The new season of The Apprentice is just around the corner!  The big news on is that Donald Trump has fired old George and icy Carolyn from the show and hired his daughter Ivanka. The Apprentice is now run by the Hair and the Heir! Ivanka's main qualification to sit in judgment in TV's most famous boardroom is she gestated in and graduated from Ivana Trump's womb. This is affirmative action, nepotism style. At least, Ivanka is no Paris Hilton brand of daddy's girl. Unlike Paris, Ivanka is not famous for being a loose canyon. Ivanka was summa cum laude at Wharton School of Business. The Heir can be a tougher cookie than the Hair. 

Supposedly, in the debut episode, a contestant chokes on acid reflux, and Ivanka chuckles at his weakness under pressure. She obviously inherited her cutthroat from Daddy, since Donald patronizes a competitor by carping, "You're very vicious. Well, you're a lawyer."

Now that Hair is building a big tower in Chicago, it only makes sense for him to move "The Apprentice" from New York to here. So, he didn't. The sixth season of the reality-competition show is set in Los Angeles. The winner will help Trump's construction site in … Chicago.

But Hair recently said he wants to shoot the show here eventually, partly because he's erecting that functioning obelisk downtown.

As of now, Los Angeles is a good locale for eyes that seek skin. In the second episode, competitors will design bathing suits, then model them on a runway on a bright beach. The winning team will splash in the presumably clean waters of Hugh Hefner's hot tubs at Playboy (now run by Hef's daughter Christie, FYI).

Even though Ivanka got her job because of who her mother once had sex with, what I like about "The Apprentice" is it remains a show where accomplished workers earn rewards through hard work and skills. By comparison, "Survivor" depends on backstabbing politics. "The Amazing Race" is just a lucky crapshoot.

Oddly, "The Apprentice" has gotten better with age even as its pop culture star has dimmed. The tension is taut, not fakey. And the boardroom is still a funny fishbowl where ambitious piranha claw each other's ears out.

It's interesting that as the years have gone on, NBC has added "The Office" to its lineup, showing us the fictional underlings of a nowhere office, low on the totem pole of Donald Trump's corporate America. My point is, it is people like Hair whose empires employ but drown characters like those in "The Office." Grazie, senor.

But where the employees of "The Office" suffer from low expectations, Trump's suckups boast, "I also publish a magazine in my spare time," and, "We do multimillion-dollar developments." Curiously, swimming in money does not enhance the personalities of sharks.

Contestants' first assignment is to build a tent in the backyard of the mansion. They think it's a joyful challenge. But really, it's like a scene in a mob movie where people have to shovel their own graves, because that tent will be the sleeping quarters for each week's losing team.

After one loser sleeps in the tent, she says, "This does feel like [the] Third World." Because Southern California is exactly like Somalia.

I'm sure Hair gets a kick out of this go-go life of his. But the fruits of his labors look less appealing to me than the fruit of his loins. At the start of the season, he stands smile-free in a suit and tie in front of the mansion, frozen pale by sunlight next to his newer, younger, expressionless wife, with her helmet hair, as she holds their lucky child who won the baby lottery of a lifetime. His name is Barron. I expect empirical decisions from him any minute.