In a few interviews on E! and various channels, contestants have talked about how little they sleep on the show. They basically work 7 days a week and sleep 2-4 hours per night. After a few weeks, this starts to add up. I think the negative character traits of some of the people were really exaggerated given how little they have been sleeping. Just looking at Wes' face (or is it wes's face) you could see black circles under his eyes...So, here's my sleep analysis for the contestants:

Jen - Cognitive Slowness - couldn't understand simple wheel concept when I think she's incredibly intelligent & has demonstrated this in other tasks (Though, I think the part she didn't get was how the wheel would magically make the type of jeans you wanted appear in the center... it's just a piece of paper, not a piece of oragami... and this confused me to because the way Ivana explained it, you would turn the overlapping wheels with the traits you wanted in a jean and your jean type would appear in the middle. Overlapping paper is not going to do that so easily.)

Wes - Literally 1/2 asleep during this task. He looked like he was moving in slow motion. He talked slow... he didn't really think very clearly either. He seemed kind of spaced out. I thought he was going to fall asleep in the cab.

Maria - Angry, hypersensitive, snapping behavior. The majority of people who are sleep deprived get very irritable after several days/weeks go by. Maria jas been bitchy but never like THIS.

Kevin - What was up with the Sweating? Body temperature regulation gets screwed up w/o sleep. (Or maybe he was just nervous...who knows. This one is a stretch.)

Kelly, Andy & Sandy seem to be handling it better than everyone else but since Sandy got in a 20 minute fight with Maria, I wonder if she is also oversensitized & angry from lack of sleep.

Of course this could all be attributable to other things (increased pressure with smaller teams, Ivana not explaining the wheel properly), but still - sleep is a HUGE deal for people and we completely treat it like it's not necessary despite the 100s of studies that come out on a weekly basis showing how important it is.

• RE: Sleep Deprivation Among the Contestants,rtrader, 12:01 PM, 11-19-04
  • RE: Sleep Deprivation Among the Contestants,Estee, 05:25 PM, 11-19-04
• Maria,sorgee, 02:53 PM, 11-19-04

Interesting post. I understand Apprentice 2 was filmed over 42 days straight through, so it would seem that the remaining candidates have now gone about one month with reduced sleep. I think Kelly's military background plus his present job as CEO (they are accustomed to long hours at the job) and Andy's youth are coming in handy dealing with this very rough schedule.

I think the lack of sleep may explain some otherwise bizzare decisions, like Raj reducing a four bedroom home to a three bedroom, or the lack of ideas during the creative sessions (from both teams, but particularly Apex during the NYPD recruitment ad task).

Bill Rancic made the comment that this game is about endurance and determining not to 'give up' too quickly. He may have been thinking about how grueling this type of environment really is (moving from one task to the next over a few days, with little sleep).

Also in Kelly's favor: he's used to this. West Point cadets basically spend four years at varying levels of sleep deprivation, with the first being the worst. The Academy schedule is not for anyone who likes the simple pleasures in life, like being able to close your eyes for more than two seconds and standing a chance of getting them open again.

is going to need more than sleep to help her out. The girl went a bit over the top on national TV and showed what type of an employee she would be. Sleep or no sleep, I doubt that there are many people out that that would want her to work for them after seeing her fits in prior episodes and especially last night. I bet that there are even less that would want to work for her!

Sleep deprivation is a part of the job. I bet that once she calmed down she was almost thankful she got put in the cab. She looked and acted like lack of sleep was getting to her mentally, emotionally and physically.
(I almost felt sorry for her. ALMOST.)