
Celebrity Apprentice: Annie was robbed
News, Media ·Monday May 11, 2009 @ 00:14 EDT (link)
Honestly, did the audience, judges, and Trump not watch the show? Let facts be submitted to a candid world!
- Annie never lost her cool in the boardroom, while Joan flung personal insults all the time, e.g. "Would spit and drown her mother in it" "Worse than Hitler" and accused her poker-playing friends of being "mafia".
- Joan absolutely caused the designer to quit. She badgered him and brought in her own expert until he left and refused to work with Celebrity Apprentice, which left Annie hanging since his company was doing both sides of the hall. While it was unprofessional of him to quit, Joan's actions definitely drove him to it.
- Outside the boardroom, Joan was much worse behaved than Annie. She held a grudge; Annie did not. Annie tried to reconcile with her in the last show; Joan refused to talk. She badmouthed Annie and her profession ("trash") whenever she had a chance. Annie only ever had a few insults outside the boardroom ("I hope she dies" is about as bad as she got, and that immediately after a "Joan-caused disaster"). In business, it's important to be under control; Joan was not.
- As everyone admitted, Annie was far more intelligent than Joan. Intelligence is a great asset in a business.
- You can't claim Annie wasn't personable: look at all the friends she had and how many were willing to donate money for her charity. Joan, for all her age and experience in the business, could only come up with about one third of the money Annie raised.
- Presumably Joan is some sort of New York City icon: that explains the indiscriminate adoration of the crowd; it doesn't explain Trump and the other judges.
- Annie won on the objective categories: she had signs for her charity and, as mentioned, raised three times the money. On the fuzzy, fudgable criteria, Joan won, which looks a bit biased from here. (I initially thought there were just four, and Trump was giving two points to each to draw out the final decision, which would have been dodgy but understandable.)
In all, given how well she did as a project manager, in remaining professional in the face of a catty mother-daughter team, and in fund-raising throughout the show, Annie should have been the Celebrity Apprentice, and only preconceived bias would say otherwise. I thought Trump was better than that.