Sean Is Trump's Next Apprentice

The fifth season of "The Apprentice" came to a close Monday night before a live audience in Los Angeles at the Orpheum Theatre. Donald Trump hired Sean Yazbeck, a British recruitment consultant.

"Mr. Trump, I am not going to let you down," vowed Sean as he savored his victory. "I'm going to show you as soon as possible that you made the right decision."

Sean will take a job overseeing the development of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Soho. It's a 50-story condominium hotel that is expected to be completed in 2008.

Sean, 33, who currently lives in Miami, beat out Lee Bienstock, 22, a business analyst from Brooklyn, who was the youngest finalist in "Apprentice" history.

In the final episode, both finalists were faced with the challenge of throwing a charity benefit - the kind of event which might be found in The Donald's own PDA. Lee's assignment was to orchestrate a celebrity hockey game to benefit Denis Leary's Firefighters Foundation; Sean was asked to organize a Barenaked Ladies concert to benefit the World Wildlife Fund.

Lee is much younger than Sean, clearly more inexperienced — and not quite as suave or good looking. A very confident Sean told us at the beginning of the second to last episode: "If everything goes as planned, I will be the next Apprentice." He was right.

Confident Sean dominated his final task.

First, his teammate Andrea, who left in last week's episode after blood started coming out of her nose, was back on Sean's team after she had a consultation with a doctor who told her it was nothing but a burst blood vessel.

Sean started off on the right foot by greeting Trump as soon as he arrived at the concert. The live auction he organized was successful; the team auctioned a Pontiac for $40,000.

He may have stumbled a bit when he suggested that a person dressed in a panda suit come parading on a stage with Donald Trump during his event at the Taj Mahal. The Pontiac exec he pitched the idea to considered a comedic spectacle surrounding his cars inappropriate, so Sean scrapped the idea.

Lee, on the other hand, seemed to encounter many more obstacles as project manager.

A pre-event meeting with an exec from Denis Leary's Firefighters Foundation was excruciatingly painful for him and his entire group. None of them seemed to plan out the logistics, like how actress Jaime Pressly - if she were wearing three-inch heels - would be able to get to center ice to greet the crowd.

To exacerbate the situation, Lee put team member Lenny in charge of dealing with the celebrities, a bad move considering Lenny didn't know who any of them were. While Lenny might be a powerful man in business, schmoozing celebrities is not one of his strengths. And as designated celebrity escort, he failed to tell any of the celebrity guests where they were supposed to be.

Later, in her own words, Pressly, who hosted the hockey event's car auction, critiqued Lenny's organizational skills: "Your (stuff) is not together, little Apprentice boy!"

Lee also made the mistake of failing to greet Trump when he arrived at the celebrity hockey event.

But at the end of the task, Lee impressed one of the most important people, Liz, the head of the Firefighters Foundation. Liz praised Lee for a job well done. She said she "saw Lee shine," something she'd been waiting for all day.

In the final boardroom scene, Trump said Lee picked a far riskier team. He then grilled the would-be apprentices, asking them why each was better than the other. Sean and Lee rattled off their academic accomplishments, trying to impress Trump with their honors.

Organization and leadership skills were Sean's strength. A little natural charm also worked in his favor for many of the tasks.

Sean has "energy like I've never seen," said Trump's sidekick Carolyn, giving her endorsement during the finale. Before Trump made his decision, Sean asked to be chosen because of his ten years experience in landing million dollar deals.

As winner, Sean could have chosen the to run the Trump International Tower in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, which Trump said is part of the largest redevelopment projects in Waikiki's history. Instead, Sean said he wanted to learn from Trump, and that the best place to do that would be on the Soho project in New York City.

In the penultimate episode on May 29th, it appeared that Sean had a leg up over Lee. Even an NBC.com viewer poll showed that viewers favored him for the last two weeks.

Lee's first questionable move in that episode came when he chose the three previously fired teammates who would help him with his winning task. He selected Lenny, Roxanne, and Pepi. The choice of Pepi got laughs from Trump crony Carolyn.

"Who was the guy on the far right, Pepi?" Carolyn said, laughing so hard she was nearly in tears after the teams left the boardroom at the beginning of the episode. A virtual unknown since he was eliminated in Week 2, Pepi was indeed a peculiar choice.

Sean, too, hit a stumbling block with his team, made up of Tammy, Andrea, and Tarek. Andrea began coughing up blood and left the task in tears.

In the beginning of the final task, preparations took different paths.

When Lee first met Liz from the Firefighters Foundation, to whom he had to pitch fundraising ideas, he was unprepared. Liz wanted "big ideas" and was totally unimpressed by his suggestions, such as a date auction with a firefighter.

Lee came off as overexcited and nervous. He was so giddy in a meeting with a sponsor that he overlooked a huge fundraising opportunity. None of his ideas were fleshed out. Carolyn said it best: "He took a laid-back approach to the task."

Sean tackled his task with hours of planning and generally seemed more in control. He spent much of his time ironing out logistics and other minutia for a concert in Atlantic City, N.J. His only wrong move may have been when he opted out of a meeting with a major event sponsor to help coordinate a dinner menu (tattletale Tarek called attention to that).

British export Sean wouldn't have been allowed on the show last season because in all of the previous seasons, contestants have been exclusively American. NBC dubbed season five "an international affair" with contestants also hailing from Russia and Canada.

Throughout the season, both men were solid project managers: Lee was PM four times and lost only one task; Sean did it twice, with no losses.

Sean and Lee were selected as the final two at the end of Week 13, when they worked together as the two remaining members of Team Gold Rush. They were up against the two remaining women of Team Synergy: Roxanne and Allie.

The teams were challenged with designing uniforms for the employees of Embassy Suites, and the women were expected to have an advantage.

But after the fashion show, it came as no surprise when the Embassy Suites employees chose the men's designs over the women's. It was evident in the details of the designs that the guys listened to the employees before approaching the task, while the women seemed to morph into fashion designers creating couture that was not complimentary to all body types.

At the end of the task, Trump's daughter, Ivanka, noted how she was impressed by Sean's fashion sense, admitting that she learned things from him that she, a former model, didn't even know.

A love connection of sorts was forged this season between finalist Sean and Tammy, who became the 12th contestant booted after an X-Box 360 promotional task went wrong. Sean said in Episode 13 that the two of them might meet up again after the show finished. In the finale, Sean shocked the audience when he said that he and Tammy would get married.

Season five marked the debut of Trump's children Donald Jr. and Ivanka as boardroom judges when sidekicks Carolyn Kepcher and George Ross are away. Ivanka has proved to be a nice addition to the show.

At a winner's dinner with finalists Sean and Lee, Ivanka revealed that her Dad wears a pink bathrobe and likes milk and hamburgers almost every night. But more important, to be her Dad's Apprentice, you have to be "solid, tough" and, she warned, "he doesn't like showboats."

Trump made it clear in that episode that he doesn't like backstabbers either. He sent "bosom buddies" Allie and Roxanne home at the same time after they went at each other in the board room like a couple of feral cats. Trump said he'd never seen two contestants who had become better friends, and he was appalled at how quick they were to turn on each other.

Last season's winner, Randall Pinkett, made an appearance at the finale. He is now managing a renovation of a Trump property Atlantic City.

The online vote from viewers was presented to Trump right before he made his decision.

The June 5 finale was the first Apprentice finale to take place in Los Angeles, which will be the setting for the next season of the show.
By Amy Bonawitz