Celebrity Pie Face Recap: 2015 Celebrity Apprentice Debut

The first task for the Celebrity Apprentice cast in the 2-hour debut of Season 7 (1/4/2015) was creating and selling their own celebrity pies at Pie Face. Trump met his freezing celebrities in Rockefeller Center and said the team that earned the most money would win but the Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro, would pick the best pie and Toshiba would chip in a big bonus for that.

This season was taped about a year ago, early in 2014 and significant changes have occurred since then. It was taped before the sudden death of comedy icon Joan Rivers who was as a judge during a couple of episodes. (Not this one. Piers Morgan joined Ivanka and Donald Trump in the boardroom for the debut). The Cake Boss got arrested for drunk driving in November 2014 and pleaded guilty in December. He got a 3-month license suspension license, a drunk driving program and a $300 fine.

But the very awkward elephant in the room for the viewer wasn’t even on the show: embattled comedian Bill Cosby. That controversy is due to heat back up later this week when Cosby is scheduled to perform 3 shows in Canada, despite planned protests. In the Apprentice debut, however, Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy Huxtable on The Cosby Show) was taken to task for not putting in a call to Cosby for a charitable donation– but that came up in the boardroom, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Team Vortex: Nobody came up with anything to trump (pun intended) the first team name offered by Geraldo Rivera, so that was that, and “logically”, he was also chosen project manager. From the world of sports, we have Johnny Damon, Terrell Owens and Sig Hansen; from acting: Ian Ziering and Lorenzo Lamas; from music, Kevin Jonas; and for comic relief, the irrepressible Gilbert Gottfried, official Balloon Supervisor. Kevin worried that alpha male Geraldo would be hard to work with and whined about it whenever he could throughout the whole 2 hours.

Reality star Kenya Moore’s suggestion, Team Infinity, got the vote over Team Gold and Team Trojan Horse (yikes!). Keshia Knight Pulliam volunteered to be project manager. Also on Team Infinity from acting: Vivica A. Fox; from sports: Shawn Johnson and Jamie Anderson; reality stars, Brandi Glanville and Kate Gosselin; and TV host Leeza Gibbons. Brandi was hoping that Kenya didn’t bring the Bravo drama along with her. Psst — Brandi, by the look on her face, we’re sure she did.

The guys made a savory low-calorie chicken pot pie that the Cake Boss thought needed salt. They also made a sweet pie based on the “ice box” cake recipe of Mrs. Kevin Jonas. But the burnt pie shells ruined those.

The ladies’ savory offering was an enchilada taco pie that had too many flavors going on for the Cake Boss, but they “nailed it” with their sweet pear and blueberry pie that was Jamie Anderson’s idea. So we knew that the bonus was going to the ladies.

In the meantime, Geraldo had been very busy getting big money donors to chip in like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. The $20K, $15K and $10K contributions were coming in hot and heavy, burnt pie shells notwithstanding. The ladies won $25,000 for baking their little hearts out, but that didn’t help them at all. Even with that bonus, they only took in $93,862, while Team Vortex racked up $185,322. Kevin Jonas gave Geraldo a big handshake and a “Great job!” after their win was announced, despite his earlier efforts to make his project manager look bad because he didn’t know Lorenzo only made $100 and Terrell was the second lowest earner, not Ian (say EYE-an).

Kenya was all too happy to put Keshia’s head on the chopping block by pointing out that she refused to call her TV dad with the “deep pockets”. Keshia explained that she had not spoken to Cosby for over 5 years and it was just not her style to call someone up out of the blue to hit them up for cash. Since it was for charity, Trump was not impressed. Keshia brought Kate (who didn’t earn any money) and Jamie back to the boardroom for the final showdown and tried her best to get Kate fired. Donald Trump was unhappy since he thought credit for the $25K bonus was properly due to Jamie. But we don’t think that tactic (only giving Jamie $5K credit for her idea) did Keshia in. No, Keshia pretty much shot herself in the foot in two ways: by saying she wanted to “go big or go home”. She was criticized again for not calling Bill Cosby. Also, while she straight up told Kate that her donation that didn’t arrive didn’t count, she kept trying to get credit for her donation that didn’t arrive. So Keshia was the first to make the trip to the elevator and told us as she was driven away that it wasn’t fair. She would tell her side on the Jan. 5th Today Show.

Trump did give Keshia a $25K donation to her charity, Kamp Kizzy. The men won $280K for Geraldo’s charity, Life’s WORC, that helps developmentally disabled and severely autistic people.

Two more episodes of Celebrity Apprentice are coming up Monday evening and, hopefully, Kate’s donor will come through. As for Lorenzo (who said his ex-wives took all his money), we hope he really was saving someone as Piers suggested or we can’t expect him to be around much longer.

Another thing that has changed drastically since the taping: Pie Face shut down all of its New York location except one in October 2014.