She’s not going to give out cars

MARTHA

If we can look past the adorable Himalayan cats for a moment, we can see the real problem here: Martha isn’t Oprah. She doesn’t have roots in the primordial talk soup that spawned Maury, Jerry and Sally Jesse. She’s not going to give out cars, and if she did they wouldn’t be Fords. She’d rather sell America tasteful paint than vault William Faulkner on to the best-seller list. She’s not trying to improve the whole world — she just wants to keep her corner of it tidy and free of clutter.

And that’s why The Apprentice: Martha Stewart has so much potential. There are many perfectly normal people who can’t handle a hot-glue gun. How will she deal with them? That muddy section of the gene pool that produces reality-show contestants will no doubt be represented, and we’ll get to see how the woman deals with incompetence. Even if she’s trying for warm and fuzzy under imperfect natural light, there’s the very real possibility that cracks will show. To be sure, she’ll try to cover them up in the editing suite, but producer Mark Burnett knows the reality game well enough that he’ll surely let a few show through.

Even the tagline is a good omen. Instead of Trump’s tough but fair “ You’re fired,” Stewart will reportedly tell her contestants “ You just don’t fit in.” Now, that’s the harsh perfectionist her fans admire and the rest of us have only heard about secondhand: the woman who puts the Omni in Martha Stewart Omnimedia. The vast majority of the population doesn’t fit in to her world, and it’s about time she let them know.

The Apprentice: Martha Stewart premieres tonight at 8 ET on NBC/ Global.

National Post

berrett@ nationalpost. com