Far From a Good Thing

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

NBC thwarted my plans to review “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart” by not making it available to critics in advance of its debut Wednesday night at 9 p.m. “Burnett is really perfecting it,” an NBC spokesman explained to me in an e-mail, referring to Mark Burnett, the creator of two reality show megahits, “Survivor” and the original “Apprentice” with Donald Trump. My hopes rose immediately, of course, as I imagined Mr. Burnett at work day and night to perfect this wonderful new show; I look forward to watching Wednesday’s perfect results.


Meanwhile I’ve had to settle for daily live syndicated fixes of “Martha” at 11 a.m. on NBC. On her new and annoyingly smug talk show, Stewart has clearly established herself as the Charlie Rose of daytime television. She routinely interrupts her guests with her own self-aggrandizing comments: The whole show seems designed to celebrate her persona and her skills. In the show’s opener, she mercilessly forced “Desperate Housewives” co-star Marcia Cross to scramble eggs, despite her stated aversion to cooking; the whole point seemed to be to show off Stewart’s superiority over her guest, who she barely allowed to complete a sentence. The next day she commanded members of her studio audience (an alarming number of whom are blond, blue-eyed Martha clones) to wear ponchos to commemorate Stewart’s famous fashion statement as she left prison.


In a perfect world, the over-saturation of the airwaves with Stewart’s phony-friendly persona would eventually grow tiresome to all but her most loyal fans. Unfortunately, Stewart designed the perfect world herself. While Mr. Trump brings a refreshing clarity to the fourth season of “The Apprentice” – “People don’t change,” he sighs knowingly at one point during the show’s entertaining season opener this Thursday night at 9 p.m. – it isn’t likely Stewart will allow her true self to be revealed on camera. What the domestic diva represents, sadly, is a triumph of surface over substance, of form over content – and in the end, reality television delivers something different. It’s meant to tear off facades; it’s about humiliation, not celebration. Even with Mr. Burnett backstage pulling the strings, I doubt whether Stewart can indulge the rough demands of the television audience and go deep enough beneath the surface to find the darkness America wants to see.


The New York Sun

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