Celebrity Apprentice: The Drinking Problem

We start as Brian McKnight delivers his winnings to Victor and Saundra Brooks, founders of Youthville, USA. In case you’ve forgotten, these thirty seconds of an extended two hour broadcast is what it’s all about.

But now on to all the other good stuff, which is the task at hand! The challenge: the Teams will run a Loews Regency hotel for five sets of guests during a one night stay, providing the best customer service and hotel experience. The guests will review and provide feedback on the teams, thereby leading to a winner. $20,000 to the winning Project Manager, and one loser goes home! Melissa commands T-boz to step up, and the men “encourage” Dennis to lead.

The teams separate to brainstorm customer service strategies, and then to learn the art of running a hotel.  T-boz delegates the ladies into their various roles, with Joan most notably at concierge, which is the smartest thing to do. Wait, actually that was Melissa’s idea. The rest of the women brainstorm ideas for amenities and perks, while mastering their individual tasks, which include housekeeping and room service.

As for the men … well, let’s just get to it, shall we? No one’s watching this week to find out how the teams really did. We were promised a meltdown, and a meltdown we shall have!

Or not. Basically, Dennis starts out as an effective team leader, generating ideas and executing plans, amazing his team and reluctantly impressing some of us at home (ahem). Then, on a roll with everything working out, he orders two cranberry and vodkas, and Effective Dennis becomes Crazy Dennis. He ruins Brian’s amenity cookies, stops making smart decisions, and curses a blue streak in front of his guests. No one seems to take offense to his language, but if I were a guest and someone dropped some f-bombs and colorful language at me, I’d be very put off. Granted, I occasionally share colorful words with you folks, but we’re like family, right? Yeah, mofos!

Anyway, things become unbelievable when a pair of guests run into problems with Brian at concierge. Brian’s having trouble delivering the right wine to the room, and can’t find a table at The Waverly Inn, a restaurant that was overbooked months ago. I hate guests like this too. I’ve worked for some of them. Enter Dennis with the wine, because who knows alcoholic beverages better than Dennis? He then grabs the two guests, hops in the Ferrari with his new best friends, and takes them to dinner wherever they want to go, forcing his presence on them for the entire evening.

Now, if you’re the type that likes that kind of thing, then you’ve just hit the jackpot. But if Dennis Rodman intruded on my night and joined me and my father for dinner, I’d have been pissed. Lucky for Dennis, his guests fall in the former category.

Meanwhile, some of Kotu’s other guests are kept waiting for rooms, but the team rallies to complete all of the concierge requests, and to keep Vinny Pastore, aka Big Pussy, happy. I’m not being inappropriate, that’s his name, I swear. I mean, the name of his character. On that show. Vinny is a nightmare guest, and possibly a nightmare of a person, if my memory from Season 1 of CelebApprentice is correct. Either way, he deliberately drives the men crazy. Kotu offers no free gifts, relying entirely on charm and how well they look in poorly fitting uniforms.

On the opposite side of the room, the women deal with a gaggle of gay men in room 702, who require a little more indulgence than Natalie is willing to provide. Annie, however, has no problem putting on a smile and doing whatever it takes to win, so she picks up Natalie’s slack. I have to say, I’d probably roll my eyes as much as Natalie does. The women also have to deal with Joan’s forgetting that not everyone is as rich as she is, and that people occasionally like to know when the services they request cost more than the advertised price. The women receive very special guest Stevie B as the celebrity annoyance for Athena, and good lord, what a joke this guy is. Stevie B plays the obnoxious part to the hilt, starting with how he doesn’t like the view in his room. It makes me want to go back in time to ComicCon and pull this clown aside and say, Really? Really, Stevie B? This is what you’re doing now? You used to be so hot!

Setting my issues aside for the moment, the editing skews in favor of showing that the women seemed to have had a harder time of it than the men, making more mistakes with their clients on all levels. Free breakfast makes up for a lot, but it also gave the women a lot more work to do. So while the ladies pull an early morning room service run, Dennis Rodman strolls into the hotel some time after the rest of his team, sits on the couch in the makeshift lobby, and proceeds to fall asleep. Stay classy, Rodman. Stay classy.

To the boardroom! So here we are, with a barely sober Rodman, both teams lined up, and it seems easy as pie to say that the men lost and Dennis should go home. You know it’s coming, right? But then I start to worry that Trump thinks keeping Dennis around is good for ratings, and I fear that either the men will win, or they’ll lose and somehow Trump will end up firing Brian for being an R&B singer. Or something equally silly that bears no weight in this task, just so he can keep Dennis around.

But we start off with the ladies, and Melissa takes credit for T-boz’s win, by claiming that she was the one who suggested T-boz lead, and isn’t Melissa just a frikkin’ genius? Room 702 complained about Natalie, but her team comes to her defense.

The craziness of Dennis starts when he admits that he doesn’t think his team won. He didn’t like working with Kotu, and no one listened to him. Trump feigns surprise. When he asks Jesse what Dennis means, Jesse doesn’t know, but he does think that Dennis has a drinking problem. Most of the men and some of the women agree with him. Dennis takes a shot at Jesse, since Jesse once had a drinking problem himself, and Jesse admits that he hasn’t had a drink in nine years. So now Rodman looks like an insensitive jerk on top of everything else. Jesse goes back and forth, at one moment looking like he’s going to cry, the next looking like he’s going to flip the table over. But always cool and professional.

Jesse speechifies about the faults of Dennis Rodman, man and hero to millions of fans, and he does it really well. You can’t argue with Jesse at all – he’s so making the Final Two. But Dennis calmly does, finally shooting back with “is this about Dennis Rodman’s issues, or is this about the damn game?” and that’s true too. Except that his issues prevented his team from winning this round of the game. And if you cost your team the win, then technically, you should go home.

Dennis attacks the team in general, saying that the men abandoned him from Day One. Clint politely refutes that by saying that the team wanted to win as much for the win as for the opportunity to bring Dennis into the team and let him shine. Which is so not like previous contestants on this show, who let their PM fail so he can get the boot. I might have done that myself if Dennis were my PM.

But before you count Dennis out, it’s time for the NBA defense! He says “If I’m such a bad integral part of anything that I do, how did I win five championships?” But Herschel Walker says that Dennis isn’t the only one who can pull the athlete card, and tells Dennis to live in the present, that was the past. A better answer would have been, “This isn’t basketball, and you didn’t win a championship today. You lost.” Trump debates possibly sending Dennis home even if the women have won. Before anyone can comment on that, Trump finally calls for the results, and … the women win! So the point is moot, isn’t it?

Trump thinks so, because he doesn’t even send the women out. Instead, he gives Dennis a chance for last words. Dennis declares that his teammates are intimidated by him, and that he can “kick anybody’s ass” at anything. Or at any time. Or something. He mumbles, so who knows? Nevertheless, Jesse responds, “Why doesn’t he kick our ass at being a good person?” Oh, snap!

And so, despite the great respect that Trump has for Dennis, he let Trump down, himself down, and the team down, and with that, Dennis Rodman is finally fired!

As Dennis leaves, Joan calls the Boardroom emotional, intervention-like. Dennis interviews not to count him out, because he’s going to be okay. Sure, sure – we wish you the best, Dennis – just stay off my television, okay?

T-boz’s charity: Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia.

Next week: Donald Trump mixes things up, and the Celebs don’t like it!

Season 2, Episode 5 (originally aired March 29, 2009)

For more on The Celebrity Apprentice, click here.

Sundays at 9/8C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Ali Goldstein