Reality TV just got Real, for Realz

If there's anything that can make the joy of watching The Apprentice even greater, it is reading about it. I have never been much of a reality show fan, despite the numerous hours spent in front of my telly. Most of the time, I'd rather watch sitcoms and teen dramas, such as Gilmore Girls, even though they are rather cheezy. But the Donald's "You're Fired," which will soon be, "You're Fired™," just caught the figures on my remote and is not letting me go.

One of the reasons why I am hooked on NBC on Thursdays is because this show, above all other reality show, is actually real. Even the Donald's notorious comb-over hair is real. I mean, how real is putting a bunch of people on an island and seeing who survives? How close to our reality is that? The Apprentice reflects the real world that we currently reside in; it is a mirror of our society. Trump's unrealistic amount of wealth isn't quite tangible to average joes and janes like You and Me, but that's the cynical, cold, hard truth, isn't it? How many of the people who watch this show can expect to make so much money in their lifetime?

Another "real" (the term, "real" has been just done and re-done and killed over and over -- I feel like banning it from my list of vocabulary) aspect of the show is how the women only got so far. In an article in USA Today, Irma Herrera writes, "The Apprentice has only one woman left standing beside three male peers for the final rounds. At last, reality TV is starting to look like reality." And she has the numbers to back it up. Although about 50% of all law school graduates are female, and yet they represent less than 17% of partners in major law firms. Although women are approximately 30% of graduates of MBA programs, they are only 2.7% of the Fortune 500. I seriously doubt that all the women are out there doing just pro bono work.

It is a sad reality. I found Amy to be an extremely clever individual. I sincerely thought that she would make a better candidate to run a Trump corporation than Kwame. And it's not just cuz she's a woman. I honestly think that Bill present himself better, and Troy, who was fired a bit earlier, although without fancy college degrees, would have made an excellent CEO.

How much of this is set in stone? Are women doomed to carry inferior positions and receive less pay than men forever? I don't think anyone believes that women are innately incapable of doing intellectual work that men are capable of, or that women are less adequate than men in performing any intellectual brain-work task. Evidently, the glass ceiling does exist, and while more and more women are out there proving that this can be shattered, one has to admit that this is a lengthy and tiring feat, making the labors of Hercules seem very trivial. But as The Apprentice subtly portrays, the reality isn't the sunny-side up happy face we pretend it to be.