The Celebrity Apprentice {Off the Hook}

Warning: This review contains spoilers. Do not read this unless you have seen the episode.

Although I can’t stand reality TV, there is something about reality-competition that I like. I may not watch Survivor or Amazing Race anymore, but I used to watch them all the time.

The one competition show that I continue to watch, and have never stopped watching, is the Apprentice. Even as far into it’s run as it is, I still love this show. I think that is because it is just more intelligent.

You have people taking on business tasks, and getting fired when they fail. I believe that the apprentice is actually more real than any other kind of reality show on TV for that reason.

The current season, which is actually the second season in the last seven months, has returned to the celebrities. I enjoy seeing new, unknown workers who are fighting for a job, but I think the celebrity version may be better.

It is great to see mostly washed-up celebs duke it out for charity. There are always great fights, and I think that this season has had some really good boardrooms. However, I specifically want to discuss this previous episode.

This season has the typical men vs. women format, and the task this week was for them to create a 30 second commercial featuring ACN’s new videophone.

While the executives wanted the teams to go for more emotion, the men went for a current and hip theme. Their commercial featured a young man telling his grandparents that he was engaged.

However, it turned out that he was engaged to a man. The women, on the other hand, went with a more typical theme. Their commercial had a young girl calling her parents, and because her mom was deaf, she was able to use the videophone for sign language.

The men ended up winning and Dionne Warwick was fired. She was fired for leaving early during the editing process and for telling Mr. Trump to fire her because that was the consensus of the team.

However, during the boardroom, only two of the other five women wanted her to leave, while two other women wanted La Toya Jackson to go. Basically, she couldn’t count correctly and pretty much quit.

That is two weeks in a row that a contestant has quit. In the last task, Niki Taylor quit because she felt like the team did great and that she should accept the responsibilities.

That was more understandable, but this was just plain dumb. Don’t get me wrong, Dionne has been very rude during the competition and deserved to go, but I still don’t understand why she did that.

Anyway, this season has been highly entertaining so far. There have been a few standouts for each team.

Nene Leakes, Marlee Matlin, and Star Jones have all done very well on the women’s team. Even though Nene was the project manager of the task this week, she did a good job.

For the men’s team, I am surprised to say that Lil Jon has done very well so far. He won as PM in this task and he has been good throughout the competition. The same could be said for Meat Loaf and John Rich.

However, I do have to discuss Gary Busey for a moment. I can’t help but laugh almost every time he has anything. Although he won as PM a few weeks ago, he has been a poor player.

I do like watching him, but he is a standout for all the wrong reasons. So, again, this show may be a reality show, but it is only one of two on all of TV that I watch.

It is still a great business show, it has great boardroom arguments, and it is very entertaining.

College Couch Potato Grade: B+