[BlogEntry] Celebrity Apprentice 1/10/2008 : The Gene Simmons Edition

I wonder if I'll last for this show, especially as it appears to be going against Grey's Anatomy. When I start getting consistently new episodes over there, Trump is dead to me.

This week starts our with Pierce, apparently drunk, tearing into Omarosa. That's entertaining, but it also makes him look pretty foolish.

This week is make a tv commercial week, and Gene Simmons is the producer. Stephen Baldwin, citing 20 years acting experience (in Bio-Dome, though…), gets to be director. On the ladies' side it is Nely, one of the celenbrities I've never heard of.

This episode is all about how much of an arrogant ass Gene Simmons is. But we knew that from last week's trailer, since it's all supposed to lead up to him insulting Trump's daughter. What happens is that Ivanka comes to check up on the guys and Gene, who has been in "no time to lose" mode from the word go, tells Baldwin that "She'll wait." And then adds, in case anybody didn't know that he's obnoxious, "You're probably gonna go tell the girls team what we're up to, out of that whole sisterhood thing."

The women, on the other hand, are wholly uninteresting. They have a little meditation exercise, which Omarosa calls bullsh*t, and then they visit with the customer for a "Just tell us what you want and we'll do that" meeting – something that the guys skip altogether. The most interesting part of the women's part of the show is when Nadia forgets to order lunch, and you can just tell that she's going on the chopping block because "We would have won if there's been food!"

During the presentations both teams are lousy. The women oversell it, saying they brought a whole Internet campaign as well as radio, when all Trump wants to see is the tv spot. Gene Simmons for the men is equally offensive, telling Trump he doesn't want to talk, he just wants to show his product.

In the end, the guys win. The women got screwed a bit this week as Trump immediately goes to the "Why didn't you use your celebrity to sell it?" thing, but they offered that to the sponsor, who said that he wanted real people with read dog stories. As I guessed, Carol calls out Nadia for firing because she forgot the food. Sure enough it is Nadia who goes, not necessarily because of the food but because nobody sees her as a business leader.

Next week is apparently going to be a spotlight on Simmons again, according to the trailer. I'm beginning to think that he's not getting fired for a long, long time.