The Celebrity Apprentice – Um, Skype much?

I wouldn’t minimize the possibility that I’m romanticizing the past, but my recollections of previous seasons of The Celebrity Apprentice include a lot less annoying people than we’re saddled with this season. Am I wrong?

The good thing is that I’m pretty much thoroughly enjoying the men’s team. I still can’t seem to get on board with Gary — what about the word “classy” was he not understanding as it came out of Star’s mouth? — but the rest of the men are working for me on one level or another. As for the women? If everyone other than Marlee were to go, I think I’d be okay.

Last night’s task was to create a thirty second commercial for the new ACN video phone. I may be naive here, but who would pay for the equipment and service necessary to use this thing when you can Skype for free? I’m not sure I really understood that.

Lil Jon ran with this one for the men, and he faced NeNe on the women’s side. In other words, the musician — who makes music videos and possibly endorses products in ads and commercials — versus the reality star. Tough one.

So I was pleasantly surprised by how good of a product NeNe ultimately created, and by how well she managed much of her team. In fact, for possibly the first time I found both teams’ creative attempts to be good. The men took a risk and it could have gone either way for them, but no one could call either of these teams a real loser.

Using Marlee in a commercial that featured sign language was a great idea, and the perfect way to emphasize the plus that comes with a video phone. Meanwhile, the men went for shock value by casting Jose as someone’s gay fiance. What went unspoken, because it didn’t need to be said in the end, is that “emotion” means many things, including joy. A commercial packed with emotion needn’t just be a heart string puller.

Three of the women flopped big time: Hope is not a productive team member, La Toya — at her own suggestion, by the way — failed even at “keeping up with the time,” and Dionne quit on her team by going home early. I checked, by the way, and as far as we saw she definitely didn’t ask for NeNe’s permission to do so, not that that should matter. What we saw was Dionne approaching NeNe, with NeNe saying “Oh, you’re going to leave?” Would she have said that had she been asked for permission?

Regardless, Dionne turned the incident into a self-sacrifice, I think to save some face before her inevitable firing. But overall the board room was way too long … how long did the men alone get to chat about their experience? Why not instead give us ten more minutes of the task?

Another thing I was wondering: where does Trump get his information about the tasks from? He talks as if from some informed perspective — like last night about La Toya being a strong player — and I’m just wondering if he gets briefed, if he watches some of the raw footage, or if he’s just full of it. I assume he’s just talking to see if someone will contradict him, but I wonder.

Anyway, the men won again, and one more weak link got sent him in Dionne. Still a ways to go on the women’s team, but at least progress is being made.

“They don’t call it business for nothing.” – Star, not really being clear on why they call “it” business

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 28, 2011 @ 15:00 EST5EDT