Pizza on 'The Apprentice'

Posted by Adam Kuban, March 31, 2005 at 9:19 PM

We normally don't like the practice of "live blogging" an event because, frankly, it's pretty pointless. But I couldn't resist it for this special pizza episode of 'The Apprentice.' Please forgive the inevitable typos in this post and the fact that I don't know who anyone on the show is. OK, let's roll:

9:05 p.m.: I get a call from Tien telling me that right now on The Apprentice, the two teams, Net Worth and Magna, are each charged with conceiving a special pizza for Domino's and then selling it. Whoever sells the most pies wins. Tien tells us that The Donald tells the teams something like, "One of the first things I did when I built this place was make sure I had a good pizza oven."

9:10 p.m.: Net Worth comes up with with a specialty pie with meatballs at its heart. They call it the Meatball Masterpiece. Good move, I think. Sounds exactly like the kind of dumbass moniker Domino's would come up with after months of focus groups—Net Worth does it in a few minutes.

9:12 p.m.: There must be some kind of yearning for meatballs in the collective unconscious. Magna comes up with a meatball-based pie, too. They're calling theirs the Meatball Mangia. Nice use of the Italian language here, but I think it'd be lost on most Americans. But Magna's meatball pie only materializes after some strife: The long-haired dishwater blonde lady's like, "We need to come up with a new pizza concept. Let's base it on pepperoni, because everybody likes pepperoni." Her teammates seem to disagree. "Not everybody," the black dude says. Uh oh, now that bow-tie-wearing dweeb is yapping about a BBQ sauce-chicken-and-cheddar pizza. Is that bow tie cutting off his oxygen? Yuck. And why is this dork still on the show? Bow ties blow.

9:20 p.m.: Net Worth starts marketing. They look smart, going down toward the NYU area and talking about marketing to the dorms there. Good move: College students are huge pizza eaters. Magna's marketing to businesses in the Midtown? area. They're getting lots of takers for multiple pizzas. Though I wonder how many people would buy if it weren't obvious they're doing this as part of a popular TV show.

9:27 p.m.: The teams are in the boardroom.

On Magna's performance: Trump's blonde-haired woman adviser is like, "Magna marketed to busineses in the area and made $653.12." She tells them it was smart to do that.

Net Worth: The little bald dude is like, "You simply marketed to people on the streets." He says they had no plan. They made only $523.90.

Tien instant messages me:

tien (9:34:13 PM): the reason they all seemed to choose meatballs is that Trump said he liked them
tien (9:34:36 PM): in the atrium of trump tower
tien (9:34:57 PM): "one of the things I did was to create a great pizza oven.
tien (9:35:08 PM): the pizza biz is a $32 billion a year biz.
tien (9:35:22 PM): domino's does $400 mil in pizza a year.
tien (9:35:45 PM): thats big stuff"
tien (9:35:50 PM): that was his blurb
tien (9:36:01 PM): "i like meatballs, i like lots of different things on it"
tien (9:39:21 PM): and they didnt have meatballs on the menu before

I missed the first 5 or 10 minutes, so that explains the meatballs. Still, I'm sticking with my meatballs-in-the-collective-hive-mind theory. Papa John's is hawking a meatball pizza now, and there was a story in the Times last week recounting the meatball recipe from Franny's chef/co-owner.

9:46 p.m.: Papa John's has bought ad space during the show. For the Spicy Meatball Pizza. "Tell the competition 'They're FIRED!' Why buy a pizza from an apprentice when you can buy it from a pro?" Tricky move on PJ's part.

9:50 p.m.: Now Stephanie, Alex, and Chris are in the boardroom. Why did Stephanie go to Brooklyn to deliver pizzas to a couple guys, The Donald asks. He's right. That was dumb. Waste of time for only a couple pies. And she had never been on a subway before! WTF?! I guess this Chris dude has a temper. But Stephanie's dumbness in going to the BK dooms her. She's FIRED! Alex wisely keeps his mouth shut and avoids getting fired.

I guess Domino's is now going to market the Meatball Mangia. I still don't like the name. "Meatball Masterpiece" is just boring and predictable enough to go over better with the pizza-eating masses.

9:59 p.m.: The show ends. At Slice HQ, I'm left with the same sick feeling I get after gorging on a chain-pizza pie. And God knows how many orders that dreadful Domino's place will get out of what is essentially an hourlong commercial.

Slice would like to have Domino's execs in our boardroom. Domino's: You're FIRED!

We would have missed this episode were it not for a phone call from contributing editor Tien Mao. Thanks, Tien!

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