The Apprentice season that highlighted a battle between high school-educated streetsmart contestants competing against college-educated booksmart contestants is fittingly ending with a final showdown featuring one contestant from each team.
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Picking up where the previous week's episode had left off, last night's NBC broadcast of The Apprentice 3's sixteenth episode showed the conclusion of the Final 2 task assignments that the two finalists had been given. Tana Goertz, the last member of the streetsmart team, had been assigned to run the NYC 2012 Athletes Challenge, an event intended to promote New York City’s bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Meanwhile, Kendra Todd, the last member of the booksmart team, had been assigned to run the Best Buy Video Game Championship, featuring EA Sport's new Fight Night 2 boxing game.
Each finalist had been given (presumably intentionally) some of their most difficult former teammates to assist them in running the multifaceted and complex events. Tana was assigned Kristen Kirchner, Brian McDowell, and Chris Shelton -- each of which had proven themselves highly volatile and difficult to manage. Similarly, Kendra was given Erin Elmore, Danny Kastner, Michael Tarshi, who had each proven themselves to be flaky and unreliable under pressure.
At the end of last week's broadcast, Kendra's event had been shown to be in trouble as the free-spirited Danny stumbled through an impromptu presentation, and one of the main sponsors of the event, Sony Playstation, was displeased with the location and appearance of their product placement area. This became a key focus point for Kendra, who worked to smooth over issues with the vendor, and with the help of her teammates, worked to transform the location into something that would satisfy the sponsor. Additionally, Kendra also followed through with her grand vision by have a boxing rink built in the center of the main event area.
Meanwhile Tana’s event hit many snags. Starting with conflicts between Kristen and Brian concerning the placement of banners, Tana proceeded to deal with crisis after crisis -- many of which were brought on by her bickering "employees" -- leading Tana to bad mouth her employees to the camera on several occasions. On the day of the event, things continued poorly for Tana, with her team struggling to get going after a long day of preparations the day before.
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Once back at the site of the Athlete’s Challenge, things got worse for Tana as the printed material detailing the day’s events was not yet available and there was a general feeling of disorganization. The situation was especially noticeable when the guest of honor, New York governor George Pataki, arrived and had to wait in his limo because no one was available to review the event with him or provide a schedule of the activities in which he was to be involved. Another disaster came in the form of the event flyers themselves, as after they had begun to be distributed, it was determined that due to a lack of proofreading, they included inappropriate comments concerning some of the athletes.
And then just when it seemed things could not get worse for Tana, they did. As the event started with a patriotic flag ceremony featuring New York City school children and Governor Pataki, it was determined that the parade of flags did not include the United States flag. The glaring omission was noticed by no less than Governor Pataki himself, who mentioned his disappointment to Donald Trump, causing The Donald to comment that the flag's omission was a "big mistake." Despite the issues, the athletic competitions went on, although not as smoothly or professionally as they likely could have.
Back at Kendra's event, things seemed to go much more smoothly. The Playstation representative approved her reworked product demonstration area and the full sized boxing ring appeared to work well as the event's centerpiece. The event appeared to proceed with few if any additional issues, and even George, Carolyn, and The Donald himself seemed to be enjoy themselves. After the event ended, the Best Buy representative even offered to hire Kendra if things didn't work out with The Donald.
Once the events ended, the two "managers" said goodbye to their teams in very different manners. Tana dismissed her team, refusing to even walk them out as she felt she had won the task on her own despite them. In her limo ride back to the suite she showed her eternal optimism as she confidently proclaimed her victory despite the issues, going as far as stating she didn't think the event "couldn't have gone better." Meanwhile, Kendra broke down in tears as she shared a group hug with her departing teammates -- a group that included several people with whom she had not previously enjoyed working. In the ride back to the suite she commented how her team had worked better for her than they had when they were working to win the job for themselves.
At the following day's final boardroom session, Tana and Kendra squared off. Tana was called on her badmouthing of her employees, with Carolyn terming it unprofessional. Kendra was called on allowing Danny to run a meeting unsupervised. Both were asked to explain why they should be Trump's next Apprentice, but alas that determination won't be made until next week's live season finale. The episode's final scene featured Carolyn and George both declaring how strong the contestants were, and the six "employees" coming back into the boardroom.