The CELEBRITY APPRENTICE - Episode 3

The Celebrity Apprentice, episode 3: the deaf man walking.

We open on those no longer in the boardroom waiting to see who returns of the three still downstairs; Nadia, Carol and Nely. The mood is jovial, the wine flowing. Jennie, Omarossa, Piers and MariLu are sitting around a coffee table.

Before the Project Manager (Nely) had to decide who to bring into the boardroom with her, Trump asked Jennie who he should fire. Piers, glass in hand, cheerfully recounts the moment.

“It was like a scene out of Goodfellas.
(Imitating Jennie) “I find it incredibly difficult.
(Imitating Trump) “Name someone, Jennie.”
He makes a pistol with his hand.
“Nadia.”
He turns and shoots MariLu in the face, complete with a little kid’s/Marvel Comics gun firing sound effect, “Pooksh.”

As Jennie cringes at the laughter, tearful Nely and tough Carol arrive. Nadia, you’re pooksh.

Morning, exterior. Trump, Ivanka and three civilians exit from a black limo and stroll down to a boardwalk beside a river. It must be the East, because Trump asks Vince (The Soprano’s Big Pussy, not Entourage’s little pussy. Yeah, I know I used the same line in the prologue, but who reads prologues? It’s not like you need them to do the report, right?), “How many bodies do you think are in this river?”

Trump intros one of the civilians. “The great Jim Kramer from Mad Money on CNBC.” (Fight between CNBC’s Kramer and Sienfeld’s Kramer: who’d win? Hint: CNBC’s guy is on the show to be Tweedledum to Ivanka’s Tweedledee.) The other two are Kodak execs. The challenge is to outfit an Airstream and stage a prototype for a traveling promotional venue for Kodak’s new home photo printer.

A twist: Trump asks Gene Simmons, the man most responsible for Hydra’s sweep of the first two competitions, to PM for Empressario. The women do not look impressed. Gene accepts.

In the car Simmons lets them know he operates as a benevolent dictator. He also (and again) forsakes meeting with the client. Hey, he’s 2-0. It’s worked for him so far. An idea comes to him; a tagline from a higher dimension: “It’s a Kodak world.” I will tell you how many times he says this in the show at the end of this recap.

Hydra meets with the client. Kodak tells them their technology allows their printer to use an ink that sells for half what photo ink currently sells for. I just finished printing our Christmas pics. I’m sold. Kodak makes it clear: they must promote that the ink cost drops by half for their printer.

Nely and Carol return from meeting with Kodak. During the meeting Nely did most of the talking, leaving the Kodak execs looking a little peeved. “This is the most important thing they said: we are selling this printer. That’s what we are selling. We are selling those machines.” She never mentions the ink.

Simmons speaks to the camera, and it’s kind of scary. He’s convinced that he has come up with the greatest branding slogan in the history of such things. Not only that – it is what Kodak needs, even if they don’t know they need it. Praise God he never became a home renovations contractor.

At Hydra, Steven’s bi-polar dial is way over on the manic side. Piers says it was the Red Bull. In either case, he walks around on top of the meeting room table (did I mention Ivanka is in the room?), exhorting them to excellence in what he obviously thinks is a motivational speakerish way but is actually more like, in Piers’ words, “A rampaging rhinoceros with a spear in its back”. Cut to Steven at a wall covered with sheets of notebook paper. On them he has written, ABC, 123, VIP, MVP, MPE. Pointing to each in turn, he says them aloud, as if teaching a class.

Piers has had enough. He says they are going to deliver a knock-out to the competition with the half-price ink, so they should show Lennox and Tito (the most uninvolved PM to ever appear on The Apprentice. He’s so uninvolved I forgot he was the PM) knocked out by the printer. The others agree.

The task moves along. Empressario’s Simmons should be wearing ermine, the way he struts. They get the Airstream outfitted and painted beautifully. Steve, climbing down from once again standing on the table, tips it and spills a full cup of coffee into the keyboard of the laptop that contains all the graphics Hydra has spent the day preparing.

The day of the presentation Empressario looks sharp. Kodak World is airbrushed along the sides of the Airstream and a chain of “It’s a Kodak World. Welcome. It’s a Kodak World,” belts the entire trailer. When Kramer comes by to check things out, Simmons takes his hand as one would a child’s and walks him around the Airstream, pointing out that the slogan-belt can be read either way; “It’s a Kodak World. Welcome,” or “Welcome. It’s a Kodak World.” Try this one, Gene: God save all free will will free all save God.

Hydra’s presentation looks like shit. Banner posters, printed after midnight, are taped to the sides. Kramer is furious. The only good things are the posters inside the trailer of Steve’s photos of Lennox and Tito knocked out by the printer and banner’s promoting It’s the INK. And Steve gets brother Alex to drop by and buy a few printers.

Interior, the Boardroom. Trump brings up Simmons’ decision to send Nely and Carol to meet with Kodak rather than attend himself. Simmons does his, “I know best and don’t wish to have to deal with small minds that do not comprehend that I know best” shtick. Trump asks Kramer about Hydra and is told that the presentation stank, but the message was perfect. The choice was Kodak’s and Hydra wins with substance trumping style.

Funny; on the boardwalk by the river, the Kodak duo made it clear that profit was one of the criteria on which the teams would be judged, but it never got mentioned. Could it be that the notion of selling printers out of a trailer to passers-by was ludicrous? Could it be that brother Alex was, in fact, the only sale of the day made by either team, and nothing was mentioned to save Kodak from embarrassment?

Hydra is dismissed. What happened next was bizarre. Simmons refused to admit any fault and continued to maintain that he knew best and Kodak was the true loser. When asked which two he would bring back in the boardroom, he was handed Nely, who accepted the blame for not identifying the client’s needs at the meeting, but instead brought back Jennie and Omarossa, neither of whom made any errors. And Trump had to beg him to do that – he just wanted Omarossa.

When they come back Trump and Simmons do this Laurel and Hardy you-always disagree-with-me, no-I-don’t routine. When Trump says, “Gene, you’re fired,” I almost expect Gene to say, “No. I’m not.”

It was a strange thing to watch, Simmons’ inability to hear anybody but himself. Ivanka was putting her finger on it, I think, when she started to tell him in the boardroom, “You had an idea, it really worked, you promoted yourself in a really incredible way and you promoted it and it worked and now…,” but before she could finish he interrupted her and she never finished the thought. If she had, I think she was going to tell him that he succeeded because he didn’t listen to the naysayers, but all he really learned was not to listen.