Although I Want to Work for Diddy sounds like it should be a show about people fighting each other to get a minimum-wage job, it is instead another entry in VH1’s vast raft of celebreality shows—in this case, one where aspirants compete to be P. Diddy’s personal assistant. The premise, at first, made me worry for Diddy’s career. After all, one of the conditions of doing a celebreality show on VH1 is that you are no longer a celebrity. Times haven’t gotten that bad for him since Making the Band, have they?
Judging by last night’s debut, we don’t need to worry for Diddy; while he has a show on VH1, he’s still celebrity enough not to appear on a show on VH1. Not much anyway; he sits down for an interview that’s spliced into the episode at points, but the actual job of finding his assistant is left to other employees—a former assistant, a former manager, and other hired hands who vet the applicants. It’s not I Want to Work for Diddy; It’s I Want to Work for the People Who Used to Work for Diddy. Or maybe they should call it The Apprentice’s Apprentice.
In the first episode, Diddy’s proxies organize two teams of contestants to go out and run errands for the boss man, including videotaping a cheer for him and buying a longboard for his son. Remember back in the innocent days of the early 21st century, when on Making the Band Diddy would show up in person to make the contestants walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn to get him a slice of Junior’s cheesecake? Back then, he actually had to lower himself to appear in person and make his unreasonable requests himself. Now he delegates that crap out. That, my friends, is a businessman.