That’s right, a guy who worked with Stephen “Flea” Baldwin and Vincent Pastore thinks KOTU is doggin’ it. Heck, when he sees Herschel Walker and Clint Black are really just talking to models, he says “It’s like a load of Stephen Baldwins”. I imagine that expression gets used a lot in the Morgan household. “Really, young lady? You were studying at the library until 2 AM? That is a load of Stephen Baldwin.” Joan and Natalie Gulbis return, and Piers asks what it’s like to compete against her daughter. Joan has no problems, as long as Melissa isn’t “thrown under the bus”. Ivanka says that if she were thrown under the bus, her father would be disappointed in her for allowing it to happen. Hell, he’d be driving the damn bus.
Celebrity Apprentice Smackdown: Season 2, Episode 8 (Apr 27)
At Athena, Brande Roderick is excited to meet Piers because he was her favorite last season. Brande and I have so much in common. Piers talks to them about fundraising a little bit, because he was the freaking master, and that motivates Melissa to actually try and call some people. Brande thinks this is “fascinating”, but I’m not sure that adjective can ever be applied to Melissa Rivers, or anything Melissa-adjacent.
OK, remember last week when Natalie tried to call one of Annie’s rivals for a donation? Well, she chose poorly. Phil Hellmuth, who I remember as the color commentator for Celebrity Poker Showdown, calls Annie to give her the scoop. So despite the failure of this plan, Annie still calls some unidentified schlub to ream him out for giving Phil’s number to Natalie. Apparently, Natalie told this guy that she needed a poker coach to play against Annie. So, this “getting money” plan never really got off the ground. Annie is furious, and Clint and Joan can hear her yelling through the wall. To her credit, she does calm down once she gets the facts straight. Still, this is a lady you don’t want to piss off. Even a failed attempt to put one over on her earns the Wrath. Natalie then interviews that she wishes she’d “been able to contribute to the team”. Little late in the season to change now.
Melissa is feeling under-appreciated, since nobody’s raving over the jewelry she picked. It’s going to turn out that she chose wisely, but I think Annie’s people would have bid on earrings made of pop-top lids.
Clint explains that they’re pooling all of their big bidders to go for the cheapest piece of jewelry. I’m not sure that there’s a wide enough variation in prices for that to really matter – I think it would be better to have bids on each piece to maybe stimulate some activity from the people who weren’t plants.
Almost time for the auction. Annie’s group of bidders includes Scott Ian from Anthrax, and wouldn’t you love to know how those two know each other? Annie’s the auctioneer and she’s doing a decent job. She’s mostly pretty conversational, and plays to her people. Her first piece goes for $30,000 and Trump is impressed at her mad skillz.
Annie’s people erupt into a bidding war for the second piece, and Jesse James compares her auctioneering to a “bear after salmon”. Scott Ian buys a necklace for $52,000. Brande comes out modeling a necklace, and Annie gets down on her knees in front of one of their big bidders, and she calls the way she’s holding the microphone “subliminal”. No, dear, wbcccce get that you’re miming oral sex. That’s liminal at best. (Between this and a line of hers later in the episode, I think we have some insight into how Annie gets people to donate so much on a regular basis.) We see a montage of Annie selling stuff and whipping people into a frenzy.
KOTU preps their auctions, and Clint Black flubs immediately. “A steal at half the price?” Hee. (Excerpt from Clint Black’s forthcoming vanity press novel, Flint Brown: Bluetooth Cowboy: “Flint looked her in the eye, undistracted by her heaving bosom. ‘Sometimes, fancy words aren’t going to get the job done. Those zombie rustlers are getting away, and I can either write a speech or kick some ass. Which one do you want?’”)
Their auction begins to a deafening silence. Clint is awkward and halting, and he doesn’t talk up the jewelry, so he repeats the opening bid over and over. Finally, he bails on the first item after receiving zero bids. Well, we’re off to a good start! Piers interview that it was an “insult to Mr. Trump and Ivanka”. Piers hates KOTU so much! Next up comes a pair of earrings. One of Annie’s bidders tosses in the minimum bid. Joan and Natalie wonder if they should help Clint out, but Joan says she doesn’t want to “steal his thunder”. I think that’s just defamatory to the concept of thunder, to claim that Clint has any to steal. Anyway, that pity bid is all he gets. He actually tries to get Trump to bid, and Trump actually fires hate rays out of his eyes that take 20 years off of Clint’s life.
Natalie decides to send out their biggest item just to try to get people interested. This throws Clint off, and he keeps talking about the model’s non-existent earrings. Joan actually comes out on stage to correct Clint and add some punch to the auction. Thanks to Joan’s saving throw, this goes pretty well. She dominates the rest of the auction, but we don’t hear specific figures.
Boardroom time! The retarded baby ducklings file in, and Annie looks so freaking pleased with herself you’d think she cured something. Trump likes the jewelry Athena chose, and Annie gives full credit to Melissa for that. Annie refuses to pick a weak player, but she says Jesse raised the least money. Now, this is going to a crazy place, so hold on. Piers reminds everybody that he won last season despite his many “inadequacies”. “Flaws,” Trump corrects him, which is pretty funny but almost definitely not intentional. Piers asks Jesse if it’s true that he’s married to “one of the biggest stars in the world”, and Jesse gives the one word answer “yes”, making it clear that this episode was shot in 1994.
Piers tries to goad Jesse by asking if his wife turned him down for a donation. Jesse didn’t ask her, because he doesn’t mix business and pleasure. Hilariously, Piers is trying to get a rise out of Jesse, but his tone and expression never change at all. We’re coming back to this in the next Boardroom, but for now Trump changes the subject and turns to Joan.
He didn’t like Clint as an auctioneer. Ivanka thought they chose the wrong jewelry, since they couldn’t be seen from the audience, and she thinks the lack of bids made her look bad. Piers and Ivanka thought it was disrespectful to pool the bids on one item and leave the others going for bargain bin prices. Piers slams Clint at great length. His insults include the phrase “I could feel the will to live seeping out of me”, and I miss Piers so much!
Clint says they didn’t have access to the funds that Athena did, and I think that’s a pantload. Herschel Walker doesn’t know rich people? Joan doesn’t know rich people? Joan says she doesn’t know Richard Branson or Simon Cowell. You do realize that here are other rich people besides the ones that Piers knows, right? Trump and Joan have a weird conversation, the gist being that the two of them know exactly the same people and Joan could have called them, only maybe she did and they might or might not have turned her down. I think they’re talking about organized crime, but I can’t be sure.
Melissa butts in to say that Trump’s friends are cheapskates and maybe they should talk about this privately. She also says that Piers’ tone “is bordering on critical”. Oh no! He’s almost critical! Trump asks Annie’s opinion, but Joan isn’t interested. She actually plugs her hears, because she’s six. Annie agrees that the way KOTU handled their bids was disrespectful to Ivanka. Joan freaks out all of a sudden. She reams out Annie for being a terrible person, and then Annie and Melissa fight over who called Brande a weak player last week in the Boardroom. Let’s see, considering that it was an extended poker analogy, that seems clear. Still, let me check the tape… Yep, it was Annie.
Annie remains cool throughout, probably because she realizes that the Rivers women are making themselves look like they might actually be crazy. Trump says that Annie actually seems very nice, and Joan responds with “So did Hitler”.
Wow. First off, that’s almost always an indefensible rhetorical argument. It’s the last vestige of somebody who’s falling apart, comparing their opponent to Hitler. It indicates that either you are a little bit crazy and over the top, or you don’t really have a good grasp of history. Joan Rivers, you have now compared Annie not being critical enough of Brande to making genocide an official national position. My second point is this: When did Hitler ever seem nice? I submit that the answer is never.
Piers is actually shocked at the comment, and asks Melissa if that was disrespectful, and Melissa mumbles something about hoping Piers one day has “children who love you as much as I’ve heard they do”. Wait. Piers asked if it was appropriate for Joan to compare Annie to Hitler, and Melissa’s response was “I hope your kids love you as much as it’s reported that they do”. There is absolutely no way to break down the thought process there.
Annie mentions that she had people get on planes and come out and spend money. Per Trump: “I guess they like her? Or something?” Joan brings up the crazy-lady phone call, but considering that the whole thing involved Annie yelling at somebody who is not in any way involved with the show, it doesn’t really have any bearing on anything. Also, as Piers points out, the story makes KOTU look bad, since their plan was foiled. Then they talk about whether Annie is “a screamer”. Piers is absolutely fascinated by the boneheadedness of Melissa at this point, as she jumps in to confirm that her own teammate made an angry phone call. This guy worked with Tito Ortiz for most of a season, and Melissa’s thought processes baffle him. That says a lot right there.
Piers says that Melissa is “sucking up” to her mother. Melissa: “I resent that statement.” Piers: “Then why are you doing it then?” Ha! Trump smirkingly asks Melissa if Annie is a bad person, and Melissa finally says “no”. Ivanka asks Jesse if Melissa is a liability, and you can tell that he’s not happy to be called on. He makes a joke about “reenacting a family reunion”.
Results time! KOTU made a profit of $92,000 which is pretty darn good considering they didn’t even sell one piece. Piers announces that Athena made a profit of “153,000 pounds…. Dollars”. Ha! This leads to some good natured joking between Jesse and Piers about the relative weakness of their respective countries’ currency. More to the point, man, they absolutely smoked KOTU. I wish that Jesse and Piers could have their own show.
Athena leaves the Boardroom, and the bickering begins. Annie’s pretty upset about the Hitler comment, and she and Melissa brawl over it. Up until now, this rivalry has pretty much been in Joan’s head, but now Annie’s mad.
Commercials: Hiro wants us to drink coffee out of reusable cups, thus saving the world. I don’t drink coffee, so I guess I don’t have to do my part!
In the Boardroom, Trump asks Clint who the weakest player was, and Clint refuses to commit. Trump thinks the jewelry selection was at fault, and asks why Joan didn’t pick it. “She’s probably the best jewelry picker in the world”. Well, she’s trying to keep her amateur status so she can pick jewelry in the Olympics. Joan says she was counting on Natalie to pick things that were stylish and “young”, and wasn’t thrilled with her actual picks. When pressed, Joan cries and says she can’t think of anyone to fire.
Joan says she wishes Herschel would marry Melissa, which is pretty funny. Even funnier is Herschel’s “Hell, no!” facial expression. Trump is happy with what Joan and Herschel did, and even though Clint sucked, the loss wasn’t his fault. Natalie admits that she couldn’t raise any funds and she picked the wrong jewelry. Natalie Gulbis, you’re fired and I assume I will forget that you were ever on this show in short order.
In the suite, Annie and Melissa are still arguing, and they completely miss the actual firing. And in the reception area, Joan seems to be poorly miked because her jewelry is making an awful clanking noise. Unless those are the robot parts that keep her alive. Joan Rivers needs oil!
When KOTU comes back to the suite, Melissa tells Joan not to throw fuel on the flames. But Annie, perhaps justifiably, brings up the Hitler comment. Mercifully, we go to commercial.
There’s a nice segment where Annie gives almost a quarter of a million dollars to the man from Refugees International, and I really thought his bowtie was going to spin when he opened up that check.
The Retarded Baby Ducklings assemble in the golden nightmare that is the Trumpartment. Now, I’ve been watching this season with some friends who haven’t been regular viewers. So while I’m sort of used to the way it looks, they responded with just the sort of fresh abject horror that the Trumpartment deserves. Everything is made of gold, even things you’d think would have their functionality impaired. How the heck does Barron have a chance growing up here? The amount of money that went into making this place look tacky is just mind-boggling. Donald Trump is the real-life Scrooge McDuck, and I would not be surprised to find out that he goes swimming in a giant money bin.
I’m just now realizing that Donald Trump is actually the guy that Bruce Wayne pretends to be. You know, the showy, rich d-bag who grabs headlines and nobody would ever suspect of being Batman. Not that I’m suggesting Trump fights crime by night, you understand.
And here, in this New Money Nightmare, Trump explains to the ducklings that the economy isn’t doing so well, and people are turning to frozen food. Nice mixed message, buddy. He introduces an executive from Schwan’s, who wants them to create a new frozen meal and marketing campaign. They’ll be monitored by Ivanka and CNBC’s Joe Kernan (“Probably the most important financial reporter anywhere”.)
Athena picks Jesse as their Project Manager, and he thinks his main job is “keeping the infighting to a minimum”. Well, he’s probably right on that one. Herschel volunteers for KOTU, because Clint and Joan don’t feel like they can manage one another.
KOTU meets with the Schwan’s people. They babble something about how important Customer Service Managers are. In the Athena meeting, they stress the importance of healthy eating. Once they start brainstorming, Annie researches their bestsellers, and determines that turkey meatballs would be a good choice. She says it so often that the words “turkey meatballs” lose all meaning. Jesse finally agrees that they’ll make three dishes and pick the best. They’ll be trying meatloaf with sweet potatoes, turkey meatballs with gluten-free pasta, and chili. He has Annie and Brande cook, mostly to keep Annie and Melissa away from one another.
Commercials. Wait a minute. Papa John’s is doing a tie-in pizza for the Wolverine movie? Well, that’s probably going to be pretty badass, right? Um, actually, it’s a cheese pizza. Yeah, nothing says “Wolverine” quite like pizza without toppings…
Over at KOTU, Herschel decides that he’ll be the chef. Joan has no interest in this, because she does not like to cook. Herschel’s research leads him to a skinless chicken breast. Clint says this might be a little boring, but he also doesn’t want to be the guy who argues. He does suggest a ginger soy chicken, which isn’t exactly blowing me away.
In the Athena war room, Jesse is working on the marketing in silence, and doesn’t respond to Melissa’s torrent of words. His one sentence trails off incomplete, which is probably the best way to deal with Melissa. Joe Kernen checks in with them, and when told of their menu options, is not blown away by gluten-free pasta. You know, I’m not up on the specifics of gluten, but I’m pretty sure it’s the thing that makes food taste acceptable.
In the kitchen, Annie cooks while talking about how awesome she is. Brande’s starting to get bored with her and her constant self-aggrandizement. For her part, Annie claims, and I am not making this up: “I’m like the total woman. I cook, I raise my kids, I work hard, and I can give a good blowjob.” And now we know exactly why she’s so popular on the poker circuit! Brande’s reaction is priceless. When you’ve offended the sensibilities of the star of Stripper Wives and Life of a Gigolo, you might need to work on classing it up.
At KOTU, Herschel wants to include a yogurt dessert, but he’s not really getting that it’ll be difficult to include as part of a frozen meal. Herschel finally tells Clint that he’s in the food business, and “My food company makes more money than your record company”. Wait, Herschel owns a food company? I am suspicious of the veracity of that statement. Wouldn’t it be weird if he were like the founder of Quizno’s or something?
In the kitchen, Herschel is not pleased with Clint’s sauce – too salty. We also learn that Herschel doesn’t eat meat. Holy crap. That guy is a vegetarian? Aren’t they usually a little more sickly than that? Dude must eat like a brontosaurus. Joan tries the chicken and deems it “horrible”. They try to cut the crappiness of the sauce with a bit of orange juice, giving them Asian Orange Chicken.
Jesse and Melissa head to the kitchen. First up, the meatloaf, which Annie describes as “sublime”. Jesse says it’s good, but he doesn’t like it. Next is the chili, which he loves. In an interview, he announces “Chili, chili, chili, chili, chili, chili” and then lifts his leg and farts audibly. Ha! If he weren’t already my favorite, that would have done it right there. You have no idea how often I rewound this scene.
Finally, he tries the turkey meatballs, which he likes. “But there can only be one that I like the best… and it’s the chili.” The women all prefer the meatballs, so he goes with majority rule. That’s some pretty good managing, because that bunch is volatile.
KOTU brainstorms an ad campaign. To nobody’s surprise, Clint suggests a Clint Black-themed ad campaign. At Athena, they try to name their product. Melissa’s lying on the floor, punchily suggesting the stupidest names you’ll ever hear. Jesse tells everybody that he’s got the presentation and marketing handles, and dismisses everybody. I don’t think this is Clint Black-style stonewalling. I think time’s limited and he’s seen Annie and Melissa go at it over marketing before.
Presentation time! KOTU goes first, presenting their chicken to the Schwan’s executives. Joan explains that it’s “East meets West”, when really, it just sort of seems East to me. I mean, it’s not like chicken would be out of place in Chinese restaurant. Heck, they probably have Orange Chicken on the menu. And then Clint pitches his Clint Black-themed ad, starring Clint Black. (With thanks to Schwan’s, the preferred frozen meal of Clint Black.)
The executives really like the food, but they can’t figure out how the dessert is going to work. Also, it would increase costs considerably.
Athena presents next, and Jesse talks up the turkey meatballs. He does a good job of selling the food itself, but leaves out the marketing campaign almost entirely. The executives like the food but are alarmed at the lack of marketing. Honestly though, have you ever seen an ad for Schwan’s?
Boardroom time! Right off, Trump mentions that Joan has talked for years about her “non-cooking ability”. Wow, that’s the worst possible way to express a really simple concept. Unless she actually has the ability to uncook things. Herschel damns Clint with faint praise (“Clint is Clint.”) Herschel and Clint then argue about whether or not Clint is a good listener.
Annie claims that Jesse is “impervious to suggestion”, which makes it sound like he can’t be brainwashed. And now it’s time for Trump to expound on the enigma that is Jesse James. “He marries one of the most sought after women in the world… that’s pretty cool. And yet, he’s such a low-key guy… How the hell did he marry Sandra Bullock? What does she see in him?” And just in case things weren’t uncomfortable enough: “He’s got to be great in bed. You’re great in bed, right?” Everybody laughs, because it’s Trump and he think this passes for normal human interaction. I don’t know, this is a pretty insane moment right here.
Alright, who did Schwan’s prefer? It turns out, they “liked both a lot”, but they chose Athena. Athena wins again! They leave the Boardroom while Annie talks about how smart she is, and now it’s time for our fifth firing in three episodes. Clearly, this season has a bus to catch.
Trump asks Clint who he would fire, and Clint refuses to commit. Although he does say it was a mistake to do chicken. There is an argument as to whether Clint expressed that, and I seem to recall him actually recommending the specific type of chicken. Joan manages to turn this into another rant against Annie, which perplexes everybody in the room. When asked whether he likes Clint, Herschel responds “I can put up with Clint”. Hee.
As it starts to turn against Clint, Jesse announces to the suite that he was the first one who suggested Clint be fired. Ha! He started a trend right there. In the Boardroom, nobody will commit to picking a weak link. In the end, it comes down to the unusable dessert. Of course, Trump still takes a minute to make it weird. “I love you, Herschel. I am not a gay man, and I love you.” I stand by my contention that Trump only discovered the existence of homosexuality back in Season Five of the original series. Anyway, after proclaiming his totally acceptable Dude Love, he fires Herschel. Awwww. He may not have led his team to any victories, but he tried hard and seemed to be lacking in massive personality disorders.
Next week: Jim Cramer guest-stars, Joan Rivers throws out more personal insults, and there is a mysterious piece of paper! Can’t wait!
