Hopefully none of the cast of 14 celebrities starring in The Celebrity Apprentice 3 are friends of Donald Trump, so as to avoid the ridiculous rigged predetermined insult to our intelligence outcome we saw last season from happening again.
The teams have been divided by gender.
Men: Bill Goldberg, Bret Michaels, Curtis Stone, Darryl Strawberry, Michael Johnson, Rod Blagojevich, Sinbad
Women: Carol Leifer, Cyndi Lauper, Holly Robinson Peete, Maria Kanellis, Selita Ebanks, Sharon Osbourne, Summer Sanders
Their first order of business is to pick a team name and a project manager. The twist is that the women will choose the PM for the men and vice versa.
The men choose Cyndi Lauper as the women’s project manager, hoping that she will rub the other women the wrong way, causing them to self destruct. Although Rod Blagojevich, who nobody on either team wants to be associated with, would seem a likely choice, the women instead opt for Bret Michaels. He’s not all there to begin with and is on one hour’s sleep from his concert the night before.
During the naming, Cyndi is already worrying the women. The references to history that nobody’s ever heard of get thrown out the window by a simple synonym search, which produces the name Tenacity.
For the men, Bret Michaels suggests RockSolid, and they run with it.
They will be running a diner. Well, I think that we can say this is up Curtis’ alley.
Cyndi picks her restaurant spot, and Bret defers to Daryl, who is comfortable accepting the other spot. No need to flip a coin.
Curtis suggests avoiding the mass traffic, instead opting for an exclusive club with high pricing.
Sharon insists that nobody cares about the food, and she hopes to overpower Cyndi’s leadership. Selita offers up her cooking experience as someone who came from a big family.
Carol and Summer do the fliers. Sharon decides to work with the paparazzi on purpose, having him take their photos for the marketing. Holly says she was not given a task, so she opts to put together the menu. Cyndi’s finding out that Holly is bossy. Carol has decided that her team are dumb bitches.
While the women focus on burgers and fries, Curtis is trying to locate some truffles so he can make risotto.
Ivanka thinks Cyndi’s doing fine, but focused on stuff that doesn’t really matter such as how heavy she looks in the marketing photos.
In talking with Ivanka, the women decide to set $100 price point for their burger as a higher price compared to their target $20 price. On the opposite end, the men are going no lower than $100, with a top price of $250 for the truffle risotto. They realize that Ivanka thinks their pricing is too high, but Bret’s ready to press ahead regardless.
Holly is lining up a lot of commitments, using her autism fundraising experience. Cyndi says she doesn’t know a lot of rich people, but she does know Rosie O’Donnell, the person who was in a public spat with Donald Trump for months.
Nothing is premade. They’re going to have to make their own food from scratch.
Sharon and Cindy make a call to the local radio station to see if they can spread their plans to the masses.
Both teams seem to have lines right when they first open. While the women get people who are willing to eat, the men have people start walking out when they see the prices.
Cyndi’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off. So this would be an opportune time for Don Jr. and his small talk I guess. From what he sees, there’s complete chaos, but they seem to be tapping their resources right.
Holly goes outside to drag Carol inside to work the counter. They don’t need any more people in there. They’ve already got more than they can handle.
Despite the slow start and their high price point, the men are starting to get a nice flow of traffic. At Curtis’ invitation, Al Roker makes a visit. They’ve all called a lot of people, who are spending $1000 and up.
Don Jr. sees a lot more organization from the men, but he suggests that Curtis has a real problem if they lose.
Not to be outdone, the women are also getting some big buyers. Donald Trump has an idea that has the potential to derail their efforts. Joan Rivers will go visit each restaurant, and whichever one she likes will get $10,000.
As the day goes on, Holly continues to tell Carol what to do. Having dragged her off the street, now she wants her back out there.
Curtis puts Joan’s burger up and makes a point of saying it’s hers. Rod is too busy trying to convince everybody he’s innocent. Finally, after 9 minutes, Bret grabs the burger and serves it to her. It’s cold by then. In addition to their service, she doesn’t like their pricing.
With about half an hour left to go, Bret is struggling with his diabetes. He can get by without sleep fine, but if his blood sugar goes wonky, he could well end up on the floor.
The women are so busy that they can’t make their way outside, leaving some big donors waiting in line when time expires.
Sharon declines to offer up a weak player when Trump asks. Cyndi agrees as well. If they lose, she’s gonna have to change that tune. Both of them also decline to offer who brought in the most money or who brought in the least money.
Bret says that, if anyone is the weak link, it was him. Rod apparently did not raise anything, but he has kind words for the rest of his team.
Joan liked the women best, which was made abundantly clear already. She blamed the governor for her cold food. He doesn’t recall making her wait.
The women raised $29,559, bringing them to a total of $39,559 with the Joan money. The men raised $57,905, almost double what the women raised.
As the winning project manager, Bret receives $100,000 for his charity, American Diabetes Association.
Cyndi says she had a friend she could have brought in. When she mentions the name, Trump responds that she’s disgusting.
The men made $46,000 in tips, compared to the $24,000 the women made.
Holly says that the money was left on the sidewalk. Perhaps because nobody was outside since she pulled Carol inside to work the counter.
Ivanka, who offered criticism of the men’s pricing initially, now says that whoever came up with the pricing for the women was too low. Cyndi accepts responsibility.
Maria has no comment who should be fired, although I’m not sure I’ve heard her comment on anything so far this whole episode. Holly, likewise, declines comment, except to say that Trump said it comes back to the project manager. Selita also doesn’t know. This is getting old and pointless.
After Trump starts swearing, Maria finally has an answer. They can do without Carol. Holly agrees either Carol or Cyndi. The men, who are watching this go down, say that the women are going to need Carol’s creativity going forward.
Carol’s response is that Holly didn’t get her hands dirty. Don Jr. responds that Holly was the number 1 money raiser for their team.
Sharon joins the anti-Carol parade. Cyndi thinks that getting rid of Carol would be a mistake. Summer says it would be between Cindy and Carol. Selita didn’t raise much money, although Ivanka suggests that it’s because of her food that they got Joan’s vote.
Cyndi has never fired anybody in her life and doesn’t want to put anybody at risk. With that in mind, Trump offers to just leave things as they are and pick someone from the group.
Siding with the majority, Trump fires Carol.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of Celebrity Apprentice 3 Episode 2, which airs Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.