The Apprentice (American TV series) season 5

Candidates

Team selections

Weekly results

Episodes

Week 1: Summer of Sam's Club

• Airdate: February 27, 2006
• Prologue: Trump arrived at Republic Airport in New York where George and Carolyn were waiting to introduce him to the new candidates aboard his jet. Back on the tarmac, Trump had each candidate say a few words about him or herself. Upon completion of the candidates' own speech in an Apprentice first, Trump personally chose two candidates to be project managers for the first task and asked both of them to form the teams.
• Sponsor: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
• Hosting Company: Sam's Club
• Task: Teams had to promote a Sam's Club store and sell the most memberships. Teams could also use a Goodyear Blimp for promotional purposes.
• Judges: Donald Trump; Carolyn Kepcher; George H. Ross
• Trump Monologue: Change The Team - People that are successful always know when to pull somebody that makes the team fail.
• Gold Rush project manager: Tarek
• Synergy project manager: Allie
• Winning team: Synergy
• *Reasons for win: Synergy used their blimp to advertise freebies given at Sam's Club over Gold Rush's simple marketing techniques. They sold 43 new memberships.
• *Reward: Lunch at the Penn Club of New York with Donald Trump
• Losing team: Gold Rush
• *Reasons for loss: Summer's attitude was questionable, practically giving up during the task and making only one phone call while she was supposed to make as many as possible, claiming that she could not call the local businesses and restaurants during their dinner rush. She also demonstrated a lack of confidence in her team's ability to win before the boardroom, even though they only lost by 3 memberships. Duffle bags were also misrepresented as gift bags, which had nothing inside them and were given away for free, as declared by Tarek to Carolyn during the task. They only sold 40 new memberships, only 3 less than Synergy.
• Sent to boardroom: Tarek, Summer, Lenny, Lee.
• *Firing verdict:
• **Tarek came under fire for bringing in Lee and Lenny into the boardroom, for it seemed that Tarek only brought in Lee for personal reasons and Lenny had done what he was told to do, therefore they didn't deserve to be in the boardroom.
• **Tarek claimed that Lenny did not contribute to the task, but Lenny had been in the blimp and utilized his information of the area which George confirmed to Tarek.
• **Summer came under strong criticism by Carolyn in the boardroom after being unable to explain what she contributed to the team, or justify her giving up on her assigned task of calling restaurants after only one attempt; she attempted to deny responsibility for the loss, but George disagreed, pointing out that with the narrow margin of the defeat, Summer might have been able to bring in enough customers to win had she continued making calls. Lenny then came to Summer's defence, saying that she had tried to contribute, but Tarek had ignored and sidelined her, seemingly convincing Trump to give her another chance.
• **Trump noted how Lee and Lenny were laughing at Tarek's bad decisions, especially the fact that he continued to defend the empty gift bags as being a good idea. He also couldn't get Tarek to give any reasonable cause for Lee and Lenny to even be in the final boardroom, vindicating them.
• **Summer suddenly interrupted Trump, which brought the attention back to her. Although Trump openly stated he was "ready to practically fire" Tarek, Summer continued her attempt to defend him, which caused Trump to lose his patience and, given Summer's lack of judgement and little contributions in the task, he decided to fire Summer instead without any hesitation.
• Fired: Summer Zervos – for having a terrible attitude, doing little to help her team throughout the task, her interjections in the boardroom, and at the recommendation of Gold Rush. Despite Tarek's poor performance as project manager, it was deduced that Summer's poor boardroom logic, unsatisfactory performance, and bad attitude made her the obvious choice to be fired.
• Notes:
• *At first, Brent suggested that his team name should be Killer Instinct, but project manager Allie went with Pepi's idea, Synergy. Tarek named his team Gold Rush.
• *After Summer's firing, Trump warned Tarek that he did not make it by much, and was only saved by Summer's interruptions ; Lenny responded by saying "Not for long". Trump then said to his advisors that Tarek was "totally overrated".
• *Most of the team actually thought that Tarek didn't deserve to be fired despite not making smart decisions. The team thought Summer should have been fired.
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