Celebrity Apprentice - Week 2

Episode 2: In which Gene Simmons is an asshole.

Celebrity Apprentice is not the best show on television. Its not going to win any awards, or garner huge ratings. But, during trying times such as these, we make lemonade with lemons, or something like that.

At about 9:30, my friend watching the show with me turned to me and said, "It's only 9:30? I feel like I've been watching this forever." And so it was that this episode was pretty boring. But not entirely uneventful.

As The Apprentice relies on sponsorship and product placement to survive, this week featured both a Macy's executive and a Pedigree dog food executive to tell the teams they needed to make a commercial about adopting dogs. Trump asked the contestants who likes dogs and Lennox Lewis and Tito Ortiz raised their hands. Trump was like oh I bet you like big dogs or something and Lewis was like no, I like cats.

THE Gene Simmons and Telemundo exec Nely Galán were chosen as the Project Managers. Nely's team met with the Pedigree exec to hear exactly want he wanted. He told them exactly what he wanted and then they proceeded to ignore it.

Gene Simmons and Hydra chose not to meet the exec and went right to the studio to record the commercial. Simmons made Stephen "20 Years of TV Experience" Baldwin the director of the commercial, essentially making him the project manager. During filming, Miss Ivanka Trump came in to check up on Team Simmons. Instead of stopping what they were doing and paying attention to the person who would ultimately wind up having a say in firing them, Simmons told her she would have to wait until they had time to deal with her. Then when they did finally talk to her about their commercial, Simmons said something condescending to Ivanka along the lines of "Being a member of the female sexuality I of course expect you won't go and tell the members of your sisterhood about what we are doing here." He really is a pig. I'm surprised Father Trump didn't fire him right there for talking to his daughter like that.

The women's team did some bickering, and messed up stuff. Their idea was to have talking dogs telling stories instead of, you know, the "celebrities" that they are telling the stories. They also decided to only use the voice of one of the most famous supermodels of all time, instead of putting her on screen.

The men sort of clicked under the direction of Orson Baldwin. Gene Simmons told everyone on the team that only he and Baldwin were allowed in the editing room, because everyone else was worthless. While editing, the rest of the team had the AUDACITY to barge into the editing room and see the commercial that they would ultimately be fired for. Gene Simmons put them in their place and sent them out of the room. How you tell UFC Champion Tito Ortiz and Lennox Lewis to get out is beyond me, I guess Simmons is more powerful than I realize.


During the presentation, the Pedigree exec confronted Simmons about why he didn't meet with them. Best scene of the show: Gene Simmons tells the exec that a great writer "Son Shoe" (He was trying for Sun Tzu) said something in The Art of War about how the battle is fought on the battlefield not in the boardroom or something I dunno. Piers Morgan corrected his pronunciation of Sun Tzu and Simmons was like "Oh I was using the more traditional Mandarin." It was Hilariously awkward.

The men actually made a decent commercial, showing a bulldog playing around with a ball and then in a kennel. Trace Adkins' "voice of God" provided the voiceover talking about like the heart of champion or something and then they pulled back to show Lennox Lewis holding this bulldog puppy and grinning from ear to ear. It was actually heartwarming.

In the boardroom, Trump made Simmons half-heartedly apologize for offending his daughter and didn't seem nearly upset as I thought. He wound up firing Gymnast Nadia Comaneci for not having the heart of a winner or something businessey sounding like that. The apprentice is getting really predictable and dull, and this episode was a prime example.

However, Jennie Finch is still on the show. And while this is like the second episode in a row she literally didn't open her mouth, she still looked amazing, and thus I will keep watching Celebrity Apprentice.