The Apprentice LA - Episode 1

Alright, here we go with the recaps. A few notes:

-Each recap was written in the week after that episode aired.

-Everything in a given recap is what my thoughts were at the time that episode was filmed, not now. Basically, I tried to duplicate what would have been my journal at the time if I had written a journal at the time. And this was part of my purpose in writing-- in addition to providing people I know with recaps, they will stand as my journal of the experience. For this reason, I provide a lot of detail. [translation: they're long.]

And without further ado, recap #1--
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so i have an immense amount of things to say, and i can't really figure out how to organize them. i'm gonna try going somewhat chronologically, we'll see how that goes. and screw capitals-- this is going to be way too long an email to deal with the shift key.

also, i'll write a lot about what i was thinking at the time, but nothing about the future. i will do my best not to foreshadow anything, and i'll compartmentalize my opinions to what my opinions were up to the end of the episode.

so-- backing up to a few days before the filming began. we all arrived, one by one, at a hotel/corporate housing place on a sunday, may 28. i was under the impression that the show was starting that day, but as it turned out, the filming wouldn't begin until friday (as i was told upon arrival). this was upsetting because i was very anxious to stop thinking about it and start doing it, and couldn't believe i had to wait another week. so i was brought to the room i'd be staying in for the next 5 days and told to meet in the conference room in the main building at 6pm that night.

so at 6 i head to the conference room and see 4 or 5 people sitting there. i recognized some of them from the finals of the application process, but this was the first time i saw who any of the fellow cast members were. one by one the rest trickled in. i made eye contact with a few who i remembered from the debates of the finals, and shared a knowing glance/silent mutual congratulations with surya, derek, and marisa.

the thing was, we were constantly supervised and strictly forbidden from any form of interaction whatsoever with any of the other cast members, and that would be the case until the filming began five days later. so we're all sitting in the conference room around a huge table, kind of eyeing each other. really tense but also very exciting. no one was saying anything, and i remember one of the casting directors (the people who cast the show are the same people who supervised this pre-week) saying to us, "this is just one of what will be many awkward silences this week." the reason for this is that they want all the initial impressions to be captured during the first day of the filming. it would ruin the show if it started and people were already friends with each other.

some initial thoughts on the cast were:
-i can't believe carey, james, and aaron had made the show (i knew more about the guys than the girls because our debates at the finals were against our own gender).
-i was extremely unhappy to see frank there
-i was extremely unhappy to see martin there (i completely loathed him at the finals)
-i was pleasantly surprised at how many attractive girls there were
-this was the first time i had seen angela, and realized immediately from looking at her that she had to be the olympian

finally jay bienstock, the executive producer, came in the room and congratulated us and he and a few other producers explained a bit about the process and a bunch of the ground rules for once the filming began, and warned us about being a pain in the ass to the producers like omarosa, ivana, and a few other former cast members apparently had been.

we were given a schedule of the week, which consisted of half a dozen photo and video shoots. every photo and video currently on yahoo and nbc.com, as well as the show's opening credits and the tv commercials, came from shoots we did this week.

my main focus during the week was to sleep. but i always have a hard time falling asleep before midnight, and most of the days we had to meet in the lobby in suits at 5:45am or some ungodly hour in the morning. so by the time thursday rolled around, i was underslept. like an idiot.

thursday we were told that we had to be in the lobby with our bags, in suits and "camera ready", by 4:30am sharp the next morning. thursday night i got into bed at 8 and between the excitement and anxiety and everything else i didn't fall asleep until after 1am, and my alarm went off 2 hours later. not an ideal way to start.

so i did about 150 jumping jacks in my room trying to wake myself up, and headed to the lobby. we were assigned one of the four lexus suv's and sat in there driving around for over an hour while they got all the "us in the lexus's driving to the mansion" shots.

finally, we got out of the suv's at the huge mansion on mulholland drive where we'd be staying. as we got out, mark burnett came over and said hi to us. cool guy. he told us that in his mind this is the most grueling reality show. he compared it to survivor and said that on survivor nothing happens when the sun goes down so people sleep a ton, and on the apprentice people sleep so little that deep exhaustion sets in quickly, and the stress is overwhelming. good to hear. he also said, "you guys will be feeling the heat of the fire tonight." of course, it wasn't until i was sitting in the fucking campsite next to the fire 12 hours later that i understood his little comment. that clever fuck.

after burnett left, we were brought up into the driveway and stood there in a line (this is what you saw when we introduced ourselves to trump). but here's the thing-- we hadn't seen a camera yet, and suddenly, stepping into the driveway, there were no less than forty cameras lined up in front of us. short ones, tall ones, cameras on the roof, and a moving camera on a huge crane. it was positively terrifying. there were 2 or 3 cameras on each of our faces. and we stood there, deers in headlights, for 45 minutes until trump's limo pulled up.

he walked into the driveway and asked us all to introduce ourselves. this was really frightening, seriously-- because this was the first time any of us had heard the others speak, and the first time we were in front of the cameras, and i knew that if i fucked up my sentence here it's something trump would call me out on. high stress.

so then martin made his infamous bathroom comment. in his defense, none of us had been able to go to the bathroom since we got to the lobby at 4:30 that morning, about 5 hours earlier, and i felt his pain. but mainly, it was a bad joke. he was trying to be witty and it's one of those things where if trump laughs, everyone else would laugh too and martin's a hero, and if trump criticizes it, everyone rolls their eyes and martin's the worst. unfortunately for martin, trump wasn't amused. terrible start.

so trump told us to go set up a tent. we all went into the back, and it was complete and immediate chaos. this was the first time we had ever interacted, and everyone started yelling things and everyone was trying to lead. i was in a state of shock mostly-- i was looking around, the whole thing was unbelievably surreal, and i just kept thinking, "god i wish i could tell my friends what was happening right now." it was 100 degrees, there were cameras everywhere, i was on 2 hours of sleep, and everyone was yelling. and then it hit me that trump was probably going to fire someone right after this for dramatic effect based on everyone's performance, and it suddenly became stressful as hell. it was my first taste of the bizarre, unique combination of intense stress and unheard of surreality.

so it finished, and we went into the boardroom. another surreal blast-- i've watched this show religiously for the past few seasons, and i've sat on my couch for dozens of hours watching a bunch of douchebags in a boardroom with trump, and suddenly, i was watching another one except I WAS THERE. try to imagine how weird that is.

so heidi and fat loud frank pick teams. here was what i wanted at the time:

-to be on a team with derek, surya, nicole, marisa, and heidi
-to not be on a team with frank or martin

seriously. so you can imagine i was less than please when almost everything went the other way (my team is frank, martin, aaron, james, carey, nicole, stephanie, and michelle). after the teams were picked, i remember thinking that i was on the loser team, fully. the only person who i was happy to be on a team with was nicole, who seemed like a winner to me. and no, i'm not just saying that now.

so we were assigned our task and we all piled into the 180 degree van and headed to the carwash. people started throwing out ideas and strategies and it was ridiculously intense and i didn't even know anyone's name. as weird as the tent and boardroom were, this was weirder. again, i've watched dozens of apprentice tasks, from my couch. suddenly, there were all these people frantically discussing carwash strategies, and in my exhaustion, i honestly went back and forth between thinking, "oh, i'm watching the apprentice. i wonder what this team will come up with" and then thinking, "OH MY GOD I'M INSIDE THE TV I'M IN THE VAN I'M ON THE SHOW HOLY FUCKING SHIT." far and away the most surreal experience of my life. (not that different from being addicted to Lost for years and suddenly being on the island with jack, lock, and the others). this is the shit the camera can't capture.

the other thing that's so odd, is that i wasn't sure what it really was-- it's certainly not real life, but it felt way too important to be a game, and it felt nothing like a tv show. it was just this bizarre, super-intense mission i was on with these weird strangers and there were cameras everywhere. and with a serious element of fear-- getting fired first is a huge embarrassment, and someone had to be the first. all in all, i had never experienced anything remotely like it.

so we got to the carwash, and the editing was pretty accurate. frank was incredibly hyper. we had exactly 3.5 hours until the task was over, and he was acting like we had 15 minutes. we should have had a 5-10 minute group discussion. but of course, as surreal as it all was for me, frank was the project manager, which must have been even more terrifying, so it's hard to criticize him too much.

the rest is pretty accurate. i ended up being the pseudo-leader with frank gone, and james and i sold well, while martin was lackluster and without the charisma and energy needed to “upsell” someone to a $35 wax who came with the intention of buying a $10 carwash. i don't know much about what the girls were doing on the street, except that stef threw up a few times apparently from dehydration (speaking of which, it was literally 100 degrees and we were running around sweating in the sun for 3.5 hours and none of us had a sip of water the whole time).

the car wash was the first time i was actually having fun. the stress wore off once i got a bit more used to the cameras, and realized that i was selling the shit out of the cars and wasn't in danger of getting fired, and i found myself much less intimidated by the people, and the cameras, and the whole thing than i had been at the beginning of the day.

i also thought we won. of course, they made it look like a landslide because they want it to look like a clear-cut winner and loser, but we lost by $100 ($2,300 to $2,400). it was neck and neck. we did have a low volume of cars, but james and i both sold a handful of $100 details, which cost as much as 10 carwashes each.

so we go back, find out we lose, and head to the backyard. i wasn't that upset about this. the camping seemed kind of fun. granted, the showers were ice cold, we had to sleep on the ground using a sweatshirt as a pillow (and the sprinklers assured that none of us slept more than 4 hours), and the food sucked, but it was kind of fun to me. we all plopped down in the fold out chairs, drank beers, and started to get to know each other. of course, in the small time the editors have they show mainly the fighting and the adversity, but 95% of the time in the backyard during the course of that episode was pleasant and fun. they had to make us look miserable to properly contrast us with the winning team in the house, but we had a good time (although we were all legitimately upset to have lost).

we also had a few productive discussions about everyone's strengths and weaknesses and some general strategies for marketing, sales, and delegation in the future. there was also a discussion about who would be the next project manager. no one besides nicole showed any interest in the job. i was not at all eager to take the lead at that time-- i actually felt like i could lead that group well, but knew that it would put me in a serious danger of being fired second, and why take that risk so early. my tentative plan was to step up task 4 or 5.

eventually, day 1 ended. (remember, i had woken up that morning alone in my hotel room. long fucking day.)

my new thoughts by the end of day 1:
-i had a total turnaround on martin. he was witty as hell, incredibly smart, interesting, and great guy to sit around with. he has 2 kids and loves them more than anything, and is just a genuinely good guy.
-i was completely smitten by nicole.
-stefanie didn't seem like quite the bitchy old hag i had thought she was prior to the filming. She actually seemed perfectly friendly, but she still made me uneasy and i wasn’t sure i really trusted her.
-i had turned around on aaron, and now really liked him. just a genuinely nice, friendly guy.
-frank had gone from a bit absurd and a bit intimidating, to completely absurd, kind of endearing, a little annoying, and not intimidating in the least.

anyway. the next morning, after tossing and turning the whole night, i came out of the tent and did a faceplant. of course, heated arguments were omitted from the episode. witty comments, omitted. people throwing up at the carwash, omitted. but the faceplant—the faceplant makes the cut. i remember emerging from the ground and seeing a camera guy 2 feet away, and thinking, "well that's great."

so the next day, we all had long (3-4 hour) interviews, which provide the show's narrative (i'll explain more about the interviews and schedule in the next recap since this one is already about 30 pages). that night, i was sitting and chatting with nicole and frank when i decided that if i was going to throw frank under the bus in the boardroom (which i intended to do), i wanted to tell him now and not surprise him then.

here's the awkward thing-- everyone was on such polite and good terms because it was the first task, and frank and i had been buddies all day, and yet the whole time i know that i'm going to tell trump that frank should be fired the next day.

anyway, this is was the first time anyone mentioned the boardroom, and it was a heated argument. they showed about 30 seconds but it went on for over an hour, with everyone on both teams listening (although i didn't learn that the other team was eavesdropping until i saw it in the episode). basically, i had about 4 good arguments against frank and he kept getting angrier and angrier and i remained completely calm, which in turn made him even angrier.

why frank? it was obviously him or martin, and i really liked martin, and frank was loud and annoying, and seemed like he'd be a complete distraction in future tasks-- and in the long run, if your team wins more than not you'll last longer and have more fun while you're there. you really don't want to be on the losing team. and, the idea of getting frank riled up seemed kind of fun.

so i brought it up, and we went back and forth for about an hour, and it ended with him asking me to spend time thinking about it and at least remain open-minded about who i'd say should be fired, and i agreed that i would. the next day he asked me if i had thought about it and i said yes, and he asked if i had changed my mind and i said no. it was awkward.

side story: somewhere in the middle of all of this we named our team "Arrow Corp" (michelle’s idea—other ideas were everest, angel, and blue motion. thankfully, arrow won out). we were told to come up with a sign and present it to trump. we all came up with ideas for the design, and the team chose mine and i sketched it out. the team loved it. then trump came to the backyard to check it out (with regis philbin, randomly-- who looks 10 years older in person), and said he liked the name but the sign (which was all me) was just "okay." awkward.

so, the afternoon of day 3, the producer pops by and tells us that we have to be dressed and ready for the boardroom in 2 hours. gulp. i felt completely safe and i was terrified, so i can't even imagine what frank and martin were going through. so we headed to the boardroom with our bags (we all had to pack for a night's worth-- the loser takes the bag with him and heads to the same hotel we were at prior to filming, and comes back the next day, when everyone is out on task, to get the rest of his stuff. since no one can unpack when you're living outside anyway, this part was not difficult).

so we sat down in the boardroom (assigned seats-- one of the only things that's staged), and ivanka and heidi are sitting there. weird seeing heidi sitting there. trump comes in, and suddenly, i'm back in "oh, i'm watching the apprentice-- i hope it's a good boardroom OH MY GOD I'M INSIDE THE TV I'M SITTING IN THE BOARDROOM" mode, and the adrenaline is pumping. the first thing i noticed was that in her role, heidi had elected to be a bitch. interesting tactic, and one that none of us had expected. there was no precedent whatsoever for how the winning PM acts in the boardroom. Trump: "heidi, what have you heard about this team?" Heidi: "i heard they didn't win." (later that night, back in the campsite, nicole went on a fuming rant about how much she fucking hated heidi after her smug bitchy performance in the boardroom-- good times).

so it gets going-- i'm basically thinking this: i have about 12 rock-solid arguments lined up against frank. i may use them, i may not. i'd like to see frank go for sure, but not enough to be adamantly active in this boardroom. i'll lay low, and if i get the opportunity or frank attacks me, i'll lay it on thick.

the first portion of the boardroom (the part with the whole team) went on for about 30 minutes. at one point trump asked me, "tim, how was your experience at harvard?" i replied that it was great. he asked, "is harvard better than wharton (wharton is his pride and joy)?" and i basically sat there and stared like a deer in headlights for 5 seconds until he said, "good answer."

also, heidi at one point said "could have went" in a sentence (which ended up on the air). after 10 seconds of talking trump said, "hold on-- i'm sorry-- could have GONE" and then said, "you know what? heidi, you're fired." everyone's heart stopped, and then he said, "just kidding." at another point, frank made some glaring grammatical error, and trump corrected him. i later asked a producer about that and assumed that this happened a lot but just never made the air, and the producer said that trump has never had to correct anyone's grammar before on the show, and was surprised that he didn't fire frank on the spot for it.

anyway, frank calls me and martin back into the boardroom. this was no surprise-- i led the whole charge against frank, and there was no one else he could have taken. so we go outside on the couch and wait. we're out there for about 20 minutes. i'm thinking that i'll keep quiet and the instant frank attacks me i'll get into it with him.

we get called back in and frank does attack me, albeit lightly. i have so many things to say-- he attacked me as the "sales PM" after i only assumed that role on my own after he left. second, i raised frank's shitty pricepoint to a much higher one which worked well. third, i sold extremely well. fourth, sales was not the problem-- we were sitting there half the time with no cars to sell to because the marketing wasn't working. fifth, we had $1000 seed money given to us (every task has a different amount of allotted seed money, the remainder of which you hand over at the end-- it does not factor into the sales totals), and we used $72 of it. frank had all the money with him the whole time and could have very easily used it somehow-- it could be as simple as handing 5 strangers $200 each to make signs and market. sixth, frank was gone for over half the task, getting flyers we didn't end up using. (incidentally, you may not want to hear me vent and tell my side of the story in every situation. well too bad. that's what you're all here for-- to hear me vent and be bitter and tell my side of the story.)

in the end, frank probably should have been fired, but then again, PM on the first day is a tough spot, and trump appreciated his simplicity and sheer sincerity and found him endearing. frank got very lucky that someone else stood out as a weak link-- if martin had sold well, frank would have had no outs and would have absolutely been fired.

so then trump lets me leave and i head back to the tents. i walk into the backyard and they're all standing there waiting and they see me and scream "oh my god he fired both of them?!!" and i explain that no, they were still going. they demanded that i tell them everything that was happening in there and my explanation was, "basically frank is kneeling on the table crying," which as you've seen was not much of a stretch.

so they handed me a beer and we all hugged, and we stood around for about 45 minutes waiting for either frank or martin (or possibly neither) to emerge. the other team was on the other side of the hedge anxiously trying to get the scoop too.

and finally, frank and his big fat head came around the corner.

additional thoughts:

-i got ridiculously sunburned at the carwash, hence my red boardroom nose. fuck off.

-watching the boardroom yesterday, i rewound and watched frank's reaction to martin being fired about 40 times, and was laughing uncontrollably. seriously-- if you have it tivo'd, go do this now.

-poor martin. he was so upset when he was fired and so surprised. and he of course was crucified by the editing, but everyone in the cast would tell you he's a great guy. although of everyone, he'd probably take being first fired the best-- he's had a good sense of humor about it ever since.

see you next week—