Tiffany Fallon is fired on the first Celebrity Apprentice episode
Celebrity Apprentice debuted tonight on NBC, and I think you might be able to classify it as a kindler, gentler Apprentice. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly thought that the task would be tougher and The Donald would have been tougher in the boardroom. Then again, it is only the first week of the show and maybe as time goes on it will get a little more difficult. I really hope so, because that is some of the fun in watching the Apprentice is seeing the contestants being torn to shreds in the boardroom by Donald Trump.
Trump divides the group into teams based on gender. After their initial meeting with Trump the contestants are told to go and select a project manager for the upcoming task and come up with a name for their group. The women come up with the name Empresario, which is a Spanish word that means entrepreneur. Omarosa is selected as the first project manager. The men select the name Hydra (based on Gene Simmons’ suggestion of having a mythical name), the creature that had seven heads and who grew back another head every time one was cut off. It was so strong that even Hercules could not defeat it. The men thought this was a really appropriate name. Stephen Baldwin stepped up as project manager.
The task given to them by Trump as to sell hot dogs on the streets of New York City. The team that sold the most in terms of dollar amount would be the winner. The women initially want to cash in on their celebrity, but Omarosa wants to bank on their solid sales skills to sell the product. The men on the other hand want to trade in on their celebrity, with Simmons calling lots of his rich contacts to stop by the next day to “purchase” hot dogs for thousands of dollars for charity.
Omarosa runs this task in true Apprentice style, getting the women all decked out in uniforms that feature a hot dog on the front and ball caps with their names on them. The women don’t get the same number of big ticket donations – during the task Marilou Henner decides to take it upon herself to bring in some of her contacts and is ultimately responsible for $11,000 of their total sales. Jennie Finch gets David Wright, a player for the New York Mets to stop by, and in the last few minutes of the task he buys out their cart and gives away the hot dogs for free. The men have a ball cashing in on their celebrity, “selling” pictures with them for those who pay a lot of money for hot dogs.
When the totals are revealed in the boardroom there is a major difference in success. The women of Empresario earn just over $17,000 while the men of Hydra bring in $52,286. The total of $69,324 raised in sales sets an Apprentice record. Stephen as winning project manager will get this money for his charity – the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund (named for his mother). The winning project manager for each task going forward will also earn the profits from the tasks for their charities. The men are sent back to their war room to watch the boardroom proceedings. This could be a real benefit for the winning team, because they will get to see who is going after who in the boardroom.
The consensus from the Trumps was that several mistakes were made by the women. The location was poor (near Penn Station); the uniforms hid their celebrity; and the fact they did not cash in on their celebrity status was a crucial mistake. The commodity was their celebrity status according to Trump, not the hot dogs. Omarosa brings back into the boardroom Carol Alt and Tiffany Fallon.
Tiffany Fallon was a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, and Trump questions why she did not call Hugh Heffner for a donation. She said she was saving him for a bigger task in the future. Trump reminds her that is she is fired then there is no future, and that had she called Hef he probably would have given her an outrageous donation like $100,000 for a hot dog. Ultimately this mistake was her undoing, and Trump fired her. Tiffany Fallon thus becomes the answer to the trivia question “who was the first person fired on Celebrity Apprentice?”
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