The Celebrity Apprentice – TEAM: Together everyone achieves more

Gary Busey is super crazy. Regardless of anything else there is to say about the man, that fact has to be established up front. I had to stop trying to count how many smile-and-nod conversations he had with people during last night’s episode of The Celebrity Apprentice, where he would say something that made no sense and they would just say “Sure.”

I should add to that as well that he was a disaster as a project manager. In fact, the only thing that saved the task for the men was Mark McGrath — and then currently jailed Richard Hatch — scoring some outdoor accessories for their presentation. That allowed the men to transform their RVs into what Camping World was looking for: an interactive outdoor experience.

The men have a fair amount of fat to cut, and the first one that needs to go is Jose Canseco. Between his regular “I want to be on record” disagreements with the team, and his laziness, the only thing Jose brings to the table is acrimony. Richard Hatch seems better behaved now — ignoring his insulting all country music fans — although I still wonder how he fits in with even these “celebrities.” And Gary, for all that he isn’t a bad guy, certainly isn’t a consensus builder. If the men were left with John Rich, Lil Jon, Meat Loaf, and Mark McGrath they’d soar.

The women, meanwhile, are a disaster. Niki Taylor seems like a lovely person, but she’s a bit too much of a wallflower for this competition. Hope Dworaczyk only came out of her shell with Niki, so it’s too soon to make a call on her. Marlee Matlin is awesome, while La Toya Jackson is frightening in a “Is that Michael reincarnated?” sort of way, but there doesn’t seem to be much unpalatable about her. Plus, the more criers the better!

But that’s as far as one can take the women’s team; Dionne Warwick is impossible to have to listen to, while Star Jones is entirely unbearable. NeNe Leakes’ presence here is as questionable as Richard Hatch’s, but I think she’ll only be as unpleasant as she is until “Ms. Dionne” and Star go.

As a team the women did terribly. I think Niki was mistaken to assign each of the women their own room, because the result was a lack of cohesiveness and an incomplete job. Since the team wasn’t following Niki’s vision, she had less of an ability to make sure that what they were doing addressed the various aspects of the task.

Plus it resulted in incidences like the one with Dionne, where the women had an expectation that they “owned” a certain area or room, causing some unnecessary turf questions. I think Niki could have brought a lot to the game — particularly as project manager on last week’s children’s book task, which she didn’t step up for — but her lack of strong leadership wouldn’t work with this crowd.

And so it wasn’t surprising that she got fired when the women lost, or that she took the entire blame. What was interesting was that, given a different week and a different player, Donald Trump would have been berating the project manager for doing exactly what Niki did “so classily.” Doesn’t he at least get embarrassed by the hypocrisy?

Plus it means one of the good ones is gone. But I see a storm brewing on the men’s team, so there are still plenty of good times left to be had.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 21, 2011 @ 12:00 EST5EDT