Last year, Donald Trump threw his own reality under the bus by turning into a celebrity competition for charity. Theoretically, a somewhat interesting idea, but one that was a little odd. Watching celebrities perform bizarre tasks, and try to “street corner” goods and services might be worthy of a watch, especially if you happen to have any investment in said celebrities. Thus, Celebrity Apprentice was born.
As you might expect, there were a few “problems” with the show. Several of the celebrities were of the “celebrity except insofar as anyone knows who they are” variety. A lot of the viewership consisted of those who were only watching on the off chance someone might smack Omarosa around. Many of the tasks were boring, and when it came down to choosing something like performing poorly at them were nonsensical. And, on and on.
The show did stumble onto a nice ratings magnet though. It turned out that some of the contestants were a little on the loopy side, and when the nuts go after each other (or one nut goes after everyone) people start chatting at the watercooler. America seemed decently anxious to tune in to see that semi-famous people could flip their lid, and act severely childish at the drop of a hat, just like your run-of-the-mill, ordinary reality show contestant.
Of course, even the regular version of The Apprentice got a healthy dose of its ratings from the mysterious appeal of watching a group of uber-Type As try and out bastard each other, but the technically insane people were somewhat rare, and mostly limited to those we could bring back for Celebrity Apprentice.