The Celebrity Apprentice: Guilty as Sinbad

“It’s a Kodak world. Welcome.”

If you’re a “Celebrity Apprentice” nut like me (highly unlikely, I know), you recognize those immortal words from Gene Simmons during season 1, when he convinced himself that he’d created the greatest advertising slogan of all time and basically dared Donald Trump to fire him (which he did).

It was a Kodak world (welcome) once again last night when both teams were charged with creating a Kodak storefront experience. And even though the episode didn’t reach the loony heights of that Gene Simmons classic, there was still plenty of fun to be had.

Before Trump stepped out of his limo (I guess he’s done walking) and presented Team RockSolid and Team Tenacity with their task, we saw Bret Michaels present a $100,000 check to his diabetes charity. More specifically, we saw a little kid and a mildly freaked out teenager with an uncomfortable smile plastered on his face sit quietly and nod as Brett tried in vain to put them at ease with his sense of humor. I’m guessing the combination of Bret’s makeup and his insistence on pronouncing diabetes as “dia-bee-tus” is what scared them. (I wonder what they would’ve thought of Bret’s introduction of the word “dis-com-boo-berated” into the lexicon last night.)

Anyway, Trump introduced the task and asked for project managers. The women of Tenacity somewhat arbitrarily settled on Maria Kanellis, while Rod Blagojevich somewhat arbitrarily settled on Sinbad, and the rest of the men went along with it.

Despite the fact that she was seemingly chosen at random, Maria tore into the task enthusiastically. In fact, her biggest “challenge” during the preparation stage was bladder-challenged Cyndi Lauper who (if we’re to believe the editing) is SO annoying that Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks would rather practically jump out of a moving vehicle in the middle of traffic than have to endure sitting next to Cyndi when she’s talking. Personally, I’m loving me some Cyndi Lauper (especially when she’s talking to herself/traffic while carrying a giant rug), even if she is the “hooker” of the team.

It also appeared the women had a problem on their hands when Sharon Osbourne took ill and missed the second half of the first day. That turned out to be a non-issue except for the part where Maria (in her biggest misstep of the day) inexplicably put Sharon on the food stand during the challenge. Oh well, at least all the people who undoubtedly got sick that day can claim that they caught celebrity germs.

On the other side, I was happy to see that Sinbad appeared to know what he was talking about because no one else did!

Certainly not Bret Michaels, who tried to coax an assignment out of Sinbad before getting frustrated and giving himself a time out. But if “Celebrity Apprentice 3” has taught us something in its young life, it’s this — Bret Michaels’ mom didn’t raise no dummy! Bret realized the crew was filming him isolating himself and looking frustrated. Bret is a veteran of THREE “Rock of Loves” — the man understands reality show editing, and the man was getting the Malcontent Edit!

He demanded an assignment from Sinbad, who spouted more nonsense, but eventually lead to the guys going out in the streets of New York City and creating Kodak moments. (Bret’s Kodak moment apparently involves getting hoisted by his “cojones.”)

The women may have the genius of Cyndi Lauper on their side, but the men have the ferocious double shot of Bret and Rod Blagojevich on their side. Just when I think the guy can’t get any sleazier (asking the cameraman, “Did you get that?” after shaking a guy’s hand during a confessional and claiming he’s part of something called the “Fellowship of Doers”), he comes back with a weirdly zealous and endearing affection for balloons (GOLDENROD!), inspiring Sinbad’s sole funny riff of the night.

The task began and the women seemed more organized and on the ball. In fact, they were doing so well that Trump, sitting in his office and monitoring the action, decided to even the score a bit by pulling a giant switch labeled “Power” and blacking out the women’s store whenever they pulled too far ahead. (At least that’s how I imagined it happening in my head.) The repeated power outages (probably due to all the products the women were displaying) caused a logjam in the Kodak Moments stations, where many of the visitors (including Secret Shopper Lauren) couldn’t find their pictures.

I forgot to mention — the Kodak bigwigs, in their infinite sneakiness, sent a Secret Shopper to each Kodak store. Secret Shopper James visited the men’s store and was pretty much on his own.

Team RockSolid decided to heavily rely on their celebrity and had set up stations where visitors could pose with the various celebrities in their (un)natural environments. (Blagojevich had no natural environment, so he was relegated to taking pictures.) Unfortunately, they neglected showing off the Kodak products (which is why we were all here last night — to sell Kodak products) and the cards that were supposed to send people online to find their pictures apparently didn’t work. (To me, that was a bigger faux-pas.)

The product knowledge put the women over the top (Summer Sanders has a job waiting for her at Kodak after she gets fired), and Maria won $20,000 for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

The men had to face Trump in a relatively drama-free boardroom, since it was pretty clear Sinbad was going home. There was some attempt to place blame on Bret, who had also shown up a scandalous ten minutes late during day 2 (“stupid early” in rocker time), but pretty much everyone agreed that Bret is a stronger overall player than Sinbad.

Sinbad (who’d brought Bret and Blago) back with him never had a chance. This show hates stand-up comedians. Don’t believe me? Andrew Dice Clay was the first person sent home last season, and this year the two comedians (Sinbad and Carol Leifer) have already been sent packing. The real highlight of this portion was Sharon Osborne’s hilarious commentary while watching the men in the boardroom. She called Michael Johnson a “dumbo” and speculated that Goldbert had a “little d---.” This was funny stuff, but Sharon is technically not a comedian, so she should be safe.

So what’d you think of this episode? What’s more humiliating — being told, “You’re a disgrace, enjoy prison” or being mistaken for Donny Osmond (pictured, left)? What the hell was on Maria’s head during the first day? (A hat, an adornment, her hair?) Finally, how long before Cyndi and Trump get into an all-out shouting match? (I love their not-so-secretly antagonistic relationship.)