Thursday , March 28 2024
Really, an Ivanka-based task? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

The Celebrity Apprentice and Nepotism

How quickly things change. Last week on The Celebrity Apprentice, Joan and Clint were at each others’ throats. This week, they weren’t quiet friends, but they worked together on the task. Joan had a good idea about including the celebs’ faces on the display they were building, but only Clint realized that it would require rejiggering of the size of their display. They may have been in different places when they were figuring it out, but figure it out they did and neither yelled at the other and refused to listen when the other spoke. See, the two can work together, even if they smiled at one another through clenched teeth later in the boardroom.

I actually thought that, despite their working together one of them would end up going home, that the other team, Athena, had an advantage going into the boardroom. Athena used the CEO’s picture in their display, carrying over what the company, LifeLock, had already established as their advertising campaign. The LifeLock execs even seemed happy earlier with the idea of just expanding the current advertising ideas they were working with.

So, to me, it seemed that fitting in with the LifeLock brand was a good thing for Athena. The execs disagreed, they apparently wanted different and went with Kotu. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised — Kotu had not one, not two, not three, but four celebrity endorsements on their display, but it absolutely went against what the LifeLock folks initially said they wanted.

If you're keeping track, this sort of thing has now happened two weeks in a row. Last week, All was way off on what they wanted from the teams by asking for a viral video when they really wanted a minute long commercial and now this week LifeLock was less than accurate about the parameters as well. To me, that's distressing. I don't know whether the executives just have no idea what they're looking for in advance or if they don't care what they get as a result because simply having the product on the show is enough for them. Neither of those seems like a really good answer, does it?

I think I know what you want me to say next though, and I absolutely will — the worst thing about last night's episode wasn't LifeLock not knowing what they wanted, it was the second task which smacked of nepotism. The teams were tasked with running a charity auction featuring Ivanka's jewelry. Hmm… I can't imagine why the Ivanka Trump-based task got split over the course of two episodes which will give it nearly three hours of screen time, can you? It certainly couldn't have anything to do with Ivanka being on the show and being Donald's daughter, now could it? No. Certainly not, that's not the kind of thing anyone would organize to highlight their daughter's other interests, is it?

Oh no, wait, it totally is, isn't it? That's the exact sort of thing we ought to have expected. It doesn't make it any less disappointing, but it was completely to be expected. Clearly there are some perks being Trump's daughter and this is just one of them.

I'd like to think that if I had a TV show I wouldn't act in the same manner, but let's be honest, we probably all would to a greater or lesser extent.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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