‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ episode 5 review: On Brooke Burke, David Charvet, and motorcycle-gate

It really does not happen all that often on “The Celebrity Apprentice” where someone not even on the show ends up getting more attention than someone on it, but that’s precisely what we saw on the first hour of Monday night’s show.

Before we get to that, a toast to comedy – In terms of pure hilarity, the Kawasaki task was by far the best task of the entire season so far, whether it be Arnold Schwarzenegger giving some incomprehensible story about his time as a bodybuilder in the boardroom to seeing the name of Boy George’s drag queen friend be repeatedly bleeped out by censors. The concept here was fairly simple: Find a way to create some new photos to promote one of the company’s latest bikes. The message that they really wanted to put out there into the universe was a simple one that these bikes are for everyone!

Well, somehow this idea led to Project Manager Carson Kressley deciding to do a “tasteful nude” on one of the bikes, which was so bizarre and awkwardly hilarious … especially the part where he said that, and then tried to get away with doing it while wearing a set of white underwear. Not the same thing, Carson! Add to this Ricky Williams being dressed up in an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation shot and whatever the team decided that they were going to do with all of those heels. (Could they not find a celebrity for that particular photo?)

There is nothing about these photos that should’ve worked, and we even get Chael Sonnen’s concern that this was not the target audience for most motorcycles. Then again, if you’re not going to ride a motorcycle because a drag queen is riding one, aren’t you kind of an idiot? Chael’s concern would’ve probably been more valid had their not been a fatal flaw in the other team’s idea.

It all starts with concept – Going into this season, we thought that Kyle Richards was a winner threat. She’s smart, she’s got incredibly deep pockets, and plenty of celebrity friends. It’s too bad she didn’t get to the fundraising task in order to show that off! The biggest issue from the get-go was that taking pictures of strong women outside on the bikes was a fine idea, but it wasn’t revolutionary. That was much of Kyle’s issue with creative most of the season: She didn’t necessarily do a terrible job in anything, but there were times when she could have swung harder for the fences.

Now, let’s talk the Charvet of it all – Here’s the run-down: The ladies wanted to do a photo featuring Brooke on one of the motorcycles, with her husband David Charvet riding right behind her. The argument here was that it would be a stunning, memorable visual … but David didn’t want to do it, seemingly because he wouldn’t feel manly enough. This later was explained away as him not wanting to do something that was not realistic, but since when on “The Celebrity Apprentice” is anything realistic? Carson took a photo on a bike naked! His explanation for it was so ridiculous, unneeded, and meaningless to boot — he’s lucky that it didn’t get Brooke fired since her photo is the one the executives were the most bored over.

What saved her is this: While her team may have won in the event that they’d done the photo as they’d originally planned, if the concept was better they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. If her error was so egregious that it cost the team the win (we’ll get to that later), we understand the argument towards firing her. However, in a race that was this close, you have to look at the Project Manager. In this case, goodbye Kyle — though only briefly, since she did make a cameo in the next task. Episode Grade: A- (for intentional comedy alone).

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