twice; I cleaned, went to church, went looking for a chest, and hung out with my friends…so I do have a life. SO THERE.

But I did watch some excellent TV this weekend. Let start off with The Apprentice Martha Stewart and the Trump Apprentice.

First of all, Mark Burnett is pushing Apprentice Burnout if he is going to continue with this marathon. They were already pushing it airing 2 seasons in one year…and now two different Apprentices back to back? We are bordering on overdoing it.

Now I have read reviews that say Martha was better. She is a trained TV professional. She is better at being on camera. While, that may be true, the show itself needs some work.

The main problem with the Martha show is that the Apprentice is tailor-made for Donald Trump. Everything from the editing to the music to the way the door closed all represented the over-dramatic, powerful persona of Donald Trump. It seems like all they did to the Martha show was take the Trumpster’s show and put a different name on it.

The show could be good….really good. You have Martha Stewart, comeback kid, the golden boy Mark Burnett, and a proven formula. But really the problem all comes down to style.

The style of the Apprentice really fits Trump, not Martha. Martha, despite what the media, movies, and former employee might say, has a nice, sweet, homemaker persona. And that is what she portrays on the show. But the show itself still acts like it is working the bite of the Trumpster.

All of the great, dramatic pauses and shots that make the Apprentice what it is fall flat on Martha. Her “The losing team will come back to the conference room and so one will…be asked to leave” is not nearly as affective as “Somebody will be fired.” And even though the “you just don’t fit in” is a great back handed insult, it doesn’t have as much dramatic bite as “you’re fired.”

For the Martha Apprentice to work, the producers are going to have to reexamine who Martha Stewart is. What she wants to portray. The shows are like twins that wear the same clothes, but are actually as different as night and day. Tailor the show to her. She did just get out of jail, but she deserves better than to be treated like a Trump clone.