Bryce for bringing Lee into the boardroom instead of Tarek and Charmaine, who were both responsible for the bad lyrics and music of the jingle, being 25 minutes late to the appointment with the two Arby's executives, and for terrible decision-making.

I think you may well have a point!

The Project Manager was fired...mainly for bringing Lee and Lenny back. Although in my opinion he should have been fired anyway.

Thanks, Benson & Sweet fa!

I couldn't believe it when my screen went blank at the crucial moment, but that was the result I expected. Bryce executed himself in the boardroom.

i have watched every episode this series and i havent noticed Lee do much at all other than look gormless in the other episodes where he was present ..so was he really missed - maybe he should be project manager next week ..

Not half as bad as when he started doing Trump bottled water (Think it was Season One) and a truck full of the stuff turned up!!!

Really amused me when he was talking about merchandise such as watches and then he said 'This week, you'll be creating a jingle for a sandwich company!'

I also liked the smugness when he told the winning team on the cruise liner episode they could go to some diamond place and take away $30k worth of them!

That's true, but he did it on purpose. What he basically did was to tell Trump that he wouldn't take his bullshit. Not many people do that, and I respect him for it. As a business decision, not bringing in Tarek and Charmaine was the correct thing to do. When nobody on at team comes up with any ideas for a long time, you don't blame the people that actually come up with something in the end. Creating a jingle that loses is still much better than not doing anything at all. If you always go after the people who come up with the ideas if a the team loses, noone will ever dare to suggest anything, making it even worse.

This situation has some similarities to Ben and the Deathbox in UK Series 5. Although it was Ben who came up with the product that lost them the task, Sugar wouldn't blame him for the loss because there were no other ideas on the table.

Thanks googleking - nearly missed you.

This is the first time I have watched the US show and I look forward to it as much as the UK version now.

I think the decision-making process re who gets fired is far more arbitrary on TA USA than in the UK version. DT seems to go far more by who he does and doesn't like and who performs best/worst in the boardroom, rather than performance in the task.

Quite sad to see Bryce go - I think he was quite good, and a decent chap. Should have been Tarek, he's been rubbish!

Although they like to pretend it is one task a week, they actually film them back-to-back (with one day off per week). It's a gruelling schedule, intended to stress the candidates and induce amusing mistakes. Giving everyone an extra day or two off would diminish that.

I disagree. Bringing in Lee into the boardroom was ridiculous and implied he should be fired for his religion. Completely unworkable.

Bryce apparently hoped no-one would be fired, which was unrealistic. In real life, you sometimes get budget cuts etc which are outside your control, and mean you have to fire someone, regardless of how well your department has been doing. Hard decisions can't always be avoided.

He had two options:[list][*]Wash his hands of it, bring in Charmaine and/or Tarek and let Trump decide. Bringing in Lee was effectively depriving Trump of an option.[*]Think about the future instead of the past, and decide who he would least mind being without for the next task.[/list]

I agree with this (and your Sugar comparison), but I don't see how it applies. It justifies bringing Lenny in, which I'm fine with, but I don't think it justifies bringing in Lee, and I don't see who else it says to bring in.

And although Charmaine is one of my favourites, I do think she ought to be held accountable for her mistakes. Not fired, necessarily, but subject to boardroom analysis. What she did on the lyrics may have been better than nothing, but "stepping up" does not excuse all else. Also, she ought to have reminded him when they were getting late for the appointment. She booked it, so she had some responsibility. I accept the leader had some responsibility also, but in this case it seemed he never really registered what time they were supposed to be there.

It's a shame, because Bryce had seemed one of the effective ones - it was he who sorted out the generator when Lenny hadn't. He had a good personality, too.

Agreed. Actually when I heard Lenny's idea, my first thought was that there wasn't time to convey the concept of a castaway. They could have spent the 3 hours on that alone. So although it wasn't an intrinsically bad idea, it wasn't right for the schedule they had and the implementation was bound to fail.

However, although the fault lies more with Dan for accepting the idea, it's an understandable mistake given the time pressure they were under. They didn't have time to consider and reject a lot of concepts. Still, Dan seemed like a fairly poor leader so I'm not bothered that he got fired, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

I was pleased that Roxanne won as she's been good all the way through. I had liked Andrea, too, for being competent, but she somehow turned all evil and was getting at Roxanne.

Generally both teams seem strong, with neither having any true disasters so far, nor really likely to. Nothing to compare with UK Apprentice, anyway. Now Brent is gone, the team he was on have lost twice in a row. I suspect the other team will keep losing until Tarek goes.

To me, it made perfect sense. Lee is quite selfish to skip two tasks and use religion as an excuse. You don't do that to your team in a competition like this. As I said before, if it's that important to him he shouldn't have participated in the first place.

The way it is now, Lee has had some serious upside because of this (getting a free pass TWICE, in addition to getting way more rest than the other people), and his team has had a lot of downside (being two men/one man down in tasks, which may have contributed to them losing (especially in the GM task). I guess things like this can be sorted out in a normal work situation, but in a contest like this people shouldn't have to compete on unequal terms.

The issue though seemed to be whether he had to bring two people in. If he could bring just one he would have taken himself and Lenny. He asked around the question how many do I have to bring in but didn't push it to an answer. Thinking it had to be two he chose between taking in someone who had done less who couldn't be fired because he had been absent (Lee) and someone who had done a lot but made a mistake (Tareq/Charmaine) With Lee there he gave Trump a choice of 2 (himself or Lenny) and protected the stronger members of his team. Carolyne was right he put himself more in the firing line - but his argument that Lenny hadn't been able to contribute and that his problems wouldn't go away made more sense than Trump seemed to register. The alternative of trying to blame one of his better team members seemed to be what they wanted - but he wasn't playing the game to get rid of the good competition. I'm not clear if he was sacked for not playing the game or for making it clear that he didn't trust Trump to save the better members of the team or because Trump didn't understand the idea of protecting your good people?

Show 5.

I thought both adverts wasn't bad but the right one won. How Tarek survived I really don't know. He is way too controling and like Bryce did in the next episode never stopped himself digging himself into a corner.

It was good to see lenny actually contribute soemthing in the discussions stages for a change. normally he stays quiet, lets people make a decision then pick it to pieces.

Show 6.

Both jingles worked but I actually preffered the gold rush one. Yes they didn't say only at Arby's but they did manage to geta lot in and more name checks for Arby.

Bryce played a blinder and threw himself on the sword. At the start he had the meeting the night before to clear the air and get the group together which he managed. They worked well as a team although Lenny avoided getting involved in the task. No way does he not know what a Jingle is and his English isn't so bad he couldn't have suggested anything better than having a chicken noise in it.

I think he made the right choice briging Lenny and Lee into the boardroom. He pretty much knew that Lee wouldn't get fired. That left it with a straight 50/50 call. Lenny who did the least out of everyone who took part in the task or himself as PM.
I think he knew if it was Lenny that went it was a decision he could live with. In the end I think he sussed the way it was going and for the good of the team he talked himself out of the competition.

Yeah, I thought the whole thing was quite strange.
Bryce claims that it was the production team's fault:

"
Bryce says his team’s tardiness was caused by Apprentice production crew
The Apprentice 5 »
by Andy Dehnart / April 10, 2006, 6:50 AM
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On last week’s Apprentice 5, project manager Bryce was booted, and one of the reasons Donald Trump gave was because his team was late to a meeting with executives at Arby’s. Bryce tells TV Guide that it literally wasn’t his fault.

“To be 100 percent honest, it’s because production held back our van,” he says. “We had to do some interviews and stuff before we could actually leave the suite, which was quite frustrating. It’s tough always waiting for the cameramen. It’s not ‘real,’” he told the magazine. Part of that, apparently, was his fake excuse; he told the executives that he wasn’t really sure what time they were supposed to meet, and that his team didn’t know how to plan travel time in Manhattan.

Bryce doesn’t blame the editors or producers; he says “production did a great job overall. The editing, quite frankly, is accurate. They can only use what you give them, so that’s reality, but in terms of how the actual projects go down, it would never happen that way in the real world. They have to get approval wherever we go and get the cameras inside the vans before we even get in the vans.” As TV Guide points out, “it’s an even playing field, since the other team has to deal with the same obstacles.”

As to his decision to bring Lenny and Lee into the boardroom, Bryce has no regrets. “This is my 15 minutes and I’ve got to live the rest of my life with whatever I say on the show. I know who I am and I’ll do what I want,” he says. “I’m not a yes-man like Bill.”

(I removed the link to this, because the page contains spoilers)

Let's remember that Bill had to fill in for George as Trump's side-kick because George was also taking the religious holiday. I gather for them it would be a bit like working over Christmas. I can't really blame candidates who desperately want to win, for taking part despite the holiday, nor for taking that day off when it was offered to them.

I'd blame Trump and the producers rather than the candidates. Especially for the General Motors task, where two candidates were absent - things should have been arranged so that one came from each team. As I've said before, Trump seemed to relish the unfairness of it.


Whatever he says, I hope and believe Trump doesn't have a single reason.[list][*]Not playing the game - Trump seems to regard throwing away a tactical advantage as a killer mistake. He once sacked someone merely for giving up immunity and asking to be judged on his performance. I think Trump saw bringing in Lee as an error of that kind.[*]Disrespecting Trump - I doubt it. Although I know Sugar has objected to candidates trying to do his job for him; it's a bad thing to do.[*]Trump not understanding about protecting good people - as Carolyn said, Bryce all but begged to be sacked himself. If he did that to protect his good people, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because they stopped being his good people when he was sacked.[/list]One way or another, he gave Trump little choice.

Interesting. Thanks for that. It was rather unfair for it to be included in the boardroom criticism if it was the production team's fault.

Totally agree, that had been a VERY easy way to make it fair.
I also remember back in season 1, where the men's team was THREE men down in one task because they lost all the time.
In general, I think it's better when the teams are mixed up a bit more like in the UK. At this moment, Gold Rush is a disaster and I don't see it getting better:

Leslie - Has she done anything all series?

Tarek - Has he done anything right all series?

Lee - Good as a PM in task 2, apart from that we haven't seen much of him

Lenny - Entertaining guy with a lot of common sense, but clearly not the best candidate

Charmaine - Does some good things and some bad things

I thought we saw that they were told when the meeting was by Charmaine. They might not have registered it but then how can you go to a meeting when you don't know when it is and why didn't someone ask the obvious question? I missed when the other group were meeting with the management - though I got the impression ( mistakenly??) on one viewing that it was about the same time which would have been odd anyway. The other team presumably had as far to go and it was edited to make it look as if they had the first slot - so when did each team leave if indeed the other team were first and the gap between the two teams was as long as they implied?

Its all very strange - they looked as if they were meandering in an unconcerned way to a vital meeting which was starting at some unknown time. It can't have been like that, so The Bryce story makes sense.

Even so, if they film the show within the period of a month and you know that at least 3 or 4 of the candidates will observe the Jewish holidays, why film in that month?

Love that comment - so true! More like Bill Rancid - does he ever disagree with Trump?

No matter how 'attractive' your output and how many times you name-check, if you miss the USP in a marketing task, you're onto a loser.

The other team won, not because their song was 'better' but because they'd managed to tease out and incorporate the USP into the song by asking the right questions during the meeting with the execs. Also did them no harm arriving on time for it.

Some very expensive treats over the past 2 weeks, firstly the diamonds and now the truffles.

I totally disagree with you, I think he has been the first candidate ever to stand up to DT for what he believed in, rightly so IMHO and completely ruffled his feathers. If DT actually listened to what he was saying with Hindsight he would realise the mistake he made by firing him. Like Brice said in the taxi he was'nt afraid of yes people like Bill and Caroline and has a great deal of experience in real estate as well as sticking to his principles and speaking his mind...


Lenny should have been fired he has about as much enthusiasm and energy as a dead parrot.

Except he didn't, really. He didn't tell Trump that no-one should be fired this week. Instead he accepted that someone would be. What he did next was tantamount to resigning (since they could hardly fire Lee for his religion or Lenny for his nationality), and yet he didn't actually resign. It was just an ill-thought-out mess on his part. His heart may have been in the right place, but he wasn't thinking. He was a guy who couldn't cope with reality.


Lenny did all he could on the task. He had numerous suggestions for the jingle, admittedly all rubbish because he didn't know what a jingle was. Nor could he write the lyrics through not having American as his first language. The team leader ought to have found something else for him to do that played to his strengths. He was wasted where he was.

Lenny has been an asset on previous tasks. Eg the previous week he pointed out that they should use a voice-over instead of subtitles. The only time I've noticed him being apparently at fault was over the generator, and since the observers confirmed that he had worked hard on that task it's quite possible that the fault lay elsewhere (eg with the team leader, who got much wrong that week).

And of course, where the other 2 Jews took their holidays, Lenny chose to work. That was a bit like a Christian working over Christmas. We're not allowed to penalise the ones that won't do it, but the ones that do are hardly lacking.