Penultimate

Excellent second to last episode of The Apprentice tonight. I’m already looking forward to the next season, when competitors will know the format better. There wasn’t a lot of metagaming in this season, and that’s got to be partially due to the lack of information about the full rules. Next year, contestants will know that they’ll see their fired peers again, and they’ll know that they can keep allies on their team safe even when it gets down to three people per team. More important, they’ll be more confident about the twists.

I also enjoyed the interviews, and wouldn’t have minded watching more of them. There’s no question but that this episode demanded a completely different set of skills than previous contests. In particular, Amy’s lack of substance showed up in a big way. Given what Trump’s looking for, it’s going to be very clear who has no chance next year.

I liked Kwame’s tactic of hiring his old team, since they weren’t as ego-ridden as Versacorp. Most of Bill’s people were pretty clearly unhappy about losing. Of course, Omarosa’s screw-ups may have blown that tactic. Albeit… he picked second, so he was going to wind up with Omarosa no matter what. So the real question is whether giving Omarosa a little egoboo was worth not picking Nick. And I think it was; Nick was showing some serious attitude at Bill. So since Kwame was going to get Omarosa no matter what, he was smart to get Heidi over Nick.

Now, why Bill would choose both Nick and Amy is beyond me.