Celebrity Apprentice: Season 12, Episode 10, “Winning by a Nose”

The contestants go to Trump’s apartment “that he rarely shows anybody” he says, but I remember his gold plated apartment being shown at LEAST on three other seasons of the Apprentice.  Not to mention, if you’re going to have the gawdy. gold plated everything, the whole point is to show it off.  Since when is Donald Trump modest?  Trump reveals they’re launching a new fragrance at Macy’s called “Success by Trump.  The contestants have to come up with a slogan and a display.  Clay has stepped up on his team to be project manager and Aubrey has volunteered on her team.  She is once again going against Clay.  Last time Clay won.  The winners receive $20,000 but if they do something Trump REALLY loves, the winner will receive $100,000.

Clay’s team of Penn, Lisa, and Dayana are tossing around different ideas.  Dayana keeps trying to make it sexual in nature by suggesting to have a man and woman in a photo with both of them naked.  Clay says he doesn’t see how that says “Success”.

Aubrey’s team has Arsenio and Teresa on it and she and Arsenio are already disagreeing about what the word “Success” means to them.  Arsenio relates it to money and power and Aubrey says it’s about improving someone’s life by what you give of yourself.  Say what??  I’m with Arsenio on this one.  HAPPINESS may mean what Aubrey is saying, but SUCCESS is money and power.  Sorry girlie. Aubrey says if they want to do something “new” then it’s not doing something obvious with the bling bling.  This could either be brilliant or fail miserably and at this point, without having seen anything else, I’m thinking it’s the latter.

Clay’s team is throwing around the slogan “You Earned It.”  Penn keeps interjecting his idea over and over.  “Brainstorming is more fun if you have good ideas, and that’s all I do.” Penn says.  Clay isn’t completely sold on Penn’s ideas and Penn is kind of steamrolling his thoughts.

Aubrey’s team is going with “Always Trust Your Instincts” because it’s a quote from Trump himself.  Aubrey tosses around the idea of using Eric (Trump’s son) in the ad as kind of a “before” Donald.  Both teams have said that using the fragrance boxes as buildings to create a skyline would be a good idea.  It will be interesting if they both end up going with the same idea.

Team Aubrey was in the van on the way to the studio where they’re going to build their skyline background for the store display of the product when she had the idea of getting out of the van to take pictures of the actual New York skyline.  So the van pulls over and there’s this big fence in the way, she gets on Arsenio’s shoulders (while wearing a skirt) in order to get the camera above the fence to take the picture.  Arsenio says in the interview to the camera “Aubrey had this great idea… let me put my vagina on the back of your neck.”  CLASSIC.  Best line of the season!

So Clay rolls with Penn’s idea and has Dayana snuggling up against a male model in a business shirt and tie and she’s holding the fragrance.  Meanwhile on Aubrey’s team, Teresa and Arsenio go shopping for the materials for the skyline and Eric Trump walks in to see how the team is doing.  Aubrey has him posing for pictures that they’re going to use for their display meanwhile flirting with him and trying to butter him up.  Or maybe she’s really interested in him?  Doubtful.  🙂  Aubrey tells Eric that she thought of everything, the other two are not creative and haven’t given any input or ideas.  I see this as a very bad strategy for Aubrey.  If they win, she gets the credit, but if they lose how can she not take the fall if she flat out told Eric she was responsible for everything?  She can try to blame the others for not giving any input, but I still think she should be fired if she loses.

Dayana suggests to Clay that they have a flyer or something that they can hand the judges with the picture on it and the product.  Clay says no.  Aubrey decided to have a pamphlet/brochure to pass out so that the judges have something to take with them.  This could be the separating factor that will determine the winner and loser.

Lisa goes over to Aubrey’s team to sneak a peak and sees that they are doing something similar with the buildings and the fragrance bottle.  There’s no time left to change anything.  Clay keeps things the way they are.

Both teams are putting the finishing touches on their displays.  George walks in to Aubrey’s team and you can tell he just hates their display.  He leaves and Arsenio said the crazy thing was that Aubrey was too narcissistic to even notice that they’re in trouble.  She still had all the confidence in the world.

Presentation time:  Aubrey’s team up first.  They did a good job presenting the display and the product. Aubrey lead the presentation, Arsenio then talked about what success meant to him and passed out the flyer, and Teresa talked about how affordable the fragrance is and handed out scent sticks so the executives could smell success.  I don’t love their actual display as much as Clay’s, but I like the flyer and scent stick ideas and they did a fantastic job presenting it to the executives.

Clay’s team’s turn: Clay shows the display to the execs, but instead of really selling the product and the display, he kind of just describes it.  He tells the execs that if they have any questions to go ahead and ask them.  They tell him to “keep going.” Clay kind of panics because he already said everything he was going to say in the presentation.  Clay was the only one that did the speaking at their presentation.

Clay’s team’s display was sleek and neat, but their presentation fell short.  Aubrey’s display looked more juvenile, but I liked the slogan of Trust Your Instinct and their presentation.

Boardroom time! Everything is all lovey dovey, nobody’s saying anything bad about anyone.  Then Eric asks Aubrey about how when he came to see them, she was taking credit for everything.  So Aubrey says again that she did everything and Arsenio takes offense.  Arsenio says he came up with the slogan after seeing the quote and Aubrey says she came up with it first before Arsenio found it.  So Trump asks each project manager who they think should be fired if they lost after hearing the pros and cons of each time.  The Execs hated Clay’s slogan “You Earned It”, they thought the picture was too large, but they liked the picture.  For Aubrey’s team the execs liked the slogan and the essence of the display conveyed the right message.  The thought the display was boring and didn’t like the silhouette of Eric.

Trump says he doesn’t LOVE either of the displays.  They each had good things and bad things.  So what he’s going to do is give the winning team’s project manager $40,000 to their charity, and then give $10,000 to each of everyone else’s charity.  That was very cool of trump.  So even if someone is fired, their charity still gets $10,000.  The winning team was Aubrey!  I really think it was the flyer and scent sticks that won it for them because their display was not very good.

Clay decides to let Lisa go back and he is bringing Dayana and Penn back into the boardroom where one will be fired.  Penn is coming back because he’s responsible for the slogan that the executives hated.  Dayana, even though she did well on this task, is coming back because Clay says she’s often aloof,  “not present”, and doesn’t give ideas until it’s too late.  I am worried that Clay is going to go home because although Penn came up with the slogan, Clay approved it.  Also, Clay didn’t do well at all during the presentation.  Even though I’d like to see Dayana go home, I have a feeling she won’t.  The only reason I can see her going home this time is for the shear fact that she is at nearly every single boardroom.  Every project manager brings her back.  Trump has to put some stock in that.  I never thought I’d say this, but I really hope Clay doesn’t go home!!

Going round and round who should be fired.  Clay is doing well defending himself.  Trump says he wants to fire Dayana because she’s been in the boardroom 6 times but on this task she didn’t do anything wrong, he wants to fire Clay because he’s the project manager and he approved the slogan, but he’s going to fire Penn Jillette for coming up with the slogan.  Penn is fired.  I think this was the right decision.

Now scenes from next week look AMAZING.  Clay, Lisa, and Dayana are all having it out with each other.  Dayana is project manager and the teams have to write a jingle.  Clay is shown completely losing it.  The drama’s going to be great and very entertaining!  Can’t wait!!