The Celebrity Apprentice 5, Episode 7, Part 1: Am I Blue?

For her part, Teresa gets in on the cattiness by saying she felt Debbie was setting her up at the last minute, which she hasn’t done to Lisa or Aubrey. I don’t know, it seems like a pretty big thing to overlook, so it’s a good thing Debbie mentioned it when she did, but I’m just a casual observer so what do I know?

Back to Unanimous we go, and Penn is telling the team he’s set up donations from Teller and from the Blue Man Group. He says he offered Blue Man Group to Dee, who loved the idea. The men continue calling their rich friends, and Lou even leaves a message for Vince McMahon, owner of World Wrestling Entertainment. (I’m a lifelong wrestling fan, so if Vince shows up, this will officially be the best episode of this show ever. By the way, is it coincidence that this episode is airing on Wrestlemania Sunday? Hmmm…) Arsenio says everyone is on the phone at the same time, and he’s trying but all of his friends are avoiding him, because when you don’t have a talk show, a lot of people who you thought were your friends are not. I wonder if Johnny Carson ever had that problem after he retired?

He finally gets a hold of Jay Leno, who says he’s going to FedEx a blank check. Arsenio talks about how he and Jay are friends, and does his Leno impression to demonstrate how Leno got him into show business. See, I could have sworn I remember Arsenio mocking Leno when the two were both on competing talk shows, and not in a friendly way, either. But here, he says Leno is like a big brother to him. I’ll never understand these late night wars, I guess. (A little detail I love: The screen on the phone has The Celebrity Apprentice logo, which is kinda cool.)

Down the hall, Lisa has her grumpy demeanor out as she’s giving the girls grief about taking a hundred pictures, and says it’s always up to her to save everyone’s ass. Dayana asks Lisa if they’re including subway directions, and Lisa bites her head off about it and says they’re focusing on the least important stuff in this whole [bleep] task, and flat-out tells Dayana to shut up. In an interview, she calls Dayana an “eleventh hour Yappy McYapster,” which I can’t add anything to.

Dayana, to be fair, is trying to be helpful and asks Lisa if she needs any more help, but she really can’t read the room as Lisa tells Teresa to get Dayana out of there and says, “Oh my god, [bleep] shut up. [Bleep] shut up. [Bleep] shut up,” and Dayana keeps talking the whole time. Teresa makes the “zip your lip” motion to her, while the graphic designer looks horribly uncomfortable. Dayana interviews that Lisa is confused over when to get emotional, and Trump is not going to pick a winner who’s going to be shouting and yelling and screaming and crying. No, but he might give their charity 10 grand, as we learned last week.

Lisa continues trying to get Dayana to shut up, and interviews she’s blown away by the stupidity of parts of their group. She actually tears up while talking about how she sweated her ass off putting this book together and she’s “sick of this pressure from women who all they do is looking in a [bleep] mirror. [Bleep] you. Develop a talent and a brain and then maybe the world will take you seriously.” And she’s nearly in tears as she says this. Wow – maybe Dayana has a point about Lisa not knowing when to get emotional.

It’s the next day and Unanimous begins selling their guidebooks at 8 AM—I guess the rest of their night was so boring that we had to skip over all of it. [Editor’s Note: What, did you want this episode to be four hours long?!] Dee is confident he’ll raise lots of money and hopes everyone else will bring in a lot as well. There’s a wrinkle, as Lou tells someone they’re five dollars, and a guy is apparently told otherwise. Clay asks Paul to tell them to stop saying they’re five dollars, and Dee says it is worrisome but they still need their big donors to make a difference. He hopes the Blue Man Group will make a big donation, and he shills the guidebooks to the public by saying, “If you don’t donate money, I am burning in Hell.” Hey, it worked for Jimmy Swaggart!

Meanwhile, Forte is also selling their guidebooks, and they’ve gone with a black-and-yellow color scheme for some ungodly reason. Aubrey offers to give someone a kiss if they’ll buy a guidebook, which should tell you something about how much faith they have in the product. Teresa says she’s not going to focus on the drama from yesterday (the producers will do that for her) and now it’s time to start selling. A contrast is shown as Dayana gets turned down by two people but Aubrey gets a donation from one guy. I’m sure those three people represented a very accurate depiction of how sales went down all day, too.

Back at Unanimous, Michael Andretti shows up and buys a book for 20 thousand dollars, so it’s good to see he’s not as bitter toward his former teammates as Lou is; Dee is also impressed. Lou announces a 25 thousand dollar donation, though the dude’s name is not given even though he’s standing right there next to Lou. Another guy buys two for 15 thousand, and Dee interviews that he never heard Arsenio make an announcement.

Speaking of Arsenio, he’s on the phone asking about Leno’s check, but apparently it got lost and is still on the truck someplace. He insinuates it’s because the check arrived at his New York office at 7, but the office didn’t open until 10. So somewhere in New York City there’s a truck driver with a blank check from Jay Leno. Arsenio says he’s never failed at anything (I remember a Star Search reboot that says otherwise) but today he knows he’s in trouble.

At Forte, Debbie says things started slow and they had to work for every 20 dollars, but then the big money starts coming in, and they’re off and running. Dayana does some goofy singing as she interviews that people don’t realize she’s a hard worker and she’s there to win for her charity and win The Celebrity Apprentice. So… basically she’s there for the same reason as everyone else.

Lisa announces a five thousand dollar donation from Jeff Foxworthy, and she tells us a few more donations came in as well. Meanwhile Teresa’s big money donors have not shown up yet and she’s on the phone trying to track them down. Lisa says the pressure is on her to raise more money because she’s Project Manager.

Back to Unanimous, where the Blue Man Group are making their entrance by parading down the street with a giant blue man puppet or something. Teller also shows up, and I have my little geek-out moment at the Penn & Teller reunion before Teller hands Clay 20 thousand in cash. Penn says his “little Grinch heart” grew three times in size.

But the stunt backfires, as the Blue Men burst some balloons filled with money. Everyone scrambles to pick it up as Dee announces it’s all for charity. It appears quite a bit is turned in, but Clay calls it a “complete [bleeping] disaster” as Arsenio notices some woman trying to put money in her pants. Clay interviews that within seconds, there were fifty people on the ground grabbing at the cash, and Arsenio grabbed some out of the crack of some lady’s butt because she was trying to put it in her pants. Where the hell were the cameras to capture that?

Some woman is shown pulling money out of her cleavage, as Clay angrily tells Dee that if they recovered half of what they were given, he’ll be surprised. And people call me cynical? Learn to trust people, Clay. Penn has a slightly better attitude, as he says if anyone copped the money and ran away, he considers that charity. A bit simplistic, but still.