The Celebrity Apprentice: The Straw That Broke The Donald's Back

Being on “The Celebrity Apprentice” is hard!

There are various phone calls to be made and goofy hats to wear. Even worse, they make you wake up at the ungodly hour of “some time before noon.”

But we’ll get into why we had our second celebrity in three seasons quit a little later.

I have to begin with a very important question: what kind of child makes it his dying wish to meet Donald Trump? Not to completely belittle the seven-year-old boy (who DID bear more than a passing resemblance to the Donald) Maria met when she delivered her check to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but really?! That’s your wish, kid? Is it safe to assume you’re suffering from some sort of mental illness?

(It’s a good thing that it was painfully obvious the producers of this show put him up to it, because we all know NO ONE’S dying wish is to hang out at the finale of “The Celebrity Apprentice.” I just hope the kid’s actual wish gets granted as well.)

Anyway, let’s get on to this week’s task, which was to create a four-page advertorial featuring a celebrity spokesperson for a joint, identity-protection venture between Lifelock and Norton. (Yes, it even works for a Mac.)

Advertorial: an extended newspaper or magazine text advertisement that promotes the advertiser’s product, services or special point of view, but resembles an editorial in style and layout.

That’s the Dictionary.com definition for “advertorial” and I’m convinced that Team RockSolid project manager Michael Johnson googled the word and saw what it meant, like I just did. Unfortunately, he also decided to follow the dictionary definition of the word to the letter at the expense of making his team’s advertorial interesting, eye-catching or even factual.

Johnson ignored the pleas of Brett Michaels, who “as a graphic designer” (Trump calling his BS in the boardroom later was actually excellent) suggested they color a bit outside the lines. Sadly for Brett, he’d gotten himself semi-banished to the fringes for the second week in a row after a poor showing during Team RockSolid’s meeting with the Lifelock/Norton executives. (I actually think Brett is still talking in his business-speak gibberish.)

If this were “Survivor”, I’d suggest that Brett form an alliance with Rod, since both guys are constantly ignored and disrespected by their teammates. (And because they’re the two most entertaining guys on the team.) You can’t 100% blame the rest of the team for not taking them seriously — I mean, this IS Brett Michaels and Rod “I never EVER learned how to type” Blagojevich (pictured, left) we’re talking about. However, the desire to compete and contribute is there (which is not the case when you’re talking about a certain ex-baseball player) and, at least in Brett’s case, there seems to be some untapped creative potential.

On the other hand, if Rod keeps getting sent out to do menial tasks, I do believe he’d shake the hand of every single New Yorker (and most tourists visiting from out of town). A highlight of the episode was Daryl Strawberry telling Rod that, in New York, you can’t stop to shake hands and that you have to keep moving — two seconds later, Rod said hi to the very next person he saw…but he kept moving. (I guess he’s learning.) A lowlight of the episode — Rod saying, almost out of nowhere, “We’re prematurely ejaculating.” Well then.

On the women’s side, Summer Sanders was in charge. Let me rephrase that — Summer Sanders was project manager, but didn’t really do an awful lot of managing. What she did do was say “Uh” and “Um” a lot. She also did a bang up job of appearing absolutely flustered when Trump Jr. stopped by to check on Team Tenacity’s progress.

Summer has to be one of the worst, ineffective project managers to ever win a task on thi show. That’s right, the women somehow pulled it together in the end. In fact, the one good decision Summer seemed to make was naming Sharon Osbourne (not Cyndi Lauper) as their celebrity spokesperson — because there’s nothing scarier than Sharon Osbourne in a leather jacket. All kidding aside, the women’s advertorial was more eye-catching and better-produced than the men’s and they deserved the win, despite lacking a call to action.

It looked like it was going to be a lot closer than it was after the presentations. I mean, the men’s was hopelessly boring after Michael Johnson took over from Curtis Stone but at least it didn’t feature a malfunctioning laptop (why do these women keep having problems with technology?) and a swearing, coughing Sharon Osbourne. (Also, why did the men have microphones at the start of their presentation? There were only two people in the audience and they were eight feet away?)

In the boardroom, Summer somehow managed to make herself look worse by attacking Cyndi Lauper for distracting from the task and then taking it back. I get that Cyndi Lauper’s craziness can be a bit of a distraction, but what I really HATED was Summer’s completely condescending explanation to Cyndi about how she loves her “stories.” To paraphrase Sharon Osbourne, “Shut the f--- up!” Her wishy-washiness was every bit as infuriating as Michael Johnson’s misguided stubbornness.

Maybe I feel that way because I enjoy Cyndi on this show. In fact, my most surprising Cyndi-related development was the fact that she apparently DOES watch this show. (She referenced Dennis Rodman’s drinking problem last year.) After the season premiere, I wasn’t even sure she owned a TV.

The men lost and the tea leaves were saying Michael Johnson was going home. That is until Daryl Strawberry raised his hand and asked to go home.

It didn’t come as a major shock. Last week, Daryl admitted that he had been lazy. This week, he lamented how hard it is for a celebrity to actually wake up in the morning. I’d make even more fun of Daryl for this completely ridiculous statement (especially coming from a former professional athlete) and for quitting if I didn’t believe that there was a chance that he has a really serious problem. There’s a chance the guy just misses his family, but the man does have a very famous history with substance abuse (and he was looking pretty rough toward the end of his run on this show). I wouldn’t be surprised if being on “The Celebrity Apprentice” made him want to do drugs again (he wouldn’t be the only one), and he just needed to go.

Then again maybe he’s just a lazy quitter who wants to hang around his house and NOT raise money for autism. Either way, the worst part of Daryl’s exit was his attempt to make it look like he was willing to get himself fired to save Michael, and not because he wanted to go home. If I had been Trump, I would’ve fired Strawberry and then I would’ve turned around and fired Michael Johnson. You know, because he was the reason his team lost and he deserved to be fired.

Oh well. Now Daryl Strawberry fans have an entirely new reason to be ashamed of rooting for him. Yay.

So what’d you think of this episode? Will Curtis wear an apron next week? (Probably. Great call by Selita.) Does Trump really know Michael Johnson better than he knows himself? (What was THAT statement about?) Finally, what does the word “advertorial” mean to YOU?