For all of its many quirks and faults, I’ve always enjoyed the Apprentice franchise (even the short-lived Martha Stewart era, I’ll admit!).
And this season of Celebrity Apprentice was an entertaining one, proving out Mark Burnett and company’s superior casting prowess once again. While Nene Leakes versus Star Jones was classic cat fighting-meets-reality television train wreck theater (as was Gary Busey versus Meatloaf, to be fair), I was particularly impressed by the talented and passionate celebs brought into the gauntlet this season to compete for their respective charities.
The quartet of musicians on the guys’ team – Lil Jon, Meatloaf, Mark McGrath, and eventual winner John Rich – were particularly impressive. Finalist Marlee Matlin and Star Jones stood out on the women’s’ side, though the latter was often insufferable.
This is all to say that I was engaged with the season, and I was interested to learn who the winner would be. Even the finale, which featured the likes of Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and Geoffrey Holder (the old school dude from those ‘70s “uncola” 7 Up commercials), and the Harlem Globetrotters, was much more interesting than usual.
So now we’re at the end of the finale, which has actually spanned three hours of television over two weeks at this point. Donald Trump gives his very general thoughts on each and goes on about what a difficult decision that it was.
Finally, John Rich was announced as the winner, though Trump through me off in saying that he’s “going to do it a little differently this time” (I thought perhaps he was going to declare both Rich and Matlin as co-winners).
Then what happened? What happened is what always happens: we cut to streamers and confetti and credits immediately, with the season going to black a few short seasons later.
Even thought this happens every season, it never fails to surprise me, and even insults me in some small way, I must admit. Why not spend a minute or two interviewing John Rich about how he feels about winning, and check in with Matlin while we’re at it? While this may not prove to be the most fascinating bit of television in history, isn’t it somewhat unfair to deprive an audience who has spend some baker’s dozen of hours watching this competition of some tiny moment with the person who has just been declared the winner? Perhaps we’d see a winner who was overly smug in victory (we’ll never know in Piers Morgan’s case, though we can certainly imagine), a memorable line from a person who has been in the spotlight for decades (Joan Rivers), and so on. And wouldn’t it be interesting to get some small glimpse of how well or poorly the losing finalist took the news.
Other live reality/competition finales do this as well, and Hell’s Kitchen comes immediately to mind. I know that they could budget a few minutes for post-winner interviews if they wanted to, so there much be another reason. The cynical side of me says this is because the producers want to hold the audience in front of the television and in suspense until the last possible second. Why, though? So there will be more of a “lead in” for commercials that end the hour? Or is it simply to maximize ratings, figuring that many people will shut off the set the moment the winner is announced? I’d really love to hear different opinions about this, quite frankly.
The Survivor model is far superior in my view. The final vote by the jury is held at the very beginning of the “reunion” episode, which immediately follows the two-hour finale. So, sure, there is absolutely the same cynical backdrop here – holding viewers into the next hour – but we then have a full hour where we get the winner on stage with Jeff Probst on hand to bring the entire season to a close properly. There’s some bloat during a long night of Survivor action, but really this is a much more fulfilling way to end a season of a competition-based reality television show.
Video: Celebrity Apprentice, “Sweet Victory”
Watch the finale in full from Hulu, while available:
