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| Bret Michaels and Brande Roderick on All-Star Celebrity Apprentice |
For Donald Trump’s thirteenth shot at NBC’s The Apprentice, he went for what’s won the highest ratings for him (and co-producer Mark Burnett of Survivor fame): celebrities. Last night, All-Star Celebrity Apprentice aired its season 13 premiere - an episode titled “The Wolf in Charge of the Henhouse” - with a cast of eight men and six women: one of them a previous winner (Bret Michaels from Poison), one of them a notorious villain (Omarosa, the titular wolf), and all of them driven. It wasn’t pretty.
Before the credits rolled, three of the Celeb-prentices defined what this season’s show would be about. Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider said “we have to make it crazier.” Trace Atkins, a one-time runner-up and a team captain during this outing said, “I didn’t come here to dick around.” Finally, Stephen Baldwin commented on the array of bizarre personalities on the All-Star cast: “A Rodman, a Busey and a Baldwin means that anything is possible,” said the actor taking into consideration basketballer/ Kim Jong Un’s best buddy Dennis Rodman and outsider actor Gary Busey.
Busey and Baldwin both made it onto "Plan B", Trace Adkins’ team starring Dee Snider, Lisa Rinna, Marilu Henner and Penn Jillette.
Bret Michaels’ group, called "Team Power", hosted Brande Roderick, Claudia Jordan, Dennis Rodman, La Toya Jackson, Lil Jon and Omarosa, who was chosen first by Michaels because of her smarts. Michaels never knew what hit him until it was too late where Omarosa was concerned. She had it in for him from the start - she wanted to take down a previous winner. Then again, so did Trump.
The mogul was annoyed from that unlike Celebrity Apprentice winners Piers Morgan (who ripped into his one-time nemesis Omarosa smartly and mercilessly), Joan Rivers, Arsenio Hall and John Rich, Michaels had chosen to compete instead of act as a judge.
Trump seemed insulted that the rocker refused to join him at the big desk. "You’re asking me to pick you as a winner again, which I thought was crazy," Trump told Michaels, who rather than lead the series’ first challenge, left it up to Roderick – a solid breadwinner but a bubble-headed project leader.
With the challenge focusing on meatball-making and fund raising, the All-Stars acted in accordance with their personalities. Despite coming up with genuinely funny names for his team (Bread Pudding, Sperm Farmers and Cotton Ponies amongst them), Busey was uncomfortably goofy to watch. Omarosa was unrelentingly mean to Michaels, a nice man who just sought to raise additional funds for his Life Rocks Foundation-National Philanthropic Trust. She even quoted the bible (“vengeance is mine”) in her two-hour long take-down of Michaels.
By night’s end, Michaels’ Team Power only collected $250,000 in opposition to Atkins’ Plan B’s $419,000 (Atkins charity was The American Red Cross). Team Power’s project manager Roderick – a Playboy Playmate by trade – didn’t bring underminer Omarosa into the board room. Instead, Roderick brought back LaToya (for no good reason) and Michaels, who may or may not have brought in $25,000 – Omarosa wouldn’t give up the figures. How does that happen? Is no-one accountable for the donations this show solicits?
In the end, Trump’s disgust that a former winner had dared to compete when he could have been a judge is what felled Michaels. Trump fired Bret Michaels, and the Poison singer rode off into the Manhattan night saying that he would always chose to fight to win more money for his cause than merely sit in judgment.
All-Star Celebrity Apprentice airs Sunday 9/8c on NBC
Photo ©NBC
Posted on Monday, March 4, 2013
