Celebrity Apprenitce Continues...

Every week another one bites the dust.

The first week it was Carol Leifer. The teams had to develop a menu and serve people in a diner-setting and make as much money for their charities as possible. This also meant that someone had to be the server and/or busser. Cindy Lauper was a terrible server, but she worked her butt off to do it and really gave it her best effort. Carol was useless. She proved right off the bat that she was there to put in the least amount of effort and had no drive whatsoever. I would imagine that being waitstaff was also not a task she relished. I'd never heard of her to begin with, but they said she was a comedienne. Probably someone who is not accustomed to doing the hard work that bussing tables and serving customers really is.

The second week it was Sinbad's turn. This has to be the fourth or fifth season that Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice has aired and I don't know if he never actually saw this show, or what the deal is, but his management style was a sure loser. He had a full team and he did not dole out any tasks or use anyone else in his team effectively. The task was to build a Kodak storefront. Sinbad tool over everything and on top of not really using his team, he made it painfully clear that he did not like Bret Michaels. Bret is very ADD and there is a way to get him to be of great value, but Sinbad did not make the effort to try. He's too much of a control freak to pull this off. So another one bites the dust...

The third week was creating a leaflet for a bundled product from Norton and Lifelock. (Are you starting to see a pattern? I am. Both Kodak and LifeLock showed up in Season 8's Celebrity Apprentice to have their product plugged.) So the teams had to each develop a branding and storyline to create the leaflet, then shoot the images and put it together. There is a lot of ego power and infighting that is generated in this kind of show, but some of it got really out of hand. Rod Blagojevich actually said (on air!) that 'the guys are making the same mistake they did on the last task. They are "prematurely ejaculating" and they "need more foreplay."'

When did that become okay to say on public television?!

Anyway, the women won that task despite all the infighting and after all the arguing in the boardroom, it is Darryl Strawberry who gets the boot. Maybe he watched the episodes; he must have known that quitters never make it out of the boardroom alive. The third one bites the dust.

Episode four brings Selita and Rod, the most useless man in the world, to the leaders of the packs. The packs are being whittled away, one episode at a time. This time, the two team leaders are spirited away on a private jet (how I'd like to travel!) to Universal Studios Orlando. (Orlando would be just another central Florida hole if not for Disney and now, Universal.) The idea was that the team leaders would work with their teams only through technology. This is when we were talking about Rod the Loser Governor going down in flames. This guy makes my mother - in her current condition - look like a technology wiz! He can't even use his own cell phone. He must have had the staff doing everything. (Suddenly it becomes feasible that maybe he didn't swindle all those people in Illinois because he is lacking the basic skills to do it...)

So Selita is sending drawings and ideas through her cell phone and Rod can't even call. Forget the laptop. This guy would not know where to plug it in or turn it on, let alone actually navigate it. It is painfully obvious that the mens' team is working at a huge disadvantage.

Well, Rod did one thing right - he delegated the whole task to Bret Michaels, which gave Michael Jordan and Bill Goldberg kittens but turns out he's the right choice. A little reading will tell you how to deal with the ADD personality (I'm one of them, so I know). Anyway, Bret did a great job - and might have won - until Rod returned and screwed it up, as only a politician can.

The women won. Rod was fired. We all cheered!

Which brings us to Episode 5, all about a viral advert (why this is okay to use as a description, I just don't know) for Right Guard deodorant. Again, seeing the theme. Trump gives all his big supporters all kinds of time on the air - about one hour and 45 minutes - and they get all this advertising just from watching all these famous people stab each other in the back (and some in the front) to win creating an advert for this or that product.

The teams each got a basketball star I'd never heard of, both of whom looking a little, uh, long in the tooth for this, and had to make a 30-second spot and a 10-second grabber. Holly Peete Robinson - no, Robinson Peete - was the women's team leader and Curtis Stone was the mens' team leader. Holly already has openly maligned Cyndi Lauper on other episodes and clearly was not happy but in this episode, Cyndi was not around for all of it - she flew down to Washington, D.C that day to meet with President Obama. And the women were short Sharon Osbourne, who had gotten sick at the beginning of the show and was hacking up a lung. This actually made the teams even since the men's team lost the last three episodes.

So the men did a short with these two kids that won a meeting with their famous basketballer (hold on, I'll look up the name...), Clyde Drexler. The 30-second advert was quite funny and an attention grabber (coming from me this is high praise - I hate adverts); the 10-second one was good, too. And it was completely different and did the right thing, getting the attention of the target audience to get them to see the 30-second run.

The women had a unique idea - a boy's first "funk", but the execution was so-so. And Holly, who knows everything, did not listen to the executives, who made it abundantly clear that the target audience is 14 - 18 year old boys. She went for her ideal target audience, mothers of 14 - 18 year old boys. Bad idea. No one could have been anymore plain about it and she had even asked about it! But she just had to do it from hte mother's point of view. Their basketball guy was Scottie Pippin, who was really cute in the advert. However, Holly took a ten second piece from the 30-second clip to use as the viral grabber.

BIG MISTAKE.

While Holly should have taken the hit for being a poor teamplayer and a sore manager, the final choice was the right one. But getting there made Holly less and less popular and I suspect she will be finished off before we are down to the final four. She tried to throw Cyndi under the bus and failed spectacularly - Cyndi was away for the first day passing a law and returned to sing the jingle for the advert. Holly didn't like that Cyndi sang over her recording but let's face it, Cyndi is a helluva better singer. So the ego was mad at being upstaged.

She briefly tried to bring Cyndi back to the boardroom to fire her, but Donald told her she could not bring Cyndi or Sharon, who gets a pass for being sick. That left Summer, Maria and Selita. Holly brought back Maria and Selita. Maria stuck to her guns for something that Holly hadn't done and Selita did nothing - much as she had on the task. Selita got fired. Another one down.

And that brings us to Episode 6... which airs tonight at 21:00. We shall see what happens tomorrow, for I'll be going to bed around the time this will air.