Celebrity Apprentice: Winning by a Nose

Wouldn’t we dearly love to see Lisa Lampanelli or Aubrey O’Day get eliminated tonight? Yes! But who we would like to see get fired more? While we try to figure that out, let’s get on with the recap of Winning by a Nose, the 4/22/2012 installment of Celebrity Apprentice.

Tonight the teams met up with Trump in his “humble apartment” in Trump Towers that he rarely shows anyone, and where he indulges his Midas touch …

It’s like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it’s all gold instead of chocolate. ~ Aubrey O’Day

The celebrities were tasked with creating both an in-store display and a slogan for Trump’s new fragrance, Success by Trump, which he will be selling at Macy’s. It will be judged by Martine Reardon, Executive V.P. of Marketing & Advertising at Macy’s; and Cathy Glossman, Trump’s Executive V.P. of Global Licensing. The criteria will be the creativity of the slogan and brand messaging and the in-store display presentation. The prize is $20,0000, but …

if you do something I love, I’m going to increase it to $100,000. ~ Donald Trump

Team Unanimous: Aubrey O’Day took charge of this task and we do mean took charge. Arsenio Hall and Teresa Giudice were her other team members but since she didn’t let them do anything, maybe Aubrey will get the gate if they lose. Aubrey took a Donald Trump quote as their slogan. “Always Trust Your Instincts.” How creative is that? Arsenio promptly showed her it was a direct Trump quote. She decided she would use Eric as a model for a young Donald Trump and he suspected her motive was brownie points.

I think the Latin translation of Aubrey actually means bossy. ~ Arsenio Hall

Team Forte: Clay Aiken was the project manager. Penn Jillette, Lisa Lampanelli and Dayana Mendoza. Their slogan was “You earned it.” Penn came up with the idea to put Dayana in their display looking seductive while cuddling up to a male model, holding Success by Trump. Dayana can’t really get a break because if they lose, they were already planning on selling her down the river. That’s why Lisa was being so nice. LOL.

Lisa’s being very nice … she’s not as volatile anymore but, then again, I hope she’s not trying to bust my peanuts. ~ Dayana Mendoza

Lisa spied on Unanimous. Teresa felt “the win,” but right after she said that, the Success signed crashed to the floor, as if it was a bad omen … but their presentation went quite smoothly.

I’ve really been a Mini Trump! ~ Aubrey O-Day

Forte’s presentation really was awful particularly because Clay was not prepared to talk about it at all. He apparently thought all he had to do was give a short explanation and answer questions. But the judges had no questions and expected him to “keep going.” LOL.

It was a little bit of a surprise when they said ‘keep going’ ~ Clay Aiken

What part of ‘in-store presentation didn’t Clay understand?

In the boardroom, the teams were informed that it was going to be a hard decision because each team had elements that the judges thought were swell, but each also had elements that the judges thought sucked.

The judges loved Audrey’s team takeaway scent sticks and their slogan. They totally hated the silhouette. They loved Dayana’s picture even though they thought it was too large. They hated the “You earned it” slogan, saying it was too arrogant and it wasn’t prominent in their display. Forte really missed the boat by not having any takeaways. We’d say that is what really cost Forte the win because they would have been pretty much even with Unanimous if they had taken care of that detail. And Dayana did suggest it, although Clay deemed it too late to do anything about. All the same, it was a detail that should have been thought of much earlier — by Clay, in our esteemed opinion.

Clay let Lisa Lampanelli escape and brought back Dayana and Penn. We’re amazed that after two shows where the wrong person was brought back and it pissed Trump off, that Clay didn’t have enough brains to let Dayana escape. Clay thought Trump should fire Penn. Dayana and Penn thought it should be Clay because Penn had good ideas, too.

I want to fire Dayana, but I can’t. ~ Donald Trump

Trump also said Dayana has been very cunning and smart. We think he should have fired Clay for being so wishy washy, but he decided to fire Penn.

So we did not get our wish at all. Isn’t it inevitable that Dayana will get her “peanuts” busted next week and end up in the boardroom? At that time, Trump will probably fire her just because he’s sick of seeing her whether she does a good job or not.