The men have been begging Trump to get rid of Gary Busey for weeks, but he ignored them, instead watching the team self destruct. In The Celebrity Apprentice 4 Episode 7, Busey’s number was finally up.
Everybody else may be celebrating (including the men), but NeNe takes the opportunity to sulk out in the hallway. She doesn’t like La Toya any more. Not that she did in the first place.
Trump approaches the subject with the remaining contestants. Should he run for President? It’s not so far fetched an idea, although I’m not sure anybody thinks he’s serious. He may not be a politician, but he’s got a strong business background, which would make him more qualified to fix our fiscal woes than the people currently in charge.
This week’s task is to create an ad campaign for the Trump Hotel Collection, which is apparently a real thing. They will create 4 page ads with each page being able to run as an ad on its own. They will be judged on creativity and originality, brand messaging, and the overall pitch. Although Ivanka’s not out of town this week (she’s standing right there giving them instructions), now’s as good an opportunity as any to bring Eric Trump into the show. Ivanka instead will act as one of the executives.
John Rich reluctantly steps forward to be the project manager for the men. He wouldn’t stay at Trump’s hotels. Star volunteers to be the project manager for the women, and she has stayed at his hotels.
Star’s concept is individual elegance, collective luxury. La Toya’s unimpressed.
The men’s concept is “live the life” because that’s what the executive said. What that means or how they’re going to translate it into a campaign, they’re not sure.
Star sends NeNe and La Toya on errands. So send the two people who don’t get along shopping together. Granted, I’m sure NeNe could find a way to hate any of these women, then act like the victim. This pairing allows them to have a therapy session before proceeding with the task.
Eric is concerned that the men are a bit long-winded. Nobody’s going to read a thesis when they’re flipping through a magazine. The most interesting thing for me is that people actually still read magazines.
It doesn’t take the women long to get in their element. They hire a manicurist and makeup artists and have Ivanka’s representatives bring over some jewelry. Unlike previous project managers, Star is smart enough to want to get Hope to model for them in a bathtub.
John is happy when Meat Loaf is removed from the mix, leaving him alone to work with Lil Jon on the campaign.
Don Jr. thinks the women are organized, but he’s not sure about the demographic they’re targeting.
NeNe and La Toya go shopping as planned, and they’re actually getting along. There’s a problem, though. Star told them she wants them back in an hour and a half. Now she realizes they’ll be lucky to get down the street in that amount of time.
The photographer is worried about time, but that’s okay because Star’s worried enough about that for him and the rest of the team. There are two shots that have to be done in the daylight. The bathroom shot, which NeNe is in charge of, is one of them. Thanks for coming back. Now you have 5 minutes to prepare for the shoot, and you’d better hurry up and get through it. NeNe doesn’t care if nobody else will snap at Star. She will.
Meat Loaf is directing the photos for the men. He took a bunch of shots of a butler, and every shot looks the same, so there really isn’t much to choose from. John Rich thinks he’s looking at an undertaker, so they chop his head off.
John doesn’t want to miss something stupid that will be obvious to Trump, such as a word that’s spelled wrong. Perhaps they shouldn’t have used such big words then, including supersede, one of the most misspelled words in the English language. And there are a lot of words, too. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure they have a spellchecker handy in Microsoft Word. If not, there’s probably a free one online.
After the women are done, La Toya reiterates her concern. What they have done has been done before.
The men offer up a presentation of personal experiences. The women go with Star’s idea, which is for each of them to say a word and then the next one says a word and so on. I don’t get it.
One of the execs says the women’s campaign is like an ad placed under a windshield wiper for a sleezy club. The men, meanwhile, have too many words, including some that are not spelled right. They also lack a call to action and are too traditional. Ultimately, they were not pleased with either ad.
Hope thinks Star is the best member of their team. NeNe says Marlee. John Rich will not be naming names.
Neither team did well, which brings us to a question of the lesser of two evils.
For the men, their ads had a good concept and theme, and the pitch was good. However, there was too much copy, the photos were overplayed and not creative, their ads weren’t really pitched, and they did not provide a way to contact the hotels. For the women, the name Trump stands out, and the words were on point. However, the ad was cluttered, the buzzwords were not subtle, the ad was literal rather than conceptual, there were too many photos (many were too small to recognize), there was no emotional connection, the pitch was way too formal and highlighted the Collection rather than the ads, there was a disconnect between the ad and their task directions, and it seemed like it was a flier for a strip club. In summary, two words: Greek tragedy.
We already know the men won the pitch, and after we’ve heard that lengthy list of negatives about the women, it seems safe to assume the men have won the task, or at least not lost it. They’re just lucky Trump was not judging this task because he would have gone to town over the lack of contact information.
As the winning project manager, John Rich will receive $20,000 for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Star wants to know whether Trump really needs to fire someone. Yes, yes he does.
Trump thinks the reason for the win is because the men did a better pitch. Star accepts responsibility for the pitch, but she should not be fired.
Marlee continues to argue a point that doesn’t matter. Like Star, she think they did a better job than the men.
NeNe doesn’t want to answer who should be fired. La Toya, however, thinks that Star should be. If she didn’t support anything on that page, it wouldn’t have been there.
Marlee would fire La Toya. Huh? Her argument is that La Toya is the weakest throughout the competition. Don Jr. argues that Hope should be in that same boat. NeNe agrees La Toya’s the weakest link. Trump’s argument is that La Toya has been a star in two tasks.
Star selects La Toya and NeNe to return with her to the boardroom because they are the weakest links. Hope has some damage control to do in the coming weeks, having been labeled as a weak link.
So why’d Star bring NeNe back with her? She wants her to bad mouth La Toya, and she’s not shy about saying that.
La Toya contends that Star is too controlling, and she keeps coming up with bad ideas, whether she’s project manager or not.
Not one to argue with the demands of a team that someone be fired (unless that someone is a dramatic character like Gary Busey), Trump fires La Toya.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Celebrity Apprentice 4 Episode 9, which airs Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.