The Celebrity US Apprentice: recapped

It seemed like another normal bloated two hour US Apprentice ... but then, it all got far, far worse. How could it be worse? We're on hand to cover simply everything Apprenticey, so can tell you.

In this week's US Apprentice, promises the TV guide, 'one celebrity gets sick'. You would think the name of the episode would be 'The episode where we suddenly sneak in half of the next episode without telling you', but no, they led on the sick thing.

One celebrity gets sick. But how sick? Really sick, you ask? Colourfully sick? Sick all over the other celebrities sick? And most importantly, WILL there be midgets? And what's the horrifying twist at the end? If you want to know these and other such desperately important matters of business - our ongoing mission to recap anything Apprenticey will provide.

It begins, as it always does.

Last week, on the Apprentice

We get to see the enormous surprise of last week's boardroom, with Khloe being fired for drunk driving last year (and for taking time off her Apprenticing to see to her court-mandated responsibilities) "I was really upset, because Clint was a jackass" says Joan Rivers, correctly. But Khloe went for the previous DUI, and Tionne went because she volunteered to come into the boardroom to support her project manager.

It wasn't the greatest week in the history of justifiable decisions.

And then we see the slogan popping up in the opening titles:

But, having seen the shenanigans of last week's boardroom, that doesn't really ring true. It feels like it's more "It's neither business nor personal; it's just random". That's not so catchy.


The teams have to provide an in-store display for some kind of service that claims to stop people stealing your identity.


Natalie, tall, blonde and mightily golfy, has the honour of being project manager for KOTU. In reality, this may end up being more a role of babysitting Joan Rivers and Clint Black, who very openly hate each other.

For the other team: Brian McKnight is stepping up: again. He's looking mildly confused about doing so, as he was away playing a concert all through last week's task, so looks slightly shell-shocked about being handed the leader hat so suddenly, especially by champion back-seat-driver Annie Duke.

We see Annie talking about her lack of project-managerness. "You may think I haven't stepped up to the project manager role: and that's completely deliberate". The wee ginger snake.


In the planning rooms, however, the title of project manager seems to be a bit of a large and empty hat. Brian - who was away Annie asks the company representatives what their three buzz words are: 'protection, confidence and security', they say. If this doesn't end up with a large display involving the concept of putting a condom over your whole identity, I will be very disappointed.

It doesn't, and I am. Booooo.

They end up with very obvious ideas: Natalie and KOTU are going with the concept of having a safe, well done them. And Brian and Athena are concentrating on padlocks.


Melissa Rivers likes punctuation. There we are; proving there's truth in the statement that you learn something new every day (whether you want to or not) that's a lesson to take away from this week. Melissa? She LOVES herself some punctuation. She's just reading potential slogans out to herself "Easy, period! Safe, period! I love punctuation!" She yells, to the interest of apparently no one. "Period!"

No matter how much time I spend in the states or how far I get from actually being the right age to find primary school humour funny, there's still something that makes me want to go "Hee hee hee! She said period! She shouted it! Hee!"


Clint and Herschel go to Brooklyn to work with the display manufacturers, who … well, they manufacture displays. I don't know where I was going with that sentence. Of course they do that.

The display men agree to build the shape of a safe out of wood, without even once saying"Really? That's dull, isn't it?", so they're obviously professionals.

Meanwhile, Athena send Jesse and Brande onto the streets of Manhattan to - it appears - take pictures of padlocks until he runs out of film, padlocks, or island.

Sadly, this doesn't seem to have happened by 3.30, at which point Annie, back at base, thinks to ask whether anyone had contacted the display manufacturers (they manufacture displays, you know). They haven't. She tuts, and rolls her eyes and points fingers, quietly, at all the people she thinks should have been in charge of this task. Anyone but her, basically.

Eventually she rings the display makers in Brooklyn, who say that they need the design and materials by 4pm.

Railing, Annie rings Jesse and Brande and tells them to stop taking pictures of padlocks tout suite, and get to Brooklyn. They're on the way there when Jesse starts getting poorly. Which brings us to …


Yes, the main attraction of the episode has arrived, and … Jesse James has a tummy bug!

He visits the toilet a LOT in the middle-section of this episode.

Now, that wasn't quite as colourful or as gory as I was hoping - mainly just shots of the outside of a toilet door - but frankly I'm quite glad of that.


Annie is upset at Brian McKnight not taking control of the team; she's angry at other people for not communicating deadlines to the display team; she's angry at the display team for not getting things organised in time. It's the kind of thing you'd think she might have a right to be angry about … if she'd only step up and be a project manager - just once. Because if she knows so much better, why doesn't she just take control?


Are dull, and mainly stick to the facts about identity control and how this magnificent display stand combats that; you might have hoped that Brian McKnight would turn this into a Brian McKnight concert, as he did the last time they had to do a presentation - but he doesn't.

He just talks about identity fraud prevention. Which is dull.

Similarly, you might hope for a Joan Rivers spectacular, as you would normally get if you requested she do anything more interactive than stapling … but she just talks about identity fraud prevention as well. Yawn.

Better than this is when we cut to a commercial break and discover that the company in question's current advertising campaign in the real world consists of nothing more than a bad actress in a terrible wig talking about how identity fraud is generally a bad thing. So yes, fair enough: they seem to need all the help they can get.


Suddenly I realise that, alarmingly, the tasks are done, the presentations made, and it's only 45 minutes into the programme. That leaves us with a ridiculous hour and a quarter left for boardroom - which, in a non-contentious week, is just insane. In fact any week that would be insanely bloated. Rubbish. Look, I can do it in FAR less.

The executives thought: that KOTU used their celebritiness well, but that the product should have been for sale on the display.
They thought it was good that Athena had the product freely available on the display, and liked the presentation, but essentially:

KOTU won. Better packaging and celebrity endorsement, as well as a (admittedly joke-free, but still good) Joan Rivers presentation won it.

Fingers point, though mainly at Brian for being a bit weak as a team leader (and not getting up and doing a song at the presentation, I totally think that's why they lost it).

JOAN RIVERS THROWS A FIT about the fact that Annie was saying she wanted Brande to go, but didn't speak up about that to The Trumpster, and now Melissa is going back into the boardroom. Mama hen is not happy, and tells everyone so. Twice.

BACK IN THE BOARDROOM Brian admits that he's somewhat lost his drive for the show, and kinda doesn't want to be there any more.

So now he won't be. Brian is FIRED, it is 1hr 12m into the show.


Trump calls all the contestants back into the boardroom, and announces a twist: the next task starts right now.


Oh, this is just taking the piss. Trump announces that they will be holding a fashion show and jewellery auction.

"My daughter Ivanka is a very special person" says Trump "with a very small mouth". Ok, he doesn't say that second bit. "She has a jewellery line that's going very very well" though not well enough, apparently, that it can't do with a slab of free advertising on a major network.

So those are the bits of jewellery that the celebrities will be auctioning off. Nice. So it's a case of calling all their celebrity friends, and trying them to get them to buy some novelty trinkets for obscenely large cheques.

The celebrities are clearly underwhelmed to hear this: they're a bit tired, poor poppets, they've been having to work business hours for whole DAYS in a row now.

However, as could have been foretold:


… for the week will be Annie on the one side (Athena), and Joan Rivers on the other.


Is done in a tired and grumpy fashion. Annie assigns roles with an iron fist, everyone just grunts and takes them: except Melissa who starts whining.

Joan just gets people to start calling their big earning pals as soon as they get to a safe place: this is where they will lose if they lose, and she knows it.


"Whoever earns the least money, that's who I'm taking into the boardroom" says Annie, loudly and bolshily, to anyone who'll listen. The people listening, in this instance, are Brande and Jesse.

Jesse, who works as hard as ten other celebrities, but doesn't have as many high-rolling friends, is not impressed. The contacts he's got, he says, he would rather save for the week when the profits would go to his chosen charity; it seems a little mealy-mouthed, but you understand what he means.


Celebrities: they front a lot of causes arguing that we should all just get along. Well: can't they all just get along?

Apparently not.

"It's the bleeeeep lord of the flies" snaps Melissa, tightlipped, which, weirdly, makes her look more like a frog than ever. You would hope this would mean that at some point she might reach out and eat both the offending teammates with a 20-foot tongue, but no, this doesn't happen.

Her problem is that suddenly, Brande and Annie are the best of friends. This is not unexpected: Professional Playboy Bunny Brande happens to know about pretty ladies in pretty things and men who will pay for that, and Annie is keen on that combination.

They are annoyingly pally, though it's not as if Melissa is any less annoying though, is it?

Meanwhile, Joan and Clint have reached some kind of uneasy peace, and Jesse is gritting his teeth and quietly hating everyone. Happy celebrity families, this is not.


Annie is as pushy as you might expect with the fund-raising: her main selling point on this whole show has been that she hangs out with people who throw money around both for a living, and for fun: she's going to raise the most money. Brande also knows people who like chucking funds about: Melissa and Jesse, meanwhile, do not. They sit looking by turns wounded and grumpy about the whole thing.

KOTU, meanwhile, are also having problems: there are only so many people they know with money, and only so many times they can hit them up. Natalie, particularly, doesn't like asking her friends with money for money. Her strategy is a difficult one: she wants to find a poker rival who wants to stick it to Annie, and get them along for the ride.

It's a hard strategy, and I can't see it's going to work, but I fully support their filthy underhandness in thinking it up.

"I've got some friends who could contribute some stuff, but I'd rather win by hard work." Says Jesse, again. Oh, my dear, dear love. That's NEVER going to work.


Picking jewellery is left to Melissa and Natalie. Melissa picks large ugly statement pieces that will easily be seen from the catwalk; Natalie picks small ugly yet more 'tasteful' pieces that someone might actually wear. When Natalie gets back to Joan's war room, Joan clearly wishes she had her daughter on her team instead. Anyone who has happened upon Joan's QVC collection will know why.

Picking models is a considered thing for Athena, who think about hair colour, variety, and who can show an imaginary bracelet off the best. It is less so for KOTU, who leave Clint and Herschel to the task, who mainly seem to sit in their chairs and gibber and dribble at the sight of attractive women.

The teams pick some clothes. Joan Rivers gets some loud punchy pieces, the other team run into an argument when Melissa feels like Brande is spending more time picking out what she personally should wear than what all the real models should wear.


We see Trump briefing a mysterious man, but can only see the back of his head. He gives a run down on the task, the main players, and the characters to look out for.

"Thanks for taking care of this for me" says Trump "I trust you".

And then the mystery overseer turns around and we see the full horror, curly-topped and full face…

"There's only one Celebrity Apprentice, and that's me" says Piers Sodding Morgan, who won last year's season: "I'm back".

Oh sodding brilliant. As if I needed any more reasons to be done with this version of the show.

Welome back, Piers!

And then it suddenly finishes until next week. So, 45 minutes on it this week, the full two hours next? Christ alive, that takes bloated to a whole new extreme…