The outcome of the final episode of The Apprentice was what I wanted and what most people expected after last week: Kendra got hired. The process of getting to those two little words, however was nothing short of excruciating. Geez. It was worse than sitting through Ryan Seacrest's meaningless babble on American Idol to get to Bo Bice. Usually we DVR Idol so we can fast forward past the commercials and Ryan's blathering, and I try to do the same with The Apprentice. It cuts greatly back on my viewing time to eliminate the commercials and filler crap.

Unfortunately, tonight I was watching The Apprentice in the emergency room, where I had to take my son because he impaled his foot on a shard of glass. That's how dedicated I am folks - for you I sat through all the fluff permeating the final episode, while sitting in an ass-numbing emergency room chair, just so I could serve you. I'm a giver that way.

I found the set design annoying to no end. They had it set up like a courtroom, with Trump, Carolyn, and George, and Season One and Two apprentices Bill and Kelly, up on the dais like a group of capitalist justices. Over in the jury boxes sat the other members of Tana and Kendra's team, ready to sit in judgement. There was the live audience, laughing, cheering and clapping so mechanically they might have been driven by cue cards. And there were the commercials. The endless commercials, that seemed to come every two minutes.

Tana was defensive and edgy through the entire episode. Clearly, she knew that she was going into the finale as the longshot. Trump immediately attacked her for her treatment of her teammates last week. I think what really hurt her on this is that she didn't really accept responsibility for it. Oh, sure, she admitted she made a mistake in talking about them like that, but it lacked sincerity.

For one thing, she tried to make it sound like she was only berating them at the beginning, based on their past performance, when she was bad-mouthing right up until the end, when she snuck out the building after them. She was still bad-mouthing them in the Boardroom, for pete's sake!She tried to downplay her sneaky exit after her event, claiming that she just left after them because they could afford a limo and she couldn't. The other stupid thing she did was to claim that it was just a misunderstood sense of humor that nobody got.

She did apologize to her team later, sure - after she realized their feedback was going to be crucial to her success. Kendra, no doubt, realized this all along, but even so I never got the sense that she was playing nice with her team to manipulate them into liking them. She understood that she needed them to succeed, she managed them adroitly, and she was genuinely touched at the kind things they had to say about her. Kendra shone with sincerity, whereas Tana came across like the popular girl from high-school who plays nicey-nice to your face while she plots to pour pig blood on you at the prom behind your back.

Tana trying to take credit for the Pontiac brochure was the final nail in her coffin, I think. Does she not realize that Trump actually knows everything that went on? Okay, so the circular shape of the brochure was her idea. Big deal. Her manic excitement in trying to take credit for the success of that whole project because of the circular shape bordered on the ridiculous. Kendra stayed calm, pointing out that there were many elements to the brochure - the photo choices, the color choices, the writing - that made it work, not just the shape.

What I wanted to see was Kendra bitch-slap Tana right there in front of everyone. She should have been more assertive, pointing out that it was her idea to take advantage of the photo shoot as an opportunity to glean marketing ideas from the crowd gathering to watch the shoot. Kendra understood that the decision to purchase a car like the Pontiac Solstice is an emotional one, and she focused on finding out what people's gut emotional reaction was to the car. Tana and Craig never understood what she was doing, not for a second. They did not "get" it, Kendra did, and it was the context of the brochure, the way that Kendra pulled together the emotional responses of real people to the car into the brochure, that wowed the folks at Pontiac. The shape was a nice touch, but it was like a cherry on top of a banana split. 

However, I have to say the way Kendra played it was smarter. She knew that the single biggest black mark against Tana was the way she treated her team last week. So rather than lay out Tana's failings, she gave her credit for the shape of the brochure while still pointing out her own contribution. When Trump asked her why she let Tana and Craig take credit for her work, she replied that when they were in front of the Pontiac folks, it was important to look like a unified team focused on the project - that in business you don't air your team's dirty laundry in front of the client. It's unprofessional. Trump clearly liked her answer.

Kendra wasn't intimidated by Trump, either. When he brought up her crying in the board room last week, she got all up in his grill. "It was an emotional moment with my team," she shot back. "I've seen 300 pound linebackers holding up the Super Bowl trophy with tears streaming down their faces." The audience roared and applauded her, and Trump had to concede that one to Kendra.

Trump revealed what the two job choices for the winner were: running the Miss Universe pageant, or overseeing the renovation of his $100,000,000 Trump Mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Tana picked the pageant, Kendra, naturally, picked the Mansion gig. Trump interestingly, seemed a little miffed that Tana preferred the beauty pageant to his Mansion.  The Mansion is in Florida, Kendra's home turf, and it's in real estate, her field of expertise. It's almost as if Trump chose that particular job knowing that Kendra was going to be his hire.

Trump was surprised that Tana's team didn't nail her to the wall and frankly, so was I. I wanted to see them crucify her for her shabby treatment of them, but all we got to hear was Chris, being much nicer than one would expect him to be, politely saying he was "bothered" when he saw the tapes of how Tana talked about her team, and that he personally thought Kendra was a better choice. When Tana attacked him, saying he'd never even worked with Kendra, he shot back that he lived with Kendra in the Tower and that they were working on some stuff "outside the boardroom", which a blushing Kendra quickly clarified was about real estate in Las Vegas, not any Apprentice hanky-panky.

As much as I like Kendra, and as much as I'd far prefer to work with her than Tana myself, I have to say that as much as Kendra won The Apprentice, Tana lost it for herself. She had been a consistently strong performer throughout the process - stronger than Kendra, overall. She had the likeability factor going for her - everyone thought she was nice, even Carolyn. Quite simply, Tana blew it for herself on the final task with the way she treated her team. All Kendra had to do after that was hit a home run with her own task, which she did. Kendra deserved to hear "You're hired", and Tana deserved to go home to Iowa.

Kendra's new job is perfectly suited to her talents, and I have no doubt that she will excel in her new job. The show ended, most fittingly, with Kendra driving off in her shiny new Pontiac Solstice, the car for which she designed her awesome brochure. Now we just have to sit back and wait for fall, which will bring us Season Four of The Apprentice and the new Martha Stewart Apprentice show and, or so Trump says - the Broadway musical version of The Apprentice. Wow. Not sure about that one.