Month: May 2009

Remember how Joan Rivers called Annie Duke a big fat liar? (It was in between the comment about her friends being in the mafia and how she was a mass murdering fascist dictator.) On his website, David Tutera, the event planner who was involved in the show, has offered his input as to why he decided to remove himself from the show.

Here’s what he had to say:

David Tutera was asked to be a part of The Celebrity Apprentice season finale by the show’s producers. As a celebrity event planner and designer for over twenty years, David was happy to assist Joan Rivers and Annie Duke in throwing a party as their final challenge. The name nor the mission of the charity organization were not disclosed, despite numerous requests by David and it quickly became evident that Joan cared more about integrating the corporate sponsors into the event than benefitting the actual charity.

As a true philanthropist, David Tutera believes in giving back and works tirelessly with the Prevent Cancer Foundation, The Alzheimer’s Assocation, and GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Joan Rivers’ unprofessional actions and attempts at creating false drama were unexpected and offensive. Rather than respond to Joan’s personal attack and participating in an event where the true focus was clearly forgotten, David graciously stepped away from the situation.

Three more people were fired in The Celebrity Apprentice 2 Episode 10. First, Clint Black was fired after the task. Then, Brande Roderick and Jesse James were fired after the interviews with Piers Morgan.

That sets up a final two that Donald Trump has probably been planning for a while now: Annie Duke against Joan Rivers. Annie’s been the clear frontrunner from the beginning, and I can’t imagine the justification for her not winning. As for Joan, she’s only in the final two because it’s “the biggest blood feud on television,” having proven to be a one trick pony only interested in making everything her version of funny, except the malicious personal attacks she inflicts on fellow cast members for no reason.

After the final boardroom, Annie attempts to have a discussion with Joan. Joan doesn’t want to talk, and she storms out of the room, as usual. Before walking out, Joan says “Let’s not be childish about this.” Is she giving herself that advice, or perhaps she’s saying it for her daughter to see? She only deals with her equals, so since Annie’s above her, they can’t talk.

Brande Roderick, Tom Green, Melissa Rivers, Clint Black, Herschel Walker, and Dennis Rodman are back. So Khloe Kardashian was fired because people who had a DUI can’t be on the show, yet Rodman, who was drunk for most of his six tasks, is back again? Typical Trump.

They flip a coin, and Annie wins even the coin toss.

Annie: Brande, Dennis, Tom
Joan: Herschel (not her daughter, but it’s not like Annie will pick her anyway, so this is a good strategy), Clint (the guy she hated before she hated Annie), Melissa

They will do a VIP party where they will auction off items. They will also work with Kodak and Cirque du Soleil. Kodak wants them to create a limited edition picture frame. For Cirque du Soleil, they will sell tickets for Wintuk at face value to the man on the street. Sure there aren’t any more companies you want to plug here in this task that doesn’t appear to fit together very cohesively?

They will be judged on the amount of money raised, the Kodak product integration, the charity integration, the celebrities in attendance, and overall guest experience.

Andrew Dice Clay, Scott Hamilton, Claudia Jordan, Brian McKnight, and Jesse James join Trump on stage for the live audience. Their appearance has not yet served any purpose.

Melissa would have preferred Tom or Dennis instead of Clint.

Joan says it’s good versus evil. So which side is she on?

Annie assigns Dennis and Tom to sell the tickets (there are 80) and work on the picture frame. Her goal is to raise half a million dollars. She hopes that Dennis comes through. There’s a real possibility he could raise 0, but he could also come through big.

Dennis has started fundraising already. He’s got $20,000 cash from the Pistons and Lakers.

Annie’s getting frustrated with Tom, who keeps interrupting the guy from Kodak when he’s trying to speak. She’s not the first one to bring up that issue.

Melissa would like to head up pictures. Herschel is assigned to fundraising. Clint doesn’t have any more money to raise, saying he’s gone through his whole rolodex already. So what’s he want to do?

Jim Cramer offers the stats. Annie’s teams have won 7 times, and she has a 2-0 record as a project manager. Joan, meanwhile, has been on 6 winning teams, and she has a 1-1 record as project manager. It’s the businessperson (on a business show) against the emotional person.

Annie can call up her poker player friends and tell them Joan trashed them, giving them more encouragement than they already seemed to have to begin with throughout the course of the season.

Clint doesn’t appear to be doing anything.

Tom and Dennis are kicking back and relaxing, until Tom decides to have some fun. Dennis will be his sidekick as they work to distract Annie from the task.

Melissa and Joan are confusing their event planner.

Tom and Dennis are inviting people to get on their bus. It’s nothing creepy. Honest.

Melissa and Herschel will be selling the tickets. Rather than actually selling them on the streets like they’re supposed to do, Herschel makes a phone call and unloads them all at once. Now they will just hand out all the tickets for free. This will either be frowned upon, or it will be looked at as genius.

Ivanka is worried that Joan’s people might not be willing to actually buy the auction items. She had that problem before.

Joan’s still unimpressed with her event planner.

Unlike Joan, Annie loves her event planner, probably because she’s provided her with a more coherent set of guidelines.

Brande and Annie are in positive spirits with their progress on auction items.

Joan doesn’t trust her event planner, so she calls her friends to do the design instead.

Joan asks Clint what he’s doing. He’s just writing up some e-mail.

Joan gets her event planner on the phone. He tells her they’ve got less than 12 hours to make this happen. She responds they can still do something wonderful despite the time crunch, although she doesn’t have any suggestions as to what. Later, he calls back. He quits.

As for Annie, who was initially having more luck, she’s having trouble getting her event planner on the phone. She’s at the design place to sign a contract, so she’ll barge into the office and find out why she won’t pick up her phone. The girl who meets them there throws them out. With the cameras out of the room, Annie finds out what happened. Because Joan was so difficult to work with, they won’t work with The Celebrity Apprentice at all, so Annie’s out of luck, too. The decision was made by the owner of the firm, the one who Joan was working with. Trump picked a real winner here, although it’s entirely possible this was intentional. It’s now after 5PM on a Friday night, so everybody’s closed.

George, the guy Trump dumped from the show because he wanted his kids on there instead, is in the audience to offer 15 seconds of input.

If Annie didn’t like Joan before, now it’s really war. They start making phone calls, and luckily Annie knows everybody. Joan calls up her charity, and they have an events team, so they will help her out.

Annie thinks she’s got the event planning under control, but the rest of it’s coming apart. Brande is worried about low celebrity turnout, while Dennis and Tom return to break the news that they haven’t sold all the tickets. They can’t keep up the joke, though, and they have actually sold everything.

Joan’s also struggling on the celebrity end. All of their celebrities have backed out. Herschel’s got a suggestion: impersonators.

Everybody from God’s Love We Deliver has shown up to work on Joan’s event planning. Meanwhile, Annie’s got a pair of designers, a construction crew, and a stocked warehouse. That should save both teams from disaster.

Joan knows someone who knows every female impersonator in New York. His mom just died. So why not call him up and see if he can help? He takes her call surprisingly well, and he will make some calls.

Clint actually will be doing some work today. He will record video of each auction item.

Annie has some videos that she’d like put on to the Kodak product and cut down. Tom’s job is to shoot the videos and cut out the parts she listed to cut out. He does as he wants, but after his hissy fit, they come to the agreement that it should be okay as it is.

Over on Joan’s side, she’s got Clint, Clint, and more Clint. Every picture frame has Clint in it.

There are a bunch of drag queens, including a Joan one that looks better than Joan. Dennis outdoes them all, putting a dress on himself, not for the first time.

Annie’s lined up a few celebrities, as well as all of her poker player friends.

Dennis doesn’t care for his team’s event. He sees it as people just networking.

Joan’s mostly got impersonators, but she also gets some actual celebrities. Kathy Griffin’s happy to be the biggest name in the room for a change.

Knowing they’re going to get crushed on funds anyway, Joan has priced her auction items so they’re easy to afford.

Kodak likes Melissa’s limited edition frame, which focused on sharing, to go along with the EasyShare brand. On the other side, the Kodak exec likes the use of the frames to tell about the charity.

Both Joan and Annie walk away from the event pleased with the whole experience. When the night’s over, they hop on their double decker buses and go to see Wintuk with the ticket buyers.

With the event over, it’s time for the final boardroom.

Dennis managed to redeem himself by doing what he had to do in the task.

Joan says her team was “interesting.” They got it done.

Melissa defends her actions when she turned into a raving lunatic by saying that she was faced with lies and deceit.

Donald found some of the faux celebrities to be creepy.

Dennis and Tom support Annie as a leader.

Joan says that Annie’s accusations about the decorator quitting because of her are a total lie. Wait until she watches the show back. Granted, she’ll still be in denial anyway. She tells Annie that she’s not allowed to discuss the subject because she refuses to have this air on TV. As if all the other stuff she’s done on this show has been okay. From Annie’s understanding, they were insulted that Joan went to one of her friends for help and wanted the event planner to work with them. In response to this, Joan says that Annie’s people have mafia money. Then the daughter, who hopefully will get back behind the camera and not in front of it again, jumps in to defend her mother.

Joan says that she thinks that you win with honor. So she’s got no shot. She’s tired of Annie telling the truth and making her look bad, and she just wants to know who the winner is.

Joan’s team raised $150,830; Annie’s team raised $465,725.

Annie did a phenomenal job on charity integration. Don says it was a big part of the experience that he didn’t see from Joan’s side of the table.

Joan won the other three criteria for the task: Kodak branding, celebrity attendance, and overall experience.

Jesse and Dennis get back into their argument/intervention.

Melissa still does not believe she embarrassed herself.

Clint refuses to answer the question, but Jesse would hire Annie. Dennis would hire Joan. Scott would hire Joan because he knows what it’s like to be getting old.

Joan is playing for God’s Love We Deliver, which delivers food to people with illnesses. Annie is playing for Refugees International, which works with governments to assist refugees.

Piers’ charity from last year, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, has been able to open a new center in Maryland to take care of soldiers returning from Iraq. They say that, without the impact from the show, they would not have been able to do that. For Trace Adkins’ charity, The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, managed to get through some legislation that was in the way before the show.

Trace would hire Joan. Piers would not hire his favorite throughout the season but instead would hire Joan because she won 3 of the 5 criteria from the final task.

Joan wants to be chosen because she won honorably and didn’t grab money.

Annie raised far more money, won more challenges, and won more as project manager. Annie blames the final task that she supposedly lost (because the Trumps crammed it so full of subjective criteria so they could hand pick who they wanted because they knew the fundraising aspect would be a landslide) on Joan causing the designer to quit. Joan again doesn’t want her to finish talking. Annie’s friends also came through, unlike Joan’s. Joan is unprofessional, and she’s proven it week after week. If Joan had actually behaved like she has on this show in the real world, she would be fired at best, and her employer would probably be sued. And then Joan screeches some more.

Ivanka says that Annie played a phenomenal game, but she admires Joan’s tenacity.

Don Jr. appreciates Joan’s stamina, but Annie lives and breathes game theory.

Annie has been fired. Joan is The Celebrity Apprentice 2 winner. I don’t get it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a business show, right? Shouldn’t it be about more than someone having stamina for her age? Crushing everybody else on fundraising, performing consistently well on every task, and playing perhaps the best game in the history of the show is apparently not enough for the win, but this is the type of inconsistency we’ve come to know from Trump.

The Celebrity Apprentice 3 has been confirmed for next year, and there is talk that a new non-celebrity edition of The Apprentice is in the works.