Other Great Reality Shows > Other Reality TV Shows & News

Celebrity Apprentice 2

<< < (40/46) > >>

apskip:
RECAP of CA2, 8 Contestants Left

THE AUCTION
Onward from where it left off last week, the auction of the Ivanka Trump collection jewelry is the main event this week. Athena is led by Annie Duke and KOTU by Joan Rivers. Piers, in his "eyes and ears" role which is not limited to just Athena, visits Athena and talks to Annie about preparations for the show. Annie tells her that the key is actually making sure high rollers come to the auction to support their favorite teams by bidding. Jesse and Melissa have both done a poor job on this, leaving it all to Annie and Brande. Both are strong contributors in other ways, however.  Piers indicates his support for Annie's philosopy that whoever raises the least money should be taken to the Boardroom if a loss results. Melissa gets the message and immediately starts phoning everyone she knows. Jesse is also affected when Piers later asks him how with a Hollywood star wife (Sandra Bullock), he can't raise any Hollywood money. Jesse is just passive aggressive in not responding. He made a deliberate decision to save those contacts for when he could personally beneift. He is not going to waste them on Annie or Joan. Piers asks him whether he contacted his wife. Jesse says no, he does not mix business with pleasure.

Natalie's plan to recruit poker players to bid aagainst Annie results in one of them she contacted calling Annie to tell her what's going on. Annie goes ballistic and uses some very strong language to dissaude the caller from doing that. Whoever it was will not go against Annie; I'm not sure whether he is going to actually bid for Annie or not, but Annie has several other high rollers that do come to town (this is not a phone in a bid auction like the one that Piers won CA1 at).

The Athena auciton was the Annie Duke show. Annie was the auctioneer and stroker of egos of his roller rollers and probably would have done anything necessary to beat Joan Rivers. The important work was already done, as those high rollers were in place and Annie used them masterfully. She sold crystal earrings to poker player Andy for $25K, $52K to Scott,  and $50K to Brande's friend Stewie. The other 2 items were not shown but they sold.

The KOTU auction starts with Clint in sole possession of the auctioneer role. He wanted to do that and Joan let him. That turned out to be a less than successful decision. Clint founders on the first item, which if I have connected the dots correctly is a diamond ring that costs KOTU if they sell it $6,000. Nobody was interested in bidding the minimum $20,000 that Clint wanted, then Clint withdrew it leaving his team with no profit whatever. Why didn't Clint just lower the opening bid minimum, say to $6,000 and see how bidding developed from there? I think the basic problem is with the choice of a large diamond, which tends to have inflated retail prices and sell mostly at major discounts to those. Clint continued awkwardly on a Hervey diamond hugging earring set and Black Onyx Earrings, so Joan jumped on stage and added some much-needed levity and homor to the auction. KOTU sold a total of four items so there were two others.

The boardroom quickly focused on the role of jewelry selection. Annie delegated that to Melissa, who selected large showy pieces that fit the format of this auction well and sold well. Joan delegated this to Natalie, who was given goals from her team to buy low-priced items that had maximum profit potential. That meant that the items she got were a bit smaller in size than the Athena items, which had implications for auction attendees being able to see them and value them. Someone (maybe Piers) even suggested that Ivanka's collection was degraded by the approach that KOTU took to selling it.

There is the ususal dicussion about how do you think you did. Trump then has the results announced by Ivanka and Piers. It is $92K for KOTU and $153K for Athena. Score one of Annie! She trounced Joan soundly, mostly due to her personal connections. She will be more vulnerable than others for having used those connections anad myabe unable to tap them again later. Joan here beccomes vicious in attacking winning project manager Annie. She uses an analaogy to Hitler at Buchenwald that is inappropriate and just plain nasty. She claims Annie has a big ego. Trump defends Annie saying that it is necessary in making a living at poker. Melissa also attacks Annie and Trump tells her she is making a mistake by protecting her mother and being disloyal to her project manager. That shuts her up. This is another example of Joan and Melissa in a coordinated effort, which was OK when on the same team but absolutely insane when on different teams. However, Trump may argue with Joan but he does not fire her (I would have for saying what she said; she is practically inviting it).

KOTU loses and someone will be fired. Everyone agrees that Joan was a saviour on the task, at elast as much as was possible, and that Herschel brought in $55,000 in the bidding. So was the KOTU loss due more to Natalie or to Clint? I think Clint was more at fault but Donald Trump found it convenient to pin it all on Natalie. He fired Natalie. Annie gets to deliver a record $245,000 check to Refugees International.

THE COOKOFF
The second task in this week's episode was a food competition. Schwan's frozen foods is a leader in their home delivery industry. They do not really need additional product recipes in my opinion (if they do their product development group would now be size zero), but they do need the celebrity marketing and the exposure of being the reason for a Celebrity Apprentice task. That task is to create a complete frozen meal to add to their product line and associated advertising campaign. Schwan's executives will judge the results.

Teams have to create an entree, side dishes and a dessert that stand up to freezing and taste very good when reheated at home. It was Herschel's turn as Project Manger vs. Jesse (the last competitor who has not already been one) for Athena P.M.

KOTU starts with some jousting between Clint and Herschel. Clint wants to give Herschel some feedback. Herschel dimisses it without listening because it is from Clint, the chronic compainer. So Clint does not get mad, he gets even by piping down and not providing Herschel with important information on some negatives. As Clint says, let him hang himself. It turns out that Herschel does not eat meat ( a vegetarian?), which puts him at a distinct disadvantage in tasting the alternatives. Herschel is the initial cook but Clint kind of takes it over over time. The first KOTU entree attempt is a soy chicken based on Clint's home recipe. They agree it is way too salty and tone it down with blood orange juice. This appears to satisfy KOTU and they name it Asian Orange Chicken. I would eat it for sure, although it is not clear that I would pay the premium for any home-delivered products. It has 480 calories a serving.

Athena has Annie taking charge in the kitchen, since as she puts it "I'm a fast cook" with 4 children and a husband to feed. They look at 3 different entree possibilities(also meeatloaf and chili) and do a taste test on them but 3 of 4 on the team want to focus on spaghetti and meatballs named Triple Play Turkey Meatballs. This also sounds really good.

KOTU adds French cut green beans and mashed potatoes and a complicated dessert of frozen yoghurt, berries and granola. Athena adds a gluten-free pasta, and an apple crisp dessert. It's time for judging.

The Schwan's executives had a lot of good things to say about the products of both teams, but one negative is the complicated KOTU dessert, which was diffcult to freeze. The KOTU advertising campaign concept sounded better to me since Jesse massively underperformed on this and would not share what he was doing with his team and ended up with meaningless drivel. The Schwans's executives bailed Jesse out by selecting Athena as the winner even though they also really liked KOTU. The bottom line here is that the "marketing campaign" was negligible in the overall decision, which was almost entirely based on the food concepts.

So congratulations to Athena and Jesse gets $20,000 to give to the Long Beach Education Foundation. Joan, Clint or Herschel will be fired. First of all, Joan performed decently so she was not on the bubble, except that the disastrous dessert concept was hers. Herschel definitely was as project manager. Clint was because of his mediocre at best performance. Herschel tried to disown the product choice, but Trump would not allow him to do that. Trump stated that as Project Manager it was Herschel's choice even if the basic concept had originated with Clint. Clint took a lot of flack from Donald Trump and Ivanka, but he came away still on KOTU as Herschel was fired. he was the only Project Manager with 2 losses.

apskip:
Whoa! The filth coming out of the mouths of Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers was incredible in tonight's episode. They both deserve to be fired. Fortunately, Donald Trump is good at evaluating people and his production staff tells him what is going on with all the celebrities. He made the right decision in firing Melissa and I applaud Joan for realizing that the things she has said on camera are so egregious that she has goen over the edge. I look forward to NOT seeing Joan Rivers on television ever again. If she is in something I want to see, that will indicate that the producers of that show have no taste, so I will curb my enthusiasm. It appears that Joan Rivers' deliberate on-camera gaffe months ago was misdirection when she indicated that Melissa will be in the final. That is true and so will Tom Green and Dennis Rodman and all the fired celebrities. Donald Trump would sue them big-time if they did not show up.

Pedaler:
Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!  That last segment was the most vile, profane, riveting, and exciting piece of reality television that I can recall.

Bravo Celebrity Apprentice. 

pledge:
That was quite an episode.........especially after the firing !
IMO looks like "The Donald" likes to keep the ones that he
feels can bring in the most money.  Like last year, not work
ethics but who you know and how much money you can make.

RealityFreakWill:
Annie's blog:

Episode 9 of Celebrity Apprentice: I am a Whore Pit Viper

I am not exactly sure what a whore pit viper is but I hope it becomes the catch phrase of 2009.

This week we were tasked with creating a 4 page advertorial for Right Guard. The teams were 4 on 2 so one of Athena’s members needed to be moved over to KOTU. That morning I was sure it would be me. I figured the producers would want to see Joan and me on the same team. Man, was I wrong. Those producers are much, much smarter than I am for sure because the dynamic between me, Brande and Melissa was much more interesting to watch as was the dynamic between Clint and Jesse. Go producers for moving Jesse on over to KOTU. A much better move than I would have made.

So, I will go over KOTU first, then address Athena.

On KOTU, Jesse really knew magazine advertising.  He is an amazing photgrapher and he owns a magazine (called Garage Magazine) and understands the cutting edge of this kind of layout. Jesse and Joan both gave Clint ideas.  Joan came up with a bunch of big black guys hovering around David Lee (a white guy) to show David under pressure.  What the hell? I don’t get that and it seems kind of racist. So that idea was promptly rejected. Jesse came up with this idea of David being the new kid on the block with the pressures of New York City to deal with. He drew out an amazing two page spread with David in front of a beautiful cityscape. That is the idea KOTU went with. Good call.

Jesse went out to photograph the cityscape while Clint stayed back to lay out the project. I found the interactions on the team interesting. As far as I could tell, Joan just stayed out of the way once her ideas were rejected and left Clint and Jesse to do all the work. Clint incorporated a lot of Jesse’s ideas as well as some of his own. Jesse got pissed that Clint wasn’t executing all of Jesse’s ideas. Now I am a huge fan of Jesse James. I think he is incredibly talented. I think he is incredibly intelligent. I think he deserves to be in the final two. But in this case, I feel the need to defend Clint Black. Obviously, I wasn’t in the room so I am only looking at the edit. But it seemed that Clint was trying really hard to be accommodating of Jesse’s ideas and really incorporate them. In fact, the final layout seemed to reflect most of what Jesse wanted. Jesse, though, decided to absent himself from the process at some point. Even when Clint was begging for input, Jesse refused to give him any. In this case I think Jesse let his personal feelings about Clint (he clearly doesn’t like him) to get in the way of being a team player. Had the team lost, I would have actually thought Jesse should be fired for shutting Clint out like that when Clint was begging for help. I never thought I would say that because in terms of overall game play I don’t think there is a comparison between the two. Jesse is the much, much stronger player.

Over on Athena, Brande stepped up as Project Manager and doled out the tasks. She tasked me with doing the brand messaging and the presentation and the slogan and and and. I was actually very resistant to being tasked with so much. I tried to insist that Brande do the presentation as I felt that was a lot to put on my shoulders. In the end Brande really wanted me to do all that so I did what my Project Manager asked of me, reluctantly. Melissa was tasked with doing all the photo editing and layout work. Brande oversaw everything.

I came up with the concept of David Lee naked with the saying “Right Guard: The only thing I ever need to wear” That is the concept Brande chose to go with, which upset Melissa. In fact, everything upset Melissa. When I called Brande to let her know the photographer had said it was an advantage to shoot David first, Melissa got upset that we were keeping secrets. I am not sure why since we were on speaker phone. The fact is Melissa felt like she was being set up for failure by me and Brande. But that is actually not true. I am not saying that I would not have done that if I had to in order to succeed in the game. Of course I would have. But I didn’t need to. Melissa was setting herself up for failure with no help from me by being an ineffective fundraiser and abrasive in the boardroom to Trump, to Piers, to George, etc. At the end of the game, those things really matter and I already knew that Melissa was going to have trouble getting to the end. The dynamic with her mother was already bringing her down, the dynamic with the people in the boardroom as well. And the fundraising capabilities. Brande was, plain and simple, the stronger player.

But, amazingly, in the end I think we all worked very well together. I took Melissa aside to try to make her feel more included. Brande did the same. Because in the end we are a team and we wanted to win and not have to face the boardroom and go into the next task a team of 2 against a team of 3. I actually to this day think we made a very good layout. And I stand behind the presentation I did and was extremely surprised my Melissa’s comments about my presentation. She watched me practice that at least 5 times and never once said she didn’t like it. She never once said it wasn’t conversational enough. Even she thought it was bad, why didn’t she ever say that to my face? Why did she only critique me behind my back? My only explanation is that she was trying to set me up for failure, the very thing she accused me of doing to her. I would have liked the constructive criticism to tell you the truth since I was reluctant to do the presentation in the first place. I really felt Brande should be doing it.

So we go in the boardroom and this interesting dynamic between Clint and Jesse comes out. I knew Jesse did not like Clint. But that was hard for me to watch because, again, from what I saw Clint was actually trying to cooperate for once in the game and I could see he felt very shut out and thrown under the bus in all that. From what I could see the layout did mostly come from Jesse’s ideas…just not 100% of the layout. And when I saw their work I knew we were going to lose. They did a really good job. So I am surprised Jesse was so upset about the whole thing in the first place except that he just plain old doesn’t like Clint. That is my only explanation.

On our side, the executives liked the concept of David Lee half naked and they liked the branding but they thought the execution was boring. That was their words and that was our downfall. Athena lost the task. I was very nervous that I might be the one to go simply because I had been tasked with so much. The thing I had going for was exactly the compliment Cramer had paid to me earlier…that I had done most of the work so if we won I would get  a lot of credit it but I had also set myself up not be be fired because I had been so vocal in making sure that everyone knew I did not ask to have so much put on my shoulders. But that might not matter, even if I had played the hand right. Even if I had made sure I left all the decision making power with my PM I still might get axed for the failed layout since I had done so much of it.

As soon as we got in the boardroom, though, it became clear right away that I was not in danger. Trump, Cramer and Ivanka all quizzed both Brande and Melissa about whether or not I had taken over the task and everyone vehemently agreed that I had not. That really put me out of hot water and, interestingly enough, it was Melissa who really argued the most strongly in my favor when she was trying to argue I should be fired.

The other point was that, actually, in the end the execs thought the photos were boring and that happened to be the one thing that was not my job. That was a lucky break for me since I had so much on my shoulders in this task. So it came down to Brande and Melissa and who would be fired. When I was asked about this I had an interesting dilemma. At this point in the game, Brande and I had become very good friends so my loyalties certainly were with her. However, I also knew that going into the next task I would a) have to be project manager if Brande went along with me since she had already stepped up twice and b) that if we were to lose I would have a much weaker argument against Brande than I would against Melissa. Being PM for sure on the next task would be a tough spot since the PM is usually the most under fire. And Brande was the stronger player to boot. She had raised much more money than Melissa, second only to me in fact in the game. She was an incredibly hard worker. And, this is really important, she was really well liked. Much more well liked than me, obviously. Melissa, on the other hand, was a weak fundraiser, was not well liked at all and would have to be project manager on the next task since she had lost on her first try so would need to try for a win in order to win the whole game. So taking Melissa long with me would be a better play.

But I really went against game play here and decided to argue for Melissa getting fired. Why? Because I really just felt Brande deserved to be in the game more and I just plain really like and respect her as a person. So when push came to shove, I recommended Melissa get fired even though it felt like it was against my short term best interests. I figured the life equity issue was much more important to me at that point…walking away from the game knowing that I had been loyal to my friend, to Brande.

So, in the end Trump fired Melissa and, well, you saw the meltdown from the Rivers for yourself. Folks! It’s a game where you get fake fired from a fake job all in the hopes of raising a ton of money for charity! Really, calling anyone a whore pit viper under those circumstances is an extreme reaction and, frankly, not losing with grace. And Joan Rivers. Well. What can I say there? As far as Brande goes…as much as Joan likes to claim I called Brande an idiot she is the only one who has disparaged Brande’s intellect falling on the age old your a dumb blond insult. Brande defended herself pretty well against that one pointing out if she is so stupid then why is she still there and not Melissa. Good point Brande. For everyone thinking I somehow manipulated Brande in order to get ahead in the game I would venture to say it is quite the opposite. Brande outplayed Melissa pretty nicely.

Now, as for Joan’s comments about poker players…well…what I said on the show is true. Poker players are the most wonderful people you will ever meet. Poker players are thoughtful and generous and are good for their word. I think it is so interesting that the group that has come out the most strongly in support of the show and in support of these charities, poker players, are so vilely disparaged by Joan on the show. But it was clear Joan doesn’t care much about that when she said, “Oh stop with all this charity nonsense.” Joan can attack me all she wants. She can attack my morals. She can call me a Nazi and compare me to Hitler. I signed up for that when I agreed to do the show. I was there to defend myself. But to use such a broad brush to insult a whole group of people who did not sign up for that kind of abuse, implying they are criminals, saying outright that they give blood money and are worse than white trash. Well now I am angry. To insult me is one thing. I can take it. To insult my friends who have been nothing but generous and selfless in their support of charity. That is a whole other thing and that is where you can get a rise out of me.

Joan saying that all poker players have no last names and are worse than white trash is like me saying that all comedians are miserable, depressed people who take their angst, anger and unhappiness out on everyone around them. Clearly, that would be unfair.

http://www.annieduke.com/2009/04/episode-9-of-celebrity-apprentice-i-am-a-whore-pit-viper/

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page