Rants and Rambles

NBC Programming at its worst

It is a sad day when characters in the Showcase program Trailer Park Boys are closer to being a satirical representation of the business world than they are of any real people who stereotypically might live in a trailer park.

Okay. So The Apprentice is popular. Can’t argue with that (in fact, that is what scares me). I had never watched more than a few seconds of it before either changing channels or switching off the television. Last night, a bit tipsy, I watched about five minutes of The Apprentice after The Family Guy had ended and while waiting for Law and Order: Trial by Jury to begin.

I gave up on The Apprentice very quickly. I have heard enough about it that I know it must contain something that the public can call “drama”. Hell, our newspaper devotes a column to it every week. I don’t read the column. But seeing it in the business section (rather than the entertainment section where it belongs) is enough to convince me that (a) it is a damn popular show and (b) there must be something dramatic involved. I was, however, seriously unprepared for the five or ten minutes I just managed to watch.

I mean, holy crap, are these the people that are going to be sitting in the boardrooms of America soon? Am I actually expected to believe that these people will be running the corporations of the world? If they are, we are all a lot more doomed than I thought we were.

Doesn’t the show supposedly get something like a million applicants with each series: all desperate to perform like trained animals? Moreover, have I not been led to believe that the people on this show (other than the education vs. street smarts series – which, mind you, the one I just watched could be part of) are well educated at some of America’s top business schools?

If these things are true how can these people act like such dramatic idiots? I am from “Lower Rubber Boot”, Canada, and the businessmen and women here show more decorum over casual business meetings at Tim Horton’s than the people on The Aprentice demonstrate in the boardroom. I certainly would be unwilling to go to any meeting where the people attending acted in the manner that the people on the show did during the few minutes I watched.

And what is going to happen when these whiny, back-stabbing cry-babies bring their arrogant, egoistic mannerisms to the real world of business? Isn’t there are move on to have corporations be more ethical in the future? How will these people ever bring ethics and morality to American corporate culture: They don’t have it in their personal lives?

No, if the people I saw, including a tobacco chewing clown (literally), are any indication of what tomorrow’s leaders will be like then we all better start hoarding food and water and learning to speak Mandarin right away. Common sense and common decency are looking like they are about to go out the window. If American schools are churning out idiots like this I am glad I didn’t choose to attend one (and that was an option).

But are those responsible for this lowest common denominator programming really kidding anyone? The people on this show were chosen because they treat each other like trash. The show is popular because many people (too many people I think) can relate to this ignorant and obnoxious manner of social interaction. It isn’t even that these people are educated that scares me the most, it is the fact that the show must be popular because viewers see something of themselves in these infantile gesturing bafoons.

What is the most terrifying aspect, however, is that the people on The Apprentice treat each other like Ricky treats people on Trailer Park Boys. The important difference being that Ricky is played by an actor (remember them) who is putting all his skill into being the most ignorant, self-centered, criminally-minded trailer-park trash stereotype that he can possibly be. The people on The Apprentice, on the other hand, are supposedly real people with some manner of education in the business world (be it formal or otherwise) who act the same way!!!

What does this say about our society and culture? Too many things to mention here.

Far too many things.