Celebrity Apprentice: QVC Challenge.

In the second task shown on 1/30/2017, the 6 surviving celebrities were met at Gold’s Gym by Celebrity Apprentice 2015 winner Leeza Gibbons and Patrick Schwarzenegger. Arnold “The Governor” Schwarzenegger arrived and launched into one of his little reminiscences: he first trained at this very gym when he came to America.

The teams will compete at selling gym equipment through QVC. They have to negotiate for what they want to sell from 4 pieces of equipment, assuming they wanted to sell the same item. As it turned out, they didn’t. They needed to price the item and pitch it live from Muscle Beach. The team that makes the most money in 8 minutes wins $50,000 for the project manager’s charity.

Team Prima: Project manager: Carson Kressley. Members: Boy George, Lisa Leslie

Team Arete: Project manager: Brooke Burke-Charvet. Members: Laila Ali, Matt Iseman

On Prima, Carson decided his experience as a “QVC god” meant he had to do the live selling. He also thought Boy George’s 94 lb. weight loss story would make a great testimonial. Lisa worried that they would not connect with the women but Carson insisted on the testimonial, in spite of the fact that he relied on Lisa to choose their item just because of her athletic prowess. Lisa accepted that and decided she would “produce the crap” out of it. Boy George cracked that she was playacting at producing: “Actually, you’re not Oprah.” Their item is Oyo’s DoubleFlex Total Body Gym. They priced it at $99 because they felt anything over $100 would be a hindrance to sales. That’s how much it is on Amazon too. Leeza came by to get a gander at their progress. She agreed with their pricing strategy wholeheartedly but suggested that not using Lisa up front may have been a bad move. Carson defended his decision by pointing out that viewers would not believe that superfit Lisa would even need the Body Gym. Boy George produced his “before” picture and Leeza could not believe her eyes. She conceded that it may indeed turn out to be their secret weapon.

On Arete, they were working with the Obsidian Slide Board, with exercise DVDs, booties and mitts). They priced at $109.99 because buyers might be turned off by the 4-week shipping period and they might need that extra $10 from each unit sold to beat Team Prima. Hmmm, it’s the very same price on QVC. Brooke chose Laila to demonstrate the product with her and tasked Matt with the producer gig. Leeza visited and dropped the news on Brooke that pricing over $100 stunk, especially when she already had the shipping obstacle.

Carson impressed Patrick and Leeza with his delivery at Team Prima’s presentation but Lisa noticed that the order volume was pretty flat. The volume spiked when Boy George gave his testimonial. For some odd reason, Lisa had not been told to let them know when the call volume was flat and didn’t think of it herself but she did think to remind them about Boy George’s disclaimer that he didn’t lose weight because of the product. What the hell good was his testimonial then? Oh, he bought one and said he was going to use it for maintenance. After he said that he uses bigger items for clothes hangers, we figured he was really going to use this one for a doorstop.

Brooke wasn’t giving Matt any direction for Team Arete’s presentation. She preferred everything to be live and spontaneous. so Matt was kind of left hanging but he took action when he noticed a drop in calls and told her to get Laila in there and the calls went up when Laila did her thing.

Both teams had live fitness models but with Brooke and Laila also participating in the action, Arete definitely had the advantage. As it turned out, they sold far more units than Team Prima, 4-week shipping and $109.99 price notwithstanding. Prima’s sold 88 units and made $8,798. Arete blew them out of the water with 156 units and $17,158. Brooke’s $50,000 win was her second for Operation Smile.

The Governor really put his foot in his mouth telling Lisa that she looks amazing “for her age.” Lisa is actually a year younger than Brooke, and it was just a wildly inappropriate remark coming from a 69-year-old man who has obviously had a lot of plastic surgery on his face and is 2 decades older than Lisa. Leeza Gibbons put her face down on her arms as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Carson, Lisa and Boy George remained in the boardroom to sink or swim. Carson thought that either the customer didn’t like the product or it was their presentation. Lisa was blamed for not saying anything when the numbers weren’t going anywhere and the Governor thought that she should have taken it upon herself to get out there in the front. They also thought Boy George’s testimonial was too short. Despite Carson’s stellar record of 2/2, he was terminated because of this major defeat. Lisa also got the axe for not being more helpful and also because she has appeared in the boardroom 5 times, but more likely so they could narrow it down to 4 and finish up the show in 2 more episodes. Lisa did not really deserve to be fired on this one.

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