"Dear Martha, Good Show... Corny Ending" - 
by
Then Martha introduced the fake George. His name is Charles Koppelman and he is on Martha's Board of Directors and he is, of course, an old, rich, white guy. He has a background in the music industry and in his words, he's worked with everyone from Babs Streisand to Tracy Chapman. Wow, what a wide breadth of music. I thought he would say Cannibal Corpse as his second example, but no such luck. That's like saying, "I watch a ton of reality TV! Everything from Trump's Apprentice to Martha's Apprentice!" Another good thing the show did right off the bat was to acknowledge the rumors that one of Martha's people had a prior relationship with one of the candiDATES. It turns out that George -er, Charles, knows Bethenny. This was supposedly a scandal before the show aired but the show didn't exactly hide it. Bethenny, who reminds me of the little girl in "The Ring," knows Charles' daughter and actually dated his son. Later, when this was brought up in the loft, the question, "Does anyone feel threatened by that?" was posed. This was greeted with several hearty (and assuredly phony) "No's," and that was that.
So Charles is a standup guy and Alexis is not a lesbian and everyone loves everyone. But not so fast - remember the "first impressions" thing? Yeah, well, my first impression of Charles is that he's a tool. From the get-go, he held an unlit cigar in his hand as a prop. Does George need a prop? Nooooooooo. Conclusion: Charles has a small penis.
After the introductory meeting, the 16 MarthApprentices made their way over to their loft to get to know each other. They all marveled at the living space as if they expected less. Which reminds me, The Real World would be cooler if they put them up in a doublewide at some point. Anyway, the first order of business was for the group to divide themselves into two teams of eight which again elicited surprise for some reason. People, your loft was going to be beautiful and you knew you would be divided into teams... Why the wide eyed and open mouthed surprise? Early standout candiDATES included Shawn, who must be Suze Orman's twin sister. There was also Jeff who sounded and acted like a prick. I also immediately realized that Martha's WASP nature trickled down to the casting directors, as the only flavor present in the bunch was Vietnamese Jennifer. And something tells me she's not exactly going to be "keeping it real," as it were. For shame, Martha, for shame. (Then again, another notorious story about her is her mistreatment of her Latino staff, so maybe she's just showing her true, ahem, colors.)
The gang peaceably divided themselves along a creative types vs. business types battle line. The creatives named themselves "Matchstick" and the others became, "Primarius." I immediately dreamt of them joining forces with each other to create a Super Apprentice a la the Transformers (Optimus Primarius), but no such luck. The aforementioned Jeff named himself Project Manager of Matchstick and Dawna would lead Primarius. (Oi, a Dawn, a Shawn, and a Dawna. This should be fun.) Some jerk named Jim then had some face time saying, "You don't control my actions, I control your actions." Then he made some terribly unfunny jokes and immediately leapt to the front of the "Most hated off the bat" race.
The next morning, a chipper Martha called the loft and instructed everyone to meet her in the lobby of Random House at 8AM. Martha would meet them there after finishing up some work at her house and a meeting at the publisher's. By my calculations this meant the phone call came at roughly 3 AM - work some, then the horrible commute into the city, then a meeting, then makeup and hair - all by 8AM? Martha is incredible indeed. Charles and Alexis joined their boss and laid out the first challenge. Each team would choose a classic fairy tale, illustrate it, make a physical book, read it to first graders and be judged by both the kids and the publishing giant. Yay! Not another marketing campaign challenge! "Dear Martha, please limit the Trumpish marketing challenges, as they got really, really boring last year. Cordially, sg-dub."
I thought Suze Orman was already rich
The teams retreated to private rooms and began brainstorming. Primarius quickly chose "Jack and the Giant Beanstalk," and set out to get a focus group together, as business types are inclined to do. Jeff, as head of Matchstick, ruled with an iron fist. They would do "Hansel and Gretel," and they would do it his way. Dawn, a writer, would write the book and no one could question anything. Nice guy, this Jeff. Due to the lengthy intro for the premiere, the actual creative process was completely glossed over. In a blink of an eye, both teams had their finished stories and we got our first earful of the results. Matchstick's Hansel and Gretel was the stuff of child psychologist’s nightmares. The protagonists hated their names, changed them, snuck out of the house, littered, and trusted strangers. When some Matchstick men (and women) voiced their concerns over this dark and creepy version, Jeff told them to, "Shut up." He liked the rhyming tale and he was going to roll with it, logic be damned.
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