So are you watching the new season of "The Apprentice"?

I really thought I'd stopped watching that show, but last night I found myself drawn back in by some mysterious power. Well, that and the fact that Chris wanted to watch it, and I was already sitting right there in front of the TV. (I'd been monitoring the inauguration doings for hours.) I thought last season's show was boring, but they've tweaked it: instead of male/female teams, the contestants are split into those who went to college and those who didn't. Now, of course, this doesn't really prove anything about whether it's better to have a college education. They could have picked more competent people from the pool of less educated applicants and deliberately chosen some awkward, inept folks from the college grad applicants.



And, in fact, that's kind of what it looks like they did. One character is so goony, I suspected him of being an actor, unleashed on the group to screw them up. Since Trump decides whom to fire each week, he could easily keep the actor around, screwing up the morale of the college grad team. But I don't think this character is an actor. Why mess with the success of the show by cheating? And why trust an actor to get it right? In the huge pool of applicants for the show, you can find someone very weird and annoying, but also smart and articulate, with some business background. Anyway, the new season looks good. The people seem more real and differentiated than they did last time (when I had trouble telling them apart). The non-college people are lively, and the college-people are enlivened by the goofball in the group.