This episode’s task featured longtime Apprentice sponsor Kodak, as Kodak once again needed a new promotion. Very fortunate that this always seems to happen during the taping of The Apprentice. So the task involved teams promoting Kodak’s products in a storefront setting, using their celebrity status to aid in the campaign.
Maria was chosen as Project Manager for Tenacity, while Sinbad was assigned the role for RockSolid. And when I say “assigned”, I mean that Rod deflected the role away from him and chose Sinbad to lead based on his Bluetooth earpiece. And while it was not evident until a bit later, that was the clear turning point in this task.
Maria’s main problem leading up to the opening appeared to be controlling Cyndi, who clearly is not wired the same way as everyone else and is probably why she’s so unusual (sorry, I had to do it). But it’s pretty clear that, despite her eccentricity (or maybe BECAUSE of it), the women all love her, hence their reluctance to put Cyndi on the chopping block in the previous task.
Regardless, Maria had a clear vision of what she wanted to present and even managed to work her charity into the mix, which I felt was a brilliant move because even though it does nothing to the Kodak representatives, it gave her some positive ammunition in the event that Tenacity lost the task. In terms of roles, she seemed to assign everyone to a proper position. Summer was a great choice for helping to educate the masses – her job as a TV Host requires her to absorb and present information in a clear and concise manner. Using replica WWE belts were also smart – and obviously a nod to her (the current) employer. And of course, bringing in WWE wrestlerSuperstar Mark Henry (who, indeed, is a strong, strong man) was also a good move, even if people had no idea who he was.
The one thing about Tenacity’s presentation that I’m really curious about is whether the power outages were taken into account during the task. The women appeared to roll with this setback as best they could but one has to wonder if things would’ve been much more efficient without the outage and whether the Kodak execs (who were present during one of the outages) extrapolated from this occurrence.
Meanwhile, RockSolid was clearly disorganized, and essentially the men went their separate ways to do some tasks that, at times, had nothing to do with the actual task at hand – case in point, Rod talking to his lawyers. That they ended up with something functional still boggles my mind, but it appears to be one of those cases where the team does a bunch of stuff and from that stuff, they gain inspiration. For a time-constrained task such as this though, I don’t think it’s recommended.
The funny thing about this disorganization is that it brought out some of the base tendencies in the men. Some of the men tried to work based on the loose parameters of the project. Others did their own thing. Bret took a time out due to frustration. And Sinbad seemingly did nothing. If success in this game were predicated on this series of scenes, then I’d say that Michael and Curtis would be the two men left standing. But it’s not, and I’d suspect that Trump will let Rod stay on as long as feasibly possible, so we’ll see how things play out.
RockSolid’s presentation basically consisted of coming in, taking pictures with the celebs (oddly enough, Goldberg also had a replica WWE Big Gold belt) and leaving with a website flyer in hand. Pretty simple, and effective in getting people in, but since the task was to raise awareness of Kodak’s products, I can’t call this anything but a complete fail.
And then, we got 30 minutes of time to tell us what we already knew – Sinbad was going to be fired. Clearly, Sinbad and Bret were the only two serious candidates for elimination, and of the two, Bret had proved himself to be the better PM, so Sinbad had to go.
Money Earned:
Bret Michaels – $100,000 ($100,000)
Maria Kanelis – $20,000 ($20,000)
Carol Leifer – $10,000 ($10,000)
Project Manager Standings:
Maria Kanelis (1-0)
Bret Michaels (1-0)
Cyndi Lauper (0-1)
Sinbad (0-1)
Just another reminder that this weekend, if you’re in the Toronto Area, go visit Murtz, Natalie, George “The Animal” Steele and others at Wizard World Toronto.
