For several years, we have been without a non-celebrity edition of The Apprentice. By some, that has been lamented. Of course, with the numbers being what they were for the regular edition, The Celebrity Apprentice helped extended the life of the franchise and probably allowed for the new edition of The Apprentice we're getting this season to exist. The ratings for the regular Apprentice the last time it appeared were just not good enough to keep the whole thing afloat.
As for this new season, was it nice to see the show back last night? I think so. It was fun, but I do believe that the recession theme was a little overplayed. I think by now we all know that the last few years haven't been terribly easy economically speaking, but to attempt to focus on how all the candidates have been hurt terribly by the recession was… well… done in typically overly bombastic Trump-style. Certainly in two of the stories we heard from the 
women's team, the recession seemed to have a minimal effect on their lives. One candidate said that she had several job offers when she started looking, but they weren't perfect. She did take one, but thought she deserved more. Another candidate was fresh out of grad school. Grad school, while certainly beneficial, doesn't – even in the best of economies – mean that you're going to find a job immediately, so I'm not sure why she felt so hurt by it all.
Beyond that, it seemed to me that when you have some silly people on the show – and there are silly people on the show this season – you're undercutting your recession edition message. It makes for good television to have some less than great candidates because they add drama, but it takes about 30 seconds to look at some of these "recession" candidates and realize that they ought not even be hired in good times. I don't think the show wanted to send that message, but they unquestionably did with their selections.
Oh, there was definitely good too. Most notably, it was nice to see that the contestants had to do a real tasks with lots of moving parts. The celebrity version of the show has never been very good at creating difficult tasks – the celebs have had to work, never of the quantity or difficulty that regular contestants have faced.
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