Ladies and gentlemen! Meet the new reality television star that everyone loves to hate! She has all the elements that make up the puurrrfect villain. She’s full of herself. She double speaks. She points a manicured nail profusely. She’s quick on her feet, and when called on the carpet can deny and turn on some wiley tears. It’s Aubrey O’Day! (Who I still refuse to believe is a celebrity on this season of The Celebrity Apprentice.)
But before I get to her, I need to say something. This edition of The Trumptuals was three hours long. A double dose of hunka hunka burnin’ boardroom! So if I dissect every little inch of it? You and I will be here until next Wednesday. And I don’t know about you, but I have to do stuff like work and color my hair and feed my cat.
So here’s my plan. I’m going to tell you the two people who got Donald’s silver spur in the butt and why I agree or disagree. Along the way, I’ll throw in some particulars about the tasks.
Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride …
Task Number One A.K.A. The One Where Debbie Gibson’s Love Gets Shaked: It was clearly stated that this task was primarily about fundraising. So, I thought this ousting was wrong. Just wrong. Aubrey skated by. She lucked out that the project manager (Teresa) failed to bring her into the boardroom when she should have. Simple math here peeps. Aubrey did not make as much money as Debbie did. Period.
Teresa chose Debbie in her final two out of spite. She made excuses to the Don Don that it was about who would be a better person for the team in the long run when asked why Aubrey wasn’t there. That alone proves that Teresa, as project manager, wasn’t listening to the guidelines originally set forward. (A reason to be fired.) I figured Teresa simply wanted Debbie gone as she perceived her a threat.
I say this because of a couple of things I saw. First? Debbie is constantly called out by Lisa and Aubrey as a creative person who makes things happen. That’s true (although a lot of her ideas are sub par). The main reason I believe Teresa chose Debbie was due to the imperfections in her leadership skills that Debbie pointed out in the boardroom before the winner was announced. It was a knee jerk kind of tit for tat. (The women are so good at sabotaging themselves over real or imagined slights. Sigh.)
As an aside … the men’s team was incredibly fortunate to have won by those fourteen dollars. They made some huge mistakes. Penn could have gotten the shaft for the whole “Blue Man Group” fiasco. Arsenio simply would have been shown the door for not contributing a penny. The way the wind blew on this one was all about the cash.
Which leads me into …
Task Number Two A.K.A. Trump Mixes Up the Teams: Finally! I told you last week I was waiting for this eventuality. I think we were all sick to death of the women losing due to their inability to act cohesively without tearfully clawing each other apart. But! It turns out?
That even by changing the teams around and mixing the women in with the men? The women still can cause the drama right and left.
At the end of this task, we said so long to Dee Snyder. Again. The wrong move on The Donster’s part. And once more, a couple of contestants got some lucky breaks.
In this task for Walgreen’s, the teams were divvied up and we saw Arsenio head up the new members of team Unanimous (Clay, Aubrey, Teresa, and Paul). They rocked it, that is for certain. This team was above and beyond team Forte (Lou, Lisa, Penn, Dee and Dayana). They had better brand messaging, presentation, and creativity.
But if you saw what I did, Arsenio was brilliant in letting Aubrey do a ton of work and then attacking her when it came down to brass tacks in front of the Trumps. If his team had lost, I would have loved to see him try to defend his decision to take a back seat to Aubrey. (Even in not pushing to chose his own photo for the “box” portion of the presentation.) I mean the dude barely stood up to her at all during the task, but in the boardroom (before he even knew he had won) he came out like a champion prizefighter to just smack that chick down.
Which was fine by me. Who amongst us has not wanted to see this evil woman/child taken down a peg or two? She’s a pain in our collective backsides.
Here’s where I have to tell you … watch Arsenio. He’s a conniver as well. In the first task he made a monumental mistake by not having his main contributor (Jay Leno) immediately wire him that check. That was just stupid on his part. And in this task, he let Aubrey drive the car but staged a coup on her. He knows how to play this game.
The way it all shook out in the wash though, was not a surprise. Lou Ferrigno and his “110 percent” just wasn’t good enough.
I’m tired of Lou and his excuses and his big talk. As project manager of this thing? He by rights should have been let go. The fact that the executives liked his presentation skills didn’t qualify the fact that his team did a boring and lackluster performance on this task. For me, anyway. Yes. Dee was in charge of design. It wasn’t great. But he ran all his ideas by Lou, and they were given the green light.
Considering Lou’s past (non) antics and the feedback that has been given to The Donald by so many contestants regarding Lou and his ineptness? I didn’t understand this “firing” either.
What do you think? Am I off base here?
And more importantly … as the teams move forward, how will Arsenio and Aubrey even attempt to work together after the scene tonight?
Sound off in the comments below for me!
Clacked by Tara Shrodes
on Apr 02, 2012 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I didn’t actually watch the first task and boardroom. Hubby turned it on as the teams were giving their presentations on the Walgreen’s task.
So mostly I saw the boardroom from the second task, and let me say, hubby and I both enjoyed seeing Aubrey taken down a few pegs. We totally called the tears that were turned on when the Donald started in on her; she’s such a fake! We were rather disappointed that because Arsenio’s team won, there was no chance Aubrey was going home. Or was there…? She took herself a little elevator ride, but she stated on Twitter that she did not go home. I hope the show producers give her a nasty earful today about spoiling the suspense. No, I don’t follow the spoiled brat on Twitter normally, but after the delicious drama last night, I did check in to see if she had anything to say.
I still may check in on the first task, as it’s on the TiVo. Penn wrote a blog post about the Blue Man Group and all, and that the $20,000 check from Teller was their contribution, while the leafblower and balloons thing was performance art, which is what they do, and he was happy that bystanders and homeless folk who could use it were able to snag some of the money. (see https://www.huffingtonpost.com/penn-jillette/celebrity-apprentice-blue-man-group_b_1395411.html) And apparently mild-mannered Clay totally went off on Penn behind the scenes. That I’d have liked to see, but at least from what Penn said, it happened where the cameras weren’t.
*POST AUTHOR*
Foolish stunt by The Blue Man Group Lisana. Someone could have really gotten hurt. As it was, Clay said he was batted around pretty well in the fray. I think Penn is backpedaling. His story last night was he was floored at Teller’s generosity and that the Blue Man Group has a rule that they don’t handle money. So … he’s changed his tune as he realizes how stupid and potentially dangerous that whole thing was.
I’m liking him less and less. I hope Clay eats him alive.
What? No mention of Lisa’s epic breakdowns? I really can’t stand her anymore. She hates Dayana because she’s beautiful and assumes she doesn’t have a brain and just goes off on her? And going on and on how she has to always carry her team? She is coming across as increasingly insecure and destructive.
Please no more 3 hour episodes.
*POST AUTHOR*
Ann, I agree. Lisa is so jealous of Dayana, it amazes me. Very high school. She needs to get over it, and for golly’s sake stop crying and having meltdowns. She acts as if this show is life or death. And while it’s great how much the charities benefit? She’s not going to get thrown to the Lions in the middle of Coliseum if she gets kicked off.
Lisa is good. She’s killing her chances with the tantrums and drama though.
Buck up buttercup!
Dayana’s more than just an impossibly pretty face. When Penn flubbed the name “Walgreen’s” during the presentation, Dayana stepped in like a pro — her lighthearted jokes about giving him her tiara — and got him off the hook. The tension in that room was so thick, and Penn was tongue-tied and unable to recover. Dayana acted with such poise and diffused the entire siutation.
Sadly, Lisa has a bad case of fat-and-ugly-girl jealously. It’s very high school, and very unbecoming for a middle-aged woman.
I really want to watch the apprentice but 2-3 hours of programing is too much for me. There is never enough time in the day.
There’s 2 things that really bugged me in this episode, the Blue Man group stunt was beyond stupid (and really, homeless? if you want to use homeless excuse go to a shelter and give money there) and Clay had all the reason to be angry. Someone could’ve gotten seriously injured aside of all the money lost to the charity.
Then for some reason the admission that the quotes on the box were made up kinda really bugged me. If I see a face on a box with a quote I assume that person made it, was it really that hard for each one to come up with something other than Aubrey or I wonder if they tried and she just shut them down.
If Arsenio would’ve lost the task I have a feeling he would’ve been fired for being unable to manage Aubrey.