Reward? A trip to an empty ballpark to meet with Steinbrenner? Big whoop.

Seriously (monkey). I thought the golf course was lame, but next to visiting an empty ballpark and watching two egomaniacs give each other metaphorical blowjobs it's the best reward ever.

Wow. You know the laws of physics, nature, and/or common sense are about to be repealed if an afternoon with the thoroughly repulsive George Steinbrenner is considered a reward. How much do they spend on this show? I've seen Community Access channels with bigger budgets.

I tell ya...having the ex-felon (I don't care if he was pardoned) and the "short-fingered vulgarian" in the same room must have released an odor somewhat akin to a Midwestern pig farm.

Like a big potato and hancox, Mr. WebGirl is a big Yankee-hater (by way of being a Mets fan). When he heard the prize he said "If I won that I'd ask to be moved to the losing team." At least if they had let them watch a game from the owner's box they probably could have eaten.



I would have squealed with glee had someone asked him his opinion of salary caps.

What was up with that last reward? Ick for the George and Donald lovin' going on. What kind of man greets another man with "I love you" in front of a group of people? That was just weird on so many levels.

It seems like they could have at least gotten a tour of the place or gone to stand on the field or something.

Heh. I would have had to ask for a special dispensation to stay home. There is no apprenticeship in the world good enough to make me meet Steinbrenner in Yankee Stadium.

Count me in with all the Streinbrenner/Yankees haters. I can't stand the guy. I'm a yuge Mets fan. But then again, if you're going to go in business with DT, you might as well meet Satan himself.


WORD. That was the last thing someone who bleeds orange and blue wants to see.

But it was networking! the ultimate "old boys" gang! I would so have business cards with me...

I predict the "reward" tonight will be a box of hair from The Hair or a visit to his stylist.

Your reward is seeing an EMPTY ballpark?

Hey: I'll take my girlfriend to an EMPTY restaurant, and then an EMPTY theatre.

Sure, she'll get to meet the manager and ticket taker.

Such a valentine's day gift.

(At least the women got FED on two of the rewards... Olive and 21. Maybe they had a hot dog at the Golf course or something.)

episode 6 : no reward; seemed better than most rewards on this show.

No reward on this week's episode... was Donald feeling a little stingy? I was looking forward to seeing the cheesiness of the reward, and felt cheated. That was lame.

I think the rewards are getting progressively lamer. To tell them that a job well done is reward enough is incredibly lame.

Yeah, sometimes, I tell my boss that I don't want my paycheck because a job well done is reward enough. Only not.

I guess the prize is the job at the end. However, it's not like Survivor or AR, where you get the money free and clear. In this game, the "winner" still has to work.

While I like the idea of there being no reward in the charity round, when DT announced this, I was hoping that he would go on to announce that he/Burnett/TPTB would be making a donation to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation in lieu of an award. That would have been classy (imho).

You know, at first I thought he was being cheap not having a reward this time, and then I realized that rewarding them every time they do something right is setting up unrealistic expectations if we're talking about the business world. Because, quite honestly, most of the time if you do something right, the best you get is a, "You get to go home and come back to work tomorrow and you're not fired," just like these guys. The rewards come once a year, if you're lucky, not once a week.

Also, to be honest, raising $75,000 in one quick shot for a charity would make me feel awfully damn good and would be more than enough reward. So I think he did the right thing this time.

Edited because I clearly haven't had enough coffee this morning to make sense the first time around yet

WORD, MamaTiger!

And I also think it would have been cool for TD/MB to have contributed $$ equivalent of renting a jet and flying to Boston for dinner to the EGPAF in the names of the winning team members. It's not as though this show is unsuccessful. They can freaking afford it.

MamaTiger, I think you nailed the reason behind the type of rewards they've gotten in the past with this: Thanks for putting into words what I couldn't put my finger on.

Plus, isn't meeting the celebrities they bargained with a kind of reward too? I can tell you, I'd rather chat it up with Regis Philbin than be oogled by George Steinbrener!

He may not have been able to properly pronounce his name, but I would have admired Trump for stating at the start "For every dollar you earn for the Foundation, I'll match and donate a dollar." That would have been "not unclassy." [tm Heidi]

Bwah!! Loved it BUT obviously we now know an even better reward is none at all. I agree with MamaTiger about reality in business plus IMHO with the shooting schedule they were on, getting a free night to relax was probably considered a GREAT reward. They went where they wanted to for dinner & drinks instead of constantly being part of a Trump Properties commercial! Good times!

The reward should have been . . . a sleepover with Tiki Barber!

That and the celebratory drinks they had looked like more fun than any reward anyone's gotten to date.

You know your reward system sucks when the people you're rewarding can come up with better things to do on their own.

So let me get this straight: the winning teams get stuff like a picnic or meeting with Steinbrenner, but viewers can enter a contest to win a weekend trip to the Trump Taj Majal?

Trump's house? A bit nicer than his apartment, but still...

But Kromm, it's the greatest house in New York State!
(Odd they didn't let us see the inside. Does anyone think it is because of all the mockery his apartment elicited?)

Oh my. Could you imagine an entire mansion filled with all that marbled gold-plated fountain-ringed crystal-chandelier-illuminated cherub-festooned crap? I'm surprised Trump didn't put a 100-foot statue of himself on the front lawn.

I actually think we didn't get to see the inside, because Protege wasn't allowed to go inside! That would sure make it a "reward" on the same level as "nothing" from last week, meeting Steinbrenner but not, you know, Derek Jeter or even seeing a game or even going onto the field, etc.

And, it's located "where all the richest people live."

Maybe that's a cheesy thing to say... but it's kind of true about that area.

You can see the inside of that house (and the outside) in the movie Two Weeks Notice. It was one of locations they used. I think, according to the DVD commentary, aside from the exercise equipment in the library and some random painting on a bookshelf (although the painting was Trump's too) everything it usually is. The foyer is predictably marble, and one of the bathrooms they used in a scene looked surprisingly small (must have been for the guests). (Unsurprisingly, Trump has a cameo in the movie, probably in exchange for using the Greatest House in New York!! --such a media whore).

These rewards get worse each week. I mean, they do have a certain entertainment value for the audience, I'll grant you that. Each week we get to tune in to see just how ridiculous the link between "reward" and "bow down to The Hair" turns out to be. A picnic on his lawn? Good. Lord. Hope they were allowed inside to use the facilities, if necessary. Or maybe he was just hoping for some free fertilizer.

The picnic would have been okay if the contestants weren't driven to Donald's palatial mansion just to have the team sit on the lawn. The same picnic in Central Park would have been a lot nicer and less of a waste of time.

IMO, the Taj Majal is pretty tacky too. I wonder, do New Yorker's find him just as annoying as we do? Do these "contestants" really "respect" him and all that other garbage they go on and on about?

After all the billions he's made, all his success, can it be that Trump is still suffering from low self esteem? Maybe that's why he always feels the need to say his possessions are the best in New York State or the world. I agree there was no point to having this reward on his front lawn other than to show off the outside of this house. I'll bet the winners had to use the undoubtedly on the premises somewhere 'worker' bathrooms if necessary, but they probably weren't even there long enough to need to pee.

Then again, Trump probably doesn't have low self esteem, he's just an assy blowhard.

Yeah, but if they had only gone to Central Park they wouldn't have been able to ride in that snazzy van he's nice enough to provide. I'm sure Trump thinks these people feel privileged to graze on his lawn. Can you munch on Donald Trump's very own grass (the best in New York!) in Central Park? I think not.

It looked like a nice enough spread he provided, but it may have been crawling with ants by the time they got there. A nice lunch in an upscale Manhattan eatery might have been nice, but then, you know, they would have had to sit at a table. And who wants a table when you can sit on the ground?

Ridiculous. The rewards are absolutely ridiculous. Donald goes on and on about the importance of details in the homes and the "winners" don't even get to see inside.I suppose there may be plenty of details to observe from the outside...

Someone upthread posted that maybe this was supposed to be like real life. Like when you do a good job at work, there may be a bonus or some tsotchke, but more often then not, all you have is job satisfaction. I think that would be fine. In fact, that would be preferable to these lame rewards.

Maybe next time, the winners will get plastic change buckets from the Taj...

Tonight's reward didn't suck! I mean, I wouldn't go on a television show with the sole aim of winning a helicopter ride over New York, but it was the first one I've seen so far that seemed at least sort of cool.

Having the PM choose 2 people to join her on the reward was a little weird though, especially when one of the teams only has 4 people; if the 4 person team had won, it would have been more singling out one person who you *don't* want to join you than choosing to reward your strongest teammates (or best friends, as the case may be).

I thought that tonight's reward was a good one. However, the fact that only three people could go was lame, especially when it looked like there was room for all five of the Protege team members.

It's still a crummy reward. I mean NYC copter rides are a lot rarer post 9-11, but it's still of a short duration and not so much an incentive as it is another Trump pulicity stunt.

It's probably the latent architectural geek in me, but I would have loved to be on that helicopter! I flew on the DC/NY shuttle weekly for over a year and never tired of the views on either end of the flight. (3A is the best seat for sightseeing into or out of LaGuardia)

I was fortunate enough, many years ago, to go on a helicopter ride around Manhattan. And even as a jaded New Yorker, to be able to look eyeball-to-eyeball at the Statue of Liberty was really quite thrilling. Although I'm sure I wasn't sitting there slack-jawed, the way Troy was!

Does anyone else recall that a number of years ago, three of the Donald's casino executives were killed in a helicopter crash? I dont remember if it was one of Trump's helicopters, or a commercial flight. I remember the news reports of Trump being devastated when it happened.

Trump tells the story in the book, it was a chartered helicopter, I think. According to the book, he almost was on that flight, but decided not to go at the last minute. (Donald has a thing about not leaving his office. It's a waste of time, he says)

I'm with Kromm in that the reward this week absolutely sucked. My idea of a reward is a special treat that is outside of my capability to do for myself, given limited resources, money, etc. Anyone can head over to the West Side of Manhattan and take a helicopter ride around NYC. I'm not sure how much those things cost, but it's not prohibitively expensive. Thus, there's nothing special attached to it in itself or just because it's a Trump helicopter,which amazingly is what I think DT wanted us to think. I'm not saying a helicopter ride around the city in itself wouldn't be great, because I'm sure it is (though past accidents with helicopters crashing into the East River would probably scare me off). But since I could do this myself, as can pretty much anyone else, as a reward it's nothing spectacular.

The same applies to last week's reward - a picnic outside Trump's Bedford estate?? You want a great picnic in a tranquil, beautiful location? Pick up a picnic basket from any of the tons of gourmet supermarkets in NY, take a blanket, go to Central Park, and bada bing bada boom - you got yourself a picnic!! Geez, if anyone had to go to the bathroom I imagine they'd have been shit out of luck.



Sure, they could have done this, GBL85! The ride wouldn't have been as long, but they could have driven around a bit and had the car drop them off at Central Park.

In comparison, the first reward where they took a chartered jet to Boston for dinner was the Holy Grail. Next week: the winning team gets a personal subway tour of NYC!!!

Not possible, as I have yet to encounter Trump Station, the most beyoootiful subway station in the city. I imagine it sometimes though, all covered in gold leaf, with chandeliers and a fountain with a statue of a random guy peeing.

Sweet Jesus, according to the spoiler thread, this week's prize for the winning PM is 10 minutes face time alone with Donald Trump. That's just hilarious. I can't decide if Trump honestly is that deluded, or if he just really thinks of the contestants as complete peons who don't deserve a quality prize yet. Probably a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.

pomme de terre, I saw that and laughed out loud. Just when I thought the rewards couldn't get any worse. How idiotic.

What I can't figure out is will that reward have any effect on the outcome? Personally I can't imagine talking to TD beyond an introduction sans handshake much less for 10 entire minutes. Frankly the idea of such a reward pretty much squicks me out. And yeah, I laughed too.

Edited to fix the dadgum spoiler tags.

The reward may sound lame, but it could prove invaluable in future boardrooms. You could try to convince Donald how you've been wronged and he hasn't seen the real you yet. It's still one million times better than meeting that fucker George Steinbrenner.

Ooooh, you guys have me intrigued!!! I like to be spoiler-free, so I'm going to resist temptation. But from everyone's reaction, it sounds like a true WTF??? I can't wait.

Ten minutes with Trump!? Are they kidding? What kinda half-assed reward is that?

Even if they think that face time with Trump is valuable, they could have at least made it lunch or dinner. Sheesh...for someone as rich as Trump is, his "rewards" suck. Cheap ass.