He's crying on the inside

For those of you who haven't been following Martha's Apprentice, Jim, the guy you love to hate, narrowly escaped being fired in the boardroom last week. Jim is the character that you either love or you hate, mostly because he's a jerk. Some people love jerks. They seem to think that it shows they are strong. Me? I think that it shows they are weak because they can't learn to get along with others and compromise. He's a little Machiavellian for my taste.

Still, viewers have been treated to another side of Jim in the last few weeks. It turns out that he's not as one-dimensional as he appeared to be. It turns out that Jim believes that what helps set him apart from everyone else on the show is how badly he wants to win. In fact, he believes he has to win to make a better life for his new family. That's right, Jim is married and his wife gave birth while he was on the show. He didn't even get to go be with his wife during the delivery because he was in the middle of a task.

You can tell that Jim loves his wife very much when you hear him talking on the phone with her. He has also shown tremendous excitement and joy at becoming a father. Despite that, he is bent on intimidating and belittling his fellow competitors. By all accounts, Jim's behavior is boorish. He threatens anyone who he believes might take him into the boardroom and attempts to throw people off their game, even if it means losing a task (of course, he doesn't realize that what he's doing endangers the task).

In the last boardroom, he was a 50/50 shot for being fired. Martha reprimanded him in the gentle way only Martha could do so, and Jim left the boardroom visibly shaken. For all his showboating, you could tell he knew his number was almost up and that he wasn't indestructible. That was the moment I knew for certain that Jim wasn't confident, as he had let on; Jim was arrogant. I think there's a huge difference between arrogance and confidence. Confidence is what wins; arrogance is what leads to downfall. The sad thing about arrogance is that it usually seems to function as a sort of faux confidence, and because of that, the arrogant person will do anything to avoid shedding it. I guess it makes sense - in the absence of true confidence, arrogance is all they have and who wants to consciously admit they are weak inside?

If the producers assembled the show to highlight this somewhat subtle story arc featuring Jim, I think they did quite a masterful job at it. We started with Jim the big jerk, and in recent weeks, he has evolved. We've now seen Jim the devoted husband, Jim the family man, Jim the caged animal, and Jim the procelain doll.

I don't think Jim will end up becoming Martha's Apprentice, but I know that when he is fired, he won't be able to keep his tears on the inside.