Except for Natalie Gulbis, who is texting, or perhaps updating her Facebook status via Blackberry. “Natalie Gulbis is not contributing anything.” Their argument ends up making very little sense, and Dennis is only spontaneously subtitled. I think they’re actually arguing about two different things. Clint is making a point about contributing to a team, and Dennis is talking to people the rest of us can’t see.
Celebrity Apprentice Smackdown: Season 2, Episode 4 (Mar 30)
Opening credits. What’s up with Clint and that Bluetooth? How many important calls does he get that he needs it all the time? Between the cowboy hat and the earpiece, he looks like he should be appearing in a political cartoon about the death of small towns.
Brande presents her check for California Police Youth Charities. The representative clearly has a giant crush on her, and melts a little when she touches him. There is some talk about how she makes hotdogs for needy kids. That’s right, poor kids in California get to watch a Playmate manipulate tubes of meat. Oh, to be young, disadvantaged, and Californian.
The Retarded Baby Ducklings gather at Capitale, which is said to be an “events space”. Every space is an events space if things happen in it. Donald Trump meets them to talk up Capitale and announce that Joan Rivers will once again miss the first part of the task. Joan Rivers is much more in demand than I would have thought, since this isn’t 1958. He introduces the task and plugs ACN, a company that makes videophones. The ACN executives give them the task of preparing a presentation to premiere their new phone at a function for five hundred ACN representatives. They want excitement! (It seems like you should have to get your sales reps excited, though. “If you sell this, you’ll get paid.” That’s all it takes.) The Trumplings will be Donald’s wingmen this time out.
By the way, my computer keeps “correcting” ACN to read CAN, and I’m tired of re-typing. Just so you know.
Trump asks the teams to pick their Project Managers. Both teams huddle up, but Dennis turns away from the team and talks to invisible people. Even Trump thinks this is odd. KOTU picks Brian McKnight, and Athena chooses Claudia Jordan. Dennis selects Blarney McGumshoes, his imaginary friend. Their first task is to choose which team will present first. The teams get together, with Dennis sitting on the other side of the room. Natalie tells us that Dennis is sitting on the other side of the room, for all the blind Celebrity Apprentice viewers.
Both teams want to go second, and they select Annie Duke and Clint to represent them at the negotiation. (Dennis calls Clint “a dictator from Hell”, which is a little extreme. And also redundant, since that’s usually where dictators end up.) Their “negotiation” consists of flipping a coin. Before they flip, Dennis starts heckling Clint for reasons that I can’t understand. KOTU wins the toss, which somehow infuriates Dennis. He strides over to Clint and calls him out for thinking he’s “the (censored)”. Depending on what they censored, this could go in any number of ways. Then Dennis rants about how it’s a team game and leaves the room in anger. I could live to be 1000 and not understand what caused this freakout. Unless the editors are messing with us, and they didn’t show us that Clint had been flicking lit matches at Dennis for the last hour. That could explain it.
In the KOTU van, everybody who’s not Dennis is talking about Dennis. Jesse James points out that Dennis picked a fight with the smallest person on the team, and you can tell that Clint does not like it when people point out that he’s the size of an action figure. Brian states that they’re not going to call Dennis because it’s easier to work on the project without him. He kind of gets at Dennis’ problem, which is that people used to overlook his personality because he was so good at basketball. “Unfortunately, we’re not playing basketball here.”
Over at Athena, Claudia and Brande talk to each other on the videophone from across the room. Claudia states that they’re doing a presentation for 450 sales reps, when it was 500 just a few minutes ago. Sales reps apparently have a very high mortality rate – they’re dropping like flies! By presentation time, it’s just going to be one guy in an iron lung. The executives come to meet with Athena, and manage to speak in nothing but slogans and buzzwords. Cut to KOTU, where the same execs are saying the same things. Were those shot at different times, or have they perfected human cloning? They probably needed to, with the sales reps dropping like flies.
Jesse addresses the group and suggests a performance from Brian would work really well. Clint visibly bristles, like “Hello! Another recording star in the room!” Actually, most of the ideas come from Jesse this week, and I’m finally warming to him. He still comes off as kind of a scary redneck with no eyelids and neck paralysis, but he’s kind of sharp and occasionally funny. Anyway, Brian’s eating this up. Do you know who Brian McKnight’s favorite singer is? Brian McKnight, that’s who. Clint asks “Are we going to have a brainstorming session?” and Jesse answers, “We’re doing that right now”. Well, he could have missed it, what with the way that everybody was suggesting ideas and all. Clint mostly seems irritated that he doesn’t actually have any ideas, but he chalks that up as a failure to delegate. So he looks through some papers, which are probably just folios from his new vanity press novel Bluetooth Cowboy. See, in the book, Flint Brown saves a town from flooding using the combined power of music and cutting-edge communications technology. There’s also a big sex scene where the female lead breathlessly proclaims “Men of average or greater height consistently fail to bring me to orgasm!” Look for it on Clint Black’s website this fall.
Jesse decides they should shoot some video at West Point, and immediately calls to make plans to visit. Clint tries to dump on the idea, saying that West Point is 50 miles away, and they don’t have that kind of time. Jesse shuts him down with “We got time”, and that’s that. (“Flint Brown’s prudent suggestions were foolishly ignored by the oafish townspeople. And then vampires ate them.”) Jesse’s response is so self-assured that Brian just busts out laughing. Clint is not very popular with his teammates.
At Athena, Melissa Rivers is busy talking down to everybody and subtly undermining Claudia’s leadership. They’re going to shoot video pieces, but have actors onstage interacting with the pre-shot pieces. That’s a lot to ask of timing, really. Unless you’re Stephen Colbert, you will probably screw up when faking a conversation with a video clip. They’ve decided that Joan will handle the actual performance, which is a good move. It’s not like Natalie and Khloe Kardashian are oozing with stage presence. (Actual thing my mother said: “Which Kardashian is on Apprentice? The one who looks like a caveman?” That’s the one, Mom.) Problem is that Joan is still offsite and has to fly in.
T-Boz is confused by the setup of the presentation, which might be the first time she’s spoken on camera. Way to go, T-Boz! I’m sure you’re making your charity very proud. Reality Show Contestants Who Can’t Find the Camera (RSCWCFC) are eagerly awaiting their winnings. Anyway, another problem rears its head – Joan won’t be back in time for the presentation. Claudia uses a sports simile which I’m going to assume is accurate. Something about Tom Brady at the Super Bowl.
Jesse and Herschel Walker travel to West Point. They talk about Dennis being a liability, and the fact that he apparently reeks of booze. Yes, they’re foreshadowing next week’s episode. It’s like they’re doing a real TV show!
Athena tries to come up with a Plan B. Claudia is stressing out, until Natalie mentions that she has a private plane. How is this possible? Do they just give those things out to any lantern-jawed blonde who doesn’t actually ever win anything in the sport that apparently made her famous? If Natalie Gulbis has a private plane, our society is seriously out of whack. I mean, if Natalie rates a jet of her own, then Tina Fey should definitely have access to a Death Star. Even Richard and Emily Gilmore had to timeshare a jet! (Wow…only you could work a Gilmore Girls reference into this trainwreck!–Myndi)
Don Jr. comes to Athena to check in. They all just bust on the men, and then Brande and T-Boz re-enact Dennis and Clint’s fight. Only they’re both playing Dennis at first. Then T-Boz crouches to play Clint. Hee. Claudia also refers to him as “Little Clint Black”. (“The buzzsaw blade missed Flint Brown by a fraction of an inch. ‘If I’d been any taller,’ he thought, ‘that could have been… deadly’.”) So, while Don Jr.’s there, they spend their time talking about how much KOTU sucks.
At KOTU, Brian is collaborating with his co-writer over the phone. He makes some ridiculously specific suggestions for a music intro that sounds like a burst of static. Clint asks him if he’d “like to bounce any ideas off of anybody here”. Keep in mind these two are the only people in the room. Brian just stares at him and smirks. These two will not be collaborating on an album anytime soon. Brian instead gives Clint the task of lining up the people and equipment they need, and then proceeds to talk over Clint when he tries to make those calls. Clint says that “any bonehead can make phone calls”, and I can think of maybe 5 people on this show who I wouldn’t trust to call in a pizza order. Their plans call for a smoke machine, which any good presentation should have.
Hilariously, Brian actually makes Clint call in a pizza order, and when he does so correctly, he is rewarded with a “There you go, buddy”. Clearly, the editors have also cut all the scenes where Clint shows up each morning with a misbuttoned shirt, unmatched shoes, and pants on backwards while announcing “I dress-ed myself!” Because that would explain the way Brian’s treating him here.
Melissa is holding court at Athena, explaining the concept of “suspension of disbelief”. Lady, we watch Celebrity Apprentice. We get the concept. Like, we’re going along with pretending that achievement or lack thereof has any bearing on who gets fired at the end. In an interview, Melissa is frustrated by their lack of structure. Claudia tries to shut down her filibuster, and says she’d like to get started on actually implementing their ideas rather than coming up with new ones at this stage. Melissa and Claudia are going at it, but very passive-aggressively. This means that Melissa has to talk about her feelings with Claudia. In a hilarious interview, Claudia makes fun of Melissa’s Botox and unreadable expressions. Ha!
Without warning, Dennis Rodman returns to KOTU, proclaiming “I don’t quit for nothing”. Except for how he left the team last week and didn’t bother showing up for the first day this time. His incoherent mumbling is something to the effect that he’s always a victim. Ivanka stops by, and Brian tells her that he’s not going to be using Dennis. She says she’ll ask Dennis what his thoughts are. Hey, Ivanka? Don’t waste your time. His thoughts are as follows: “Me me me. Me. Vodka and cranberry. Me. Me me. Boobies. Me.” Dennis says he offered his help and they turned him down. Well, he offered his help about five minutes ago on the second day of the task, so that’s not really great.
Clint comes back with the cost for their presentation, nearly $5,000. They don’t mention whether there’s a budget or if they pay this out of pocket, but Brian’s not happy with the total. The monitors make up most of the cost. Dennis offers to provide the monitors for free and Brian shoots him down. I get his reasoning, but he’s really just fueling Dennis’ persecution complex by this point.
Athena is starting to shoot their video vignettes. The baby they’re using won’t stop crying, and it’s kind of falling apart. The baby’s mother is very nearly shaking it, which can’t possibly end well. It’s unclear whether she’s actually the baby’s mother of if she just plays the role in half-assed telecommunication presentations. Annie Duke is angry about it, because babies are for chicks.
Jesse and Herschel arrive at West Point. Jesse brags that “None of them chicks could get on this military base like I did”. Yeah, you know who soldiers hate seeing? Playmates, that’s who. Jesse picks the best-looking cadet and proclaims him to be their actor. (For the record, Jesse himself calls him “the best-looking dude there”. I’m telling you, Jesse’s actually pretty funny.)
They take Lieutenant DreamyPants to a room that from some angles appears to be a kitchenette, and from other angles appears to be the Box from Homicide. The first shots we see are pretty terrible. He talks too fast and without emotion. Since Jesse is intimately familiar with one of those two problems, he lightens everybody up with hypothetical Baby Daddy drama.
At the KOTU room, Brian keeps giving Clint orders while he stands at the other end of the room, thinking leadership thoughts. Dennis is standing around in an area that is actually demarcated by a blue line on the floor. That’s the Rodman Zone, people. Clint decides now is the time to start poking the bear. He asks Dennis where they went wrong, and Rodman replies that “Somebody had a bad day”. Clint wonders if Dennis will still take him to the gay bars. This keeps coming up with Dennis – is this some kind of commonly know fact that Dennis Rodman hangs out at gay bars? I feel like there’s a running gag that I’m missing.
Brande, Claudia, and T-Boz are in the Athena van, headed for the editing suite. Claudia premieres her Melissa Rivers impression for the other passengers, and it’s pretty funny. Mean, but funny. Of course, Claudia thinks it’s about ten times funnier than it actually is. And she can only say the word “Guys”. She might want to expand the reach of that impression if she’s going to keep it up, you know? Also, now that this episode has aired, the Rivers family has a hit out on her. At least it makes Brande react with a snorting laugh. Hee.
In the room, Melissa is running the rehearsals. Pay attention to this – she is, right now, handling the production aspect of the task. Khloe lays down on the floor, because she’s all class. Melissa then complains about how she’s going to be attacked. Well, if she spends all her time griping about future battles, I can see how that might happen.
KOTU rehearses in the actual presentation space, which means Brian is just singing to the group and ignoring questions. Clint is pleased about his lack of responsibility, only he says it in a way that indicates that his team can’t recognize the genius among them. (“Flint Brown finally recognized the quadruple amputee as his former colleague. ‘I should have asked for you input and acknowledged your superior experience. Maybe then, the crocodile wouldn’t have got me. By the way, my voice box is mangled and I will never sing again’.”)
Natalie’s private jet arrives, carrying Joan Rivers. She is 100 years old, and she’s flying in straight from Texas at 4:40 AM. Joan Rivers is so much tough than you are. Claudia calls her an “ace in the hole”. Rehearsals do not go well, as they have issues with video timing and feedback. There’s an actor who totally biffs his part, with Melissa yelling “Cue actor. Actor! Actor!” And he’s just staring at her like he’s never actually heard the word pronounced before. “Wow. For years, I’ve been saying it with a soft ‘C’. Are we sure that’s not right?” Annie pushes for a simpler show, and it’s probably a little too late to put that one out there. Khloe interviews about all the amazing ideas that they have, which in her case probably involve slutty unicorns. She gives up at this point, sitting down and proclaiming “I could really not care less”. Claudia’s irritated that she has to micro-manage grown women. Meanwhile, Melissa is perfectly happy micro-managing, to the excitement of everybody. The snippet we see involves everybody dancing on stage with streamers and the forced whimsy is cranked up to 11.
At this point, my DVR decided that this was a one-hour episode, and stopped recording. I have to switch over to Hulu now. On my laptop screen, Clint Black might be too small to be seen (I believe we can call him Lilliputian, and no one will argue.–Myndi).
Trump himself is there for the Athena presentation. It’s edited to look like he’s getting a standing ovation, but since nobody’s looking at him, he clearly just came in while people were already standing and clapping. And then, after making it look like this was part of the show, there’s a cut to Trump recapping the episode so far. Shenanigans!
Trump takes the stage to explain to the ever-dwindling ACN reps that they’re going to vote for their favorite presentation. He takes several sentences to explain the concept of voting, and also that he’s going to “fire the ass off somebody”. The sales reps do their best not to ask in hushed whispers “Is his show still even on?”
T-Boz gets to announce Joan, and after four episodes, we finally know what her voice sounds like. Joan gets big applause, and she does her best at being enthused about videophones, even though she didn’t know they were a real thing until she saw her cue cards. Their first video vignette has a guy on stage talking to his wife and loud baby over the videophone. The onstage props gives the whole thing a community theater look, and the video of woman and baby is really sloppy. This elicits no reaction from the crowd whatsoever.
Joan’s killing, at least. I mean, it’s real old-school, with punchlines you can see coming a mile away, but there’s something about watching an old pro work the room that’s kind of cool. Jesse James proclaims her “rad”.
The second vignette is a video segment with Brande’s boyfriend calling her to come meet him. She then enters the actual back of the room where her actor boyfriend is onstage with flowers, and he proposes to her. But, if he was on the stage, how was he using a videophone? Answer me that! Why did I have the bowl, Bart? Why did I have the bowl? People applaud, and I’m really not sure why. Did they think that was for real? If so, they’re kind of simple.
Joan closes out the presentation by telling us that “An ancient Greek philosopher once said ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’…” If by ‘ancient Greek philosopher’ you mean ‘American advertising journal in the 1920’s’, then I guess that’s technically correct. Joan leaves the stage to considerable applause. Annie wonders “what the boys could possibly pull out of their ass to top Joan Rivers”, and I think she might want to rephrase that. Claudia has already decided that they’ll win and that Melissa will take the credit. Well, she’s half right…
Time for the KOTU presentation! The presentation opens with lasers and dancers. I would seriously always vote for the presentation that had lasers. Clint apparently takes the stage, though all I see is a tiny dot that sounds like Clint Black, to introduce their presentation. This leads right in to their West Point video, which turned out pretty well. Lieutenant Hottie is much more expressive than in the footage we saw, and Jesse is happy. Brian McKnight comes up to the stage and people freak out, probably because they think he’s Hootie. (Poor Darius Rucker–Myndi)
He exhorts the crowd to clap to the beat, because if there’s on thing you want a room full of white people to do, it’s that. Offstage, Claudia doesn’t get how it’s about the phone. It doesn’t have to be about the phone! These are people whose livelihoods depend on selling the phone. They’re already on board with it. The presentation is just to whip up excitement, and if smooth R&B is what does it, then more power to them. By the way, while the song is not very specific, the earlier footage suggest that Brian wrote a song specifically for this presentation, which is either sad or awesome. For his part, Dennis mumbles incoherently. (That really should be a drinking game.) The crowd goes wild, but Melissa thinks that her presentation was “more real”. Especially the part where Brande’s fake boyfriend fake proposed to her and her fake boobs. The sales reps are actually chanting “ACN!” by the time it’s done. Hee.
The Retarded Baby Ducklings enter the Boardroom to hear their fate. When asked, Claudia feels like they won. Brian also thinks that his team won. How will they ever resolve this schism? Brian says that most of them worked as a team, and Trump acts like he doesn’t know what that means. Clearly his memory resets after every firing. Donald Trump is the guy from Memento. Why do you think we never see him with his shirt off?
KOTU tries to explain Dennis’ blow-up, but nobody understood it in the first place. Micro-Clint assures Trump that he and Dennis will “hit the gay bars again”. Again? How did that footage not make it into an episode? Wow. Also, I think a petite man who dresses like a cowboy in a gay bar is going to get passed around like a bong at a snowboarder convention.
Trump asks Brian why he didn’t want to use Dennis (For what, exactly? To stand onstage and do a shot-blocking demonstration?–Myndi). Brian explains that they couldn’t spare a babysitter to keep him in line. Ivanka really wants to get to the bottom of the fight, and Brian can’t explain it. Clint says he “almost got on a chair and decked him”, which is pretty funny. Trump asks Clint who he would blame if his team lost, and he doesn’t have a good answer. Dennis, however, says that everybody’s going to blame him but it’s not his fault because he didn’t do anything. Trump busts him on the persecution complex again, and when you actually reach a point when Donald Trump can spot your issues, brother, you need some help.
Clint finally says that Brian took control, so if they lose, he thinks Brian will take responsibility. How statesmanlike. Brian flat out says that he should be fired if they lost. Then Trump suggests that Herschel is the only one who can take Dennis in a fight, because this show has hopped the rails completely and that’s actually a possibility for the next task. Jesse volunteers to fight Dennis right then and there. Ha! “I know his weak spot,” says Jesse. You mean his brain?
Claudia calls Joan the star of their team. Trump says that he heard Melissa was great, and Claudia will only dismissively volunteer that she had “strong opinions”. Melissa doesn’t thinks that she was fully utilized, even though we saw that Melissa actually did take control of the actual production. I think she’s just mad that her creative ideas didn’t make it to the final version. Claudia says that she tried to keep things harmonious, which leads to Melissa and Claudia talks about their feeling. Finally, Melissa says “Jump in, Mother”. That’s right, Melissa taps out of the fight so her mother can defend her. Weak! And then she swears, which makes Ivanka blanche. Anyway, Joan steps in and says Claudia doesn’t take control. As Claudia points out, Joan wasn’t there for half of the task, and the part she was there for was when Melissa had been given production control. Melissa comes in and says she wrote the whole show. Well, if you think that, how can you not have been fully utilized, crazy lady? Dennis and Trump share a good laugh over how crazy women can get. Brande says she thinks they won, and Trump says her husband is going to be “damn pissed off” at her for kissing an actor. Brande is happy that she hired a “cute boy” to kiss her. There are a lot of references to her husband and about how this actor should be very nervous. Not only is he the vice-president of her charity (then why didn’t she give him the check?), but he was a Denver Broncos linebacker for 11 years. They don’t actually tell us any of this, and I had to research it myself. And by “research” I mean “Google Brande Roderick”. Which, by the way, is not something you should do at work.
Finally, it’s time to pick the winner. 85% of the voters picked KOTU. Wait, KOTU won? Did anybody know if that was even possible? I thought that was actually against the rules! It’s like Truman defeating Dewey after the headlines were all printed, only in this case Dewey was a killer robot and Truman was a basket of kittens.
In the suite, Brian brags about his ability to seduce a roomful of women. You can just tell Brian carries around naked pictures of himself. In the Boardroom, Trump starts ripping on the women for losing. Annie thinks that the vignettes were a stupid idea, and Trump agrees that they were “cheesy”. Have you seen the Trumpartment? If Trump says it’s “cheesy”, you have gone straight into Ed Wood territory.
Trump asks T-Boz if she takes responsibility for the loss, since she’s a great singer. She doesn’t even understand the insane question. Then, Trump tells her he’s a great fan of her music. Because, after all, Trump don’t want no scrubs. A scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from he. If he had a nickel for every time one of them was hanging out the passenger side of his best friend’s ride, trying to holla at him, well, he’d be able to put yet another chandelier in the Trumpartment.
Claudia defends the vignettes, and Melissa complains that she was removed from the creative process, even though earlier she claimed to have written the whole show. Claudia finally says she’s not discounting Melissa’s experience “even though I haven’t seen anything she’s produced, she’s told me many times that she is a producer”. Ha! She goes on to say that she couldn’t control her. “I can’t whip her. Slavery’s over.” And then there’s this horrible moment where everybody does the math in her head and tries to determine if it’s OK if a black person says that, and they all come up with a different answer. Melissa then jumps in to state that she is, in fact, a producer. She points out that she produces “red carpet extravaganzas”, which ranks a half-hearted “congratulations” from Claudia. She’s totally a Mean Girl, but she’s pretty funny about it.
The men wonder why Melissa didn’t step up to be Project Manager, which is a good question. Claudia also goes on to name Khloe as the least effective person on the group. She defends herself by saying she “was waiting to be told what to do”. Ivanka points out that she’s not terribly effective. Annie agrees with that assessment. Trump goes back to creepily ribbing Brande about that kiss. Claudia picks to bring Melissa and Khloe back to the Boardroom.
You know what? These people hate each other, but the Boardroom is much more interesting when actual mental illness is involved. They’re snapping at each other, but there are no hilarious breaks from reality. This team needs a Rodman. When Trump points out that the team backs Melissa, Claudia claims that it’s politics, which sort of makes sense. I don’t get this, because everybody agrees that Melissa took control of the production, and then the production lost. And when pressed, Khloe can’t actually name anything she’s done. Trump calls Melissa “obnoxious”, which is a pot/kettle thing, and then fires Claudia. That didn’t totally make sense to me, but she wasn’t very good at defending herself. Bye, Claudia!
Next week, Dennis’ drinking gets out of control. Crap. Is this going to be a Very Special Episode?
