The Celebrity Apprentice – Can’t we go to the videotape?

No episode in the current season of The Celebrity Apprentice has done a better job than last night’s in highlighting the differences between the men’s and women’s teams. In a marketing task for Australian Gold sun care products the men — led by Mark McGrath — proved themselves to be a thoughtful, industrious, creative, cohesive unit. Meanwhile the women — led by La Toya Jackson — proved themselves an utter mess.

While the men were building an admittedly risky pirate-themed display, the women were mainly lost. Granted a lot of that has to do with the editing and the dopey music piped in after-the-fact, but come on … the women were lost. La Toya not only has no business sense — demanding all of the signs when they cost two times your budget isn’t helpful — but she seems to be a conspiracy theorist as well. She thinks she was being ostracized? The women were questioning her leadership abilities with good reason, but they were still fulfilling their duties.

Then there was the total lack of a plan on the women’s side. I suppose that fed into La Toya’s ability to call Hope up once they’d already left for the store and ask for 125 fifty pound bags of sand — did they use them all? — and her deciding the morning of the task to add a snow theme, but if that doesn’t scream chaos I don’t know what does.

Nevertheless, while the men clearly had a more boisterous display going and the women looked to have a lot of noise piled together, there’s no question that the women addressed more of the issues that the executives had stressed: Surfing Sydney the koala, “Living the Gold life,” etc. And pirates don’t identify with the product being sold; I agree on that front.

However, it’s unfortunate that someone can only be fired from the losing team. There is no question in my mind that La Toya proved herself to be little more than a complete disaster as project manager … allowing her the opportunity to continue innocently wreaking havoc is an unfortunate by-product of the rules of the contest.

But once the men did lose, I have to say that Gary should have been let go without question. I heard what Mark said about taking responsibility for the theme, and I know that he was trying to qualify that later by being more specific than he’d been in the first place. However, the boardroom should be the place where the weak are let go, allowing the team as a whole to get better. As a guy looking to get re-upped for another season, Donald Trump has got to understand that he wants to keep the game as competitive as humanly possibly, all the while keeping the show entertaining. Not to say that Gary doesn’t offer the latter, but Meat Loaf and his mood swings are still around.

And I really wish that there was a “Let’s go to the videotape” option available to those battling it out in the end, because I’m tired of hearing everyone deny things that we know they did. Gary said the word “sexual” to the executives in their meeting with the team; Gary took the executives “hostage”; Gary pushed Meat Loaf and Mark away; Gary pitched himself as a spokesman for the product. Whether the men would have lost anyway isn’t the point … Gary’s a tremendous liability, whereas Mark’s a leader. If week after week everyone’s complaining about one guy — and even Don Don threw Mark a bone in there that Mark picked up and ran with — why not cut him loose?

Speaking of Don Don, why does it make an issue more credible if he knows about it going into the boardroom? I actually think NeNe was out-of-line taking her koala head off during the task and complaining to Don Don. There’s a time and place for everything, and mid-task it’s more important to stay focused and professional. Save the whining for the boardroom.

But anyway, Mark is no more, and he seemed to be okay with that. We’ll see how the men do without him and with Gary.

“We’re just fighting cleavage with cleavage.” – Meat Loaf

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 11, 2011 @ 12:00 EST5EDT