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Celebrity Apprentice 4

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TexasLady:
So far, the men have more fun with their tasks and even with bad managers they pull it out. I was touched by Gary being helped by Marlee because she recognized that he had a hearing problem and got him help.

Marlee looks like someone who has a lot of potential yet she flies under the radar. I look for her to emerge as one of the finalists this year.

apskip:
CA4, Ep. 4

This episode started with Gary Busey delivering a check from Donald Trump to Donna Gunning, head of the Center for Head Injury Services which had aided his recovery from a motorcycle accident head injury in 1988.

Trump introduced Gary Provinzano and Mike Cupisz of ACN, which is introducing its new videophone and wants Backbone and ASAP to develop a 30 second commercial which will act as product placement on the show. It is supposed to have high emotional content. It will be judged on originality/creativity, brand messaging and their presentation accompanying their commercial. Decisions on which one will win were to be made by a convention of 450 ACN executives. Trump asked who the PMs are. It was Lil John for the men and NeNe for the women. The winner will get $20,000 from Trump for their charity plus another $20,000 from ACN.

Lil Jon quickly established his objective of being cutting edge, taking risks and being “out of the box”. He was willing to forgo the emotional appeal to get big-time humor. The women took a more conventional approach using Marlee and Dionne to supplement the hired actors.

Delegation of tasks became an important measure of the PM’s achievement.  NeNe has Hope and Dionne going for props, LaToya doing time-keeping and Marlee, Star and herself as the brain trust acting in, directing and doing the presentation of the commercial to the audience. At the start of the evening editing of the commercial, Dionne was tired and elected to leave without getting the approval of NeNe, although NeNe appeared happy to see her go. LaToya was criticized by NeNe for doing a poor job of time-keeping, although I could not verify that through the clips shown. It looked to me that NeNe just wanted to establish a scapegoat for the possibility that ASAP would lose.

The mens' commercial hinged on displaying a male gay relationship in Argentina and Jose was the designated comic with his single line “Hola.” It was truly over-the-top and made Lil John proud.

The presentation happened and NeNe greeted the audience, then turned it over to Star.  For Backbone, Lil Jon handled both roles with aplomb. The ASAP commercial was truly very good and heartfelt. The Backbone commercial was everything Lil Jon hoped for and he emphasized its potential to go viral on the Internet. There was audience support for both, but of course Trump got the specifics of the vote and withheld it until after he could play with both teams.

In the boardroom, Backbone stood by their commercial and Lil Jon could not name any weak links nor would any of his team criticize him. ASAP fractured a little, with NeNe going after both LaToya and Dionne. LaToya vigorously defended that she had the limited role she was given well despite having eye problems from recent LASIK surgery. Dionne also fought hard to counter the charge that she had abandoned her team. In fact they had not needed and probably not wanted her to help with the editing, but that was not the way it was pitched to Trump.

The vote came out 53% for Backbone’s commercial and 47% for ASAP’s although the ACN executives voting thought both were in act excellent. Lil John won $40,000 for the United Methodist Children’s Home.

Trump focused on the team dissension and looked for the person causing it but there were multiple candidates. Trump stopped that focus on the past and asked Marlee who will not contribute in the future. She said LaToya, but Trump then asked NeNe, who answered Dionne because she left during the task. NeNe used the word “babysitting.” Ivanka stated that people needed to be in the editing room for team cohesiveness, not because they were really needed.

Trump asked Dionne who he should fire. She said he should fire her. Trump says that she is quitting and accuses her of having a chip on her shoulder. Star interrupted to say that not being able to work for her goal to support her charity was abhorrent to her. Trump ended the suspense and fired Dionne. Trump said that “Dionne looked me in the eye and challenged me to fire her and nobody gets away with that.”

NeNe got off the hook as the project manager who would normally have been fired in those circumstances.

apskip:
CA4, Ep. 5

The task of this episode was a Celebrity Art Auction and the members of Backbone and
ASAP creating their own works of art to sell in their own galleries. Including  each designing a baseball cap for New Era. The person with the best hat design will win $25,000 for their charity. John Rich was named PM along with Marlee Matlin. George Ross and Donald Jr. were the observers.

Jose Canseco had doubts about this task and met with Donald Trump to tell him that his father  battling cancer needed him to be there. Jose wanted to leave the competition to be with him. Donald Trump wished him well and said he would donate $25,000 to his charity. This made the imbalance between Backbone and ASAP only 1 team member.

Meat Loaf lost it when he thought Gary had stolen some of his art supplies, causing a major confrontation. John Rich found the supplies where Meat Loaf had misplaced then and defused it with finesse. Meat Loaf later apologized to Gary for his behavior.

As the first buyers materialized, some of the artwork went for $1000 to $50,000. As example was a Gary Busey painting of a bison for $5K. ASAP had total phone-ins of $150,000 at one point. Then Star  Jones, who was manning the phone and fax line and transcribing sales into the accounting record, stated that things got scary. Three $99,000 (the largest amount that could be handled by phone/fax) sales came in together. John Rich had an autographed Gibson Apprentice guitar that sold for $470,000.

Sopranos actor Federico Cartelucci, also a serious artist himself, was sent in by Donald Trump to determine the winner of a special prize based on the best hat. Trump early in the Boardroom revealed that the winner of $25,000 for her charity AIDS Project of Los Angeles was LoToya Jackson. Backbone ended their auction by selling out their entire inventory of art.

Donald Trump played his usual games, asking the Backbone PM who were the best artists on his team. John said that Meat Loaf and Lil Jon were. A review of the Meat Loaf vs. Gary confrontation indicated that Meat Loaf lost his temper and failed to follow the dictates of anger management training. John stated that he defused the situation by reminding Meat Loaf that their goal was to pull together to raise money for charity.
Others on Backbone had their opinion solicited. Mark stated that John was one fine Project Manager and human being. John had used all his Nashville connections to bring in the only big bucks for Backbone.

ASAP then got its turn in the barrel. Both Star and LaToya praised Marlee for her leadership, particularly for using her contacts to raise a huge amount of money. LaToya donated a shirt owned and autographed by her brother Michael Jackson that she had kept with her since his death. It was one of the items which sold for $99K.

The charity Marlee was playing for was a foundation in Minnesota providing hearing aids to Third World countries. John Rich’s charity was the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Trump stated that an amazing amount of money was  raised, more than in any prior season of Celebrity Apprentice or regular Apprentice.  He cited his own book “The Art of the Deal.” He asked John and Marlee if they were willing to forgo the right to win everything raised and allow the other PM to keep his or her share. They agreed to do this. That proved to be very generous of Marlee, whose team had raised $986K versus $627K for Backbone. Trump told her he would pitch in $14K so that she could donate an even $1 million. The total raised for those 3 charities was $1.64 million. Incredible!

Trump invited the women to stay in the Boardroom, as he needed them for something. He offered them the opportunity to allow the losing team to not have someone fired since Backbone had done so well. Marlee caucused with her team and the answer was no, go ahead and fire somebody. They felt the sting of their prior 3 consecutive losses and knew that more manpower for the men weakened ASAP’s chance of future victory.

Trump next asked John to identify Backbone’s weakest link. John said that if the criteria were money raised, which he thought it should be, then Richard Hatch raised the least money (maybe $7000 versus about $15,000 each for several others). ASAP was polled to voice their opinion on who should be fired. Hope said Richard and Star said Richard.

Trump then asked John who was the weakest link on non-money terms. John did not hesitate to nominate Gary because Gary is not a team player capable of focusing for 2 solid days at 16 hours per day. Donald Jr. Added that he listened to Gary explain to him something that should have taken seconds for over 5 minutes. Marlee jumped in to praise Gary based on the out-of-the-box thinking he brings. She said that Richard should be fired.

Trump was just playing all of them. He promptly fired Richard, who regretted that his strengths would no longer be available to his team.

apskip:
It's time for one of my fearless prognostications, a bit earlier than usual but warranted by the money-raising performance results from Episode 5. I see Marlee Matlin and John Rich making it to the final 2. I think Star Jones is going a long way, maybe to #3 and Lil John to #4.

On Backbone, in spite of their wins as Project Managers neither Gary Busey nor Meat Loaf is going anywhere except elimination in some of the next 4 episodes. Hope and NeNe will join them. That leaves only LaToya and Mark McGrath not accounted for. I see them going out as #5 or #6.

TexasLady:
I agree with Marlee as a finalist and though I hadn't thought about it, John Rich could well be in the final 2 as well. I also agree with your other fearless prognostications regarding Star Jones and Lil John.

NeNe is the Omorosa of this season. She's loud, obnoxious and annoying. Her claim to the 15 minutes of fame is her appearance on Real Housewives of Atlanta and on the late night show "Watch What Happens" on Bravo.

In a way, I think Celebrity Apprentice has jumped the shark. the focus isn't on anything but raising money and that is becoming boring. Celebrities should be able to raise money because of their celebrity, that isn't really an ability that merits the title. I also did not like Marlee sheltering Gary Busey, he isn't on her team and the men know he is a detriment which strengthens the woman and weakens the men's team.  

I hope Trump puts Busey on the women's team, let them deal with him.  :yess:

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