Celebrity Apprentice ... Winning at Losing

She lost her voice and her chance to
be the next Celebrity Apprentice.

Although I’m glad he’s gone, the absence of Big Wednesday was palpable on last night’s Celebrity Apprentice. They tried to get Meat Loaf to bring the crazy but that didn’t work. Nene Leakes did bring some crazy but not any Busey crazy. Oh well! Life goes on.

And so we have another week and another challenge. This week’s challenge involved the Trump hotels. Each team had to produce a four-page ad for the Trump Hotel Collection and deliver a presentation on their advertisement.

This was definitely outside of the men’s wheelhouse. So between Meat, Lil Jon and Jon Rich, JR stepped up to the project manager plate. This was, however, a no-brainer for the women. Star Jones who would tell us many times over the next two hours, loved luxury and wanted to take on the task.

Backbone had a hard time with the concept. Even after a visit from the Trump executives, they had a hard time. In fact, neither team seemed to hear what the executives were saying. They said, very clearly, they wanted something different and not a run-of-the-mill hotel ad.

Backbone came up with a concept called Live the Life which involved photos of the outside of the hotels, a server with a napkin draped over his arm and a shirt and tie photo that was suppose to remind people of Donald Trump (say it with me ‘run-of-the-mill’). Oh yeah, all four pages had paragraphs of text.

Over at A.S.A.P. Star, of course, had a fabulous idea. She’d have four different photo that emphasized luxury: Hope in a tub surrounded by rose petals, two other scenes and a big ‘ladies who lunch’ theme with all of them around the table. As LaToya said, it was not very original; but it was a Star Jones production.

In her bossy bougie element, Star set out assigning tasks and telling people what to do. She wanted Nene and LaToya to go shopping together … or maybe not. The bad feelings between those two finally boiled over and Star made the wise decision to stop everything and have them sort out their differences. After the ladies got on the same page, they thought they’d be unstoppable … but of course, all that love didn’t last long.

Forgetting about NYC traffic, the girls didn’t get back on time which put several of the photo shoots behind schedule. As Nene tried to set up her scene with Hope, Star stood behind her barking orders. Of course, Nene barked back. It was ugly … but made for good reality TV.

Putting the ads together was only half of the task. The other half was the presentation. The guys talked about their experiences at the hotels. Star took over for the ladies and had the girls back her up with random words that promoted the hotel. It was okay the first time but after that the random chorus of words “Luxurious.” “Sophisticated.” “Classic.” It got real old, real fast.

Ironically, it was the judges who provided a lot of the laughs. One of the executives compared Star’s ad to an ad for a sleazy club that someone would stick under your windshield. They also pointed out that Hope, the Playmate of the Year, was wearing a towel in the tub and drinking from an unopened bottle of champagne. When Donald Trump asked them about the ads, one of them said "It was more a car wreck than an ad campaign.” In fact, they didn’t even want to pick a winner, saying "This is really a case of the lesser of two evils. There really isn’t a winner. The loser is…"

And the loser was, … the women. Star was stunned.

Next Nene accused Hope and Marlee of ‘crawling up Star’s ass.’ At this point, the man who wants to be the nation’s president said, “By the way, much nicer now that she lost all the weight." Clearly, crawling up Star Jones’s ass must be a much more pleasant experience now that she’s slimmer! Yes, this is definitely the man I want talking to various heads of state.

Since Marlee and Hope had very little to do with the task, it was easy to figure out that both Nene and La Toya were coming back into the board room. Although Star was the project manager, she wasn’t going down without a fight. It all came down to who was the ‘weakest player’ and although she rallied and really did try to defend herself, La Toya ended up taking that long limo ride to where ever. In a telling move, on her way to the elevator, she hugged Nene goodbye and gave Star a very cold shoulder. Brrrr!