The Apprentice

[grrrr]

Don't forget that these tasks are designed to be basically impossible. For the majority of the public, watching two teams come up with some sensible ideas (on whatever subject matter) and then executing them successfully will be downright boring.

Where The Apprentice excels is in creating challenges which will ultimately lead to the contestants fighting between each other, which makes good TV.

For example, take any task where the team has to design a product and develop the marketing - the two 'subteams' will work in almost total isolation at the same time, which would literally never happen in a real business. Of course the marketing materials and the product aren't quite going to tally, if you've got no idea what the final product looks like.

Also, they have nearly no time to brainstorm and develop their ideas, and the schedule is brutal - though it looks like the process takes place over many weeks, it's actually a matter of days. The contributors are running on empty the whole time, so it's no surprise that they come up with terrible ideas.

Some scenes are probably set up or filmed several times from different angles to make good viewing.

The only scenes they do any re-shoots for are the piece-to-camera comments from the contributors, and the reaction shots from Karen and Claude. They wouldn't re-shoot any interaction between the contributors, due to a lack of time as much as anything else.

 

[Funcone]

I think you’re being rather cynical 'grrrr'. I mean, what could be difficult about designing a roller coaster in a day when you’ve got no absolutely engineering skills and haven’t been to any theme parks? John Wardley once said in an interview that he designed most of his roller coasters on scraps of toilet paper while sitting on the toilet. Incidentally, Nemesis was originally going to have six loops, but then he got to the end of his poo and had to finish his design quickly, because someone else was banging on the door. “John, have you finished yet?”, “Yeah, I’m just wiping”.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a completely legitimate business documentary. In it, we can all learn from the best entrepreneurs, who are shown in the best possible light while performing perfectly realistic business tasks. The only thing I thought was a bit disappointing, is none of them mentioned having a green screen photo opportunity in the queue line. Any half decent real theme park would definitely have one of them.

 

[RoyJess]

The show episode was just an elaborate rollercoaster tycoon task.

I think the criticism was the fact that the concepts were nothing new or anything special.

At least they could have put in the washing machine feature