Celebrity Apprentice: Victoria and Teresa Round 2

The very beginning of the show starts with the end of last week’s show, with Victoria coming out of the board room narrowly escaping being fired. Lisa is scared that Victoria will kill her in her sleep for mentioning the fact that she made personal phone calls while she was supposed to be working. She apologizes. Victoria replies it’s going to be tough to work together if they are going to turn on each other, but she is ready---bring it on!

Now let the games begin. Literally! This week’s task is for each group to create a 15 minute show for Medieval Times and it will be judged by the audience on creativity and entertainment value. I have been to Medieval Times and it can be quite an experience. The outside looks like a castle. Inside, they serve dinner while they have knights jousting on horses, horse tricks and various other types of medieval entertainment. The teams need to pick their project managers and get started. The men’s team, Unanimous,  picks Penn Jillette. The women’s team, Forte, picks Lisa Lampanelli. The project manager of the winning team will walk away with $40,000 for their charity.

Keep in mind I am only concentrating on Victoria and Teresa, if you want a complete recap of the show this is not it, but there are plenty online.

Lisa comes up with the idea of doing something current in a medieval setting. She decides, since they are performing in New Jersey, to do a parody or spoof of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. The idea translates into The Unreal Housewives of Camelot fighting for the love and affection of Sir Donald of Trump, king or knight of Camelot, played by Lisa Lampanelli herself.

Dayana asks if there will be a lot of children the audience because she isn’t sure this idea will appeal to them. Lisa basically tells her to shut up and wear her nude leotard, ride in on a horse and look pretty…like Lady Godiva. That’s all she is good for. Neither Teresa nor Victoria have anything to say. To be honest, Lisa doesn’t want to hear from anyone but Aubrey, who becomes her second in command.

Lisa is excited about doing a clean and funny show. She assigns the roles to the women. She wants to use each individual’s specific talents appropriately. She decides to give Victoria the hardest job of creative director working with the lights and sounds. Victoria isn’t happy and says, “Why don’t you just put me in the closet?” She feels left out and that everyone has a role except her.

Victoria proves to be a whiner not a winner!

It’s time to pick out the costumes for the various roles. Everyone is excited and it gets a little noisy, Lisa loses her patience because people are interrupting her. She acts like a tyrant. Teresa’s role is the table flipping housewife (apparently there was a famous scene in RHONJ where she flipped a table). They (Lisa and Aubrey) feel this is a great idea because they are playing to the NJ crowd with a popular show they can relate to. Teresa has to work hard to learn her lines, she is used to reality television where you say whatever comes to mind. One of her lines is “Bring it on wench!” 

Lisa is writing the script and Don Jr. shows up. She asks if his father will mind if she plays him with a wig. He thinks it will be funny and she can’t get fired for that, the audience picks the winner. Don Jr. also likes their concept. Lisa mentions the tension with Victoria and tells him she doesn’t think being stage director is important. She sent her shopping to get her out of the way. 

All the women are practicing their sword fighting. They look to Victoria for instruction on how they should “act.” Victoria backs away from being stage director, she isn’t comfortable with the role. So, they tell her to take a sword and fight. Victoria is swinging her sword all the while she is wearing her Louis Vuitton bag! No one is happy about that. So then they move Victoria into doing some research with Lisa. They need to look up medieval words to use in the script. Lisa almost has a stroke! Instead of googling “medieval” which is right on the stationery in front of her, Victoria is typing in mid-evil into the search bar. Lisa is pissed because Victoria can’t even look at the paper in front of her. 

Victoria whines that she isn’t happy, she feels left out of the task, unacknowledged and invisible. Lisa tells her she has the most important role. Victoria seems to come around.

Dress Rehearsal! Victoria seems to take control in the sound room. Lisa starts to feel a little confident. However, Victoria doesn’t have the updated script so the lights and sounds are not happening when they are supposed to! Lisa is pissed again.

Show Time! The men perform first, under the leadership of Penn Jillette, and seem to do well. The next performance is by the women. Problems from the get go!

Teresa proves to be a winner!

Victoria is in charge of lighting and sound, however, when King Lisa/Donald comes out on stage there is supposed to be a trumpet flourishing his entrance…there was none, so Lisa had to use her voice to create the trumpet sound! The fighting begins for Sir Donald’s love. Teresa and another wench sword fight and Teresa wins the battle. She asks if she has done enough to win his heart. The Donald says, “You’re fired!” Teresa gets angry and flips over a table. When both shows are over the crowd votes for their favorite team.

Back at the boardroom, Donald begins his interrogation. He asks Victoria about Lisa. She says Lisa was a strict project manager, a good leader, but Donald senses some hesitation. Lisa explains that there was some tension between them from the start when she assigned the roles and Victoria felt that stage director was not important and that she was pushed aside. Teresa played a housewife and says she was challenged because it was so different from reality tv, but she was able to use her emotions from RHONJ to “act” in the show.

Donald wants to know from Lisa, who she would bring back to the board room. She chooses Victoria and Dayana. Victoria because she threatened to quit the team and go to the men’s team, she didn’t want her assigned role to be stage director and Lisa said she felt she was emotionally left out and she didn’t have time to “mother” her.

Lisa says she picked Dayana because she didn’t contribute anything except for being pretty on a horse (however, that is exactly what Lisa told Dayana that was all she wanted her to do). Dayana says that she was never allowed to voice her opinion, though she tried several times to make suggestions.

The VOTES are in and the men win it, 558 to the women’s 363. Now the men can go relax while the women trash each other in the boardroom. 

Lisa begins listings all of Victoria’s shortcomings: the missed cues, the inability to google, the threatening to quit. Victoria says she did a lot to work with the team. Apparently, all the work Victoria did with the costumes went unacknowledged or filmed, but Dayana agreed with her. Victoria thinks Lisa should be fired.

Both Victoria and Lisa breakdown crying in front of Donald, out of frustration. But, Donald has to make a decision. He decides that due to the missed cues and the fact that Victoria even thought about quitting the team, leaves him no choice but to tell her “You’re fired!”

An unhappy, fired Victoria

I am very disappointed and happy at the same time. I feel let down because this is not at all how I thought this was going to go. I was sure Victoria had the stuff to get ahead and succeed and she was going to leave Teresa in the dust. But, it turned out to be just the opposite. We have a TKO! Technical Knockout for Victoria and Teresa is still left standing without a mark on her. Not one complaint about Teresa in two weeks while Victoria had a laundry list full of issues. 

I am happy because now that Victoria is out, I will not be blogging this show any more. It was a lot of work because it is on the same night as Mob Wives, and my loyalty is to that show first and foremost. I thought this would be an interesting competition to blog, but I sure as hell didn’t see this ending coming, and not so soon. Maybe I underestimated the real housewives OR Victoria Gotti is not the badass mob wife I expected her to be. She whined and complained and didn’t rise to the occasion. Teresa, on the other hand, played her cards smart. She was quiet and unassuming and did what she was asked with a pleasant attitude. Even though I didn’t hear or see much of her, whatever she did kept her off the chopping block and everyone loves her and that is one sure fire way to get ahead.

Kudos to Teresa Giudice! TKO in Round 2 of Celebrity Apprentice! Congratulations and I wish you much success throughout the rest of the game!

Celebrity Apprentice: Victoria and Teresa Round 1

Let the games begin!

Well last night was the premiere of Celebrity Apprentice. I watched it just to follow Victoria Gotti and Teresa Giudice! Mob Wife versus Real Housewife, New York versus New Jersey. I am going to assess their contributions in the competition and at the end tell you who I think won round 1, although it might be obvious!

First a few details. There are 18 people competing this season, now 17. It’s set up as the men versus the women. Each group has to pick a project manager and a team name and then meet Donald in the board room for their task. On the women’s team, Teresa suggests an Italian name, “Vincitori” which means winners. No one likes it. Lisa Lampanelli suggests “Forte” another Italian word that means strong or strength, everyone loves it. Then they need a project manager and Patricia Velasquez volunteers. I was disappointed that neither Victoria or Teresa stepped up to throw their hat in the ring. I have to wonder why?

Off to the board room to meet Donald. The task is to make celebrity sandwiches and the project manager whose team makes the most money plus tips will get all the money made in this task from both teams, for their charity. The losing team loses a member.

Now they split up and the women have to decide what they are going to do next. Patricia suggests a carnival and Victoria says you need a permit in New York for that or the police will shut you down and that theme has nothing to do with sandwiches. Lisa Lampanelli says she will not disrespect Victoria, no matter what she says or does, because she has mob connections. They decide to create a Celebrity Club Room at a deli and the most recognizable person should be outside to draw a crowd to send in to buy sandwiches. That job falls on Teresa Giudice. Everyone calls up friends to donate money, however, they are all holding back because they want to save their calls for help for when they are project manager in the future.

They have lots to say, but do they deliver the goods?

At Café Metro, in the VIP lounge, the Celebrity Club room is set up. Teresa is in the kitchen making her secret recipe of red roasted peppers. While Victoria Gotti has not shown up for her team and isn’t answering her phone. I heard she slept in late, but later she claims that she had an accident with her eye and her cornea or retina was torn. I am not believing that, sorry. I want to see a doctor’s note. Everyone is a little ticked off at Victoria. A customer comes in saying he will pay $10,000 for a vegan sandwich. They have none, but Victoria quickly whips one up for $10,000 for him. No one gives her any credit for that. I thought she deserves some and that it made up for her being an hour late.

Next part of the task involves each team taking their best sandwich over to the Rachael Ray show for her to taste and pick a winner. The winning sandwich will get a bonus of $35,000. Lisa and Victoria show up with their Celebrity Club International Sandwich. However, the men’s team wins the challenge, according to Rachael.

Time to see who earned the most money. The women’s team earned a total of $126,962; the men’s team earned $332,120 plus the $35,000 bonus, bringing them up to $367,120. The men win, but it disturbs me and the women’s team too, that they got $305,000 just from one person. It’s doesn’t seem fair, but those are the rules.

Patricia has to decide which women were the weakest links on the team. She picks Cheryl Tiegs because she says she didn’t bring in any money; Cheryl disagrees. And she picks Victoria Gotti (as did a few others on the team), for not being a team player, showing up late and not answering her calls. No one said a word about firing Teresa at all. Lisa added that Victoria was heard making personal phone calls while she was supposed to be working. It’s time for Patricia to make a decision. She decides Cheryl is the weakest player and I agree. 

Whose team are you on? So far I'm losing!!!

Victoria came dangerously close to being fired on day one! No one complained at all about Teresa Giudice. Therefore, I have to say that Round 1 goes to Teresa, and Victoria comes out on the losing end. Very disappointed in Victoria Gotti. We’ll see if she bounces back next week.