Back to "The Apprentice"

"The Apprentice" was my favorite show. I was crazy about it. Imagine some of the most successful people. Boasting degrees from world famous schools. Managing multi-million dollar operations and many have net worth in millions, created from scratch. Never been to school entrepreneurs to scientists. Chosen from over a million applicants. But they are all human beings, hence fallible. Especially because all of them want the same thing. It is like civilized version of death tournaments.

But around more than a year and a half back I decided to get rid of cable at home. And for some reason I totally forgot about this series and never downloaded any episodes. Totally randomly, I recalled about it couple of days back and started downloading season five.

I watched first two episodes last night. As soon as one guy mentioned Mensa as one of his achievements, I was laughing. Well, I have my reasons. But I had a feeling that this dude won't last for long. Because of him being a "Mensa" member, Trump chose him to take the lead for the first task. Tarek. That was his name. Rival team had one Harvard graduate lady as project manager.

This is good time to mention Brent. This guy was chosen last when teams were getting picked. Purely because of genetics playing role. He is fat and do not look remotely like other contestants. It is apparent that he reached where he is by lots of hard work and will power. Eugenics anyone? Because of some reasons his teammates never respected him. I would say at no fault of his.

In the first task, Tarek's team lost but not because of his actions but rather decision to not act by one lady in his team. It was apparent that she be fired. Until, Tarek made some really bad decisions. The one that shocked me was him confronting Lee (youngest but strong contestant from morals perspective) that he should not mention Tarek's failure to not guide above lady in the boardroom. In the boardroom, Tarek brought three candidates back including Lee(which was ridiculous), lady in question and one guy who's inaction was justifiable. Tarek was about to get fired because of his own insecurities but unthinkable happened. This lady just couldn't resist keeping silence and Trump fired her and shouted at Tarek "she saved your ass by her own stupidity".

Second task, Lee was leader for his team and Peppy was leader of other team with Brent. Peppy's team fell apart because other members could not keep their peace with Brent and Peppy was a horrible leader. Lee won. Although more credit goes to Lenny. Who in my opinion understood task better. Peppy's team lost very badly. He was fired with a defense attorney who accused Brent of threatening her.

Both Peppy and Tarek made me think how the hell have they reached where they are?

How do you actually define success? and
Are the right people actually at the right places?