The seven remaining players on the NBC reality show Celebrity Apprentice got a reprieve last week and nobody was fired. Trump warned Tenacity and RockSolid that this week he might send home two. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son Eric Trump were charged with checking up on the progress of each team throughout the challenge.
This week’s task had each team creating three 30-second commercials for Clockwork Home Services’ three divisions: On Time Electrician, Mister Sparky, and Ben Franklin Plumbing. Two stuffed shirt executives indicated they would be judging the groups for originality, brand integrity and live performance. The winning team would win $40,000 for charity.
Summer Sanders was named project manager for Tenacity and Bret Michaels took the lead for RockSolid. Each team sat down with the ‘corporate types’, as dubbed by Sharon, and soon learned that they wanted no funny business in the plumbing ad. The exec’s felt that plumbers get a bad rap and made it perfectly clear that humor would not be welcome.
Sanders assigned a commercial to each of her teammates: Cyndi Lauper, Holly Robinson Peete and Curtis Stone. Summer is tentative at best and relied heavily on Holly, who led the team to victory last week. As usual, Cyndi was reigned in at every turn and Curtis was chastised for using Aussie vernacular when writing his commercial copy. Summer and Holly rewrote the piece because they though his phrasing needed work.
Curtis tried to persuade Summer that she was packing too many words into the 30-second spots, forcing the speakers to deliver the ads at breakneck speed. She blew it off and it came back to bite her later. The biggest angst for Sanders was whether or not to use Cyndi to sing the jingle on one of the commercials. Cyndi came down with a case of laryngitis and waffled on her own ability to pull it off. In the end, Sanders knew that Trump would come down on her with the hammer if she didn’t let Lauper do her thing. It turned out to be a hit with the executives.
Bret Michaels and team RockSolid demonstrated their creativity with upbeat tempo and jingles that flowed well. Sharon Osbourne and Maria Kanellis were shocked when Michaels insisted on throwing in a veiled reference to the long standing joke about a plumbers crack. Osbourne warned him that the executives would take offense but the always edgy rocker assured both women that he would fall on the sword if it backfired. In the end the ‘stuffed shirts’ didn’t hold it against the team.
During the live commercial reveal, the groups performed in a sound studio with the executives in a different room. Not being able to gauge the exec’s reactions was something that bothered Maria.
Back in the boardroom Trump canvassed the remaining seven about who should go home — this was before either team knew who had won the task. This year’s crop of celebrities have been far more tentative in trashing each other than in any previous season. Sharon and Maria both thought Curtis Stone was a weak player but his teammates were reluctant to jump on that bandwagon.
Donald announced that Clockwork Home Services found Tenacity’s 30-second spots to be bland, too filled with information, thus causing the ads to be too rapidly delivered. Their favorite, and the only one they would have considered using was the one that Cyndi created and performed.
The executives loved everything about RockSolid’s creativity and awarded Bret $40,000 for his charity, the American Diabetes Association. Trump dismissed Bret, Sharon and Maria in order to get down to the business of firing someone from the losing team.
Summer Sanders, as project manager, saved her right-hand-woman Holly Robinson Peete by naming her the strongest player on the team. After much back and forth, Sanders also acknowledged the Cyndi Lauper should not be in the line of fire. It was then down to Sanders and Curtis Stone. Neither one of them came up with any concrete reasons why Trump should fire one over the other and in the end Donald and Ivanka both faulted Summer for not being able to defend herself and she was sent packing.
During the closing credits, the show was dedicated to Bret Michaels, who remains hospitalized in serious condition at the famed Barrows Neurological Institute at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A news conference is planned for Tuesday, May 4th to discuss his condition.
We’re holding out hope that he will be well enough to participate in the Celebrity Apprentice Finale at the end of May.
More photos and video from last night below. Bret’s commercials begin at 4:00 on the slider.
Photos: WENN