Episode 15: Lee, you're fired!
Some high/lowlights of tonight's finale of The Apprentice:- Trump opens the episode asking the live audience who likes Lee? Mixture of cheers and boos. Who likes Sean? The crowd goes wild. And that's how the rest of the episode plays out.
- Lenny talks about Jamie Foxx who isn't participating in the event. Is he thinking of an offspring of Jamie Presley (My Name is Earl) and Michael J. Fox?
- Lys Hopper's jaw drops when Lee tells her that Lenny will handle the celebrities.
- Sean Yazbeck wants the Barenaked Ladies singer to wear a panda outfit.
- Jennifer of SLS Audio describes the Q Line home theater speaker system (available at BestBuy.com) to Tarek. He later dons a Q-Line hat for a high profile appearance.
- Gold Rush meets with Christine DiCarlo of The Leary Firefighters Foundation. Lee and his team are not prepared with the level of details she expects. Lenny tries to crack jokes to remedy the situation.
- Lenny assigns a size medium uniform to each hockey player.
- Jason Priestly enters Chelsea Piers and no one from Gold Rush greets him or escorts him.
- Lee Bienstock answers Mr. Trump's phone call, "How ya doin' pal?"
- Donald informs Lee that he'll be there shortly, but no one from Gold Rush meets him at the door. Trump recalls that Rebecca Jarvis made the same mistake last season.
- Best line of the night... Jamie Pressley to Lenny Veltman: "Your sh**'s not together, little apprentice boy!"
- At the end of the event, Lys reflects on Lee's performance, "He did a good job. I have a big smile."
- Don Jr., Ivanka, George and Carolyn each praise both candidates without expressing any preference. Politicians!
- Lenny tells Trump, "Lee is like gold. Gold can only appreciate in value."
- Donald reveals the two projects: hotel / condo developments in Hawaii and SoHo. Both Sean and Lee prefer the New York project.
- Trump asks the fired candidates to stand up for their choice of the new apprentice. Dan Brody stands for Sean.
- Trump receives the final tally of NBC.com votes and is surprised that there's a clear favorite. However, he fails to reveal the results of the vote. He also neglects to announce the results of the fundraising events. How much money was raised? Which event was more successful? We'll never know.
- "Lee, you're fired!"
- In an unusual departure from past Apprentice finales, Donald fires a candidate. Usually he "hires" the winner without "firing" the runner-up.
- Without any explanation. Without any criticism of Lee's performance. Without any praise for Sean. Trump leaves us hanging with many unanswered questions. We may never know why he chose to fire Lee. He didn't give a reason.
- Lee's religious holiday observances were not mentioned tonight. Not in the season recap. Not in the boardroom. It's not an issue for Trump.
- Sean drives away in his new Pontiac, "I'm the Apprentice, baby!"
posted Monday, June 05, 2006
29 comments
29 Comments:
Trump tells Lee, right after Sean starts to go nuts, "I want to talk to you"
Then at the very end, when you see trump and lee talking - you can see trump very clearly tell Lee "Call me next week"
I'd say Lee is set on some level - even if it isn't the Apprentice crown.
It's a shame, as the post notes, that Trump didn't share his thoughts before announcing his decision. If based solely on the final task, it would make sense for Sean to win, though we don't know which task won financially. If based on overall performance, it's much less clear. As for the audience voting, are we to infer that Sean won that poll, based on Trump's hiring of Sean?
It seemed this finale spent much more time on the footage of the final task and much less time in the boardroom/live setting, more specifically less input from others about the two finalists and little questioning of and deliberations on the final two contestants by Trump. Am I wrong, or did others get the same impression?
Also, why was Lee shaking his head and frowning in reaction to Sean's stating his intentions to marry Tammy? It felt like an odd cut, and Lee was actually making a point of registering his reaction of disagreement to something else, but this was live.
Lee was arrogant. Thinking that being 22 is an advantage is stupid. You have to be 40 or 50 to study kaballah! Also, Lee choosed a team based on his friends, not based on who was best for the job. That shows political cornyism, hiring your friends. Trump doesn't need that kind of person in his organization. I also notice that Lee lacks a sense of adventure. A New Yorker that doesn't take a chace to explore life outside of New York (the job in Hawaii) shows insularity, the famous New York attitude the rest of America hates. That is, New Yorkers who think only their city rules and the rest of America and the world is fly-over country. Mr. Trump runs a global corporation, he needs a global man. And don't tell me there are no orthodox jews in Hawaii!
Although I think Sean is a bit cocky, he does have the experience closing million dollar deals. And he is a motivator, which is an excellent quality in business.
I'm sure Lee will do great in the future, but he still has lots to learn about the real world. And if Lee's smart, he'll take whatever criticism is aimed at him and learn from it.
i dont recall them announcing the 30 grand winner
Throughout the entire last task, Lee was close to clutless. He was worried about the result, and not the process, on which real business ability and etiquette, personal relations and maturity can be determined. That he didn't meet Mr. Trump at the car, that he put Lenny in charge of the meeting the celebrities, that he had no script for Jamie Pressley, all were unforgiveable.
He saw the show last week and should have realized he was way behind Sean and that Sean was a candidate without a weakness.
After Sean selected the Soho project, he should have grabbed the opportunity to go after the Hawaii project, with all the personal sacrifices that would have made for a year or two. It would have given him a reason to distinguish himself from Sean and maybe give Mr. Trump an out to hire both of them, which was not liekly after Lee selected the Soho project as well.
Lee had a very lucky break when all of the other candidates were nearly split when choosing between Sean and he. When Donald, Jr., Ivanka, George and especially Carolyn refused to pick Sean or Lee over the other, Lee should have played to tie, rather than to win. Anyone looking at the apprentice show site in the last few days could realize that Lee was being slaughtered in the final popular pole. He should have seen that himself. He should have appealed to Mr. Trump how close everyone around Mr. Trump said it was too close to call, how Sean and he really respected each other, and if they took separate projects there was room for Mr. Trump to benefit from hiring both of them. But he didn't. He played to win a contest that he couldn't. There was no reason not to hire Sean. He certainly was the safer choice, and obviously the most popular choice across America. The truth is, he was badly outperformed in the final task, from the selection of the team onward. He failed to realize that Lenny had any weakness. He failed to foloow up on Pepe's suggestion of Pontiac possibly giving a matching grant. He knew he had the disadvantage of people wanting a fairytale ending of Sean marrying Tammy. Sean was untouchable, and Lee failed to comprehend this. Maybe playing to tie would have led to the same result that Mr. Trump still would have hired only one candidate, but it would have more rational to think that had a chance than to think he could beat Sean head-on.
walt
they did announce the winner name, some lady from utah.
Lee should be kicking himself for picking lenny. He is a disaster. Even last night, he made a series of bad jokes, one about seans babies (did he mean babes?) and one about pepe (whos pepe?).
NO ONE LAUGHED. And that sealed it for me. Lee did not deserve to win for having a complete idiot on his team.
How he couldnt see lenny being an idiot?
I will tell you.
Its actually simple.
Lee is immature. He was having too much frat fun with lenny, that he didnt realize what a complete disaster he was. Lenny was fired in week 5 or 6, so Lee completely forgot what a complete moron lenny is.
by the way, i was at the party last night in lawrence fire station.
EVERYONE thought Lenny was a complete unmitigated disaster for Lee.
He should of fired him.
I cant say enough how disgusted i was with Lenny. He literally ruined it for Lee. And i think he did so subconsiously.
Wallyhorse, get a life. Everyone knows your cancelled task theory. If you want to add Sean commenting on 14 weeks fine. But you don't need to repeat it twice.
i dont believe those polls were really all in favor of sean, why didnt trump say how the votes were distributed also, lee, there was much organising for votes, advertisements and all, and i am suppose to believe that sean ended up with the most votes. i dont believe it, as if trump wanted sean, obviously he couldnt have announced that the polls were for lee, so he had to shape the polls in line with his decision, which i definitely think he did.
Wallyhorse is correct. He "fired" the runner up once before. I still think it stinks. The final should only have "you're hired." It loses class when he fires one of the final 2.
On the other hand I suspect that the reason Trump didn't mention the results was to protect Lee's feelings. I thought it was classy. Everyone live seemed to the think the two were about evenly matched. Even the fired candidates were split about 50/50.
Still Sean is a lot more charismatic than Lee. And taking this job is at least as much about show business as it is about business.
There were also "vote for sean" campaigns. You're naive if you think only Lee was campaigning for votes.
On the Yahoo poll, Sean was leading Lee by a huuuuuge margin, something like 75% to 25%.
And the live audience clearly favored Sean too.
The biggest error that Lee made was picking Lenny. I know that's rough to say, but Lenny was instrumental in Lee not picking other strong players. It may be frustrating, but it's true.
Also, they apparently deleted several scenes in which Sean wines and dines the executives and the Barenaked ladies. I'm not sure this was so much the case of Lee doing a bad job as it was of Sean just being the perfect pick for the Apprentice. It wouldn't surprise me to see that Lee ends up working for Trump, though. He's certainly talented.
And I still don't understand why they missed a week, Walt.
Maybe Sean won the final task, but if you look at the overall season performance, Lee was clearly the winner. Carolyn said as much when she said how creative Lee was. Sean basically coasted the whole time he was on Synergy and did nothing memorable. Then he joined Gold Rush and was clearly led by Lee the whole time. Lee consistently came up with creative ideas and was a brilliant team leader on the "must win" Ellis Island task.
I think it was interesting that Trump never gave a reason for his choice. That leads me to believe that it was very close in his own mind. He might have been swayed by the popular vote, which kind of turns this into American Idol. If that's the case, he made the wrong choice.
So what if Sean was somewhat better on the final task, if this is really a 15 (or 14) week job interview, Lee should have won based on the season-long performance.
hopefully there wont be another othodox jew on any upcoming season, that way i will have no reason to watch the stupid show.
Wow! The previous anonymous really summed up my thoughts as well. After the show was over, I said "Baruch Shepitrani" and moved on with my life.
Did anyone else notice that Brent stood up for both candidates?
I believe Lee was in the lead coming in to the show, but picking Lenny, as well as not greeting Trump was too much to overcome.
In terms of their ages, I think Lee handled it well, he couldve even said that to get a guy like Sean you can hire a headhunter, a guy like Lee who is still learning the world of business, is the type of guy you find on the Apprentice.
Sean is a guy who looks good and sounds good, but likely will turn out to be a very average guy in the Trump organization
From a Jewish perspective, Lee did the right thing by picking Lenny. Hopefully, Lenny will have a deeper respect for Judaism with his friendship. Lee showed him (and perhaps all Jews watching the show) is that keeping the Torah is worth risking the chance of a lifetime to make tons of money and prestige.
brent stood up because he wanted to show how much weight he lost.
as the other lee said, LENNY IS A TOTAL disaster.
four bagel a day diet said...
brent stood up because he wanted to show how much weight he lost.
lol
canonist has published his first interview with lee
I thought there were 15 weeks in the season? Maybe I lost count?
des anyone else see sean as a total fraud? you heard it here first, he will have the shortest stint with the trump org than any of the previous apprentices (or apprenti? according to randall) also, it doesnt seem as if tammy is as enamored with him as he is with hjer, any bets on when they will break up?
whats the link to the interview?
Click here for Lee's interview on Canonist.
Our interview with Lee should be posted Thursday evening.
Sean is not a total fraud. He's enthusiastic, and despite stereotypes about the corporate world being full of boring serious people. Enthusiastic people can do very well.
He was also more creative than Lee, and a better hands on leader. His romance with the co-worker bores me, but many companies are starting to allow inter-office relationships. Southwest is one of them, and the idea of keeping life and work separate when so many people are practically living at work is ridiculous.
It wasn't only Lee's people that killed it for him. It was his lack of control toward the people that he chose.
Can you imagine if Lee picked Charmaine, Bryce, Leslie and Dan?
Lee couldn't have picked Charmaine, Bryce, Leslie, and Dan. He can only pick three.
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