Smallscreen News

Why we wanted Bret Michaels to win 'Celebrity Apprentice'

By April MacIntyre May 24, 2010, 6:53 GMT

Bret Michaels lead singer of Poison performs at the Verizon Wireless Music Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, 21 August, 2007. Rocker Bret Michaels was released from hospital on 04 May 2010 some two weeks after he was rushed to intensive care after suffering a brain hemorrhage, his doctor said. EPA/STEVE C. MITCHELL

What a difference a year makes!

Last year about this time, we were agog over the barbs traded between Celebrity Apprentice finalists Joan Rivers and Annie Duke. "Whore pit viper" became a new slur introduced into the vernacular. It was a mean finale. And highly watchable smallscreen reality fare.

This season of Trump's celebrity stew has been a kinder gentler version, and a case study in human frailties, quirks, pathos and endearment.  We all pre-judge, and in an invasive show like this, the cameras reveal the hidden body language and subtleties that reveal a person's character to us.

It shone a spotlight on the political animal Rod Blagojevich is to the core, revealed the bawdy good-natured steel Magnolia Sharon Osbourne is, the passivity of Selita Ebanks, the commonness of Maria Kanellis, the bonhomie of Sinbad, the affable star on the rise, Curtis Stone, the overall sadness and lack of drive in Darryl Strawberry and the kindness and meandering mind of Cyndi Lauper.

Poison frontman Bret Michaels winning the show was as much a testament to his tenacity (pun intended) as it was to a collective flow of good wishes and genuine caring for a rocker whose earnestness and positivity won the hearts of everyone he connected with.  Michaels was never given his fame or fortune; he worked like a dog to get where he is.  When interviewed, he is appreciative, and says 'thank you' and 'm'am' and 'sir', and is as polite as they come.

Too often the people we liked, loved and were affected by in our own lives die without our being able to tell them how they made us feel, how we enjoyed their company. 

If only the dead could hear their eulogies.

An emergency appendectomy. A brain hemorrhage. A warning stroke. A hole in his heart. A daughter bordering on Type One diabetes. The hard-scrabble kid from working class roots defeated mama lion Holly Robinson Peete. 

Michaels cheated death a couple of times this past month and a half, and it gave him a special gift, the ability to discover how much he means to so many people.  

That is something few of us will ever know in our own lifetimes.