Here we are, at the finale. Twelve celebrities have been eliminated, and we’re left with the battle between good and evil. Get used to hearing that, because it’s the theme of the night. We’re all a good deal older than we were before the show began, and I’ve written, in terms of word count, the equivalent of a short novel about Donald Trump’s reality show. But admit it, you’re gonna miss this. Now if only one of the Final Two could express that sentiment, possibly in a country song, we’d be in business.
If you want to have some fun, drink a shot every time somebody says that Piers Morgan and Trace Adkins have “very different styles”. You’ll be blind in the first half-hour and dead of alcohol poisoning by the end of the show.
Previously on… Wait, Donald Trump is looking right at me and explaining the premise of the show. Whatever happened to the Mysterious Announcer? Is there a strike? Trump assumes that you’ve been watching all along and tells us that we’re down to “Trace and Piers”, without further explanation. Really, those are two words that aren’t necessarily names. If you tuned in at this moment, you could be forgiven for thinking that Trump had a stroke. He’s seated in the Boardroom, or a cheap facsimile thereof. He asks Ivanka for her opinion, and she confirms that he has a very tough choice ahead of him, and also, Trace Adkins is awesome. Trump asks Don Jr., and when the camera pans to him, he immediately stops singing “Hello, My Ragtime Gal”. (I let it go for thirteen weeks, but dude looks like a frog.) Don also agrees that it’s a hard choice and they are two different individuals. And then Trump looks right at us and asks what we think.
Prepare to be surprised! The camera pans back to reveal that this is actually a mock-up of the Boardroom on stage in a packed studio. (Although, the audience is poorly lit and it’s actually impossible to see past the first couple of rows.) You know, the way every finale of every season of this show begins. It would be awesome if just once they opened the finale with Trump in a rocking chair by a fireplace. Or on a swing set.
When they show a full view of the fake Boardroom, you can see that it’s graced with a giant sign that says “TRUMP”. It’s the size of the nametag God wears when He goes to conventions. The announcer introduces the “biggest celebrity of them all”, and I can only imagine Mick Jagger’s surprise. “Wait, was I supposed to be there?” he no doubt asked his friends with whom he was playing darts at that moment. But no, that biggest celebrity is Donald Trump, and NBC’s got a truth in advertising lawsuit headed their way.
Trump tells the audience that they’ve raised more than a million dollars, and the math on that doesn’t work at all, considering the weekly donations were generally between twenty and fifty thousand dollars. He tells us that Trace and Piers Morgan are fighters, and that they came out of the jungle. Wait, what? Is that an expression I’m not familiar with?
Finally, we get our Previously On. But, you know, it’s everything. We see a giant show and David Hyde Pierce lurking, and in a moment that’s only gotten funnier, an angry Trace snaps at Gene Simmons, “You don’t buy that visual?” There’s a montage of actually celebrities who stopped by, including a porn star, two Baldwins, and Bob Saget.
