Reality Roll Call

Series Premiere – 1-3-08

This new season of The Apprentice introduces us to a whole new format, a new way of doing things AND an all-new celebrity cast! The focus this season is on having celebrities fight to raise the most money for their favorite charity. Whoever’s left standing will be The Celebrity Apprentice.

The Donald gives the group their fast task: they split into teams of males and females and their first task is to name the groups. The ladies name themselves Empresario (Spanish for “Mogul”). The guys name themselves Hydra after the many-headed monster from Greek mythology.

Omarosa throws her hat into the ring to be the first Project Manager for the fairer sex, and the guys choose Steven Baldwin as the Project Manager for Team Testosterone.

The first challenge involves the restaurant business. The teams will be selling hotdogs in New York. Team that makes the most money wins. The objective is to sell the most hotdogs for the most money (no easy feat in New York). Donald counsels the teams on the importance of location, location, location!

Carol Alt is a New Yorker so she is charged with advising as to the best location to sell hot dogs in New York. She decides 34^th and 7th Avenue is the best location.

The guys decide the corner outside the Radio City Music Hall is best.

Playboy Playmate Tiffany Fallon and Omarosa butt heads immediately.

The guys bank on the celebrity to get the most hot dogs sold to richest and most influential friends and asks them to pay $5,000 for hot dogs. Hydra’s off to a great start!

Empresario dresses in red hats, white t-shirts and jeans and proceeds to sell hot dogs for $5.00 apiece, then $20.00 apiece, then $100.00, then $200.00, then $500.00. Whatever they’re bold enough to ask for, they’re getting from the public so they start to push the envelope and ask for more and more outrageous amounts. Trump and Mayor Bloomberg show up at the girls’ corner and buy a hotdog (they don’t say what he paid for the hot dog, strangely enough).

The guys are giving a virtual freak show on the corner, hawking pictures with Lennox Lewis, for $5.00 or more. Gene Simmons is concerned that the celebrities who have promised to show up and pay $5K for a hotdogs won’t actually show up and starts frantically calling around to get a head count. It’s not looking too good for the guys….

At the 11^th hour, the guys start to kick in and get $100 bucks for a hot dog, but will it be too little too late?

Trump and Mayor Bloomberg show up at Team Hydra’s hot dog stand to sample their wares. Methinks he got the hotdog gratis…

For somebody who’s selling “ass in a magazine, sure couldn’t sell a hot dog on the street”, says Omarosa of Tiffany. Marilu Henner makes some calls and gets some movers and shakers to buy bottles of water for $5,000. At the last minute, Gene Simmons’s benefactors shows up and pays $5,000 and $10,000 for a hot dog.

Baseball player David Wright shows up and buys the remaining hotdogs at the last minute from Team Empresario. Wonder which team brought the most star power to the table!

Donald meets with both teams in the boardroom. Team Hydra sold $ 52,000 worth of hotdogs. Team Empresario sold $ 17,000 worth of hotdogs. A sound beating was had by Team Empresario. Donald loved the location for Team Hydra and the brilliant idea of using celebrity to sell the most hot dogs. All the money raised by both teams will go to Steven Baldwin’s charity as the Project Manager, which is The Carolyn Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, named so for Baldwin’s mother.

Omarosa’s on her way back to the boardroom, which should be familiar territory.

Omarosa defends herself by mentioning that she chose not to use sex to sell more hot dogs for Team Empresario. Been there, done that back on original Apprentice and it wasn’t appreciated back then. She then backpedaled and claimed to be disappointed in Tiffany because she didn’t do much in the way of selling her celebrity, which is the sex industry. Tiffany’s a Playboy Playmate; Omarosa feels she should have used that celebrity to sell more hot dogs. Honorable mentions to Marilu who stepped up and made a sale of $11,000 for waters and Nelly got a nod for being “solid, really focused and kept the team on task”.

Omarosa accepts responsibility for her role as Project Manager but she also expresses disappointment in some of her team’s ability.

Donald comments that Tiffany appears to be intimidated by both Carol Alt and Omarosa and calls her out on her decision not to call in Hugh Hefner to plunk down a huge donation for the hot dogs. Ultimately, that bad decision cost her the Celebrity Apprenticeship and Tiffany is the first to get fired.