Celebrity Apprentice - Who's going to blink first?

The above title has nothing to do with anyone on the show. and everything to do with whether or not I'm going to be able to put anymore time and effort into watching this show. It certainly got harder last night when they brought back the Waterboard-like 2 hour episode.


For those that might be catching up only now on The Popcorn Trick's Celebrity Apprentice recap; in a semi-humorous moment, I decided to handicap this season of Celebrity Apprentice. You can find that here. Once done, Cline came up with the brilliant idea of having a Celebrity Apprentice draft between the two of us. You can find the results of that draft here.



You can also see that my team's not doing so hot. In fact, Cline is currently kicking my ass. However, I think I have some dark horse candidates that might do some damage in the later rounds; on the other hand, he has the powerful Rivers bloc which might be difficult to beat (more on that later).

But let's get back to the show. For whatever reason, I figured the producers of the show realized 2 hours was too much time to fill and that the rest of the eps. would be only one hour. So you can imagine my chagrin when, flipping through channels during a Black Dog commercial (when will people learn you DO NOT mess with Swayze's family if you want him to do something?) I found myself mid episode. Actually, it wasn't mid episode. I should be so lucky. It was only 10 minutes in.

And the kicker? In those ten minutes, I missed the build up to the huge Rodman/Clint Black altercation. The thing NBC has been trumping for the entire week as though it was Ali/Frazier. So I have no idea what it was about. Well that's not entirely true. I'm certain I could guess. Anyway, astoundingly, it was anti-climactic and didn't really have that much to do with the rest of the episode, other than setting up Clint Black's blatant homophobia. Nice touch.

This week's task involved a corporate presentation for a video phone. I won't repeat the 3 letter company pushing them here not because of values or the free publicity, but because I can't remember them and can't be bothered to look it up. Let's just say I'm pretty sure we'll never be hearing form them again, because...video phones? Really? They were cool to think about having back in the 70s, but doesn't the Internet cancel their necessity?

Both teams meet with the corporate suits of the video phone company and the only thing anyone really comes away from the meeting is the presentation needs to be exciting. Probably because the product is most definitely not exciting. Claudia Jordan, model for Deal or No Deal is the project manager for the women, while Brian McKnight takes the reins for the men. Cue montage of bickering.

The women bicker about what the whole thing should be about, with sides quickly being chosen between Claudia and Melissa. And I'm going to be honest - Melissa seems to be a real bitch. Whether or not she knows what she's doing, her style is petulant, prissy and more often than not wrong. But she's loud so she gets things done...



The men, down to 5 now seem to get into a weird rhythm. With nothing coming out of the Black/Rodman blowout aside from a smattering of clevery edited astonished looks on the faces of the other celebrities, McKnight makes the decision to cut Rodman out of the preparation.

Presentation time! The ladies use the power of Joan Rivers to drum up excitement, and I guess she does a passable job. The men use a Brian McKnight concert to get people out of their seats. And surprisingly, people did get out of their seats. I loved the fact that during the brainstorming session, when talking about a concert, Clint Black wasn't even thought of as being able to pull it off. Pretty sure Clint Black was a little miffed about it as well, but to his Celebrity Apprentice credit, he took a back seat and didn't make it an issue.

As for the rest of the presentations, I'm still not sure what the women did. They sort of had videos that showed off the phones, but then also had Brande Roderick accept a proposal from a guy. I think they were trying to show how the video phones could make sentimental acts in real life better? I'm not 100% sure and I'm already hitting myself in the face for wasting this much time trying to figure it out.

The men got all military on us - literally - by showing how this technology would be great for an army guy to speak to his family, and I have to say it was a smart move and probably offered more value than the Brian McKnight concert.

To the boardroom we go...

I figured the men had this wrapped up, but we had to have a little canned suspense with the whole Rodman situation. And in typical Rodman speak we have no idea how he felt, or what he is doing on the show. Luckily the men won (in a landslide) so we didn't have to deal with that anymore (of course next week looks extremely painful).

Trump turns his attention to the women, and Claudia airs her grievances about Melissa which, yeah, probably not the greatest strategy. Because even though I agreed with her that Melissa was annoying and overbearing, she still did a good amount of work. I think if Claudia had immediately threw Khloe under the bus she maybe had a chance. I did enjoy the whispered, " Mother, can you jump in here?" Melissa gave to Joan, which the producers thankfully gave us as a subtitle, so no one would miss it. If I take anything away from this show, it's that the editors and other post people have a sense of humor and nudge the viewer along with timed edits. Bravo team. I'm sorry the cast and Trump don't offer much help.

The other women take turns dogpiling on Claudia (wisely realizing that the Rivers brothers are not going to be stopped this week). One particular moment I enjoyed during the boardroom scene was when Trump said how much he enjoyed T-Boz's music. No chance Trump has heard note one from a TLC album.

So Trump puts Claudia out of her misery and I envy her since she can go back to the rest of her life, while I'm stuck watching more episodes. Because now, I can't quit. This is a war of attrition, and I'll be damned if Trump is going to get the best of me. And yes, I know he already has.

Next week - Rodman's Intervention? When did this become A&E?