'Celebrity Apprentice': Spygate and the Rat

First, let's go to the highlights:
** Omarosa has a heart. Maybe.
** A supermodel trumps a boxer when it comes to discarding stinky, used shoes.
** Stephen Baldwin is an idiot.
** Trace Adkins has cornered the market on that whole strong-and-silent thing.
** Vinny Pastore canNOT carry a two-hour show.
** Nely Galan only gets more annoying as the weeks go by. Can The Donald just fire her for being like fingernails on a chalkboard?

So with the women giving women everywhere a pathetic name with their inability to win anything, this week dawned with Carol Alt taking over as project manager (finally, this clearly needed to happen). And Piers -- who is rapidly on his way to trumping Omarosa when it comes to making Evil a fully marketable personality characteristic -- is leading the men.

Piers dumped Vinny, who annoys him, by sending him to spy on the women. Which was amusing for about, um, 10 minutes. Then it got very, very VERY tiresome.

The task was remarkably simple: Design a box to collect discarded Crocs, to be repurposed for the poor. Trace sat in the corner for about five minutes and came up with the money slogan ("Wear them. Share them.") -- only the men couldn't make a talking box to capitalize on that whole gravelly voice thing he has going on, so they pimped out Lennox Lewis. Again. (Is anyone else wondering when Lewis is going to get a wee bit offended by being nothing but beefcake on the show? At least this time they didn't make him remove clothing. And Trump went WAY out of his way in the boardroom to make sure all us viewers know Lennox has a brain, too. It was kind of sad.)

The "girls" won because pictures of Carol Alt discarding shoes are hotter than pictures of Lennox Lewis. Oh, and the "girls" (because they call them that ad nauseam, even though Marilu Henner is not anyone's "girl") made their large, freestanding box -- with moving parts for donating shoes -- look like a real Croc, which was actually kind of fun, if financially ridiculous. And they made T-shirts. And the guys just carped at each other and turned out a cardboard box or something.

But the "boys" (alas, they aren't called that -- they get to be "men") didn't waste all their time: Stephen Baldwin got plenty of screen minutes talking about how he couldn't really, really abide the whole Vinny-as-a-rat thing, being a Christian with his own ministry and all, then spent a whole lot more screen time chumming it up with Piers. Then he threw Piers under the bus in the boardroom, which made no sense whatsoever. Unless, of course, he was lining up his own future departure (see below).

In the aftermath, Omarosa absolutely salivated at the mere possibility of Piers getting fired as a result. Alas, Vinny decided to trump Trump by resigning before Trump got a chance to fire anyone, rendering The Donald essentially useless -- which is becoming a theme of this series, given that Gene Simmons fired himself two episodes back and next week's tease shows Stephen Baldwin trying to fire himself, too. Apparently, the charity thing is nice and all, but not if becomes annoying or inconvenient.

The problem with Celeb Apprentices is that, really, they don't need this. At least not for more than a week or two of exposure. Proof? Tito didn't even show up this week, 'cause he had a real gig, and he decided to take a little hiatus. Here's hoping Nely has some pressing engagement next week.

-- JENNIFER FREY

Jennifer Frey  |  February 1, 2008; 9:19 AM ET Celebrity Apprentice
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Posted by: Tom T. | February 1, 2008 10:27 AM

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