Kate Ward over at EW ponders The Celebrity Apprentice: Why did she have to google four of the contestants? And is it possible to call some of them celebs if one has never heard of them? Is it fair to focus some of the show's plotlines on contestant's personal sob stories ? (of course it is, this is a reality show! Personal sob stories rule the land!), and if a Baldwin falls in the forest, and no one hears it, can he be called a celebrity? No! No! No!
Oh boy. He just couldn’t help himself. After a lackluster sixth season of The Apprentice, Donald Trump decided to pulverize the proverbial dead horse by launching yet a "star"-studded edition of television’s most tired reality show. And though last night’s premiere of The Celebrity Apprentice wasn’t nearly as bad as I'd anticipated, how did a show best known for its hilariously combative nature manage to utilize its cast of supersized personalities to such milquetoast effect?
On a more positive note, though, The Apprentice—and let’s face it, the entire Trump empire—is famous for its classlessness, and the premiere sure did manage to deliver on that front. Between Trump’s opening salvo denying our celebrities human qualities (they’re simply commodities now), to his inquiries into Tito Ortiz’s personal life, the trashiness quotient was high. And considering the show's primary competition in this strike-addled world is VH1’s Top Model marathon, I fear I might already be just a little hooked.
Of course, the casting of these so-called “successful" celebrities (uh—Stephen Baldwin?) is not the only change on this season of The Apprentice. This year, contestants are not vying for a job, but are rather playing for their respective charities. And in a world where one of the most popular television prizes continues to be a giant disco-ball trophy, it’s refreshing to see celebrities compete not just for career revival (hey, this is reality TV, after all), but also a good cause.
So who do we have here? Who was desperate brave enough to court verbal mockery and humiliation by one of the most undignified creatures television has ever seen?
There are two “celebrities” I had never heard of until this episode: buxom Playboy Playmate Tiffany Fallon and expressionless producer Nely Galán; four that I had to Google before remembering exactly what they did for a living: softball Olympian Jennie Finch, supermodel Carol Alt, and fighters Lennox Lewis and Tito Ortiz; two reality show alums: The Apprentice Season 1’s Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth and America’s Got Talent’s Piers Morgan; and six bonafide celebrities: Taxi actress Marilu Henner, country singer Trace Adkins, rocker Gene Simmons, The Sopranos star Vincent Pastore, gymnast Nadia Comaneci and Stephen "Hey, at least I'm doing better than Daniel" Baldwin. Can’t say I was too overwhelmed with the fluid definition of “celebrity,” but it beats a weekly dose of Flava Flav or Johnny Fairplay. And it is definitely worth pointing out that over the course of the hour, all the celebrities surprisingly came off as mildly to moderately intelligent.
Moving on, let’s start with the challenge, shall we? After dividing the cast into two teams—men vs. women—and instructing each group to come up with a name (the girls chose Empresario, the boys opted for Hydra), Trump told his celebrities that their first task would entail selling hot dogs on the streets of New York. Though Nely proved her spirit by offering her teammates a bizarre version of a pirate hat, Empresario decided to anoint the overly enthusiastic Omarosa as their project manager. Of course, Omarosa wouldn’t be Omarosa without that condescending attitude that Tiffany would later reference in the boardroom, and the two sparred on whether to use a sales tactic promoting their business skills or their celebrity (Tiffany, smartly, favored the latter). The Apprentice alum, however, was unwilling to back down, and Empresario developed a plan that relied mainly on cute shirts and hats. And when it came to execution, only the shrewd Marilu managed to understand that the key to victory was bringing in the high rollers through her celebrity status; her flurry of phone calls earned the team $10,000, and herself the position of early front runner in the competition.
On the boys’ end, Hydra named Stephen their team leader, and darned if the guy has a bit of Jack Donaghy in him, because he managed to head a team that came up with one heck of a sales plan. Within the first few minutes of brainstorming, Hydra tried to parlay their fame into money. And thank god the men had their Blackberrys, because Tito’s sad, junior-high posterboard certainly didn't do Hydra any favors. Good thing his trusty girlfriend Jenna Jameson showed up to audition for the next season of Rock of Love help him out with the publicity (but couldn’t she spare just a little more that $200 for a charity hot dog?).
In the boardroom, we learned the men easily trumped the women’s $17,038 with a whopping $52,286, and the total amount was awarded to Stephen’s breast cancer charity. As for the end result, somehow Omarosa managed to get off the hook for not only her poor leadership decisions, but also for managing to debase Tiffany by basically claiming she only had two things to offer in the competition (I’ll let you figure out exactly what those two things are). And though some may feel that Tiffany would've stayed longer had she argued her point just a bit better, I choose to think that Trump was too hypnotized by Omarosa’s Jetsons-inspired, Mother Ginger dress to let her go.
What do you think? Will The Celebrity Apprentice make it onto your TiVo? Do you hope that future episodes focus more on the cast’s business skills, and less on their celebrity status? Will Piers and Omarosa be the only ones who keep the show entertaining? And are you as excited as I am about the future appearances of Bob Saget and Alec Baldwin, as teased in the opening minutes of the premiere? [EW]
