The Celebrity Apprentice: With a Trace

So it turns out that Sharon Osbourne IS still alive.

I was starting to have my doubts after she missed all of last week and began this episode on the sidelines. Unfortunately, Sharon’s return couldn’t fully enliven what turned out to be a particularly tedious episode of “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

Between a mind-numbing conflict in which two of my favorites (Cyndi and Maria) both came out looking bad, a male country music singer and his aversion to necklaces and smiling, and the repeated use of the word “bandana”, I didn’t love an episode of “Celebrity Apprentice” for the first time this season. (The fact that Trump didn’t announce he was bringing back Rod Blagojevich to replace Michael Johnson may have also had something to do with it.)

This week’s tasks had the teams reinventing Luke Bryan and Emily West, a pair of country music artists on the rise. (Or so they tell me – I know a bit about country music, but not enough to know who Luke Bryan and Emily West are.) They’d have to create a press kit, do a makeover and maximize the singers’ breakout potential.

Fortunately, Luke and Emily were accompanied by the episode’s major bright spot – season 1 runner-up Trace Adkins (pictured, right). I’ll get into his absolute badassery in the boardroom later, but now I’m starting to think that Emily and (especially) Luke suffered by how much they paled in comparison with a legitimate star like Trace Adkins. (Summer couldn’t get over his sheer size/presence.) I was mostly happy we didn’t get Clint Black.

Cyndi Lauper stepped up to lead Team Tenacity because the task involved working with a young musician and she’s a legendary pop star. Goldberg stepped up to lead Team Rocksolid because…he hadn’t been project manager yet. I actually understand the thinking behind Goldberg’s decision (and his desire to play for his charity, given that Bret Michaels has already won $100,000 for his), but it would ultimately prove to be his undoing.

The teams met with both artists. Team Tenacity (mostly just Cyndi) decided she wanted to work with Emily based on a small sampling of her music, while the men, after extensive research by the well-connected Bret, decided it didn’t really matter. (Hokay.)

The men picked Luke and got to work after a weird, brief scene that Goldberg asking Luke what color his eyes were as well as Curtis and Luke exchanging shirts to prove they were the same size (methinks the real reason was to get Curtis shirtless). Bret did his best to push Luke out of his comfort zone and build a little hype around him, but it proved to be quite a challenge. I admire that Luke had a voice and wasn’t just willing to go along with ANYTHING Bret said, but that same quality kind of made him a bit of a joyless pain in the butt to work with. Bret also prepped him for his interview with People Country magazine, but Luke you know almost immediately forgot every tip that you know Bret had given him about you know having energy and you know never mentioning how tired you are.

As annoying as that was, it wasn’t half as bad as what was going on with Team Tenacity.

Cyndi took control of the task, much to the chagrin of Holly – who’s never really had much patience with Cyndi – and Maria, whose childhood vision of Cyndi was crushed after this episode. The younger women complained about how Cyndi was condescending and marginalizing them in this task and Sharon wasn’t around to defend her like she has in the past.

Not to be too much of a Cyndi Lauper apologist, but I don’t honestly think she was trying to always interrupt Maria and Holly or that she thought they were idiots – I just think that’s how she works. It’s an incredibly infuriating method for those around her, but that’s how a lot of creative people are. They’re scattershot and condescending, but they don’t mean to be. I was disappointed that Maria, a really strong player, took it so personally and let it derail her during the task and in the boardroom. As Trace (who got off a good Piers Morgan/Ozzy Osbourne joke that looked like it was going to make Sharon REALLY upset for a split second) put it during his visit with the women, this task is basically tailor-made for Cyndi, so the smart thing to do is just to stand back and let her do her thing (and you give her enough rope to hang herself in case they lose).

In what was probably the most closely-contested challenge, the men won handily with their airbrushed press materials (Trump seemed physically ill at having to look at the Emily’s un-retouched photos in her kit), the women won with the makeover, and the women somehow won the weirdly nebulous “breakout success” criteria that wasn’t ever properly explained. Emily having most of the life sucked out her during her interview and Luke bombing his didn’t really seem to play into the final decision. Whatever.

As much as Trump tried by repeating the word “bandana” 27 times, the boardroom was dominated by Trace Adkins. I liked that he stood and took his hat off when the women entered the room. I enjoyed the sly look he and Bret exchanged when Maria was talking about pushing up Emily’s breasts during her makeover. I liked when he grumpily blurted out, “Enough with the bandana.” Most of all, I LOVED that he had the guts to disagree with Trump during the Donald’s customary “I made the correct decision, right” butt-kissing convention. Even if I disagree with Trace’s premise that Bret deserved to be fired, it was worth it for Trump’s reaction – it was as if someone had slapped him in the face.

Anyway, it was Goldberg’s time to go. Whether he delegated 95%, 90%, 87% or 70% of the task to Bret, the point is that it was WAY too much. Since almost everyone agreed that Bret did a good job, it was bye bye Goldberg, an elimination that made Bret feel sick to his stomach. Trump inexplicably and harshly chastised Bret for expressing that emotion, but Bret won me over again by replying that he may have won that day, but “I lost my friend.”

So what’d you think of this episode? How would Trump look in a bandana? Did you know there was a “People Country”? Are you a “skin man” like Trump? Finally, the most important question of all – is Maria shaved or hairy?