The Final Two: Celebrity Apprentice

The whole first hour of Celebrity Apprentice on 2/9/2015 was devoted to Top Celebrity Apprentice Moments — feuds, fails, fundraising, firings (the 4 Fs), backstabbing and betrayals and winners. Then we picked up where we left off last week. Well, hours later, according to Leeza. She has to return to the boardroom with Geraldo and Vivica where Trump informs them that he fired everyone on Team Infinity and now, he was going to skip the competition between the three of them and whittle it down to two before the next task would even begin.

Both Geraldo and Leeza think the one to go should be Vivica. However, Leeza must have expected Vivica to put up a fight because the whole time that Vivica was explaining why she might as well just bow out, Leeza sat there with her mouth agape. Vivica is a smart classy lady. She saw the handwriting on the wall, and yes, we have seen disappointed feedback that Vivica gave up too easy. But her assessment that Geraldo has the big money connection and Leeza will be a stronger leader was both honest and accurate.

On the plus side, Vivica won $50K for her charity in the project she headed up. She was satisfied with the position she arrived at and the fact that Kenya Moore got the boot before she did.

So, as expected, Geraldo and Leeza are the final two. The prize for the final task is $250K for charity. They are playing for Life’s WORC and Leeza’s Care Connection. Each one has to produce a commercial to sell Universal Orlando Resort vacations. It will air at a red carpet event in New York City where Universal executives will judge their work on creativity, presentation and the amount of money raised. Trump claims that doesn’t make Geraldo a shoo-in because of his billionaire connections because money won’t be the most important factor.

After flying to Orlando, Leeza and Geraldo meet the Celebrity Apprentices brought back to help them:

Geraldo gets Ian Ziering, Vivica Fox and Lorenzo Lamas. The presence of Ian in particular makes Geraldo feel like Trump is playing a joke on him. But Ian assures him their past rivalry was nothing personal and he intends to be an asset. Although they have a meeting to discuss ideas, as usual, it is only Geraldo’s ideas that matter. Geraldo wants to be an investigative reporter. He will take kids to the Harry Potter expansion area and then he’ll be Harry Potter, too. Did we mention that Geraldo is nuts?

Leeza gets Kevin Jonas, Brandi Glanville and Johnny Damon. Kevin says the reason he has come back is to crush Geraldo but from the looks of Geraldo’s ideas, he won’t have to work too hard at the redemption he seeks. Leeza wants to base her theme on the Magic of Memories and wants to get Olivia Newton-John to sing her hit song “Magic”. They worry about overusing the word magic and making their slogans too Disney-esque.

The Universal executives visit both teams and explain that they’ll have access to both sides of the theme park. Ian asks the executives what specific message they want to get out there and they learn it is about discovering your own inner hero. Geraldo says it’s something like his idea “Courage, kids. The dragon is real,” and the execs acknowledge that he breathes fire. Geraldo then claims that moment was when the light went off in his mind and he knew that was their angle. How creative — not!

During the rest of the episode, Johnny and Brandi slacked off on their assignments, becoming separated from Leeza and Kevin. Geraldo got very frustrated with his team and decided he would also take over the directing. Next week, we will get to see the commercials and the winner. It does look like Geraldo’s micro-management will do him in, not to mention his transparent self-aggrandizing.

Whatever, we still want Leeza to win just so Geraldo doesn’t. How about you?