Omarosa was as bad as we expected her to be in The Celebrity Apprentice Episode 1. So of course, she didn’t get fired, despite sending her team off to die from the very first minute she took the project manager role. Instead, Tiffany Fallon was fired, supposedly because she didn’t call Hugh Heffner and ask him to buy a hot dog.
Omarosa and Carol Alt make a pact that what happens in the boardroom stays in the boardroom. Piers Morgan doesn’t buy it. Omarosa calls him an alcoholic for drinking some wine. He calls her a mutant and again makes fun of how she did on season 1.
Stephen Baldwin brings his mother’s breast cancer foundation a check for the total of the previous task, $69,000.
This week’s task is to create a 30 second commercial for the Pedigree Adoption Drive, created because 4 million dogs are put into shelters yearly.
Nely Galan and Gene Simmons are chosen as project managers. Gene says he’s ruthless and will fire anybody, including Donald Trump.
Nely starts off the meeting with stretching, deep breaths, seeing bright lights, and holding hands. Alrighty then. They first sit with the client, and one thing they’re told is celebrities are fine, but what they really need is stories about people with their pets.
Gene considers meeting someone from Pedigree to be a waste of time. Stephen Baldwin takes charge because he tells us he’s been in film for 20 years. He wants Lennox Lewis to be the star of the commercial, and they nominate Baldwin as the director. The guys believe celebrity’s important, perhaps more important than the pets.
Ivanka, whose usefulness in the show I have still yet to figure out, shows up to meet with the guys. Gene starts off by hitting on her. Then he rushes her out of the room and insults her by asking her if she’s going to share the information with the girls just because she’s a woman. Yeah, I expect some serious whining to come from her about that.
Piers wants to head down to the shelter. Stephen shoots this idea down, which upsets Piers because he believes Gene and Stephen are trying to control everything. Instead, they head outside in the streets of New York and try to shoot a scene. The crowds and honking horns prevent them from getting anything done.
Omarosa knows what she needs to do to keep from being fired. It’s not about performing well. It’s about skating from doing anything or taking responsibility (then being as obnoxious as possible in the boardroom should someone point a finger your way). So she avoids being involved in the creative.
Nely doesn’t believe Nadia Comaneci, who’s essentially been assigned to be a gopher, is any good.
Vincent Pastore wants to see the commercial before they leave. Gene doesn’t want to hear it and instead wants to go with Stephen and edit it themselves without input.
On the contrary, the women get together as a group to edit the commercial. At times, this produces too much potential for conflicting viewpoints (i.e. a couple of the women find the dog unappealing… and they pick now to say it instead of doing so before or at some point during the shooting), but Nely keeps things reasonably under control. Marilu, who directed the video, is also taking a lead role in the editing process.
After sitting around for a while, Piers, Lennox, and Tito Ortiz barge into the editing room because they want to know what’s going on. They’re promptly thrown out and not happy about it.
The women focus on the dogs with little effort at showing any celebrities. The men show Lennox prominently but have a good story with a voiceover by Trace Adkins to go along with it. Pedigree is impressed by both commercials but feels one of the commercials is much stronger.
After Trump mentions that Pedigree felt slighted by the men not taking some face time before shooting the commercial, Ivanka starts off the boardroom by saying “Wah! Wah! Wah!” as expected. Gene apologizes for what he said.
The men win pretty easily, and it’s well deserved. The ad the women did wasn’t necessarily bad, but as with last week, they just didn’t live up to the standard the men set. Better script and a better concept.
The women are criticized for having too many dogs, which is true. Too much squeezed into too little time. A theme for them, as they also did (wasted time on) radio and Internet ads, when all they had to do was a TV commercial.
As with last week, there is criticism over lack of celebrity. Marilu did the voiceover, but there’s concern nobody really recognizes her voice.
Jennie Finch reluctantly suggests Nadia (because Nadia wasn’t really given a task) or Carol Alt (have we seen her at all this episode?) should be fired. Carol picks Nadia as well. Despite Trump’s clear attempt to indicate that a good choice to bring back would be Marilu, Nely chooses Carol and Nadia. Nobody can figure out why Carol’s being brought back, but nobody’s real impressed with Nadia.
The judges question how Nely got so far off course considering this is what she does for a living. Trump wants to know why Marilu wasn’t brought back and says Carol definitely won’t be fired. Like last week with Tiffany, Nadia’s having difficulty fighting for herself. Before she can even spit out much of a defense, not that it appears she has one anyway other than that she wasn’t assigned a real task, Trump fires Nadia because he doesn’t see her as a leader.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Celebrity Apprentice Episode 3, which airs Thursday at 9/8c on NBC.