Sometimes, primetime TV can be educational. For evidence, all you have to do is look at Sunday night's new episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice." The lesson? If you mention bodily functions in the boardroom, you will be eliminated.
I can relate to the struggles of miss Maria Kanellis. When I was on the fifth season of "Beauty and the Geek," I was eliminated over a question related to "taking care of business." However, the sudden firing of Maria Kanellis sudden firing was about eight times more humiliating than mine...because she deliberately brought it upon herself.
What happened? As Donald Trump was questioning the final five over who should be fired, the topic of Curtis Stone's "arrogance" again came up. So how did Sharon Osbourne and Maria ever get this impression of the chef? Apparently, he took a dump in their dressing room -- I wish I knew some better way to phrase it to sound less disgusting, but there really isn't any nice way to say it.
Trump didn't like the idea of some "turning the boardroom into the locker room," so he promptly fired Maria on the spot. To be fair, it really looked like he was going to get rid of her anyway, and the gang just set him up with a really great reason.
From there, we quickly went into the annual "have the winner judge the remaining contestants" segment. Joan Rivers showed up with Bill from the original "Apprentice," and the two of them made their snap judgment of the remaining contestants. Because Curtis was the least famous of the remaining group lacked passion, they were immediately turned off by most of what he had to say. Meanwhile, everyone started to treat Holly Robinson Peete as a saint who has come down from the clouds to raise money and give us very few memorable moments. Congrats to Bill for pointing out that she has a 1-2 record as Project Manager, which in most seasons would be enough for Trump to give the heave-ho.
The real debate among Trump's two sidekicks was between Sharon and Bret Michaels. Joan thought Sharon had a ton of passion, but Bill worried that her journey this season (which included a long absence due to illness) would be too much for her to handle in the long term. Meanwhile, Bret didn't have enough "killer instinct" for Joan, even though Bill absolutely thought he was there to win.
Thankfully, Trump decided to jump on "Team Bill" and fire Sharon, and on "Team Everyone" and fire Curtis. I think they were somewhat correct in their explanations, though I thought Sharon (good as she has been) should have been fired back when she missed so much time due to illness. Meanwhile, he would all find out soon why the quick dismissal of Curtis (perfect hair and Australian accent included) may have been a mistake.
The final task
Bret and Holly were quick to meet up with the bigwigs of Snapple following the announcement, and were handed the final task -- create a new flavor of tea for the company, market it using a commercial and print ad, and then present it at an event featuring executives and Snapple fans. There were a lot of good components to this task, and considering that they only had three days to make it work Bret and Holly were going to need some help.
Therefore, we saw some ghosts of celebrities past return -- Summer Sanders and Darryl Strawberry to Bret and Curtis Stone and Maria Kanellis to Holly. I have a beef with the casting here for this task. Not only did Holly receive the two celebrities who were most recently fired from the competition, but Bret received Holly's BFF in Summer and the guy who decided he was too tired to compete long-term in the competition. What happened to Cyndi Lauper or Sharon Osbourne?
That said, Summer was probably perfect for Bret -- she kept him organized, and she would become so familiar with the product to make up for his short attention span. Curtis, meanwhile, was an "Apprentice" assassin the likes of which have not been seen this year. The chef was better this season after he was fired -- what's up with that?
The dominance of Curtis was first noted when teams had to "claim" flavors to use in their tea, and both teams wanted passionfruit. Knowing that Bret wasn't extremely patient, he went in Holly's stead to meet up with Bret and make his case for the flavors. By manipulating Bret into thinking that a) his team wanted to use all of the same flavors and b) Goldberg was ready to beat him up in the hallway, he was able to get the rocker to fold pretty fast.
That meant it was back to the drawing board for Bret, even though he was able to come back up with two flavors -- a tropical drink with vanilla and cinnamon along with one that -- as someone in the taste test put it -- tasted like "a grandpa." I really thought early on Bret actually was going to have the edge in this, since he utilized his charity the most by making the drink friendly to diaetics.
Things fall apart
However, this success was quick to fall apart for Bret. Not only did Curtis swipe some of his drink to taste it, but he immediately started to have some trouble getting the creative side of his advertisement together. He wanted the entire "Rock of Love bus" in the commercial, and then he couldn't find the equipment necessary to film the commercial he wants.
In addition, Bret also made the controversial decision to film two commercials -- one serious and one funny. Why not just go for laughs right away and include a brief message about the charity at the end. I haven't been a fan of Holly's for much of the season, but she had it right in this instance with her "Compassion Berry" ad, which she planned on sticking just a brief line about the charity at the end.
While she was finishing this up, Curtis was literally doing everything -- shooting stills for the print ad, getting passionfruit sent to room out of season, and getting Amanda the prop girl to answer her cell phone past closing time (sarcastically wondering how that happened).
Final assessment
Right now, Holly seems like she is on the road to victory. However, Bret also has some chances to succeed here. His product branding is probably still the better of the two teas, and Holly runs the risk of having her tea becoming so much about charity that people don't want to drink it. (I know right now, I'd rather have Bret's.)
Since there also isn't a fundraising component to this challenge Holly's major advantage is taken away from her. Who will win? Come back next Monday for a full recap.
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Who are you rooting for to win "The Celebrity Apprentice?" Let me know your thoughts with a comment and stay tuned for more of the latest TV news.
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Comments
I THINK BRET DID THE BEST JOB AND HOPE HE WINS!
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