Fake It 'Til You Get Caught

Looks like team Matchstick's wedding cake business went up in flames! Oh, if only that were the literal truth. This team of perpetual underachievers headed back to the conference room tonight on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

Martha provided the teams with another realistic and achievable task: bake and sell a wedding cake. What Martha does so well is connect with her audience, a value she endorsed in the first episode. Writing a children's book and opening a flower shop or bakery are probably pretty common dreams for a lot of women, and they're not unattainable goals either. Martha Stewart became a household name by promising women that they could have beautiful, organized homes -- and still have plenty of free time to pursue their passions.

Applying Martha's vision to her Apprentice makes it much more relatable than the Donald Trump version. Trump seems keen to torture his contestants, fulfilling some twisted version of an "I worked my way up from nothing" success story. In his version, you have to pull Pedicabs around Manhattan and teach old people to play Xbox. It's hard to imagine that anyone would aspire to do either of those things for the sheer joy of it, let alone for the slim chance of becoming Trump's next marketing tool.

Martha also applied some common sense to the conference room proceedings. When project manager David selected Marcela (the cake baker) and Dawn (the team scapegoat) to join him in the conference room, Martha brought the rest of the team back from the loft. The object of the task was, ultimately, to sell wedding cakes. The blame for failing to do that fell on the salespeople: Shawn, Jim and the jowly Bethenny.

Shawn not only failed to sell a cake, she also failed to keep her mouth shut, earning her a cordial good-bye from Martha. Did Bradford's boasting in the second season of The Apprentice teach you nothing, Shawn? You never say you'll take the fall if your team loses. It doesn't matter how confident you are. It doesn't even matter if it's your fault. When your team loses, it's always someone else’s fault.