Last year, The Apprentice, which had been flailing about for a couple seasons due largely to stupid decisions by Trump and the producers, got the shot in the arm it needed with a celebrity edition. Piers Morgan dominated the season, and despite some whining from Stephen Baldwin and has been (or never was) Omarosa, Piers was The Celebrity Apprentice winner.
Now, a new cast of 16 celebrities is ready to fight to help boost Trump’s ego.
Men’s team: Andrew Dice Clay, Brian McKnight, Clint Black, Dennis Rodman, Herschel Walker, Jesse James, Scott Hamilton, Tom Green
Women’s team: Annie Duke, Brande Roderick, Claudia Jordan, Joan Rivers, Khloe Kardashian, Melissa Rivers, Natalie Gulbis, Tionne Watkins
Joan Rivers agrees to be the first project manager for the women. Annie suggests the name Phoenix, since the women last year crashed and burned. Then she suggests the name Athena. They like this one better and go for it. Trump really likes the name.
Dice is complaining about the lack of bagels Trump has provided. The men are getting nowhere with their team name, so Herschel Walker steps up to say they need a leader. Scott Hamilton says that maybe it’s Herschel. He gets a second to this idea, so it passes, even though Dennis Rodman doesn’t understand why. Herschel says he’s a businessman, too, not just a football player. He agrees with the previously suggested Kotu (kings of the universe). Most of the men don’t like this name.
The teams will create, bake, and sell cupcakes in a mobile sales center.
At the first boardroom meeting when they’re getting their assignment, Dice complains to Trump. He wants some bagels.
The men start off first with location. They want to be wherever Dice’s biggest fan group is. According to him, he’s the biggest stand up comic in history (a century ago he was big anyway). Their plan is to go to Times Square.
Joan insists that they go to Penn Station, but Annie Duke remembers that this location did not work last year. The rest of the women just want her to shut up. Brande Roderick steps in with a better idea that makes this a moot point. The whole Playboy building will all go down to see them if they go to 57th & 5th. Annie makes a call to secure some money, but the rest of the women on the team don’t like this (winning) strategy.
Jesse James plans to amp up the men’s truck so that it stands out.
Tom Green calls Donny Deutsch to get him to send someone down with some cash.
Jesse does a lot with Photoshop for his business, so he’ll be doing the photos for the marketing. He will be working with Brian McKnight on that part of it, though Brian intends to just do as he’s told and stay out of the mix.
Both teams will be doing simple cupcakes with two varieties, vanilla and chocolate.
The women split into two groups. Brande, Joan, Claudia, and Melissa work on the truck and marketing, while Annie, Khloe, Natalie, and Tionne stay behind to work on the cupcakes.
Joan wants to create a circus and believes in overkill.
With her mother in charge, Melissa’s taking the opportunity to take charge of the task as well.
Dice doesn’t believe he’s a baker and doesn’t want to be a baker. Instead, he will go to Sirius Radio to do a couple shows. He’s not doing anything anyway, so he can go ahead and leave. He’s going to be taking Dennis with him. On the ride to the radio station, Dice admits he has no interest in making cupcakes.
Annie is the lead baker on the vanilla side. The cupcakes look pretty. The chocolate cupcakes, however, don’t rise like the others. Natalie, who was in charge of those, doesn’t know why. The chef who’s overseeing them doesn’t know why either. Could be baking powder instead of baking soda, or perhaps the wrong flour. To recover from this, Annie will make another batch of vanilla. They call the other half of the team to beg for help.
Clint tastes his team’s cupcakes. They’re terrible. They forgot to put the sugar in. This falls on Herschel, who was responsible for the mixing. Their overseer says they don’t have time to make another batch, but should try to put syrup on them and hope they absorb it to become sweeter.
The women’s chocolate cupcakes may not look good, but they taste fine, so if they cover them up, maybe nobody will notice.
Claudia is getting tired of listening to Annie talk. Natalie’s not happy with it either. Joan appreciates Annie’s input, but doesn’t like that she’s a fascist dictator.
The women see the guy’s truck and are impressed and afraid. The sad thing is that it only took two guys to do this, too.
The men set a price of $20 for their cupcakes. The women are willing to give them away for as little as $1.
Tom Green has gotten Tony Hawk to come down and draw in some traffic.
The partially clothed cowboy has also come down to sing a song.
The girls get a girl in a bunny costume, along with about 100 people from the Playboy building. Joan Rivers calls Brande a very smart woman lost in a gorgeous face and body.
Rodman is sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck for most of the day. He says it’s because he didn’t want to be a distraction. People can see him after they buy a cupcake.
Eric Benet comes down to visit Claudia. Kathy Lee Gifford comes down for Khloe.
Annie gets a visit from some fellow poker players, who are handing over thousands.
Trump phones Herschel and Joan to ask for a member of their team to take their best cupcake to Crumbs Bakeshop on 8th St. Whichever the owner likes best will receive an additional $15,000.
Melissa chooses one of the bombs, one of the inverted cupcakes that tasted good and then were filled with ganache because they didn’t look very good. Since he’s probably still not doing anything, Dice goes for the men.
When she gets back, Melissa is asked if she gave them the vanilla with the chocolate chips that the chef said that people were most likely to like. She was unaware of that discussion, and she also didn’t bother to get feedback from her team on their pick.
Brande has two big spenders come down. It’s around this time that Annie wants to ration the cupcakes so they have some left for when they get additional big spenders. They certainly don’t want to sell them the whole truck, but Brande does want to give them a whole tray, without finding out how much money they plan to give. They end up getting $9,000 for 24 cupcakes.
With 15 minutes left, they’ve sold out.
At the end of the day, the men are getting some more big hitters.
With 7 minutes left, they lower the price to 2 cupcakes for $20, and Tom Green calls Donny to find out where his girl is. Just under 2 minutes left, they get $10,000 for 1 cupcake.
Joan says that Brande was the star of the team.
Claudia says that Annie is the weakest member of their team. She’s mostly just upset because Annie told her how to frost a cupcake (something the chef showed her). Let it go.
Herschel declines to answer who the weak link was, but Dice admits he was. As for Dennis, he needed a spanking.
The women easily won the taste test, which is $15,000 from Crumbs. They were disgusted by the men’s cupcakes.
The men brought in $49,499; the women brought in $61,267. It all comes down to the taste test. Joan’s charity Gods Love We Deliver will be getting the money.
Tom Green brought in $16,000 from three donors, a large chunk of what the men brought in. He doesn’t like that the rest of the guys didn’t make an effort to do the same like he suggested. Herschel says he brought in the most money, but Tom doesn’t like that he didn’t encourage the others to do so as well.
Jesse acknowledges their cupcakes sucked. Scott refuses to pass the blame and just says it was whoever was in the kitchen should share equal blame. Since Andrew didn’t do anything, that leaves him out.
Herschel says that Dennis was effective when he wanted to be effective, but Dennis responds that if he wasn’t doing something right, the team leader should have told him what to do.
Clint would fire Dice due to his lack of contribution.
Andrew says he would agree to leave because the others don’t appreciate what he did anyway, and the others all did a good job. Trump’s response is that he doesn’t want to quit because the three before him who quit are considered losers. This coming from the guy who 2 years ago, when it looked like The Apprentice was going to be cancelled, told NBC they didn’t have to fire him because he quit.
Dice would fire Scott because, well, it’s not entirely clear why. Scott would fire Dennis and Andrew. Brian would fire Andrew. Jesse would fire Dennis. Tom would fire Herschel because he’s the project manager.
Herschel makes the two obvious picks: Dice and Dennis.
Trump’s secretary isn’t interested in going out with Dice after he gets fired tonight.
Dennis would fire Herschel due to lack of a gameplan. He should have been better utilized, or utilized at all for that matter. Dice agrees with his buddy Dennis.
Herschel claims he made an effort to utilize them, but it didn’t seem like it. Granted, it’s entirely possible they just simply can’t be controlled.
Herschel says Dice is washed up. Dice calls the kettle black.
Because Trump thinks that Dice wanted to quit, he’s the first one fired.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Celebrity Apprentice 2 episode 2, which airs Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.