NBC made the ill-fated decision in the fall to bring back regular The Apprentice, which flopped pretty badly, but perhaps they can do better with the celebrity version and a group of has beens (or never weres), who conceivably some people may have heard of.
The women: Hope Dworaczyk, La Toya Jackson, Star Jones, NeNe Leakes, Marlee Matlin, Lisa Rinna, Niki Taylor and Dionne Warwick.
The men: Gary Busey, Jose Canseco, David Cassidy, Richard Hatch, Lil Jon, Meat Loaf, Mark McGrath and John Rich.
The women name their team ASAP: Actors, Singers, Authors, and Professionals for a Purpose. If you have to explain it, it’s not good. After enough people volunteer Star Jones to be the project manager, she agrees.
The men name themselves Backbone. Could be worse. They nominate Richard Hatch to be their leader, aware he’s always thinking.
When asked to explain her team name, La Toya gets it wrong. Repeatedly.
Each team will run a pizzeria. Trump has two locations on offer. The women would like to go with the theater district, while the men will go with the college area.
Hatch realizes that this isn’t about location. It’s about who you can bring in. Jose Canseco says he doesn’t know anybody in New York, and since he’s called out baseball players for using steroids, he can’t call the Yankees either. If he’s going to be this useless in fundraising tasks, what purpose is he serving?
Jose is not alone in thinking Hatch is difficult. David is getting snapped at and told to be quiet.
While her team is back in the kitchen, Star is out front. They question why it’s taking her so long. Lisa doesn’t think she likes to get her hands dirty. She’s got people for that. The men have a similar problem with their project manager.
Hatch has decided to limit deliveries to large donors only.
David Cassidy seems a little overly sensitive to what he deems Richard Hatch’s inappropriately pushing him.
Dionne Warwick is on the cash register. That technology is apparently a little too advanced for her.
Hatch is calling up his Apprentice and Survivor buddies, including Ethan Zohn, who founded the charity he’s playing for. John Rich manages to get someone in there to buy a slice of pizza for $15,000. Seeing Meat Loaf and Lil John also getting donations, David gets worried he’s going to be seen as not having contributed.
Curtis Stone has come down to taste the pizzas. Whoever makes the best pizza will win an extra $35,000.
Unlike the men, who reserved delivery for big donors, the women end up on a $300 delivery run. Star’s next delivery order, $40,000 worth, makes a lot more sense. After that, they get a call from Curtis telling them Niki’s pizzas have won the taste test and have to deliver 8 pizzas to the fire station to get their prize.
Feeling she can’t serve the line and deliver the 40 pizzas for $1,000 each, Star decides to close the doors with 2 hours remaining.
NeNe asks if maybe the large donor would accept 20 pizzas instead of 40. Star calls and is told they just need to make 1. Now they just have to wait for the women with the delivery van, who are stuck in traffic over the $300 delivery order.
They return in time to deliver the $40,000 pizza. With 25 minutes left, they’re cutting it close to make that fire station delivery, which they have no idea how much it will pay. In the end, they can’t make it to the fire house. Lisa’s intuition tells her she’s going to be blamed for this.
With minutes remaining, David finally manages to get a small donation from his daughter Katie.
As the women are arguing whether it was Star’s or Lisa’s fault that they missed that last delivery, Gary’s cell phone goes off.
Jose says that Richard is lucky he’s gotten this team he’s gotten. He feels Hatch is a bully, and he wants to defend the underdog.
Meat Loaf likes Richard, but he was short with everyone.
The men raised $54,104. The women raised $115,268, more than double. As the winning project manager, Star will get this money for her charity, the American Heart Association. Trump asks who the star was, and Star says chef Niki, so the $35,000 will be going to the American Red Cross.
Gary would fire Richard. John would as well. Mr. Loaf would, too.
David and Jose will be coming back into the boardroom with Richard. Jose didn’t raise anything. David raised very little. He would fired David over Jose.
Don Jr. points out that he sees that Richard wants to be there, but he’s really not getting that from David.
When David does finally start talking, he just paints himself into a corner. Since he doesn’t have the same passion as the other two, David Cassidy is fired.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Celebrity Apprentice 4 Episode 2, which airs Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.