NBC has announced that The Apprentice: Martha Stewart will end with a two-hour live finale broadcast on Wednesday, December 21 at 8PM ET/PT.
ADVERTISEMENT
Similar to the recent finales of Donald Trump's The Apprentice editions, Martha Stewart's Apprentice finale will feature the pre-taped "culmination" of the competition's finalists tasks (meaning the tasks will have already begun in the previous week's penultimate broadcast) followed by Stewart's live "conference room" hiring of one of the two finalists.
The Apprentice: Martha Stewart finale will also feature a reunion of the show's sixteen contestants, however given NBC's previous habit of dragging out the announcement of Trump's Apprentice winners, it's unclear whether the cast reunion will follow (a la Survivor) or proceed the naming of Stewart's winner.
Due to the show's disappointing ratings and Trump's public criticism of a show he co-owns, the announcement of a two-hour The Apprentice: Martha Stewart finale is somewhat of a surprise (and perhaps an indication of just how far the once mighty Peacock Network has fallen.) The decision also seems at odds with Trump's spring statements that last season's finale of his much more highly rated The Apprentice 3 would only be an hour because the previous fall's Apprentice 2 finale "ended up with a reunion and all of this nonsense... nobody wants that." Apparently NBC now does (so far, NBC has not announced any The Apprentice 4 finale information.)
After last week's surprise dual firing (an occurrence that seemed somewhat uneventful in comparison to Trump's previous week's four-person firing), eight contestants remain in the running to be the winner of Stewart's $250,000 "apprenticeship."
ADVERTISEMENT
On this week's eighth The Apprentice: Martha Stewart episode, the remaining candidates will go all "out" in a QVC task recycled from last year's The Apprentice 2. Each team will select one outdoors-related product, with the team that generates the most revenue during a ten minute on-air QVC appearance winning the task.