David Cassidy on the Web
Celebrity Apprentice, “Pepperoni Profit“
March 8, 2011
By Eric
http://tvgeekarmy.com
Quick Take: Celebrity Apprentice, "Pepperoni Profit"
“You are the Pepperoni Prophet.” – John Rich to Gary Busey
Review: Celebrity Apprentice, “Pepperoni Profit“
(S0401) In reverting back to a celebrity edition of The Apprentice this season, it’s obvious that Trump and co. have pulled out all the stops to ensure that each episode is chock full of antics, zaniness, and all around tomfoolery. In fact, Donald himself even refers to a “circus” in one of his obligatory pompous and blowhardy opening monologues.
And/but to the show and Trump’s credit, The Apprentice remains a durable and engaging reality show format when fueled with a cast that can deliver in terms of its competitiveness or in some cases simply pure entertainment value.
Certainly a case can be made at this point that winning Celebrity Apprentice can add at least a bit of momentum to one’s career. Pierce Morgan is sitting in Larry King’s chair at CNN, Joan Rivers is enjoying a renaissance of sorts, and Bret Michaels is arguably better known in non-hair metal circles today than he was at the height of Poison’s success.
That no doubt has helped to bring in this season’s new crop of C through Z List celebrities. While it’s always a little hard to get a full sense of where a season is going in the always busy and frenetic opening episode, it’s clear that on the men’s side (Team Backbone), Richard Hatch is going to be the main polarizing force while Star Jones and Lisa Rinna are going to go at it on the women’s side (Team A.S.A.P.) in the early going.
The opening task involved each team to run a pizzeria in Manhattan with the simple goal of making the most money. Since this is a celebrity edition, that means that the celebs could use their connections to bring in thousands of dollars in donations in exchange for the pizza. This kind of task is a staple for Celebrity Apprentice and while it works fairly well, it always rubs me the wrong way to an extent as it’s very easy for the editors to make the action look any way they like while the critical factor in winning is often one or two huge donations brought in by a rich friend of a celebrity.
So that’s to say that the women cruised to an easy victory thanks to huge donations brought in via Project Manager Star Jones (such as a guy who ordered 40 pizzas at $1,000 a pop). Their margin of victory was so huge that even though they missed out on an additional $35,000 for having the best tasting pizza (judged by celebrity chef Curtis Stone, who I think shows up on every NBC reality show now) because they couldn’t get eight pizzas to a Chelsea fire station in time, it didn’t matter in the slightest.
Former Partridge Family superstar David Cassidy wound up getting the boot, and it may well have simply been because he doesn’t have the huge and dominating personality that Richard Hatch brings to the table. There’s no way that Trump is going to dump this guy in the opening weeks because he simply brings a domineering presence that everyone around him must react to. It’s the same game plan that he brought into Survivor of course, and now he’s using it for initial success at tribal council, er, the boardroom on another Mark Burnett show.
In fact, Hatch got away with literally pushing around poor Cassidy a few times. The fact that he didn’t aggressively defend himself in the boardroom seemed to nearly disgust macho man Trump, which contributed to the Deep Six as much as anything.
But, really, come on. Richard Hatch is going to be used to pull some ratings here for as long as possible.
