‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ episode 2 review: Carnie Wilson’s big Trident risk; Boy George vs. Vince Neil

Tonight, “The Celebrity Apprentice” aired two episodes back to back in order to kick off the season, and in the first hour, Arnold Schwarzenegger showed that he doesn’t really have any chill at all. He got rid of Carrie Keagan for no good reason other than that she didn’t step up enough — or, because he wanted to keep Porsha Williams around for the drama. Hard to really say which at this particular moment.

The new task – Now, Trident is coming in, and the task this time around is to create an effective jingle that highlights much of what the gum brand likes — including that it is good for your teeth! That’s not something that many other brands out there are doing in the gum industry, and we understand why they want a commercial to emphasize that. Luckily, commercial tasks are some of the best tasks that we get to see with this franchise.

In terms of Project Managers, it was Jon Lovitz and Carnie Wilson facing off — and it was the guys this time who were a hot mess. Jon is incredibly entertaining, but he’s also chaotic and unfocused. He relied on the advice of others for coming up with an ad, but it was still one without a clear direction beyond “things that make people smile.” The ad for Carnie was far more effective on the surface, given that it was all about supporting the underdog and the power of a smile — having Snooki take on Laila Ali and win in the end was inspired.

There were two other problems: Boy George didn’t take kindly to see Vince Neil drinking wine while coming up with the jingle, and for the women, Lisa Leslie was filming sideways for the first part of the task. She figured it out, and that was good since it was the only thing that seemed to be slowing her team down in this task.

The boardroom – Here’s where we were genuinely shocked: The men won! Clearly, Lisa’s concern about the commercial not being branded enough towards what the company was looking for was correct. This show’s tricky. In the first task, Tyra Banks wanted more celebrity out of the contestants on the women’s team. This time, Trident wanted a little bit more relatability so that the product could appeal to normal people. (Hey, sometimes we’re wrong and we’ll own it.)

The deliberation here could’ve been really interesting, but the problem for Carnie seems to be fundamentally simple: She screwed up. The idea for the boxing-themed ad was Kyle Richards’, and she should have made the decision to bring her back in with her. However, Carnie didn’t do that, and she went instead with Snooki and Lisa Leslie. It’s not that either one of them was bad that was the problem; they were both good! Carnie pulled a Gene Simmons and basically put herself in a position to go. Arnold did not have a whole lot of a choice. Carnie’s gone, and she could’ve brought a lot more to the competition.

Before we go, hats off to Lisa Leslie for OWNING the entire back-and-forth in the boardroom. In that moment, we felt like she was a serious contender to go really far this season, even with screwing up the video.

Overall – While we picked the wrong winners, this episode was the show at its best: Crazy, funny, and dramatic. We just wish that there was more time than an hour to get into most of it since this really did fly by! Grade: B+.

If you missed it, head over here to read our review of the first episode tonight. (Photo: NBC.)