Celebrity Apprentice - Is this going to as bad as I think it is?

Woo hoo! Now this is entertaining trash television!

Mullinator, thanks so much for resurrecting the ratings!
What I dearly want to know is, what are the living rules for these celebrities? Are they really stuffed into the Apprentice suite in Trump towers, having to do their own cooking? Hah, I believe, is the right response to that.

And, what are the rules? Some of these people, at least, have a fair bit of disposable cash. Are there rules against, say, selling themselves a $10k hot dog?
Or, if they have a task that involves a lot of physical effort, can they call up their housekeeper/admin/whatever and have them help out?

Oooh. I have to bow to the master. The only reason I watched this (flipping back-and-forth to the Orange Bowl) was for the Raj Ratings.

That being said, this episode was a lot better than my expectations. I look forward to seeing Boardroom performances from people that a) don’t need Trump to become famous and successful, and b) have egos as large or larger than Trump’s.

I just hope the editing doesn’t sugarcoat poor performances so as not to piss off the talent. I notice the only person who came off looking bad this ep was Omarosa. A whole season of glossed-over fuckups is gonna be awfully boring.

I was thinking about the living arraignments myself when trump sent the guys packing back to “their war-room”

I am disappointed that Omarosa wasn’t fired last night after Trumps “business lesson” on commodities and the whole Your celebrity is a commodity then Omarosa not wanting to use her teams Celebrity at all in their brain storming session. Marilu Henner Saved her ass, if they didn’t have the 60% that she phoned in, I am sure it would have been Bye-Bye for Omarosa. And here it is apparent that she is not a celebrity, she doesn’t see that it can be used with sound business principle. She doesn’t see it cause she isn’t a celebrity that has been able to use it to leverage it.

Glad to have you back in form, Mully. Great analysis.

God, I hate Trump’s sell crap on the street challenges. The winning team should be the one that sells the most at a fixed price, not the team with the more generous friends.

I have no clue who most of them are. But I am psyched for seeing Big Pussy on the show! (Also seeing him tonight in “Chicago”–is he seriously considering doing “Hairspray”? I knew there was a good reason to postpone that one!)

Oh, and Gene Simmons? That’s also seven kinds of awesomenses.

“Pants” is a slang term meaning “cool,” as in “KISS is so cool, they make me wanna crap my pants.” I think I even heard Cartman say it on “South Park” once.

Oh no. “Pants” means “unequivocal, unmitigated, utter shit.”

I have no idea how that misinterpretation came about. It’s old, old UK slang.

Lost the edit window. Reading in context, "pants’ can also mean bad, or horrible, an opinion about KISS which I most certainly do not share.

EDIT - thanks, Hippy Hollow. In context, you are absolutely right. I misused the term. I screwed the pooch on that one.

Well, I hope Gene Simmons is on for a long time – there’s something gratifying about the depths of my "what a freaking asshole response to even the merest glimpse of him and his washcloth hair.

I think this is shaping up to be an outstanding season.

Want to know a secret? I’m pretty sure if The Raj Ratings didn’t exist, I may have ended up creating the Gene Simmons Ratings, because, while I generally abhor him as a human being, I think he may be the greatest contestant this show has ever seen.

That was a good episode and the 2nd in a row where a fitting person was fired which is a nice change from the last few seasons. I missed the name of Captain GQ CEO, the substitute George, but every time I saw him on the screen I immediately thought of the MST3K riff from Space Mutiny. Every time he came on the screen, I couldn’t help but think of Big McLargeHuge, Slab Bulkhead, Blast Hardcheese, or Bolt Vanderhuge. That alone would have made the episode worthwhile. Well, that and Gene Simmons’ clear lack of awe at the show, The Donald, and surrounding life in general. There is something oddly pleasant about extreme ego paired with ability and distance. I’d punch him in the face if we were on the same team, but I can watch him for hours on the TV. I can’t explain it any better than that.

A new thing to note…Pay attention to how Trump fires and memorializes each candidate. Trump knows he can’t seriously blast anyone as an idiot because I bet he makes enough money off of this show that he’d like to do it again assuming ratings pan out. If he savages celebrities, he won’t have a shot of getting anyone to come on. That said, I think we will see one of three options. He will either be pleasantly ambivalent like with Tiffany last week. She was a minor celeb with powerful friends so he had to be careful not to call her useless. This week, he was much the same way with Nadia. I think his second style will be overly effusive, as he was with Nely for similar missteps that would have easily earned a tongue lashing and firing if her name were Sarah Smith with a bank account of $20. And, I predict he’ll pretty much rip Omarosa apart because he can. She has no celebrity, no connections, and can’t really cause him any future harm so he can shred her without fear of recrimination.

On to the voodoo that I do so well.

The Raj Ratings
David – Who? Exactly.
Tiffany Fallon (the breasts of the show) – Welcome to history’s dustbin.
Nadia Comaneci (Olympic Gold medal gymnast) – The good news: You got on screen this week. The bad news: Since Nely had a bad day but is pretty obviously capable to be worth a second look, you didn’t show much of anything. Feel free to triple flip with a layout off of our screens and back into our hearts.

Sam – Candidates that are not hated, loved, competent, sane, or normal but provide the combo of unintential comedy, limited shelf life, and way below average results.
Carol Alt (Model) – I don’t think she did anything objectionably wrong, so the boardroom appearance won’t really hurt her. The trouble is, you could repeat the previous sentence and stop after th 6th word and be just as accurate.
Vincent Pastore (Italian sterotype) – Granted his team is winning, but he has made no impression in a room full of positive impressions.
Nely Galan (Some TV exec with Telemundo) - It’s a steep drop and she can easily redeem herself in Trump’s eyes (vaguely important) and my eyes (clearly her main goal in life) but it will take some work. I also get the feeling that if we were to walk in her office, we’d see a bookcase covered in the latest management fad of the month titles. Anyone for corporate lingo bingo?

Omarosa – Villians and late round cannon fodder kept around solely for editors and the viewing public to mock.
Omarosa (Attention whore) – Really, is there any way she moves from this category. It was nice to basically have an episode free of her lunacy. It’s actually a good editing move. If someone came up and hit me with a stick once a minute, that stick would be gone quickly. If they hit me with a stick once a month, it will take longer to earn my wrath. And, openly enjoying the other commercial should be one of those things that earns wrath from Trump and her team as a disloyal action, so I remain hopeful for that to happen next week. Also, after the combination of her new cartoon chest and Nely’s caricaturistic (it’ll be a word someday) face, what’s the % of women on this show that have gone under the knife? I say 71%.

Katrina – Hot chicks, closet wackos, and middle of the road performers.
Piers Morgan (Editor) – I’m pretty sure that once his team loses, he’s going to shift to the Omarosa category. He doesn’t seem overly evil, but he does seem like someone who you can live with in good times and want to beat with a fish in bad times.
Jennie Finch (Gold medal winning softball pitcher) – Like I said last week, I have no impartiality here. She hasn’t done squat, is probably way outclassed when it comes to business skills, and is likely too inexperienced to put up a fight. But, she’s off the charts awesome. I feel like a teenybopper at an Obama rally.
Trace Adkins (Country singer) – What do we know of Trace? He wears a cowboy hat, he can talk solemnly about dogs and boxers, and his first name is both a noun and a verb.
Tito Ortiz (Ultimate Fighter) – I appreciate the enthusiasm. I don’t really know what you bring to the table yet.

Troy – Likeable, maybe even loveable, but you just know they have a ceiling.
Lennox Lewis (Boxing champ) – What do we know of Lennox? He can hug a dog, he’s bigger than anyone on the show, and he titillates Omarosa. I may need to drop him just because of that.
Marilu Henner (Actress) – Not a great week, but which women strike you as better? 2 are pretty blah, one just had a worse week, and one is made up of equal parts anger, idiocy, and silicone. As long as she doesn’t use Trump’s desk as a bathroom, she should coast for a while.
Kwame – Good to great, but just can’t quite be considered the top dog. But, someone to be reckoned with.
Stephen Baldwin (2nd funniest Baldwin brother, although his is 99% driven by unintentional comdey) – I really, really want him to last. He’s like Eddie Haskell with a more obvious smirk.

Bill – A diamond in a field of drooling camera hogs. Someone who, whether the team wins or loses, has the look of a finalist and likely winner.
Gene Simmons (KISS frontman) – His greatest strengths (massive ego, self-reliance, gigantic tongue) will probably be his undoing. But, until then, he can keep riding on the top of the van and own the high school like Teen Wolf did. But, at some point, he will fall off.
The Perdew/Rancic Corollary – Carol and Omarosa are out. Nely is teetering. She needs 2 or 3 weeks of minimal screen time to have a shot. Vincent needs a favorable edit soon as well.

This makes me think that the fix is in, way more than usual. I certainly don’t consider Gene Simmons to be cool, and I hated Kiss, but the man is pretty smart, appears to be very ambitious, and has developed a sort of TV-land cool that seems to be working well for him. I just can’t see him agreeing to do this show unless he’s been guaranteed that he’ll either win, or be allowed to bow out in some suitably cool way. I can’t believe he’d risk his hard-won status as a slick operator by being fired by some puffy, comb-over doofus. Being on this show is a step up for almost every other “celebrity,” even if they get fired. But Simmons? If he gets fired, he takes a big step down in the celebrity climb. He’ll be reduced to late-night celebrity poker tournaments. This season is as fixed as a pro wrestling extravaganza, maybe moreso, and certainly more than any other season of the show.

Maybe Simmons will figure a way to fire Trump, or get fired and start a rival Apprentice show of his own, stealing some of Trump’s contestants, the whole thing organized between them behind scenes, culminating in a Trump team vs. Simmons team showdown with the inevitable tie outcome and reconciliation. Or maybe Trump will name Simmons to the board halfway through the show. My guess is they’ll do something “shocking” with Simmons, something that “transcends” the “ordinary limits” of the show.

I love the way the show always ends with Trump saying, “Boy, that was difficult,” and the blonde female sidekick [yes, I’m still pining for Caroline, awesome though Ivanka is] responding “But it was the only thing you could do.”

ETA: Excellent summary, Mully!

I was entertained. At least it was funnier than “30 Rock” (whew what a stinker last night).

Random, often shallow observations:

  • I didn’t remember Jenny Finch being 8 feet tall. Maybe the other women are a little on the short side. I did remember her being that hot.

  • What is the name of all that’s good and decent was Omorosa wearing? Last week she looked like the Gorton’s Fisherwoman without the hat, and this week she goes with the miniskirt that she has to yank down to cover her ass at the business meeting?

  • Has Ivanka had work done on her face? Maybe it’s just the makeup. She looked like she was made of rubber this week.

  • Nely (I had to look up her name - still can’t remember her) should have gone home. They didn’t lose the task because the crew ate a half hour later than planned.

  • The Macy’s notGeorge guy is right - I wouldn’t recognize Lennox Lewis if I saw him.

  • Gene and Stephen’s exclusion of the rest of the group was interesting, especially because it worked out for the best. A lot of times in these shows we see ten people trying to do something when in the real world one or two people would be sufficient. The result is usually chaos, the whole “too many chefs in the kitchen” thing. So I think Gene and Stephen may have made the right call there. They were douchey about it, but I think it was a good call.

  • Nice try by the promo monkeys, but we all knew the Ivanka/Gene confrontation would amount to nothing. But wait, there’s more! Tune in to watch the whole damn show again on Saturday and see what really sparked the conflict! Sorry NBC, I have to wash my hair that night.

I was stunned at the way Omorosa acted in the boardroom AND that Trump didn’t call her on it. Reacting like your competitions ad was the greatest thing you ever saw? Slobbering over one of the competition? What a disloyal bitch.
From the coming attractions, it looks like Simmons is going to volunteer to join Empresario next week. Him and Omarosa on the same team – I wonder which team will end up with more air time?

I loved how Simmons wears his sunglasses at all times, including into the Board Room… there, he took them off, albeit momentarily, to apologize “sincerely” to Ivanka, then put them on while smirking… high treason on the Trump world is high comedy to me!

Thanks for the Raj Ratings, Mully!! It makes it all worthwhile.

I didn’t see the first episode. I tuned in to this one, decided I hated it, and then instantly got hooked. What can I say? I love the Gene. I don’t know why I love the Gene. He is horrible and abhorrent. And looks like he’s wearing a boiled-wool sweater on his head. But I love the Gene. It’s a sickness, I think. Maybe I’ll start GLA–Gene Lovers’ Anonymous.

I think it was just that her makeup was pretty extreme. She looked like an Edward Gorey illustration. (And she was awesome!)

I agree. I know Lennox Lewis by name. But I wouldn’t recognize his face.

Trump keeps telling the women to use their celebrity (in the ad, to sell hot dogs), but am I the only one who thinks they were pretty much shafted in the celebrity department? There’s not a single woman on that team I would recognize by sight or voice (aside from Omarosa since I’ve seen the first season.) I recognize the names of Nadia Comaneci & Marilu Henner but that’s it. The other women I have never even heard of. On the men’s side however, you have Gene Simmons, Stephen Baldwin, Vincent Pastore & Piers Morgan, all of whom I would know by seeing them, as well as a bunch of sports people that I’m sure many other people would know.

As cretinous as Gene Simmons can be, he does seem to have some pretty good instincts, an ability to be quick and decisive and enough ego and detachment to try things that no apprenti past would have ever dared attempt. Blowing off the meeting with the animal shelter dude, for instance, would have killed any PM in a non-celebrity year. That’s something only a guy who already has a ton of fame, money and an ego to rival the donald’s would attempt.

Another small thing, but notable in its way, was when the guys were tryng to get an external shot on the street but had trouble clearing the sidewalk of pedestrian traffic. Instead of wasting more time trying to clear an area for the shot, Simmons just quickly said fuck it and moved them back inside. He doesn’tdick around. If he can see that one idea isn’t going to work, he’s smart enough to drop it and move on swiftly to something else.

Stephen Baldwin hold also get credit for actually doing a decent job directing a professional looking commercial and for knowing how to use the talents of his team. Using Trace for the voiceover was a smart idea, as was juxtaposing the mage of Lennox Lewis playing with he puppy (my wife had the same reaction to that as Omarosa did). I guess one thing a lot of these people know is showbiz. Usually the apprentice produced commercials are ass. Itwas interesting to see them get made by people who have a clue how to produce something like that.

I think they were also right to kick the others out during editing. They really didn’t need to be there and would have just been a distraction.

The one thing that could get Simmons in trouble is his boorish attitude towards women. Ivanka isn’t some groupie. I doubt that he’s going to get any more passes for insulting her.

Dio’s mentioning of the street shooting reminded me, I found it pretty funny that Gene was doing crowd control on one end of the shoot. Isn’t the idea to keep people back from who they’re clamoring to see? Was anyone on the street thinking, “Oh snap, that’s Piers something-or-other back there! Move it, weirdo!”

Speaking of which, I’m right there with you, Eyebrows 0f Doom. I’d probably rank them in fame order something like this:

Gene Simmons
Stephen Baldwin
Trace Adkins
Lennox Lewis
Vincent Pastore
Carol Alt
Marilu Henner
Nadia Comaneci
Jennie Finch
Tito Ortiz
Piers Morgan
Tiffany Fallon
(big gap)
Omarosa
(bigger gap)
Nely Galán