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Celebrity Apprentice 2

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marigold:

THE 14 REMAINING CONTESTANTS ON NBC'S "THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE" ARE TASKED WITH DESIGNING A BRIDAL STORE AND SELLING WEDDING DRESSES THIS SUNDAY, MARCH 15 (10-11 P.M. ET)

NBC Press Release

After the men's team lost for the second week in a row which resulted in the firing of Olympian Scott Hamilton, tensions are running high on "The Celebrity Apprentice." In the upcoming episode airing Sunday, March 15 (10-11 p.m. ET) the remaining 14 contestants prepare for their next challenge -- to design a bridal store and sell 125 wedding dresses.

Each team is given 125 wedding dresses and tasked with decorating a retail bridal store. One team almost falls apart after two of its celebrities stay out on an all night binge while Joan Rivers mouthing off is starting to get her in trouble. The celebrities' rolodexes are put to the test, and both teams feel the heat as they try to get big sales lined up on short notice. Celebrities on one team have trouble getting friends to pony up money for charity. The fund-raising goes down to the very last second, putting one team over the top and the other team into the boardroom, where Trump fires another celebrity.

Clint Black, Annie Duke, Tom Green, Natalie Gulbis, Jesse James, Claudia Jordan, Khloe Kardashian, Brian McKnight, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Brande Roderick, Dennis Rodman, Herschel Walker and Tionne Watkins are the remaining celebrities still vying to be The Celebrity Apprentice.

apskip:
Celebrity Apprentice 2 Episode 2 Recap

Last week, I identified the first episode as a barn burner. I wish I could say the same this week, but I found Episode 2 BORING. So let's find out why I concluded that. Scott is the KOTU Project Manger and Khloe is the Athena Proejct Manager. Trump tells them that the winner will get $20,000 for his/her charity (not quite 1/6th of what Joan Rivers got for God's Love We Deliver of New York City, which prepares and delivers fresh, nutritious, high-quality meals to people living with HIV/AIDS who are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves).

The reason is that the rivalries on the Men's team became almost psychopathic. There were some decent male celebrities trying to do a good job and that even included Dennis this week, but Tom was hell-bent on overtalking anyone with his incessant attempts at humor. I have paraphrased what one of the contestants said: "there's a time for humor and goofing off but it's not when you are desperate to make basic decisions." In addition Clint was being disuptive with his arguing with everyone else. On the Women's team Joan is trying to clear the path for Melissa by getting Annie out of the way. She's so transparent in this, but Trump is supporting it publicly now.

The task is to work with Zappos to create a character, 4 page comic book, costumes and story line to laud its customer service department. Each team gets 2 Zappos creative persons as an artist and an editor. Both teams flounder for what may have been days with little progress. At the last minute both teams work extra hard to pull it out. The women create Ms Z. (Zappos is known to favor names starting with Z) and the men create Eee. That stands for eveything eveywhere everytime, which is a catchy phrase but a horrible name. Stories and costuming decisions are made but who really cares? Tony Hsieh is the President and he will judge the outcome.

Athena makes their presentation, but Claudia Jordan is stumbling with her lines due to serious illness the night before. Natalie Gulbis had been drafted to wear a revealing costume. She is asked how she likes the costume and says that she would not wear it in real life (it's too cheesy). Since KOTU has female characters either some Zappos employees or 2 actresses played their primary characters. Tom is doing the narrative and does an uncharacteristic good job.  Tony tells Scott that he does not like the name Eee for the character. Tony tells Trump who wins in private so that it can be revealed at a more strategic time.

The Boardroom is full of the usual hot air from the contestants. Erin Burnett has been filling in for Ivanka and monitoring KOTU and Donald Jr. is there monitoring Athena. Trump asks each one what they think. Erin says that KOTU did very well except for the name, but the hatred of that name should cause KOTU and the person who decided on it (who was Scott) to lose. Before one team is dismissed for winning, Joan who is miffed at being kept out of the writing effort despite her writing 2 Broadway plays gets in a huge shot at Annie. It says more about the pettiness of Joan than it does about Annie. However, I don't think Joan is either as smart or as tough as Annie, so she needs to be careful how vociferous she is.

Trump lets the teams know after the usual crap and unnecessary delays who the winning team is. Athena did not win so much as KOTU lost due to that name. The women are dismissed and the men stay in the Boardroom. the first shot comes from Erin, who says that all 7 of the  Men wanted to be in charge and lead the team. This was a difficult environment to function in, and should mitigate Scott's lackluster performance will little focus on the tasks. It was clear from the earlier discussion that the final decision would be Scott vs. Tom. Tom was accused of letting his boredom get out of control in conjunction with his need to perform comedy. He totally undermined that team. However, Scott had personally created and selected that name and that was the basis for the ultimate decision to fire Scott.

marigold:

Melissa Rivers Blogs:

The Gloves Are Off: “I Didn’t Steal Claudia’s Idea”

It’s only taken two weeks for the gloves to start coming off on The Celebrity Apprentice. For viewers, it seems that a stage is being set between Claudia Jordan and me. Our task this week was to create a comic book character for online retailer, Zappos. With the help of some creative editing (which I’m all for btw) you were lead to believe that I was taking credit for Claudia’s concept regarding our character, Mizz Z. This was not the case.

Remember when our team pitched the focus group of comic book readers? With the exception of Claudia’s opening statement, her entire pitch was edited out. And for good reason, it fell completely flat. At that point, what you didn’t see was the rest of our group pushing me to pitch my idea. Now granted, all of us had similar ideas, but the editing absolutely leads to matters being taken out of context. If you watch the show again here on www.fancast.com you’ll see in the boardroom that I’m the first one to come to Claudia’s defense when she’s put on the chopping block regarding her shaky pitch to Donald and the Zappos execs. I’m a team player and said what was right to defend her.

But I also have to tell you that midway through our task I began to realize something troubling about my teammate, that Claudia is only worried about Claudia. I started to get the feeling that Claudia is really out to get me. On CA there are so many strong personalities, clashing is expected. I’ve made new friends from the show, I really like Khloe Kardashian and a few others. You’ve also probably noticed that Clint Black and Annie Duke aren’t winning any popularity contests amongst the rest of us.
The unsung hero this week for our team was Tionne. She did a ridiculous amount of hard work and didn’t get nearly enough credit on the show. She had a clear vision designing the costume and a strong sense of how to push the envelope regarding its alluring look. The execs from Zappos loved it so much they said they’re probably going to use Mizz Z, in their marketing.

Over on the other side of the hallway in the men’s office, the wheels appear to be falling off the car. With all their egos walking around, there are major warring factions going on. You’d assume that a group of women would have the problems that they experience, not being able to agree on anything, but the guys’ cannot get past step one. One thing about our team, when we put an idea out there, we discussed it, made a decision, and moved on.

I really felt both teams had the same misstep with their tasks’. Not having Tom Green or my mom write the script for the super hero ad campaigns was just plain dumb. During the episode I spent a lot of time managing my mother’s justified frustration. In the end, Donald was right to fire Scott. The name for their female here, “E”, was horrible and made no sense at all.

During our back to back victory party, you saw Herschel Walker walk in after leaving the boardroom right before Scott got the ax. I was the first person Herschel walked up to and for a huge football player, he was visibly rattled. That final board room is serious pressure. Even for a Heisman Trophy winner.

Before I go, I want to congratulate my mom. Last week she kicked the season off and was the first winner on CA. Her charity, God’s Love We Deliver (www.glwd.org) got a major donation, over 126k. That’s the reason we all do this show, to raise money and bring awareness on a global level to charities most people never heard of. God’s Love We Deliver has been a part of my mom’s life, and mine, since it began.

They deliver meals to anyone who is house bound by an illness that makes them unable to get or even cook food. They’ve grown from meals being delivered on bicycle to now having nutritionally customized meals delivered daily. We’ve got over 14,000 volunteers who deliver over 15,000 meals a week. To this day, God’s Love has delivered over 9 million meals. And thanks to Celebrity Apprentice, their awareness just grew a few more million.

Have a great week and we’ll catch up after the next Celebrity Apprentice…

http://www.fancast.com/blogs/celebrity-apprentice/the-gloves-are-off-i-didntsteal-claudias-idea/

marigold:

Annie Duke's Blog:

Episode 2 of Celebrity Apprentice: The Boys Name Their Character after a Drug???

So, on Episode 2 of The Celebrity Apprentice the task was to design a comic character that represented the company culture and great customer service of Zappos.com.  We also had to write a marketing plan for how the character would be used (that was not shown on the episode). What was particularly interesting for me to watch last night was the footage of the men’s team because I never really got to see the men’s team in action except in boardrooms.  The show is giving me some insight into what was going on on the other side of the aisle for sure.  It is so interesting to see how the events during the task express themselves in the boardroom.

Now let me just say that I found the boardrooms to be the most interesting and useful part of my experience on the show from a strategic standpoint.  It is in the boardroom that you really get to see the team dynamics, not just of the other team but of your team as well. At some point if you succeed in the game you will have the teams combined and be on a team with some people who are against you at the moment.  So, I watched and listened very carefully during the boardrooms, mainly to get Trump’s perspective on the boys, to see who Trump liked and didn’t like. I wanted to get a bead on who was competent, who was causing problems, who was well liked, etc. just in case I made it far enough in the game where it would matter.  What seemed clear by this point in the game was that Dennis Rodman was causing problems on the team, Herschel Walker was very competent, and Jesse James seemed to me to be the superstar of the team.  I think a bunch of people in the game kind of thought that Jesse was just laying back and trying to fly under the radar.  But I was noticing that he never seemed to have a bit of criticism slung his way and that the parts of the task he was responsible for always seemed to come out excellently…I mean that truck was kick ass and, let’s be honest, the design of the boys’ comic character and costume was much, much better than the girls’ and that was Jesse’s part of the task.

The other thing that seemed obvious at this point was that Tom Greene seemed to be causing some problems on his team in terms of having personality conflicts.  Scott obviously had a huge problem with Tom and Herschel seemed to have issues with him as well.  But, Tom also brought in a ton of money on the first episode and was the most vocal about using a Z in the name of the character for the Zappos challenge.  And he was right.  Clearly Scott did not want to hear it from him and Scott definitely needs to be faulted for that.  Whatever personality issues you have with a person, when they are right you have to be able to acknowledge that they are right and put aside your personal differences in favor of success in the business task.  I don’t think there is a place for personal issues in the workplace and that is where Scott really fell down.

Why did Scott Hamilton get fired?  Well, the one thing that seemed to be a no brainer is that if you are designing a comic character to market a site called Zappos.com it should have the letter Z in it somewhere.  As Tom Greene pointed out, EEE is a bra size not the name of a super hero.  Me?  I think it sounds like a well known drug and that, well, doesn’t seem like such a good idea for a super hero name.  The fact is that I think the boys’ comic looked slicker.  The design of the character was kick ass and, frankly, better than ours.  I never did see their marketing plan so I can’t compare those but on look and feel alone the boys would have won.  But that name.  That name killed them.  So whoever decided on that name had to be fired.  Tom, as disruptive as he might have been, was screaming from the mountaintops that the name should start with a Z.  Scott ignored him.  Scott named the character EEE.  Scott got fired.  Exactly the right decision for Donald Trump.

I want to say, though, that I loved Scott Hamilton.  During press week (the week before we started filming) and during the first two tasks I really enjoyed hanging with Scott. He is very funny and he is very, very nice.  In the mornings before the tasks I always gravitated towards him to chat before we started for the day.  So I was sad to see him go because I really enjoyed his company.  He is truly an awesome human being.

Anyway, on to an inside view of what was happening on the women’s team on this task.  Obviously, Team Athena won in the end but getting there definitely had its bumps.  When Khloe was appointed project manager, she did not immediately take the role on well.  For the first few hours of the task she did not take control of the room, mainly in the sense that she did not divide us up into smaller groups.  There were basically three parts to this task:  the first was to design the look and feel of the character, the second was to write the character’s life story and write the comic book itself, and the third was to develop a marketing plan for the character for Zappos.com.  Obviously, the first order of business should have been to divide us up into three groups and that was not happening so instead everyone was screaming over each other to try to get their idea to be heard. Ugh.  It was total chaos and we had deadlines to meet and time was slipping away bigtime.

One of the issues was that Tony Hseih from Zappos was really clear that the character was supposed to be about customer service and company culture.  Zappos is not about shoes just like Amazon.com is not about books even though it started off as a book seller.  Hseih could not have been clearer on this issue that he does not think of Zappos as a shoe company but a service company.  In fact, their slogan is “Powered by Service.”

Claudia really seemed to understand that and veered away from any story that had to do with magic shoes or anything like that.  She suggested a girl who had a drab and dreary life because of bad customer service who is transformed into Mizz Z who’s mission is to deliver great customer service to the world.  I felt like Claudia had the best ideas and asked Khloe if she could divide us into groups.  I also told her that I thought Claudia really wanted to be on the writing team and that I would love to be on that part of the team as well (since I am not artistic).  Khloe agreed that Claudia had the best ideas for the writing, divided us into groups, and everything started to go really smoothly after that, well everything except that Joan got her nose out of joint that she wasn’t doing the writing.  The way it ended up was that Joan, Tionne and Natalie did the design stuff.  Claudia, Melissa, me and Brande did the writing and then we all worked on the marketing stuff too (obviously, with Khloe contributing to and overseeing all of that).

The design team went off to the costume place in Brooklyn and Me, Brande, Khloe, Melissa and Claudia stayed to do the amrketing materials, write the story and the 4 panels and produce the take away materials.  Claudia got sick around 8 pm and, despite what they showed on the show, I was not upset with her going home.  What I was usept with was that the desing team went home at 8 pm.  They finished the costume stuff and did not come back.  Now Khloe told them they didn’t have to come back when they asked her.  But still, they asked to go home and I was really pissed about it because we worked right down to the last minute and needed the help.  The complaints from me are actually about that.

I think Claudia did a good job on creating the skeleton of the story.  Melissa wrote the actual panels and did an amazing job, adding some very funny details like when the girl wakes up after being sucked into the computer she has the Z key from the computer stuck in her hair. Melissa also came up with the new slogan, “It’s not just a Dream.  It’s Zappos.com.”  I think that slogan is awesome and Zappos should use it.

Brande was a total superstar on this challenge.  We had all these marketing materials to create and we were having trouble finding a printer who could produce them.  We wanted to provide a mousepad with the character on it, create poster boards of the panels, create a little take away comic book for the presentation and some other ancillary materials like word finds and an example of a blog and such for the Mizz Z blogosphere.  We couldn’t do that without a printer and Brande managed to find a printer last minute through her connections who was willing to work through the night to get the job done.  That is why you see me and Brande running around the streets of New York to pick up all those materials and put the packets together.

I think after Khloe took control of the room, she ended up doing a fantastic job as project manager and really got the job done. Rough start but great ending.

One thing they didn’t show was hoe amazing Natalie Gulbis was on this challenge.  She did amazing research on the company before we went into the meeting with Tony Hseih and was really responsible for us knowing in advance that the shoes were not what he wanted to hear about.  She worked her ass off on the previous challenge as well and I am kind of sad that that is not coming through on the show yet.  She really was very committed and did an amazing job on both challenges and I wish that was showing through more.

Now, on a closing note, I guess I have to address the fact that Joan Rivers called me an idiot. I don’t really have  a response except to say that it was not my decision who did the writing in the room.  It was Khloe’s.  I asked Khloe if Claudia and I could write.  Khloe could have said no. khloe made the decision based on the ideas that were being expressed in the room, not based on past writing credits or Emmy nominations or whatever.  I understand that joan wanted to write.  I get that she thinks I am an idiot. But her ideas about the character were not as good as Claudia;s at the point that the decision had to be made.  Did I nudge Khloe to make a decision and get that room divided up?  Absolutely.  It was necessary to stop the chaos.  Did I in any way insist that Joan not be writing, as Joan clamed in the boardroom?  Of course not.

They really didn’t show the full force of the attack on me in the board room. Joan really jumped on me in that room and was clearly very upset that she did not get to write anything and blamed it firmly on me.  I was shocked by that since I did not know prior to that how upset she was.  When Khloe had divided people up Joan did not speak up then.  She saved it for the boardroom. The other thing they did not show was that Brande Roderick defended me in that boardroom.  She was upset that I was being attacked when Joan had gone home at 8 pm and we had stayed right up until that 11 pm deadline and Brande and I had been running around to get the printing finished earlier than the other people on the team in the morning.  It was nice to know that at least one women on that team liked me because I was really feeling at that point that no one liked me on that team at all.  I felt like I had no idea how to talk to these women and it was not going to get better and that no one on that team was getting me, was getting that I just really wanted our team to win.

I remember that after that boardroom, when I got back to my hotel room, I called up Joe and was just practically in tears.  I told him that I didn’t care at that point if I got fired because the women all hated me and I didn’t know how to fix it.  I told him I thought I would do better on the boys’ team (remember I hadn’t seen any of the footage of what a mess they were!) because maybe I could talk to the men better and they might understand me better. To Joe’s credit, he calmed me down by the end of the talk, assured me I would figure it out and got me back into the mindset of wanting to win the game.  I had my brief meltdown and then Joe got me over it 

So watch next week to see if I figure out how to get along with everyone better.  Sunday will be a one hour episode but then the following Saturday they are going to show a two hour version of the episode which I hear is really funny so definitely try to check out the extended version!

http://www.annieduke.com/2009/03/episode-2-of-celebrity-apprentice-the-boys-name-their-character-after-a-drug/

marigold:
An interview with Scott Hamilton:

Apprentice Castoff Scott Hamilton: I'm "Absolutely Grateful" for the Experience

Scott Hamilton has no regrets about participating in NBC's Celebrity Apprentice (Sundays, 9pm/ET). Although his elimination came early, in week two, Hamilton called it a life experience he's "absolutely grateful for." TVGuide.com checked in with the Olympic gold medalist to find out how it was to work with some interesting personalities, who should've been fired, and why he decided to take on Trump's tasks on television.

TVGuide.com: What happened?
Scott Hamilton: My strategy was never to be project manager, especially on a marketing task, so early in the game. When your name comes up from your team and they're looking at you, if you say no, there's blood in the water. They're going to smell it and jump all over you. I felt somewhat trapped, so I did it and I thought I'd make the most of it, and I tried to pull these guys together as a team. I did the best that I could, I made the error that cost our team the win, but when I look back on everything, we were really close.

TVGuide.com: Why didn't you use the letter Z for your Zappos comic character?
Hamilton: It was a typo. [Laughs] No, we should've and looking back on it, we were in the throes of everything, you're tired, you're trying to make these deadlines, you're worn out and I made this goofy decision. It was my decision to go with the whole E thing, but, except for Tom, anyone could've stood up and said, "Why don't we put a Z in front of it?" We were over an hour late and they said we're not leaving the room until we have a name. I looked at my notes from Mr. Shea and it's like, you can get everything, they'll go everywhere to get it, and they'll do it every time. That's what they're trying to get across. So we're staring at all the Es and we had a little tagline at the end — Because E puts the ease in E-commerce — and I thought that was kind of cool. But without the Z to support Zappos, I was hung out to dry.

TVGuide.com: How hard was it managing Tom Green?
Hamilton: Tom was putting on a show and from the second we got into that war room, he was working me. It's his comedy, he makes people uncomfortable. I like Tom, I have nothing but love for Tom, it's just in that particular case, I wish they would have shown how he kept going back to his same idea ad nauseum, to the point where I couldn't listen to him anymore. By the time he started coming up with suggestions that were probably something I should've listened to, it was over. He wore me out. If you're familiar with Tom's style of comedy, you know he creates chaos, creates discomfort, creates nuttiness.

TVGuide.com: And what about Dennis Rodman?
Hamilton: Dennis was with me the whole time, helped me come up with the schedule and was very helpful. The first episode they showed him laying on the couch, they showed Dennis going off. He worked his tail off, they never showed that. They didn't really tell the tale of Dennis as well as they could have.

TVGuide.com: What made you want to do Celebrity Apprentice in the first place?
Hamilton: They ask Bill Cosby why he had children and he said, "Because it seemed like a really good idea at the time." I thought I can bring a sense of kindness, it would be fun and I could get my charity out in front of people, talk about cancer, and hopefully drive some funds toward cancer research through the Cleveland Clinic.

TVGuide.com: So no regrets?
Hamilton: Why have regrets? I didn't stab anybody in the back, my issues with Tom were upfront, and I spoke about them from my perspective as best I could. I'm still here, I'm really happy, I've got a great life and I'm okay. How many people get the opportunity to get fired by Donald Trump? So that's one I can put on my list of life experiences I'm absolutely grateful for.

TVGuide.com: What's up next for you?
Hamilton: I have a book, The Great Eight. I've been trying to be 100 percent dad, I got a 14-month-old and 5-year-old, they're unbelievable kids, and I've got a great wife, so life's good. I'm raising a lot of money for cancer. Another thing about my early dismissal was that my cancer benefit was scheduled to be five days after the final episode was shot in New York. We raised over a million dollars for cancer research, so ultimately [if I had stayed, I would have won] $250,000. Or... I could raise over a million by being engaged in my event. So it all kind of worked out perfectly.

TVGuide.com: Will you be heading over to the Winter Olympics?
Hamilton: Yes, I'll be doing Vancouver 2010. It will be my sixth Olympics as a broadcaster. Torino was my favorite Olympics by far and we have pretty much the same crew coming back to Vancouver. I can't wait.

TVGuide.com: Anyone you're rooting for?
Hamilton: Honestly, it's a crazy sport right now with the new scoring system and it's hard to wrap your head around who's going to be dominant this time. All you can do is see where the momentum is headed and see who's having a great year. I don't really love the new scoring system but the performances and the athletes and their stories are wonderful, so that really gets great coverage.

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Apprentice-Castoff-Interview-1003849.aspx

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