By this point in any season of The Celebrity Apprentice, things on both teams have generally started to boil pretty heartily. The remaining players are always the “strongest” ones — that, and the under-the-radar fliers, too — and the egos on these “celebrities,” after weeks of colliding, are generally ready to explode.
It’s not surprising that the men’s team, which has been unhappily living with Gary Busey for weeks, would collapse under the weight of a Gary-led task. And let’s face it: he absolutely was a disaster as a leader. Did he pull out some great tools when faced with presenting to an audience? Sure. But he also made a ridiculously hilarious phone call to Omaha Steaks’ customer service, bombarding some poor guy with all sorts of nonsense … at least as far as he was concerned. And what in the world was the idea behind the kite on Father’s Day? Even after hearing it explained I still don’t get it.
What was really interesting was how, perhaps for the first time, we were faced with the aftermath of an incident that occurred off-camera. And if John Rich is correct in saying that Gary waited until he knew the cameras were off before really going at John, then that shines Gary in an entirely new light. I felt that he was a disaster from the beginning, but if he’s been deliberately acting the fool in order to play his teammates….
And yet I felt kind of badly for him in the boardroom. Not to say that the men were wrong in any of their evaluations, but what happens to Gary after people watch him depicted like this? I’m sure it won’t affect his career, but does he necessarily deserve the perception that’s sure to have been reinforced about him? And how much is he to blame if it was in fact a part of his game-playing strategy?
While the men surely rid themselves of an impediment to their success, I wonder how it was that the women won the task. They were certainly more put-together than the men — and more than they’ve been in many weeks — but did anyone else notice that they failed the task? I went back to the beginning to be sure, and the teams were tasked with writing, producing, and starring in live cooking demonstrations … live cooking demonstrations. Only one of their dishes was even partially prepared in front of the audience, so how did they come out victorious?
I wonder if next week we’ll see the first team reshuffling of the season. Hope and La Toya are the two remaining weakest links in the game and should be split up, and I think it’s time that Star meet another overbearing personality, that NeNe learn that she is, in fact, a negative player, and that Marlee be paired with another competitor who’s on her level. It’ll be a shame if the men don’t get the chance to show what they can do without Gary, but for the women’s sake — and for ours — I think it’s time that things get mixed up.
Personally I’d like to see Marlee and John Rich work together. Who would you like to see competing side-by-side?
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 18, 2011 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
