Following yet another victory by the men, Trump still wasn’t unable to fire Nely in The Celebrity Apprentice Episode 4 and was instead again forced into firing someone who wasn’t particularly willing or able to defend themselves, with Jennie Finch taking the cab ride home.
The women are hoping for Carol to get fired. Omarosa says it’s personal and calls her a twit.
As the winning project manager last week, Vinny Pastore is able to give $50,000 to the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer in Mitchell Berke’s (his daughter’s stepfather’s) name.
Donald Trump’s giving the women another chance before shaking up the teams again. Tito Ortiz is at a fight, so he’s excused for the week (seriously?). Trump suggests that Carol Alt be the project manager for the women. The men suggest Piers Morgan.
The challenge is for Crocs shoes. They will create a recycle campaign, where the donated used shoes will be used to make new shoes to give away.
Carol thinks this is a heart campaign. If they lose, she’s willing to take the bullet, which wouldn’t be the first time she’s thrown herself in the line of fire.
Piers wants to focus on Lennox Lewis again. Trace Adkins comes up with the slogan: wear them, share them.
The guys think the women’s brilliant idea to win is spying. In retaliation, Piers sends Vinny outside to spy on them, staging a fake fight. Taking it one step further, Vinny goes to the women and tells them he can’t work for Piers. They take a vote, not sure whether he’s playing them or not, but ultimately decide that they need him and take him on board.
Vinny’s asking the girls a bunch of questions seemingly to stall. He really wants to push Carol’s celebrity status and is coming up with some ideas, though.
Omarosa reluctantly is complimentary of Carol’s ideas and ability as a project manager.
The guys base their design on something easy to move, cheap, and simple to design.
Eventually, Vinny gets to the point where he’s aggressively pushing in an effort to help them, as he’s actually taking offense at having been put in the position he was, one he willingly and happily agreed to.
Despite that, Vinny passes the guys all the notes about what the girls are doing. Stephen Baldwin doesn’t think it’s the right thing to do. As with last week, he and Piers are on opposing sides of the fence and not getting along particularly well.
In the car ride over, Vinny spills the beans to Marilu Henner. He says he’s not a rat any more and is now on their side. She doesn’t know whether to trust this or not and says he thinks he’s still on The Sopranos. Switching sides in this game is a dumb move. While alliances perse aren’t as necessary as they are in, say, Survivor, it doesn’t hurt to have people who trust you. If nothing else, you certainly at least don’t want to make people hate you and be out to get you.
Ivanka says she’s sort of into sabotage but that it can sometimes backfire. She doesn’t mind that the guys did it and on the contrary is disappointed in Empresario for being desperate enough to have accepted Vinny on their side.
Like Baldwin, Trace also doesn’t agree with the plan. He didn’t say anything but thinks he should have protested some.
Piers and Stephen go up to Nely and try to get under their skin even further, telling them they know the slogan and the campaign. The girls are now doubting Vinny. Piers thinks it’s hilarious, which it is.
Carol calls Marilu and tells her to keep an eye on Vinny. She’s not sure whether to trust him but doesn’t particularly care. She just wants to keep working and get the job done. Omarosa now wants to destroy him, and she calls him to confront him about it. He doesn’t answer the question and tells her to just trust him. When she presses him, his response is that he told Marilu, but she says he didn’t tell her that he’d fed the men all their information. Omarosa fires him. He tries to plead his case, but Marilu is disappointed and doesn’t want to hear it. He’s worried that now neither the girls nor the guys want him on their side. Duh. I could have told him that long before it all came out.
Now Vinny’s pissed because he feels the guys sold him out. He wants Piers to go home. Piers tells him he did a great job. Instead of playing nice and pretending things are good, he argues with Piers and gives him a lecture about the mafia.
The next day, he’s still whining about it. He refuses to do anything to help them, and he admits that he told Marilu he was a spy and hopes they win. Eventually, Piers throws him out after much shouting. While he’s standing out in the hallway, Trump shows up and tells him to stick around and discuss it in the boardroom.
The women have a heartfelt campaign with the slogan “Share the Love.” They have a plain green bin, which is a lot more expensive and difficult to make because it’s a giant six foot shoe.
The men have a much more vivid bin that’s just a box, one which clearly displays the people the shoes will be going to, and everybody really likes the slogan. However, they raise concern that the campaign wasn’t quite as extensive or complete (the women had T-shirts and pamphlets).
The teams are sitting in the boardroom, and Vinny enters, with nobody happy to see him. They go over the events that happened. Not much new comes out of this exchange. We do learn that the girls weren’t actually spying as originally thought (so they say, and it’s believeable). We also learn that Piers called Vinny a very fat Italian, not a fat Italian.
Don, Jr. asks Stephen who he would prefer to continue forward. He says Vinny, as does Trace. Lennox says Piers because he realizes that this is about winning, not whether Piers is too aggressive.
Vinny basically says he wants the girls to win out of pity, which again doesn’t win him any favors with either side.
The executives thought Hydra was fantastic, but they loved Empresario. I was more impressed with the guys myself. Apparently the rest of the campaign was quite strong, or perhaps it was the heart they showed. The girls refuse to give Vinny the credit he deserves for coming up with the ideas he did and pretend that they would have come up with them on their own. With that and with everything else that’s happened, Vinny quits. The Trumps give him a hard time about it, which is pretty much as expected, since Donald Trump is well known as someone who hates quitting (regardless of the fact that last year he announced he quit this show). Trump poses the question: if he fired Piers, would Vinny stay? Vinny says yes.
When Trump asks Stephen what to do, he says he’s okay with losing more if it saves his integrity, so Piers should be fired. Piers responds that Stephen’s a hypocrite just trying to get rid of the strongest competition.
Lennox says that it’s a mental game and that Vinny’s not mentally strong enough to survive in this game.
Vinny interrupts all this drama and once again says he’s resigning due to what’s best for him and for the team. It’s interesting, though, as the team seems to be falling apart, rather than embracing the fact that they’ll be able to continue with their strongest members. Tito sure picked a good week to miss… he’s got some catching up to do here.
Pretty good episode, but in the end, I think this was only the logical outcome. Even if Piers were fired, Vinny made his bed by getting nobody to trust him.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Celebrity Apprentice Episode 6, which airs Thursday at 9/8c on NBC.