UPDATE: Terese Giudice was eliminated after the boardroom

UPDATE:  Lisa Lampanelli was fired in the boardroom after interviews with Marlee Matlin and John Rich

This week’s task has the contestants producing a four page print ad for “CHI Touch” Digital Touchscreen Hair Dryer. Check out some clips HERE. Teresa Giudice and Lisa Lampanelli are the project managers this week.

Blown Away

Last week: Aubrey tried to take control from Project Manager Arsenio Hall. On Forte, Dayana tried to assert herself. Trump fired Dayana while Lisa smiled evilly.

After the Boardroom: Lisa pranks Unanimous by pretending that Clay went home along with Dayana. Then she rejoices because Dayana is gone and makes fun of Teresa, who realizes that she’s next in Lisa’s line of fire. “Bring it,” she tells the camera from the safety of the Talking Head Room.

We skip Arsenio delivering his task money, going straight to Hearst Tower, where Trump introduces the judges for the next task. Robbie Myers from Elle Magazine, Farouk Shami, and someone named John. The task is to create a print campaign for the CHI Touch Screen Hair Dryer. They will be judged on brand messaging, the print campaign, and the presentation. The winner will get $100,000.

The judges meet with the teams and Farouk (who also appeared last season, on a “hair show” task), makes the most of this product placement by showing off all the best features of the hair dryer. Apparently it was developed by NASA. Robbie explains that the ad needs to feature the “Elle girl.”

Unanimous (well, Aubrey) comes up with a concept that marries Zen (yoga poses) with Futurism (big hair). On Forte, Lisa wants to focus on the lightness and efficiency of the hair dryer. She comes up with the idea, “Beauty on the Inside,” which then becomes, “Beneath the Surface.” Clay tells us that this is an abstract concept that may be hard to convey in a picture. Lisa is already plotting how to throw Clay under the bus if they don’t win.

The PMs negotiate for the use of models from a common pool. When Teresa asks for a red-haired model, Lisa immediately hardballs her. Teresa ends up saddled with a male model sporting a crewcut. Lisa laughs and calls herself an evil genius.

Eric shows up at Unanimous and grills them on their concept. Aubrey asks Teresa before she takes over the conversation. She’s learning!

Forte’s concept will be about women who are not typical beauties. Which turn out to be “Librarian,” “Tomboy,” and “Lisa Bonet.” According to Lisa, Clay is the only gay guy in the world with no fashion sense. If Dayana was still around, she’d have been sent to get clothes for the shoot — and Lisa would have told us what a useless, stupid, easy task shopping is. Since she’s not, Clay sends “Lisa Bonet” to help Lisa Lampanelli find stuff at Lord & Taylors.

Overwhelmed by questions from the photo shoot team, Clay refers all decisions to the absent Lisa. But, as soon as she arrives, Lisa sits down for lunch and ignores everyone but Don, who is checking up on Forte. She explains the concept, using the phrase “beneath the surface” about a million times.

As it turns out, the red-haired model never shows up for Unanimous. The agency sends them a blonde instead. Aubrey comes up with a plan. She’ll be the model! The blonde model stalks off angrily. When Aubrey changes her clothes, Teresa is scandalized by the nakedness. Nobody else is.

Aubrey tells us that she’s been in Elle many times — on their worst-dressed lists. She considers this task “sweet revenge…. I look so good as a hair model! My hair is so fierce!”

Teresa stumbles and stutters through her presentation to the judges. Farouk gazes happily at Aubrey’s hair as she presents the photos, which look very high-fashion. Arsenio does a very funny monologue about the features of the hair dryer. The judges are laughing.

Lisa and Clay give a more rehearsed presentation. No reading from notes. However, they aren’t as visually satisfying. Teresa’s team looked like a team. They look like two random people who wandered in. Their ads have a lot more copy than the ones from Unanimous.

The judges confer about the two teams. Will they decide the winner before the commercial break? Nope.

Trump starts the Boardroom by asking about the negotiation. “Did Lisa play you for a fool?” he asks Teresa. Lisa is having a great time. She brags about making Teresa take a “potentially bad model.” Teresa says Lisa played dirty.

The teams show their campaigns. Lisa thinks Unanimous’s photographs are beautiful, especially Aubrey’s. Clay thinks the ads are unclear.

Eric and Don deliver the judges’ feedback. Unanimous’s presentation was convincing, passionate, and funny. The pictures were beautiful, but they didn’t speak to the features of the hair dryer. The styling wasn’t Elle. Teresa was very awkward during the presentation.

Forte’s copy was good. The dryer was well highlighted. The ads fit Elle’s audience. But the styling was very dated and the presentation was lackluster.

The winning team was Forte. Teresa looks pained. She knows she’s going home.

Safe in the suite, Lisa is happy to win for her charity, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

In the Boardroom, Trump asks about the model negotiation. Aubrey and Arsenio both say that losing the negotiation was a problem, but they regrouped.

Teresa tries to shift the blame to Arsenio by saying he played it safe and brought nothing to the table. Even as the words leave her lips, they sound like empty clichés. Trump fires Teresa.

As the Final Four celebrate, the phone rings. They are called back to the Boardroom. Trump congratulates them and informs them that they will interview with John Rich and Marlee Matlin.

As they wait, Arsenio thinks about the challenge. Lisa and Clay think about their respective charities. Aubrey thinks about herself.

Oh, here is Ms. Brown to remind us that she’s made of chocolate. Okay, then.

Trump chit-chats with Rich and Matlin about their experiences since the show. John feels validated as a person. Marlee is excited because her charity has raised 7.2 million in a single event. Then they move on to discussing the Final Four.

Marlee finds Aubrey stunning, intelligent, and passionate. She likes Aubrey’s passion for GLSEN. John calls Aubrey a “chess player,” but found her attempts to manipulate him transparent.

Marlee wonders if Clay is truly a leader. His connection to the National Inclusion Project is strong, but was he too safe? John pushes Clay on that issue, pointing out that PMing only two tasks is kind of lame.

John asks Arsenio how will he win this thing? Arsenio plans to give 100 percent. Marlee asks Arsenio about his fight with Aubrey. She is please that he apologized.

Marlee says that Lisa is so loud that even a deaf person can hear her. John calls Lisa “tough.” Marlee thinks Lisa is passionate, but her weakness is in controlling her emotions. John likes that Lisa inspires strong reactions.

Trump meets with the Final Four again. He asks Lisa why she should win. She says her teammates always called her a star, and she was always honest. She was emotional, but never out of control. She uses emotion.

Trump gently fires her. She leaves beaming. She found the process fun. She hugs the elevator man.

We have to wait until next week to find out who the next firee is. From the preview, it looks like Clay makes the final two.

What do you think about the latest episode? Who was the more impressive interviewer, Marlee Matlin or John Rich? Did you think that Lisa deserved to go further? Answer below!

 
  • fuzzywuzzy

    There are rumors that Clay and Arsenio are the final two, so the “:-/” face may be a red herring.  Hard to say, but between those two, I think that Clay is the stronger player, but if the final task is a fundraiser, then Arsenio may have been saving his biggest donors for this (although in the guidebook task, he was shown as having a hard time getting donors apart from a blank check from Leno).

  • Anonymous

    Just out of curiosity, do you think the right team won last night?  I drifted off a coupla times during the show, but for the life of me, I did not get the Lisa team ad.  At all.  Just didn’t get what they were planning to do – or did.  And I frankly did not believe Aubrey’s team wrote no ad copy, because NOONE writes an ad without any copy and Aubrey is way too smart to be so stupid.

    When I was watching it, I thought Unanimous had it in the bag — their presentation was ten times better and their concept was smart and gorgeously executed.  But I can see where they made their fatal mistake.  The task had three judges, one from Elle (the magazine) and two from Farouk (the ad sponsor).  Unanimous focused on creating something that would please the magazine.  Forte’s ads did what the advertiser needed:  to educate consumers about the product.  Ultimately, they didn’t cover their client’s needs.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    I think that I may be starting to get hooked on this show! lol  In your opinion, was last year the most entertaining of the series? I didn’t watch any of the show, but I remember all of the ads showing Meat Loaf going postal on Gary Busey and the blowups between the women. lol  I’m wondering why the ratings are down so much for this year vs. last year.

  • Anonymous

    That is the first time I ever thought the story line was made up after the fact.  I found the whole thing entirely unbelievable – especially the lack of copy when you could tell from the presentation that Aubrey wrote it:  she is very profficient with the language, very fluid.  The campaign of Lisa and Clay basically wasn’t a campaign at all; there was no way it worked on any level (except that there was ad copy).  It was poorly conceived and worked out.  Yeah, it all seemed to have been manufactured so Teresa would leave, because obviously she needed to go.

  • Anonymous

    To be honest, I liked all the past seasons! I must say last season had alot of interesting characters like Nene, star jones, meatloaf etc.. Every season had it’s evil vs good persona, or a few celebrities that are just deluded. For example, the 1st season was the showdown between Piers and Omarosa. That was Hella entertaining too! 2nd season had the bit*h fight between Annie and Joan. So to be very honest, this season has appeared to be quite bleak to me. Even though I like Clay, I honestly think the most talented and deserving person is gone, and that is Penn.

  • Anonymous

    If this was a contest of the brightest and most competent, Aubrey would win hands down; that is, if the editing is anywhere close to the reality of what happened.  She may not be the most gracious, or the nicest, but she is far and away the most competent.  That said, she will not win.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t think Arsenio has been a strong player at all.  And he annoys me after all of these weeks with him.  Not to mention his anti-women rant, although I’m sure Trump is a little oblivious to that.  If the show is at all fair (okay, it isn’t), Aubrey and Clay compete.  Arsenio isn’t really capable.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Lisa calls Clay a “bitchy queen” again (at least the 3rd time) in a post-show interview and says she doesn’t regret or apologize for the racial slur against Dayana.

    http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/05/07/celebrity-apprentice-lisa-lampanelli-dayana-mendoza-2/

    The only thing that will make Lisa regret anything is if her career declines and it hits her in her bank account, and sadly, that probably won’t happen. She says that the show portrayed her honestly (YIKES!) and I’m curious to see if her exposure will be helpful in attracting audiences to her Broadway show that she’s developing to debut this fall or next spring.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, what they blew is plumb impossible for me to believe.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Yes, I’m a big fan of Penn’s, but he wasn’t providing the kind of “entertaining” comments or video clips that the producers want and winning wasn’t the most important thing to him, so I’m actually surprised that he lasted as long as he did.  lol  I’m glad that he’ll be coming back to help on the final tasks and he will be a very valuable guy to have on a team.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    She has definitely been shown as coming up with the most ideas and having the most creative input, whereas Clay (and especially Arsenio) have been shown to be contributing to tasks more than leading them (except for the jingle task where Clay took the lead).  I can understand the critique that Clay has been a follower and great team player more than a leader.

  • LaurelG

    As annoying as Aubrey has been, I find that I’m just fascinated by how openly narcissistic she is, and it’s entertaining to see someone who is so unabashedly self-centered and praises herself so much in public. lol

    Word to this!  Plus, her back stabbing in the talking heads is hysterical.  She’s very democratic in her insults – no one is immune except Lisa, Donald and the Trumpettes.

    About the ad campaigns, it was totally fixed to give Teresa the boot.  While Forte’s ad was professional looking, there was nothing original or fashion forward about it, and it didn’t highlight the Touch Screen aspect at all (it was developed by NASA, people!).  Someone (Aubrey?) made a passing reference about typical Elle ads not having copy so it sounded as if it was deliberate.  But then they cut out that discussion so we didn’t hear the full defense. 

    The only reason Teresa made it this far is because she is a D+ celebrity which is a teeny bit higher than most of the others. 

       

  • fuzzywuzzy

    “That is the first time I ever thought the story line was made up after the fact.”

    I think that it’s been done all along. Adam Carolla explained in detail in his podcast how editing was used to create an entirely different perception of what really happened (Penn confirmed a lot of what he said).

    http://www.adamcarolla.com/penn-jillette-and-captain-sean-parnell/

    He was annoyed that the producers created “fake story lines” to support Unanimous losing the task and he and Michael Andretti being fired.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    I agree and it’s been obvious from the start that Trump loves Arsenio.  Some of his confessional comments have been pretty funny (without being cutting or harsh), but he’s not coming across as a strong leader or someone who has lots of ideas.  It could be editing, but there’s not a lot that’s been shown to rationalize if Arsenio is one of the final two. As much as I like him, I’m kind of surprised that he’s lasted this long and is rumored to be in the finale.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5CTSGSGATMXQESVDDD7RWQRYXU Jane

    YAY!!!!!!!  LISA LAMPANELWHATEVER IS OFF OF MY TV!!!!!!!!

    Sorry for all caps, never do that, but so appropriate for this post.  SO GLAD TO FINALLY HAVE THAT POINSONOUS LISA GONE!!!!!

    Okay, whew.  Would love to have an Arsenio/Clay finale, but I think that’s too much to hope for.  Aubrey is almost as obnoxious as Lisa, but the Donald seems to love her. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5CTSGSGATMXQESVDDD7RWQRYXU Jane

    YAY!!!!!!!  LISA LAMPANELWHATEVER IS OFF OF MY TV!!!!!!!!

    Sorry for all caps, never do that, but so appropriate for this post.  SO GLAD TO FINALLY HAVE THAT POINSONOUS LISA GONE!!!!!

    Okay, whew.  Would love to have an Arsenio/Clay finale, but I think that’s too much to hope for.  Aubrey is almost as obnoxious as Lisa, but the Donald seems to love her. 

  • Anonymous

    The only thing that will make Lisa regret anything is if her career declines and it hits her in her bank account, and sadly, that probably won’t happen. She says that the show portrayed her honestly (YIKES!) and I’m curious to see if her exposure will be helpful in attracting audiences to her Broadway show that she’s developing to debut this fall or next spring.

    I’m guessing that it will help her.  She’s now familiar to millions of people who had never heard of her before.  And at least they know what they’ll be getting from her show. :)

    I’d never want to work with her, but that’s because I don’t like getting yelled at.  But I can’t say she isn’t good at what she does.

  • Anonymous

    Last season of CA was so much better than this season IMO. John Rich and Lil Jon shined. I recommend watching Lil Jon’s interview with Ellen after you watch that season. He is one cool guy. Those two were unbelievably good. The drama between Meatloaf and Gary Busey, LOL! 

    This season of CA is okay, but the stuff that went down with Adam and Penn was so disappointing to me. 

  • Penny Burke

     Lil John was the creative force behind John Rich. If they had split up Lil John and John Rich, Rich would have been fired mid season.

  • Penny Burke

    I’m wondering why the ratings are down so much for this year vs. last year.

    Nearly every week Apprentice is up against some heavy hitters. The Academy Awards, The Country Music Awards, the season Finale of Amazing Race this week. Next week season Finale of Survivor and the Searies finale of Desperate Housewives, the Apprentice finale is up against the Billboard Music Awards. There was other big shows up against it in earlier weeks but I can’t remember them right now. Needless to say, the timeslot has been hugely competitive, more so than previous years. This is the first time it is up against the Oscars, Amazing Race and Billboard Music Awards.

  • Anonymous

    So glad Lisa is gone, she seems like and obnoxious bully!!! Nothing funny about her.  Aubrey does have great ideas but she is so full of herself and not a team player at all.  All about herself and doesn’t mind letting everybody know.  (Pitiful)

  • Anonymous

    Sooooo glad Lisa is gone, what an abnoxious bully!!!!! I didn’t find anything funny about her which might explain why I never heard of her before this show.  Although Aubry does have great ideas, she is so full of herself I found myself wanting to throw-up evertime she patted herself on the back which was most of the time.  She is NOT a team player.  I wonder if she didn’t get a lot of attention, as a child, or maybe she doesn’t realize she is not the only person in the world that has good ideas. UGH!!!!!!