Last night the drama on The Celebrity Apprentice was contagious; after weeks of watching the women infighting — no offense, but I couldn’t stop laughing as NeNe cried over the fact that “Dionne is rude” after the women returned from last week’s boardroom — the men caught a little drama fever: Meat Loaf went off on Gary Busey like nobody’s business. And what’s so interesting about Mr. Loaf is that he seems a little schizophrenic, even more than NeNe does. I think his explosion came from the lousy mood that he was in, but it still came out of nowhere, and to go from that to crying as he apologized to Gary later that day … yikes! Perfect that he found his missing bag, too.
The task at hand was to create original works of art and sell them at a gallery that each team ran. Marlee Matlin took charge this week, squaring off against John Rich. I found the task itself amusing, as I’ve always wondered about the fascination we have with anything and everything connected to fame. So to center a task around these “celebrities” — almost all non-artists — creating works of art that they then sold just reinforced the obsession our society has with fame. But be that as it may, I really enjoyed the episode.
John Rich threw down the philanthropy gauntlet when he promised to bring in half a million dollars from all the hillbillies in country land. And the women all agreed that as a fund raiser John was formidable. I found that rather interesting, considering the fact that, week after week in seasons past, Trace Adkins and Clint Black both insisted that country musicians had no money. For whatever reason I was inclined to believe them, and they both worked hard enough to make up for their fund raising deficiencies, but John’s claims — and successes — raise a lot of questions about how genuine both Trace and Clint were being.
Meanwhile, like Michael Johnson before him, Jose Canseco left to tend to a family matter, in this case his father’s cancer. I wish his family the best, but Jose is not a loss for the men’s team; in fact, I think they’ll be stronger without him.
It was insane that the women got to their gallery as late as they did, but how is it that on this show things always work out in the end? What were the odds that, given how late they were, they would have been prepared to open their doors at all? It would have been interesting to see what Trump would have had to say had the women failed to so much as begin the task.
I will continue to belittle the “celebrity” that these folks possess, but I was extremely impressed by how successful both teams were at raising money. This is what the show is all about, and it was awesome watching Marlee bring in three ninety-nine thousand dollar bids, and John sell his guitar for $470,000. That was beyond words.
When the men and women raise $626,000 and $986,000 respectively, it’s kind of impossible to call either team a loser. I realize that one has to be labeled as such, but wow. And it actually isn’t unprecedented for Trump to pass on firing someone due to an extraordinary fund raising effort — season three episode seven, the “24 Hour Fitness” task, saw Holly Robinson Peete beat Sharon Osbourne with no one being fired. And that was with a total $350,000 raised; I wonder why Trump decided to fire someone from a group that raised $1.6 million.
But if anyone was going to be fired, I’m glad it was Richard Hatch. He doesn’t belong even in this ragtag group of “celebrities,” and his lack of any donor contacts screams an ineligibility for this show. Now the men have shed all their fat.
Even so I did have another thought for who may have deserved to go home … how about anyone who wasn’t John Rich? None of the contestants are really famous, but I’d say even more disappointing than completely un-famous Richard Hatch raising no money was mildly famous Gary Busey, Lil Jon, Mark McGrath, and Meat Loaf raising a measly $10,000 to $20,000 each. That’s pathetic considering what John Rich brought in by himself.
Before I forget, great seeing Georgie back in the game, and how about The Sopranos’ Furio Giunta (Federico Castelluccio) as the surprise art critic? Who knew he could speak in unaccented English?
“I love looking at the art, I love touching the art, I have fun with it.” – Donald Trump, on art
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 04, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
