Fall TV Friday – 2005 – The Apprentice: Martha Stewart

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart – NBC – 1 Season (13 Episodes) – USA

NBC are going through some rough times at the moment. They constantly run fourth in the ratings, their number one show is a reality series about fat people losing weight and their big plan to save themselves involves wasting five hours of primetime on Jay Leno. If NBC wanted to take the time to figure out where it all went wrong 2005 is as good a place as any to start and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is the perfect example of how NBC dropped the proverbial ball, ended up the proverbial creek and screwed the proverbial pooch.

Let’s put aside for a moment whether or not The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is a “good” program and let’s ask a couple of obvious questions: Why would you spin off a reality series in the first place? Even if you were to spin off a reality series why would you do it with an only somewhat successful one? Let’s say that you have asked these questions and still decided to go ahead with the show WHY would you air it on the same schedule as the original? Each Law & Order is a different show, even The Bachelorette is different enough from The Bachelor to warrant appearing on two nights during the same week but The Apprentice is still The Apprentice and all you’re doing is saturating your audience with a product they don’t like that much to begin with.

There’s another obvious question: is Martha Stewart’s audience the same audience that enjoy The Apprentice? Heck, after watching the first episode you’d have to wonder whether Martha Stewart herself even enjoys The Apprentice.

So because NBC chose not to ask those simple questions during the 2005-2006 TV season US audiences were treated to two regular Apprentices and an extra Apprentice: Martha style!

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart opens with Martha telling us all about herself, her empire, and how she was America’s first female self made billionaire. Straight off the bat you notice that Martha Stewart isas wooden as a wood collection found in the woods in a wooden box made of wood. She describes her organisation as being “full of life”, unlike, say for example, Martha Stewart. Before things have even begun you’re wondering what kind of cutthroat decisions have to be made in the world of fabric choices and cupcake frosting.

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear this is not Donald Trumps’ Apprentice. The first five seconds of the opening credits feature some weird shots that make it look like Martha is falling in love with a horse and then there’s a collection of people that remind you this is a four year old reality show and you don’t care who the contestants are.

Harking back to the question of whether Martha Stewart fits with The Apprentice the simple answer is: she doesn’t. The Apprentice is all backstabbing, office politics, and douchebags in suits. Martha on the other hand tries to make everything as nice and as friendly as possible. The first time the contestants are brought into the boardroom there’s no intimidation, in fact they all share a laugh. Donald Trump wouldn’t have allowed laughter.

For crying out loud the first challenge involves creating a children’s book for Random House. Seriously. They have to take a fairytale and make it modern to impress a group of first graders. It almost makes The Apprentice Australia’s lawn mowing challenge seem worthwhile. The teams are quickly divided into ‘creative’ and ‘corporate’. Creative are named ‘Matchstick’ and corporate are named ‘Primarius’. I know, I didn’t need to tell you the creative team came up with ‘Matchstick’ and that a bunch of guys schooled in the corporate world could only think of ‘Primarius’. It sounds like a freaking Transformer for crying out loud.

The challenge plays out like these things tend to do, there are some arguments over who contributes enough, there’s somebody who takes control, there are focus groups, there are white boards and discussions about whether or not ‘Primarius’ is a dicky name for a team or not… okay not that last one. In the end one of the books gets rave reviews, while the other gets less than stellar reviews. Ten guesses as to which team wins. Also ten guesses as to whether the person who will leave is going to be the whiny useless girl or the team leader who took control and led his team to failure. Four Year Old Spoiler Alert: It’s the team leader.

The best part of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart is the ridiculous conference room elimination. First of all she apologizes for bringing them into the conference room, as though if it wasn’t for this darn reality show they could all just hang out and eat scones. Then when it’s time for somebody to go she doesn’t use Trump’s ‘you’re fired’ she brings out her own ‘you just don’t fit in. Goodbye.’ Apparently ‘Goodbye’ was supposed to be the next ‘Voted Off The Island’ but it didn’t catch on because it turns out people say ‘Goodbye’ a lot in real life anyway.

The kicker though is as the poor sap that was eliminated has to hop in the car and leave the show Martha sits down and WRITES THEM A LETTER. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so bizarre. Here’s her letter she narrates over the final credits in full: ‘Dear Jeffrey, I’m sorry you are the first to go. Not to fail, but rather not to fully succeed. You entered this endeavour knowing that someone would have to leave after the first task, unfortunately it is you. Personally it is hard to make such a judgement call but it is part of this interview process. Good luck. Travel safely. It was great to meet you. Cordially, Martha Stewart.’

Does that sound like The Apprentice to you? The Apprentice: Martha Stewart fails because it’s all over the shop. You suffer whiplash as the tone shifts wildly from Martha trying to be everybody’s best friend to contestants wanting to stab each other in the back. The A:MS is the biggest most glorious kind of flop. It’s ridiculous and makes everybody involved look completely stupid in the process.

So far Surface and Martha Stewart have completely encapsulated the sheer laziness that was present at NBC in 2005. NBC were sitting on a slate full to the brim with aging series. Las Vegas, Will & Grace, ER, Law & Order, L&O: SVU, The West Wing, L&O: Criminal Intent, Crossing Jordan. Some of them are fine shows but they were all getting on in years.

The only pickups NBC made from the previous TV season were Medium (which they gave up to CBS), Joey (and we all know how that turned out), The Biggest Loser and The Office (which coincidentally are now NBC’s two biggest hits). NBC needed to launch a big flagship series in 2005 to replace some of their older brands. The Apprentice: Martha Stewart was NEVER going to be that show. NBC deserve to fail when all they can offer the world is lazy programming like this.

Martha, you just don’t fit in. Goodbye.

See, it’s catching on already!

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