Watching TV

Since I didn't have grading last night, I turned on the TV. I'm a lazy TV watcher, which I'm sure the networks appreciate; if I see a show I like and turn it on, I'm likely to watch the next show unless it really irritates me until bedtime.

So it was last night. I watched some comedies. One is good, and then they get less interesting to me. And then there's this Donald Trump show.

The basic premise is that two teams are doing little business things to gain Trump's approval. For each task, there's a team leader on each team; the team leader of the team that wins the task gets to meet with some business person. I'm assuming someone wins the overall season, and gets to meet with Trump or something? And then someone (or more than one?) person from the losing team gets "fired."

The teams seem to be broken down along gender lines. Is that how it always works?

Anyway, yesterday the teams had to do pedicabs in Manhattan. One team went around a tourist area, and the other chose Wall St. Both teams had gimmicks: the tourist area team (the men) did some Roman chariot theme. The Wall Street team (the women) did a "Babes on Bikes" theme. The tourist area team did way better.

The Wall Street team, wow, what a disaster. They sounded like they were TV prostitutes out to pick up customers in public. Seriously, what Wall St worker is thinking, "Hey, they're filming prostitutes picking up men. I want to be filmed getting a ride!" (The cameras must be fairly obvious, right?)

Anyway, the key seemed to be that these are tourist things, not worker bee things, so the tourist area worked better.

(The producers have obviously chosen a cast of folks who are, at least the women are, thin and fairly attractive and quite young; the men aren't necessarily thin or as young looking. So the women are playing the prostitution thing. ICK.)

Then there's a part where cast members talk to the camera about their team members, usually negatively. I'm unclear whether the judge(s?) (do Trump's kids act as judges, too, or are they just advisors?) sees the talking to the camera parts.

Finally, both teams meet with Trump to talk about what they've done. And that was both really, really irritating and fascinating in a sick way. He'd ask a seemingly smart and pointed question, and the cast member he'd ask would evade and avoid, rather than anwering. Either s/he wasn't actually listening carefully, or s/he didn't respect Trump enough to think he'd notice and actually want the answer to his question, or s/he thought he could talk around the question. It was weirdly like watching students not answer a question in office hours.

(You know: "What's your argument?" "Well, I'm thinking that it's really interesting that there's this, you know, and then I was wondering about the other stuff, but then I thought I would try to answer without doing any research and so I don't know, but I wrote this high school paper where I talked about otters.")

And then there's the unwillingness to take real responsibility. All the cast members are too afraid, as if they're really, really going to get physically hurt if they did something wrong.

Trump asked the women's group who chose Wall Street, and the blame game started. (I admit, I hadn't been paying really close attention to who made the suggestion, but they all went along, even though one woman said during the talk to the camera part that she had some doubts; she hadn't expressed and explained those doubts to her team members.) Suddenly, the team leader had no responsibility. Nor did anyone else. I really, really longed for someone to stand up and say, "I did; I made a mistake. Here's what I was thinking. And here's what I've learned from my mistake."

But, of course, that doesn't happen.

And then at the end, the team leader is asked who to fire, and she really, really should say, "Sir, you should fire me. I'm responsible."

I mean, she got fired anyway, so why not get fired like a responsible adult?

I can't imagine any sane boss thinking, "This woman was on TV and was a total bitch and didn't take responsibility, let's hire her!" (I can imagine a horndog boss thinking that she's attractive and was on TV and will probably be willing to get laid, however.)

You'd have to pay me an awful lot to be in that room listening to the whiny nastiness of the cast, because I think I'd be inclined to quickly fire anyone who whined in the meeting room. (I'm guessing if Trump had done that during the first season, the show wouldn't have survived; but if it had survived, there'd be a lot less whining now.)

But then, I'm no Donald Trump. And I have the grey hairs to prove it.