Game Show Newsnet - The Celebrity Apprentice: Season 8

Welcome to the Celebrity Apprentice! This season The Donald has taken a cue from another NBC stalwart, The Biggest Loser,” and bloat his episodes to a solid 2 hours. Exciting isn’t it?

That said, we have 16 celebrities all trying to avoid the most heinous of reality catchphrases (Especially considering the current economy).

The teams have been split into men vs. women and here are your celebrities:

The Women
Melissa Rivers (Fashion and gossip host)
Joan Rivers (Comedienne and Plastic Surgery aficionado)
Claudia Jordan (Former Barker Beauty and Deal or No Deal briefcase #1)
Annie Duke (Professional Poker Player)
Brande Roderick (Playboy Hottie)
Khloe Kardashian (E! Reality Star and sister to a sex tape vixen)
Tionne T-Boz Watkins (The T of TLC)
Natalie Gulbis (Professional golfer not named Annika)

The Men
Dennis Rodman (NBA Bad boy and walking pin cushion)
Clint Black (Country star with a penchant for black)
Andrew Dice Clay (Raucous Comedian and loud mouth)
Herschel Walker (Retired football legend)
Tom Green (Raunchy, uni-testicled comedian)
Scott Hamilton (Height Challenged figure skating champion)
Jesse James (Vehicle Pimper, not western outlaw)
Brian McKnight (Soul singer not available on the dollar menu)

The teams are given their first tasks rather quickly. Choose a project manager and select a team name.

The men move quickly, throwing about names at random until one sticks: KOTU. Is this Survivor? Wrong network. KOTU apparently stands for Kings of the Universe. With their second decision they put Herschel Walker in charge as PM for the first task. Now some team members such as Andrew Dice Clay feel like these decisions are being shoved down their throats, but at this point in the game it is way too early to ruffle feathers. Thus, swallowing is probably the better decision.

The women work together a little better and with some prodding from Annie Duke they settle on a name with meaning. The women dub themselves Athena and then in a snap judgment select Joan Rivers as their Project Manager. The women are moving fast and so will we.

Task 1: Bake cupcakes and sell them out of a Cupcake Truck for Charity. The team that brings in the most money wins.

Pretty easy stuff. The men split up with half the team heading to the executive cupcake kitchen while Jesse James gets to work on his niche, pimping out the cupcake Truck.

The women sit down and try to decide how much money it will take to win and they settle on about 20-30K dollars. Annie Duke speaks up again (get used to this) and says that she can bring in 15K by herself easy. She asks is she can rely on the rest of the team to bring in at least another 5K and Khloe Kardashian speaks up saying that she doesn’t like being talked down to. Oh, I’m sorry, she spoke up to the confessional camera, not Annie. You know how those reality stars do it.

In the baking stage of this mission there were a few interesting moments. First and foremost, in case you didn’t know, Andrew Dice Clay does not bake! He steps aside and leaves the load on Tom Green, Scott Hamilton and the like. Apparently Dice thinks he can attract more people by going on Sirius Satellite Radio (has he checked out their stock price lately?)

Both teams have settled on doing a standard Vanilla and standard Chocolate cupcake. They figure that there is no reason to get fancy with it to ensure that everyone has something they like that they can buy.

In the Men’s kitchen the Chocolate cupcakes come out tasting like crap. Apparently someone forgot to put in sugar. Mmm… bitter cupcakes. They brush the cupcakes with syrup hoping that they will absorb some of the syrup and the flavor improves… somewhat.

In the Women’s kitchen, Annie Duke freaks out (OCD, anybody) and turns into the kitchen commando. In her defense, no one was taking charge in Joan’s absence and they did get a lot of work done. Regardless, the women on Annie’s team don’t like being bossed around.

This goes for when Natalie’s chocolate cupcake fail to rise properly and Annie gets them in gear making a fresh batch and when Annie takes the time to teach the reinforcement exactly how to ice the cupcakes (because icing cupcakes is a dangerous job. Have you seen Ace of Cakes, it’s more thrilling than Ice Road Truckers!)

The women eventually solve their chocolate cupcake problem by filling the divots in with a chocolate ganache. This is why when you by a cupcake you should always check its “cupcake-fax” history report.

Time to sell!

The teams hit the streets and clearly have no problem selling. They’re each selling cupcake and 5, 10, 20 dollars a pop. And then the heavy hitters come in.

The women positioned themselves outside the Playboy building and Brande secured ad big check from the Hef courtesy of a Playboy Bunny in full regalia. In addition, all the workers of the building came out for a dessert breaks.

The men have money coming in from a few close friends, but the majority of their money is coming from hustling on the street corners. The Truck looks great and they are making a scene, but not everyone is chipping in. Dennis Rodman in particular seems set against doing anything that requires him standing on two feet. He sits in the truck claiming that if he comes out people will only stop to take pictures not to buy cupcakes. (Yes, Dennis, because New Yorkers can’t find someone who dresses as crazy as you on every street corner…)

As the hours wind down, Annie Duke is raking in the cash from all of her poker buddies. She ahs easily made good on her 15K agreement. Tom Green meanwhile is becoming slightly worried as his secured donation from Donny Deutsch still ahs not been delivered.

Ring!!!

The Donald calls both project managers and informs them to send their best cupcake to Crumb bakery for judging. The winning cupcakes will be worth 15K dollars. Quite the game changer indeed.

Dice takes a Vanilla cupcake and Melissa takes a Chocolate ganache to the taste test. The results will be revealed back at the board room. We enter the last seconds of selling and the women have hit their last trays of cupcakes. Brande has two final donors show up who offer to buy the truck out. Annie takes a step back saying that they can only have a few and that she needs to know how much they are paying. Brande in annoyed that Annie has stepped into her deal, but in the end, the last tray of cupcake is sold for 9K dollars

The men are selling out as well and with only 2 minutes to spare Tom’s donation from Donny Deutsch (as well as one from Tony Hawk) arrives. The men have sold out and all that remains are the results.

Back at the boardroom we are given the results.

The women won the taste test by a landslide (looks like the fallen cupcakes were a blessing in disguise). They get the 15K bonus. And then there are the final totals.

KOTU: $49,449

ATHENA: $61,257

The women have won and will head back to the suite to watch the boardroom. The men will now have to face The Donald.

As you might expect from celebrities, they were a lot of loudmouths but not that much was said. Dice and Dennis become the obvious targets with Herschel also coming under fire. They felt that Herschel was not an effective leader and Herschel feels that Dice and Dennis were unmanageable.

The one thing that you do need to know is that Dice at one point during the boardroom hit the Red button. He quit stating that if he can’t do things his way that he doesn’t want to do it at all.

Well that, along with the fact that Dennis didn’t retract from the task and Herschel was actually the biggest earner for the team, led to the Dice man’s demise

Andrew, You’re fired!

And with that the new Celebrity season is off with a bang. More Donald next week.

To see this episode in its entirety, visit the official website at www.nbc.com/the-celebrity-apprentice.