The Martha Stewart Apprentice has failed miserably. There are a couple of reasons for that, the biggest one being Martha herself.

She's simply not good at public speaking. She's not personable. You can't relate to her and she's not interesting to watch.

I think she's pretty well done with the TV aspect of her career. She could PROBABLY get back to where she was before she went to jail with a day time show, simply covering household bullshit, but she'll never make it as a talk show host or any sort of live TV host or really at any kind of job where she has to interact with other people.

I think the only reason why her show and books and product line were successful was because she came across like she absolutely knew what she was talking about. She seemed to be a giant in her particular field. Sure, she came across as a cold, frigid, down right monstrous bitch, but she was good at giving people something to strive for. She set a standard that was just out of reach for a sane person. She gave people (people who were interested in that sort of thing) a goal that they could never reach... a carrot on a string. The way she kept that carrot out there was by seeming completely untouchable in the context of her old show. She came across as an expert on everything she talked about. The funny thing is that more often than not, she's setting the rules and details of what she's an expert in. She creates a game and then casts herself as master of that game. It's really a pretty ingenius way to run a business. She decides she's going to talk about the perfect way to set a table, then proceeds to invent the perfect way to set a table and says "See? I just did it the perfect way"

She came across as hardcore. Like, not in a Mick Foley sort of way, but in a Patrick Bateman sort of way. She was like a machine; a smiling but completely cold, sexless, sociopathic machine... someone who doesn't have any concept of how the real world works and how people interact with each other. She lives in this world of perfect cuisine and perfect household upkeep.

I once watched her build a series of cubbies for the laundry room to organize all of the different detergents and bleaches and various aspects of doing your laundry... and this was a fairly complicated project she'd put together.

Who the fuck does that?! What SANE human being needs a methodical system for organizing their laundry accessories?

You know what my system is? There's a shelf over the washing machine. I put the detergent on that and take it down when I use it. That's it. I don't need a special color coded series Tupperware containers to keep my various laundry tools in.

Anyway, my point in all this was the following:

When Martha went to jail she suddenly became human. Sort of. And since she came out of jail, she's been working very hard to bring herself down to the level of her viewers. She's tried to make herself accessible. She's tried to make herself relatable.

That completely reverses what worked for her before. I don't know if going back to the way things were before would have been the right move for her, but I'm sure that this was the wrong one.

The other problem she's got is that unless she's got a script and cue cards, she's a REALLY terrible public speaker. She stammers and says "uh... um... " a LOT. She can never seem to decide what words to use where. She seems really uncomfortable working without a script.

You could see that back on her old show as well. Any time she'd have a guest on the show and she had to just exchange conversation with them, she seemed to get very tense and she would stammer and it seemed like she was constantly trying to move the course of the conversation back to a place where she could just recite lines written for her.

Ya know, Donald's show is decent. I like that Apprentice. It's good because Donald has personality. Sure, he seems like kind of a weird guy and kind of a dick, but at least he's personable. He genuinely seems like someone who lives in our world... he just lives at the top of it. He swears. He sweats. You can see how he works and relate to it. It might not be the way you work, but at least you can understand it. He's not the best actor in the world, and he's obviously not entirely comfortable on TV, but at least he's able to improvise and think on his feet. He seems to have a pretty good grasp on what makes good TV.

Martha has none of this. She looks uncomfortable, unhappy and completely out of her element. Reality TV is not the place for Martha Stewart. She needs to be in an environment where she has complete control of everything. The Apprentice is not that place. She's working for someone else, with people that don't really have much to do with her day job, on someone else's show.

Another thing she's got against her is that she really just don't have the pull Donald has. Donald owns a lot of New York. Donald's got major power. Martha owns what... one aisle at K-Mart? A magazine and a few books?

Sure, she's successful, but no where near the weight that Donald has to throw around. Hell, just looking at the buildings the show takes place in will tell you that. Trump Tower is massive and gorgeous. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia building looks like a friggin burned out warehouse in the ghetto.

What I'd like to see is something like The Apprentice: Puff Daddy. That would be hardcore because you know he wouldn't put up with no bullshit. I bet the tasks the people have to do would be much more interesting.

Or perhaps The Apprentice: Russell Simmons. There's another guy who'd put on an interesting show and wouldn't put up with any bullshit.

Or if you want to stay with the female idea, The Apprentice: Hillary Clinton. Imagine that. That would be come hardcore shit. They could keep it in New York that way too.

Whatever.

Just so you know, I'm not like, a huge Martha Stewart fan. I do find her interesting though. Interesting as a figure in pop culture.

Oh, btw, I'm drunk

Now I'm going to sleep. I've got a big day of drinking and beating the fuck out of the goat tomorrow.