The Apprentice - March 27, 2006 : Brent's Exit Leads to Excitement

Gold Rush was hoping Brent would return from the boardroom, because if Brent returned it would mean their team may just be safe from the boardroom again tonight. However, when everyone returned Brent was not among them, and Synergy seemed excited when Brent didn't come back from the boardroom. Synergy knew without Brent they may actually win a task.

Both teams got on board the Norwegian Cruise Line ship called "The Norwegian Jewel." This is where they met Mr. Trump to find out what their next task would be. Once aboard, Mr. Trump announced that they would create a 30-second commercial to promote Norwegian's Freestyle Cruising program, and the winner of the task would be judged by two Norwegian executives. However, the team only had three hours to complete the task, because at 3:00 p.m. the ship would be setting sail, and they needed to be off the ship by that time. Each team was given a professional camera crew and editors to help them with their task.

Dan, Gold Rush's project manager, wasted no time as he quickly gave orders and ideas to his team. Lenny stepped in to pitch his idea to the team, and Gold Rush agreed it was a great idea, so they used it. Gold Rush took Lenny's idea and immediately begun filming. While filming Danny took control of everything, and basically ignored the rest the team, making them all very unhappy.

Roxanne, Synergy's project manager, seemed to be unorganized. Even though Roxanne appeared to be unorganized, I think Synergy did at least have a good idea for their commercial. They came up with the idea to show a boring cruise line and compare it to a Norwegian cruise.

During the editing session, Tarek suggested on-screen text for their commercial, but Lenny disagreed with the idea and told Gold Rush, "you can't watch the video and read the text at the same time, because everything goes so fast." Instead Lenny suggested they go with voice-over, but Dan, being project manager, made the executive decision to keep the text. I think this was a bad choice on Dan's part. I liked Lenny's idea of voice-over instead. Besides, Lenny was right, it was hard to watch the video and catch the text at the same time.

It came time for both teams to present their commercials to the Norwegian executives, and Synergy was the first to present. I liked Synergy's commercial, I think they done a wonderful job! However, Gold Rush's commercial on the other hand, I thought it was just okay. What did the Norwegian executives think? They liked both commercials, but they liked Synergy's better. They felt Synergy's beginning was clearer, and they thought Gold Rush's castaway concept was a bit confusing. In addition, the executives also liked Synergy's voice-over compared to Gold Rush's text. Synergy won the task, and it appeared as if the team just may do better without Brent.

What a reward Synergy received! They got to visit a secret vault that held over $100 million dollars worth of diamonds. But what made the reward even more spectacular was they got to pick out $30,000 worth of diamonds from the secret vault. What a great reward!

In the boardroom, Dan and Leslie seemed to be taking a lot of heat. Dan didn't recall Leslie mentioning her broadcast experience, but some of the other Gold Rush members did recall her mentioning it, and this lead to a shouting match. Carolyn stopped their shouting by telling them they all sounded like 10-year olds.

When the shouting match was ended it was back to business, and Mr. Trump told Lenny that his castaway concept "stunk." He also addressed the issue of voice-over verses text. And when the time came for Dan to choose who would be coming back to the boardroom with him, he chose Lee and Tarek. Dan didn't feel Lenny should be brought back into the boardroom so he sent him back to the suite with the rest of the team. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, thought Lenny should have been brought back to the boardroom.

Back in the boardroom, Mr. Trump told Tarek, "you've done so badly. You have done and exceptionally poor job throughout." But instead of Tarek being fired, Mr. Trump fired Dan instead. Dan was fired for not bringing Lenny back into the boardroom. As a matter of fact, Mr. Trump had a message sent to Lenny - "tell Lenny he doesn't have far to go."

Oh well, another leader that should have taken a hint by bringing Lenny back, and then that leader may still be there. What I don't understand though, if Mr. Trump really wanted to fire Lenny why didn't he call Lenny back to the boardroom himself? Who knows.

Tune into a special Apprentice, next Monday at 9:00 p.m. (CST).

I'll leave you with this business tip on creating commercials. One, you should have already learned from tonight's show - voice-over works better than text. Two, make the commercial short but memorable.