Who will be fired tonight from Celebrity Apprentice? Discuss the show here, and later, read Montavilla’s recap. Piers Morgan is brought back to mix it up with frenemy, Omarosa. The all-stars are tasked with creating and selling 3D art. The Blue Man Group guest stars.
Little John’s Team lost the channel He brought Omarosa and Denis Rodman into the board room. Piers sat in, keeping Omarosa’s back up against the wall. Finally…
Omarosa was fired
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Lightning Strikes Mr. Hang Brain
Today’s episode is only one hour! Hooray! We start the show with everyone talking about how Omarosa scares everyone. Omarosa is the Voldemort of celebrities. No one dares speak her name in the Board Room.
No one but Piers! Piers shows up to the next challenge introduction, outside the Trump Hotel — which has a metal globe sculpture which Trump claims is super special art that he commissioned. Coincidentally, the challenge this week is to create, market, and sell art work. But first, Trace is sent to Team Power to help them suck a little less.
Team Power immediately knows that Lil Jon is going to be project manager. It takes a minute for Plan B to decide, but they name Lisa as theirs.
Trace shops sullenly for art supplies. He complains that he picked the players on Plan B. Now, he’s stuck on the loser team.
Speaking of Plan B, Penn, taking a page out of Trace’s play book, figures that their team will have 15 “widgets” and thus need 15 buyers to come in and hand them money. Stephen thinks the quality of the art matters, because he’s bringing in a real art dealer to come in and sell the art to real buyers. The other team members think this is a waste of time and write Stephen off for this challenge.
Lil Jon’s team starts calling their donors. Dennis comes in with some valuable sports memorabilia to use in his artwork. He admits that he doesn’t have any rich friends, but he is a surprisingly adept and creative artist.
On the other team, Gary is also creating some interesting art pieces. However, he keeps interrupting the power-calling team members to deliver random bits of useless, artsy wisdom. “Art is the search,” he pulls Lisa aside to impart. “It’s never the final form.”
Piers shows up to Team Power to warn Lil Jon about Omarosa. “She’s a sleeping crocodile,” he says. Unless they are vigilant, she’ll bite off an arm or leg. Brande is on top of it. She’s the accountant now and will be keeping track of every penny. Piers cleverly gets Omarosa to commit on camera to the notion that the person bringing in the least amount of money should be fired. After that, Omarosa starts keeping track of Dennis Rodman’s donors and plotting her Board Room strategy.
Over on Plan B, Stephen is trying to talk up his artwork to random customers. While he’s doing that, a friend of Lisa buys up Stephen’s pieces. Stephen gets annoyed, since Lisa will now get credit for the money. There’s also a fun bit where the Blue Man Group come in with three giant jello molds, containing a total of $15,000 in sticky, tightly folded bills.
We hear both sides calling out large donations and it’s impossible to tell which team is doing better.
The Board Room begins. Trump asks Lisa for her star player and she names Penn, who brought in $85,000. Weakest link? Stephen brought in only $5,000. He says his “network” of donors was confused when Stephen’s art pieces were sold to other donors. Lisa commits to bringing back Stephen and Gary (who brought in no money, although his artwork sold for $25,000).
Trump turns to needle Trace on which team he prefers. After much hemming and hawing, Trace admits that he likes Plan B. Omarosa likes that Trace brought in a lot of money. Lil Jon brought in the most money on his team. Omarosa and Dennis brought in the least ($12,000 and $10,000, respectively), but Lil Jon praises Dennis for going the extra mile on his art pieces.
The accounting gives the win to Plan B. Surprise, surprise. Lisa gets a total of $405,000 for her charity, St. Jude Children’s Hospital. She calls it one of her proudest moments.
As Plan B watches, the Board Room circus begins. Omarosa opens with a backhanded compliment of Lil Jon, calling him “hands-off” as a project manager. She tries to make some point about Lil Jon waiting for a fundraising task to step up as project manager. That doesn’t make him a bad project manager, Omarosa. It just makes him smart.
Piers prepares the case against Omarosa by reminding her that the weakest fundraiser should be fired. Although Dennis brought in $2,000 less than she did, Piers repeats the argument that Dennis redeemed himself for that by creating art with real value. Dennis did not let down the team, Piers argues. They let him down by not bringing in better buyers. Omarosa’s art had no value. Omarosa tries to throw the blame for that onto Lil Jon, without much effect.
Trace and Brande intelligently keep quiet, even when Trump tries to prod them. Brande reluctantly says she’d rather have Dennis on the team than Omarosa. Trump doesn’t even ask Lil Jon to name his choices for the chopping block — since that backfired on him twice before. He tells Brande and Trace to go upstairs, and throws Lil Jon, Dennis, and Omarosa into the lobby while he talks things over with Piers and Eric.
Piers tells Trump that Omarosa has no famous friends and therefore no value as an apprentice. Eric either has no opinion, or his opinion has no weight, because we don’t get to hear it.
Meanwhile, Omarosa thinks that the final Board Room will be very drama-free. “We love each other!” she coos. Dennis and Lil Jon are probably rolling their eyes behind their sunglasses.
The receptionist calls them back into the Board Room, where Lil Jon says respects Dennis for coming back and working hard. Dennis says… something about Omarosa trading on her relationship with Trump.
Omarosa tries again to blame Lil Jon for not stepping up as project manager earlier. Lil Jon sits back and lets Piers do all the dirty work of attacking Omarosa. Dennis says… something. It appears to be anti-Omarosa, because she starts fighting back. But all I’m getting is that Omarosa wasn’t crying real tears when she won.
Trump stammers for a bit about hard this choice is for him. He likes Omarosa. She was a big part of the success of The Apprentice. But he thinks Dennis has “a better story.” Wow. That was pretty meta of him. So, he’s keeping Dennis — because Dennis’s redemption story is better than more Omarosa drama.
Omarosa takes the firing stoically. She did get some money for her charity, and a little more time on television, and it’s not like Trump would ever hire her as the apprentice anyway. If he did, she wouldn’t be able to keep coming back to make mischief. “I”ll miss you!” Piers calls out as she leaves the room. I’m sure he will. She’s the only person on the show more hated than he is.
“Hey, Honey!” she greets the elevator man.
Piers turns to Trump and credits him for Dennis Rodman’s redemption.
Next week: The celebrities will need to do something for Trump’s latest wife, Melania. Somebody pisses her off. Okay, then. Sounds like fun.
