I really liked The Apprentice (Donald Trump’s ego-piece reality show) for the first few seasons. I’m not terribly athletic, though I enjoy watching and participating in sports, so Survivor type reality shows, while fun to watch, don’t really let me put myself in the shoes of the contestants. But when TA first aired, I enjoyed watching because I thought, “I could do that.”
Then the show took turn for the worse. The beginning of the end was the live three hour finale of the second season when Donald Trump started asking audience members and surprise celebrity guests (Donald’s good friend Regis!!!) who they thought he should hire, insisting that he hadn’t made his mind up. Unfortunately for the blonde-female runner-up (whose name escapes me), the audience and celebs overwhelmingly supported the ultimate winner (whose name also escapes me.) You had to feel kind of bad for the runner-up, sitting there on live television while everyone talked about how she was terrible compared to the other guy. The whole affair was bloated, self-congratulatory and boring. I thought, “This show is played out.” I kept watching, but not many other people did and the show was briefly canceled after last season’s debacle where the losing team had to sleep in tents outside (seriously…).
I didn’t plan to watch the (pseudo)Celebrity Apprentice. I generally dislike celebrities when they get a chance to strut on tv. I heard that one of the contestants was going to be reality-villain “Omarosa” from the first season, who was coming back for redemption. That was strike two. So, I didn’t watch the first episode when it aired.
But I was bored while eating lunch in my office last week, so I went to NBC.com and watched the first episode, which is posted in its entirety without commercials (thanks, no doubt to the Writer’s Guild strike). It was actually pretty fun to watch. The task was to sell hot dogs on a street in NYC for charity. (Frankly some of the “celebs” are so washed up I suspect they could use the money themselves, but charity causes on celebrity reality shows are mandated by some unwritten network edict.) The women, headed up by Omarosa put on cheesy looking matching outfits and tried to sell as many $5.00 hot dogs as they could. The men’s team easily flanked the women when team member Gene Simmons (the surprising star of the show) got on the phone and started telling his friends to bring $5,000.00 in cash to buy a hot dog for charity. I’m not sure most of my friends would pay $5.00 for a charity hot dog, but Gene Simmons pulled it off.
Last night, the second episode aired and it was even better than the first. The task was to come up with an ad for some dog food company’s pet adoption program. Gene Simmons took over for the guys and he and Stephen Baldwin really nailed it for the guys. The women, on the other hand, turned the task over to a woman that I recognize but don’t know, who insisted that she knew how to produce television, etc. The women’s commercial was amazing amateurish.
The best part of the show, though, is Gene Simmons absolute disregard for Trump, his spawn, his own teammates, and the “executives” from the dog food company. Trump’s daughter came prancing in to see what the guys were up to and Simmons pretty much dismissed her. He said, “she’ll wait” then asked her if she was going to tell her “sisters” on the women’s team what the guys were up to, since daughter-Trump is of the female persuasion.
Gene Simmons also comically blew off the executives that were judging the task. One of the unwritten rules of TA is that the first thing a team has to do is have a sit down with the executives of whatever company is providing the task to get an idea what they want. Most of the guys wanted to do that, Simmons rejected it and called it a waste of time. Then, when it came for the presentation, Simmons showed up in sunglasses and when the exec said he was disappointed they didn’t consult with him at the beginning of the task, Simmons essentially said, “Whatever….”
The sheer audacity of Gene Simmons makes this show. They’re replaying both episodes on Saturday night, so watch it if you get a chance.
lululeelee said
I liked it too! Gene is the star for really. I will tell you though that Omarosa is so annoying I may have to boycott!