‘The Celebrity Apprentice’ episode 11 review: Breaking Buddhist
In the first part of Monday night’s two-hour “Celebrity Apprentice” episode, we had an episode that was about as fun as what you would expect for one to be that featured a cleaning demonstration inside of sample houses. This, dear friends, was a bit of a yawner by “Apprentice” standards. There was nothing that crazy that happened, and the firing is one you could’ve seen coming from the moment the show started.
Laila Ali was very good through much of the season. Yet, there were three or four tasks where she was virtually nonexistent, and that’s just not something you have with a potential finalist. That’s especially true when you consider the task this time around. She professed to being a consumer of Jessica Alba’s The Honest Company, and therefore was perfectly qualified to take this on. Yet, her biggest weakness all season reared its head again — like many other athletes before her, she’s great at executing ideas, but not as great at coming up with them. She wanted to do something that was authentic and spoke to her, but there wasn’t anything fun and original about it. Also, it probably didn’t help that her teammate here was Matt Iseman — Matt’s been great all season, but he doesn’t have the same brand connection and their chemistry together during their “home presentation” of the product and its uses never had the right chemistry.
Now, let’s contrast this to Boy George, who was the Project Manager for the first time since week one and he had this sort some of variety-hour home performance featuring himself and Brooke Burke. They took a huge risk with a demonstration of a clean rag that could’ve blown up EASILY in their face, but everything that they threw out there worked well enough to get them the win. Even Boy George relating the cleaning products to his Buddhist beliefs turned out to be worthwhile! We just think the executives were just happy to have something that didn’t feel like an infomercial. George was also pretty entertaining given all of the shade being thrown subtly between he and Brooke throughout, as you could see the two of them positioning to get the other person fired in the event that they were in the boardroom.
Should Matt have been fired? – There’s an interesting question to be asked there, since his delivery in the actual presentation was actually worse than Laila, and we’re not sure what merit there was in him making up a girlfriend for the sake of telling a “relatable story.”
Yet, there are two things that save Matt in our eyes. First, you’ve got the simple fact that he is consistently good in most tasks, and he’s never disappeared as Laila had. Also, she was Project Manager, and even if her full vision was properly executed she still probably would have lost to someone who we’re not sure had ever heard about The Honest Company moments before the task first began.
Were there fun moments in the first hour? Sure, but there was nothing all that memorable in here that will make this task memorable in the slightest. Grade: B-.
For those wondering, we’ll have a full review up for the second part of the two-hour block soon over at the link here. (Photo: NBC.)