It seems as though Donald Trump will never run out of challenges for the celebrities he regularly berates on "Celebrity Apprentice". After last week's...um..."interesting"
puppet challenge, as well as some of the other tasks this season (the Medieval Times task, anyone?) it was nice to see them return to a more appropriate, more business-like task. This week, Trump saddled them with the challenge of creating an in-store display and a slogan for his new cologne, "Success", going so far as to give them the task while they were standing in his apparently gold-covered penthouse. But hey, would we expect less from The Donald? (Even usually negative Aubrey cheered up at this point, dropping the gem, "It smells like wealth in here. There's like, gold, like, everywhere.") And surprisingly, fans got what they have most likely been silently dreaming of since the Crystal Light task, all through Aubrey's off-camera snark and Clay's obvious disdain for her-an Aubrey vs. Clay rematch! My heart skipped a beat.
On Team Forte, Lisa vowed to be more kind to Dayana and stay out of her way, which made for a nice change of pace. Not having to hear Lisa scream "I had to make something up for you! You are useless!" while Dayana just shrugged it off definitely made for a better episode. No, the conflict strangely wasn't between Dayana and Lisa this time. For the first time this season, Clay Aiken-who has not once been in danger of being fired-was not playing up to his usual standard. As soon as Forte arrived at their headquarters, the brainstorming session belonged to Penn. It became immediately clear that Penn had been completely ready to step up again and had a wealth of ideas about this particular task, and yet, he just gave the task to Clay. Maybe Penn felt that he still had to stay out of Clay's line of fire in order to avoid any more tension like they had earlier in the season (concerning Lou Ferrigno as project manager of the Oseder task). Either way, Clay seemed out of his element. He ultimately chose Penn's idea of having a large picture of Dayana snuggled up on the chest of a man in what I can assume was a Trump shirt and tie combo as the center of their in-store display , and while it was an extremely smart use of Dayana (Finally!), it ultimately sealed the deal for the whole task, setting Clay almost completely in the background. The idea was not his for the photo. The rest of the display was not his idea (at least, it did not appear to be). He was also very indecisive about the materials used for his team's presentation display, which definitely cost them some time. Going into their presentation, Dayana even became uneasy and spoke up, noting "I'm just now noticing all the holes where we didn't finish painting. If you notice it, the client's going to notice it." And it didn't help that Lisa decided (in a move that felt against her character to me) to sneak a peek at the other team's display. The mood of this entire task-and maybe it is a reflection of Clay's leadership this go-around-was amateurish. It felt like, other than the photo shoot, the team didn't quite click as they have in past challenges. A team with this many strong players needs a good leader, and for some reason, Clay was not a good leader this time.
Team Unanimous pretty much became Team Autonomous, with Aubrey finally digging back into her narcissistic roots and rendering Teresa and Arsenio "useless" to her as a team. She took the first opportunity she saw to send the both of them out to buy building materials, even though it was clearly a one person job, and then excused it by clarifying that they were "of no use" to her and hadn't "helped with creative thus far". And as soon as Eric showed up to take his silhouette pictures for her in-store display (which, by the way, turned out fairly badly; the silhouette seemed like a complete afterthought), Aubrey took the opportunity to complain about her team. From then on, it was the Aubrey show, completely and totally, with Arsenio slinking around her like a scared cat, trying not to poke the beast. Teresa smartly ran off and found something essentially helpful to do that didn't involve her being near Aubrey-she actually painted the boards for the display in a skirt, blouse, and heels. In all actuality, Teresa was the star this week. After weeks of seeming like a mousy, possibly weak link, she finally stepped up and did whatever she could do to help. She was full of energy and, for once, felt complete present in the task. Could our New Jersey housewife be secretly plotting to take over the board room in the coming weeks? It would certainly be interesting to see.
In the boardroom, Team Forte stood together as a united front while Team Unanimous tried to hold it together. Aubrey and Arsenio bickered a bit again, but nothing like their board room blowup a couple of weeks ago. They each thought that they had come up with the slogan (it actually was Aubrey this time); regardless of who came up with it, the executives actually loved it. And in the end, Aubrey's team was surprisingly crowned the winner. I personally thought that, despite Clay's strange lack of leadership on the task, Team Forte's campaign was more appealing. But alas, someone had to lose, and it was unfortunately Clay this week (thankfully, Trump did give each celebrity $10,000 for their charity, with the exception of winning project manager Aubrey who received $40,000). And so, Team Forte found themselves in the boardroom to face the wrath of Trump while Aubrey, once again, congratulated her team and then snuck off to make snide comments behind their backs. Is it truly appropriate for this girl to be the Ambassador for GLYSEN's bullying division?
Team Forte should have been the ones called Team Unanimous, taking the classy route in the boardroom by backing each other up, defending their display, and instead of selling out Clay as being a totally weak leader, claimed team responsibility for most of the decisions that the executives didn't like. Clay chose to bring back Dayana (of course) and Penn (of course). Why do I say "of course"? Because Dayana is apparently required to be brought back to the board room on every single task and, as far as Penn goes, "Celebrity Apprentice" feuds never die. And of course, Aubrey attempted to stir up trouble in the safe room, jumping on BFF Lisa for saying that Dayana did a great job. I'm finally beginning to realize why her Oxygen show was titled "All About Aubrey".
Even when Clay, Dayana, and Penn entered the board room, it became clear that Clay had basically given up. It was definitely strange this week to see Clay so scattered. He seemed quite nervous, quite unsure of his words, and very uncomfortable with being in the board room. Clay made a decent argument for Penn being fired, noting his brutish ways and overbearing spirit. Dayana, pissed off from being in the board room a record-breaking six times, used her go-to answer ("fire the project manager") to try to push Clay out of the running. She and Penn banned together to try and sway Trump to fire a still-distracted Clay, but in the end, The Donald surprisingly chose to fire Penn, one of the clear front runners in the competition, for coming up with the slogan "You Earned It", which the executives hated and found to be arrogant-sounding.
I know this much for sure: Clay Aiken had better step up his game and find his voice again. This was a bad week for him, and with only six celebrities left, he is at a critical point in the game where he needs to truly prove himself before someone like, say, Teresa, steps up and overshadows him. I'll be tuning next week when the teams have to come up with a jingle and, apparently, Lisa goes crazy on Dayana again.
Who will be this season's Celebrity Apprentice? Tell me what you think!
