Post firing, Carolla shared some interesting insights on his March 13th episode of The Adam Carolla Show. Give it a listen because he describes how the show’s editing distorted the real reception of his task, and how he was led majorly astray by an unseen producer. If you’ve come this far, then it’s fascinating stuff.
Did they get it right this time? Join me after the jump to find out...
THE TASK
What kind of foolish busy work will Trump allocate the teams this week? I’m actually hoping that they skip the pretense of “business skills” altogether and get the gang to literally jump back and forth through hoops for nine consecutive hours.
No, but it’s close. They have to make a viral video which advertises a mop. Don’t those two concepts slide perfectly together. Don’t you find yourself constantly forwarding your facebook friends advertisements for mops? This is a sure thing!
Trump seems mighty friendly with a cleaning company who have apparently been cleaning floors for a hundred years. Despite having watched the entire 90 minute episode I have no idea what the company’s name is, so that might give you a sneaky indication of how successful these videos were.
Lou Ferrigno has been repeatedly marked as the weakest link by his teammates who essentially see him as a useless slab of occasionally grunting meat. Perpetually pissed at being fingered in the boardroom, Lou - as previously teased - steps up as Project Manager for Team Unanimous and his first act as PM (to prove he’s not a muscle-bound meathead) is to tear off his jacket and start doing push-ups on the clean floor of the visiting executives. Can Lou flex his way to success?
On the women’s team Wayne’s World alumni Tia Carerre is also sick of being picked on and she steps up as Project Manager. When Trump hears the news he inexplicably humiliates Tia for the 500th time this season saying something along the lines of, “Good. It’s about time you did something. What the hell has happened to you, you stupid idiot?” Tia gracefully grins and bears the abuse.
Great. Now let’s shoot an unmissable video about this damn mop!
WOMEN’S PLAN
The star of the women’s team this episode is fiesty faux redhead Aubrey O’Day, and not because she comes up with a lot of the team’s ideas, but mostly because she is an irredeemable monster. She’s rapidly proving to be the most abrasive and unlikeable person on the show, and that’s saying something when you’re working alongside Lisa Lampanelli who looks positively sweet by comparison. Aubrey continues to be a delusional, conceited mean girl who quips to the camera, “I’m glad Tia’s project manager. The mop is 100 years old and so is Tia.”
Does this comment strike anyone else to be extremely short-sighted of Aubrey? She’s attractive, yes. I’ll give her that - but even that’s fake. If she didn’t have overly styled fake red hair and huge fake eyelashes she’d be even less so. But what amazes me most when I hear Aubrey rag on Tia and Debbie Gibson, is does Aubrey O’Day think that she won’t get old? What is Aubrey going to look like in 20 years? If she’s on the Celebrity Apprentice now, how famous will she be in 2032? Aubrey seems to obliviously seed so much badwill that I honestly wonder what motivates her. Perhaps we’ll get a little glimpse of what lurks beneath the surface later in the episode...
Oh yeah - the mop.
The women make the bizarre decision to film a series of vox pops where they sound like they’re talking about the amount of men they’ve slept with but in an Shyamalan-worthy twist they’re actually talking about how many mops they’ve used. BOOOINNNG!!! Ladies be zany!
Miss Universe, Dayana, takes it the furthest. She starts writing mop/penis innuendo about how her first time was terrible but she’s now found the perfect way to hold it because of its shape. And probably something about sitting on it or something. God knows what was cut but even foul-mouthed Lampanelli thinks its too racy. Is the Cock Mop advertisement destined to fail?
When Trump’s son, duck-ass Donald Jr. rocks up to check on their progress they ask him what his “number” is and he guffaws and blushes. He says “zero” but then quickly clarifies that he means zero mops (because he pays mop-handlers). The women look shocked as though he meant zero humans.
Although she belittled her last week, Aubrey makes friends with Debbie Gibson purely so that she can have someone to bitch about Tia with. They begin writing a late night infomercial quality presentation to proceed their video and Dayana is beginning to feel a little left out. After a couple of episodes of peace Lampanelli finally starts losing it again and screams that everyone doesn’t need to be in the spotlight. Lampanelli is super scary when she’s angry. You ever seen a mother in the supermarket, at the end of her tether, screaming like a maniac through her gritted teeth at her kids? That’s how Lisa treats everyone around her when she’s pissed. I’m beginning to sense a Jeckyll and Hyde thing here because she’s actually quite nice when she wants to be. When angered though, she Hulks out more than Ferrigno. Trust me. She could kill him.
MEN’S PLAN
I know I refer to American Chopper’s Paul Teutul Snr as The Walrus, but I don’t mean to mock the man at all because he’s a talented, tough guy who has my utmost respect. He has zero time for bullshit, he just gets the job done. He doesn’t know or care what a “viral video” is. The Walrus is dreaming about eating a seal.
Surprise tension is brewing between Clay Aiken and my personal favourite to win - Penn Jillette. As the men discuss concepts, Penn shoots many of them down. He also has to explain the meanings of a lot of words to Lou who takes the executives literally when they say that the mop has to be the “hero” of the commercial. Lou wants to do a superhero shoot and no doubt take off his shirt and grunt and punch things. Clay decides to back Lou and accuses Penn of being superior and condescending. Apparently it’s not cool to be smart? Jesus Christ, Penn, you party pooper! Let the team be dumb if it wants to! Still, Clay’s words weigh heavy on Penn’s giant, racehorse-like heart.
Lou Ferrigno isn’t content to just project manage - he will also be the only on-camera star of the shoot. Walrus Paul coins the great slogan, “I’m gonna’ mop the floor with you” and Lou will say it menacingly into the camera, threatening the unseen “viewer”. Only problem is Lou can’t speak in complete sentences, mainly due to his hearing issues so after many takes Clay has to coach him on how to pronounce certain sounds so he stops saying “jirty” instead of “dirty.” They then cut their losses and get Lou to dance like a maniac with the mop. Surprisingly Lou has some super smooth moves and seductively swings the mop and shakes his Hulk-ass like a lady.
Afterwards Clay and Penn awkwardly hash out their differences. Basically Clay is emotional and Penn is logical. I still like Clay by the end of it - even though he’s wrong. This is survival of the fittest. Let the mammoth mind of Penn crush all that oppose!
WOMEN’S VIDEO
The women’s video is vague and much of the innuendo is lost. What the hell are they talking about again? Oh right... a mop. Everyone is confused and so embarrassed they could shit. Patricia crazy over-acts too. It all sails so far over Trump’s head it barely brushes his pompadour.
MEN’S VIDEO
Lou Ferrigno dances with a mop. Tell me, do you really need a team of men and a full day to shoot Lou Ferrigno dancing? This could have been done in 20 minutes with a webcam and Lou’s bedroom. Shocking.
BOARDROOM
The men are pretty confident in the boardroom. Apart from some dirty lowdown stabs at Penn for having a brain in his colossal head, it’s pretty much agreed that Project Manager Ferrigno did a really good job. That is to say, Lou is considered to have done a good job because, in Penn’s words, Lou “danced like a monkey”. That passes for business acumen now. Monkey dancing. Crazy.
But wait... wasn’t Adam Carolla criticized last week for not utilising his entire team enough in the task? Apparently this week that doesn’t matter anymore. Lou dancing was plenty to sate the increasingly morose Trump.
And to further underline how much Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of this anymore he continually interrupts the competitors with random tangents. Like Arsenio is talking serious business and Trump just goes, “You know I used to love your show. That was a great show. Good job!” And Arsenio is like, “Uh.... Okaaaay... thanks.” Get your head in the game, Donald! Next week the competitors will be in mid fight and Don will go, “You know what I like? Hamburgers. Mmmmm. MmmmmMmm... You boys like hamburgers? Penn! I bet you’ve enjoyed a hamburger in your time!”
The women’s team are far more interesting. Tia tries to play it nice but Lampanelli’s not afraid to call her out and expose her weaknesses. There’s also a minor coup against Miss Universe Dayana who is agreed to be dirty-minded and largely useless. But the lowest blow comes from Aubrey who refers to Tia as being in her “fifties”. Tia is mortified and even Trump is flabbergasted at the low blow. Aubrey is such a nasty piece of work as she descends upon Tia like a screeching seagull on a chip.
Tia blames Aubrey’s sorority mentality and then the real cracks start to appear. An upset Aubrey defends that she was fat and unpopular in high school and we begin to see where all her wretched insecurity is coming from. I think she’s so terrified of being thought of as unattractive or unpopular that she has to remind us of how wonderful she thinks she is. Every couple of minutes. I hate to break it to you, Aubrey, but chances are that in the future you will be fat and unpopular again. Everybody will be. So why not drop the act and start focusing on being a nicer person?
The women inevitably lose (I should say “arbitrarily” lose - I think it was just their turn). After being tempted to bring Aubrey back into the boardroom with her, Tia decides to skip all this bullshit and “throw herself on the sword”. She takes full responsibility and exits herself from the show, making Trump even more useless than he was before - if he doesn’t even fire people anymore then what is he doing sitting there?
And that seems to be a massive problem this season. Cheryl Tiegs, George Takei, Adam Carolla, and now Tia Carerre all exited the show on their own accord. None of them wanted to continue to be a party of all this silly, petty bullshit. And why would they be? Trump has nothing to give or take from them, and they have nothing to give or take from Trump. There are so few stakes in this game. And the irony is that Aubrey is probably smug that she won, but the real winner is Tia for taking herself away from the situation with her dignity intact.
On Tia’s exit interview she says the very wise, “The game is starting to get to a place where people get ugly and cruel with each other, and I don’t want to be part of that.”
And why would she?
The charity checks are even puny this time around. It has me missing the old-school Apprentice that was about actual business tasks with people who actually wanted to be in business.
ReplyDeleteAnd it makes the social media manager in me cringe every time they say, "Make a viral video." My husband probably cringes too because he knows it's going to make me jump into my "you don't just sit down and 'make a viral video'..." spiel.
Your write ups on this show are far preferable to actually watching the damn thing. I 'lol' regularly. Keep these coming!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It's good to know someone's reading them because I feel like a dick sometimes writing so much about a TV show that maybe no one else I know is watching!
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