Celebrity Apprentice: Season 14 premiere RECAP

I am a HUGE fan of Celebrity Apprentice even though I realize it’s god awful, the term “celebrity” is used very loosely, and I cannot stand Donald Trump in the real world.  However, I do love reality TV drama and Celebrity Apprentice is always sure to be full of that!

Tonight was the premiere of the 14th season of The Apprentice.  The opening sequence shows the previous six winners and I got the chills when they showed Joan Rivers.  Bless her heart… loved that lady!

But let’s get down to business with this season.  The teams are divided up male/female.  Click here for full cast and bios of 2015 Celebrity Apprentice .  Trump describes the first challenge which is a restaurant business, Pie Face…. making and selling celebrity pies.  Team who raised the most money wins and the project manager will win the money for his/her charity.  The Cake Boss will be selecting which pie he likes best and Trump explains the winner will be given a VERY big bonus added on to the team’s dollars.

The teams go  back to Trump Tower to discuss who will be the project manager and what their team name will be.  Kenya Moore and Brandi Glanville immediately begin arguing over the team name.  Kenya suggested Team Infinity and Jamie Anderson jumped on it as well and said it could mean infinite possibilities. But Brandi liked Team Gold because there are two Olympic Gold Medalists on the team.  Shawn Johnson agreed that in everything in life you shoot for Gold, you don’t want to be Silver.  Kenya and Brandi have a history of bad blood from the Real Housewives franchises.  The rest of the women agree though that Team Infinity is the right choice.

 Meanwhile on the men’s team Geraldo suggests the name Vortex… “it’s a storm, it’s powerful.” Ian suggests they write down the suggestions and kind of cringes at the name “Vortex.”  Another teammate suggests Velocity. Geraldo argues that Velocity is three syllables and therefore not as good as Vortex. So Lorenzo says “Why don’t we just call this Team Geraldo” and acts very put off.  Kevin Jonas argues that it doesn’t have enough to do with business but Geraldo just steamrolled it and the guys threw their hands up and went with it.

 

 

The women choose Keshia Knight Pulliam as their project manager.  Then the ladies immediately get to work planning the execution of their restaurant.  Piers Morgan came in and gave Keshia and the ladies some advice.  The men chose the obvious pick of Geraldo as their project manager.   Ivanka paid them a visit and comments that they seem very harmonious.   Ivanka gushed a bit over Ian and says she was a huge Beverly Hills 90210 fan.  Kevin Jonas is confident (possibly over confident) that his fans will show up to support him.  I don’t doubt they will show up, I doubt that they have as much money as those with celebrity connections would have.

 

The men arrive to Pie Face and Kevin Jonas is very anxious to get the ball rolling and start making pies.  Meanwhile Geraldo wants a meeting to hammer home the point of using social media to get their contacts down there.  Kevin is losing patience rapidly for Geraldo.

The women came up with a pear and blueberry pie.  Keshia suggests an enchilada-taco pie after much discussion on whether or not it should be called enchilada or taco.  Kevin picked “Ice Box Cake” which is a pudding based pie.  And Lorenzo did a chicken pot pie for their savory pie. The men burned about 600 pie crusts and they have no choice but to toss them out.

Anyone else cringing right now as Keshia is talking about the great Bill Cosby and his philanthropy?  Ugh.  Cringe.

It’s the next morning, and the women are in the van on the way to the restaurant and Kenya is appalled at Keshia for not calling Bill Cosby up for a donation.  She said she wanted to call others (like Tyler Perry) who she knows is in New York City and accessible.

Geraldo was very dismissive of Gilbert and at one point told him to go supervise the balloons.  Geraldo was really not involved in the operations of the task.  He spent most of the time on the phone.   The women are not liking Keshia’s micromanaging style and are starting to get irritated.

The restaurants open up and the men are raking in the checks.  Geraldo was standing in the center of the restaurant shouting “let’s keep it moving!  C’mon!  Let’s go! Let’s go!” which really irritated Kevin.  On the women’s team, Keshia started cashiering which irritated Vivica who was supposed to be the cashier.  But then the large checks started coming in and the women got excited again.  Kate was just greeting people at the door and Brandi didn’t feel that was hustling enough.  However, the men had entertainment going on outside which drew in more people off the streets.

Claudia Jordan (who was previously on Celebrity Apprentice) agreed to come by for Kenya Moore but said if she was going to donate a lot of money she would need to throw a pie in her (Kenya’s) face.  So Brandi got the whipped cream out to fill a pie pan with, but Kenya snuck up and got Brandi instead.  Brandi then go Kenya back.  However, Brandi said in the interview piece “I hate whipped cream, I don’t like to get sticky…. unless it’s with a really hot guy, then it’s okay.”   haha!

The Cake Boss arrives to Team Vortex first.  He comments that the savory pie is a bit under salted and the sweet pie has an overcooked crust. Over on Team Infinity, he tells the ladies there are maybe too many flavors in the savory pie and they were trying to do too much.  The sweet pie however, he said the ladies nailed it.

The men seem to have massive checks coming in left and right.  I would be surprised if the men lost.  The ladies don’t seem to have all that many huge checks.  Kate Gosselin is crying because her big check she was expecting to come in didn’t come in and therefore she didn’t raise any money.

Boardroom time!  Shawn expresses her concern that they did not win because she feels the men have better access to powerhouse people with deeper pockets.  Vivica disagrees with that and feels they won and that Keshia was a good project manager.  Trump asks Kenya who the weakest player is and she says Keshia was the weakest because she didn’t focus enough on the fundraising aspect.  Geraldo expresses that he feels they won because the team name Vortex is powerful and they are powerful and there is purpose there.  Geraldo began to sing Gilbert’s praises and admits he underestimated Gilbert in the beginning.

Trump asks Geraldo who should be fired if they lost.  Geraldo explains that the person who raised the least should be fired.  Kevin calls out Geraldo on not knowing exactly who raised the least amount of money.  Kevin says the project manager should go to the treasurer at the end of the task and look at what everyone raised.  I have to say that I am very impressed with Kevin and that he has guts to call Geraldo out on this in front of Trump.  I expected him to be much more intimidated by these men.

The winner of the bonus for having the best tasting pies was Team Infinity as selected by The Cake Boss.  The women received an extra $25,000 for having a great tasting pie, so there is still a slim chance that now maybe they won over the men.  Shawn still feels that they probably lost, and I agree.  The number of twitter followers Kevin Jonas has has been brought up several times.  For the record, he has 4.76 million Twitter followers (yikes!)

Team Infinity brought in a total of $93,862.  The men, Team Vortex, brought in a total of $180,322.  The men were clear winners.

Keshia calls out Kate, Shawn, and Jamie to Trump as raising the least amount money.  Kate says that Keshia should be fired because she was project manager and didn’t give very clear direction.  Brandi flat out says Kate was lazy.  Piers said it was clear to him that there wasn’t any clear direction and it was quite chaotic.  Vivica cries over how proud she was of Keshia.  Then Kenya calls Keshia out again not calling Bill Cosby to ask for a donation.  Keshia then gets emotional and says she has not talked to Bill Cosby in “I don’t know how long” and for her to call him up out of the blue asking for money, just didn’t seem right.  Ivanka points out that Keshia shouldn’t have volunteered to be Project Manager if she couldn’t pull in the big numbers.  Trump tells Keshia she need to pick two people to come back in the boardroom with her.  She picks Kate and Jamie because they raised the least amount of money.

Keshia, Kate, and Jamie face Trump, Piers, and Ivanka and Keshia is just getting raked over the coals.  Just fire her already… this is hard to watch.  Keshia gets emotional discussing her charity.  Trump tells her that he will donate $25,000 to her charity (a camp for inspiring and building up women).  Then he fires her.  Keisha Knight Pulliam is the first to be fired on this season of Celebrity Apprentice.  So sad to see her go!!