Last time on the premiere of Celebrity Apprentice, the women were triumphant in the cupcake sale challenge, outselling the men by tens of thousands. Annie Duke alienated the women’s team, Brande Roderick, and Tom Green and Jesse James were surprisingly effective leaders for their respective teams, and ultimately Andrew Dice Clay got the boot for his big mouth.

Tonight, after coming so close to being fired, Dennis and Hershel return to the rest of the group. Hershel says that he does not want to go back to the boardroom, because he doesn’t like to lose. Clint worries that the men’s team won’t respect their project managers in the future, and Tom realizes that you can’t trust anyone, even your teammates.

The episode begins with a description of Joan’s charity, God’s Love, which delivers meals to housebound people with life altering illnesses. Today, she delivers meals in person to a woman suffering breast cancer, along with the head of God Delivers. While there, she delivers the check from the cupcake sale for over $125,000.

Then it’s back to business. The remaining apprentices head to Trump headquarters for their next assignment. Trump introduces Erin Burnett, who hosted The Millionaire Within with Trump on CNBC. He introduces Tony, the CEO of Zappos.com, a successful retail website. Each team’s assignment is to create a costume and 4-page comic about a character who will promote Zappos. The teams pick their project managers. Khloe is picked for the women, because she owns retail stores, but she worries that she doesn’t know much about online. The men choose Scott, thanks to his reasoning and organization during the last challenge. The PM of the winning team will get $20,000 for his/her chosen charity.

Team Athena gets busy sitting down with Tony to find out what they’re looking for. He emphasizes customer service with a personal touch. Annie and Melissa prod Tony with uncomfortable questions about what physical attributes he likes, and he dodges the questions, telling them to think about the customers, not him. The men’s team meets with Tony, and Tom quickly kills the conversation with a confused rant about corporate humor.

The women begin brainstorming—which seems to mean talking over each other. Khloe doesn’t take charge, and the rest of the women get frustrated with the alpha females (Joan, Annie, Brande… and others) talking too much.

Donald gives the audience the run-down on the differences between the team project managers. Scott knows how to handle pressure from his years as an Olympian, while Khloe is less experienced, and she runs the risk of letting people walk all over her.

The women’s team continues to have problems with too many people talking and repeating themselves. Annie begins to take over and delegate when Khloe does not. Annie nominates herself and Claudia to write the script. Joan feels snubbed on the writing front. Scott tries to embrace the variety of skills on his team, but the colorful personalities of Dennis and Tom threaten to take the character in a weird, non-family direction… with a flamboyant tranvestite? Seriously? Not really, they seem to be joking, but it’s still troubling that they have no real direction.

Back on the women’s team, Khloe and Annie butt heads about beginning the storyline, and Khloe gets more comfortable in the PM role. The editor and illustrator show up to construct the mock-up of the women’s pitch for their female superhero. Over at Kotu, their artists show up, but the men are still fighting over the basics of their character. Clint and Dennis talk over the rest of the team, and the artists just sit and wait without any material while Scott watches and doesn’t wrangle the team.

Claudia comes up with a character named Mizz Z, a cute girl-next-door type who zaps good customer service into the world with lightening bolts. It’s clearly Claudia’s idea, but Melissa takes credit for all of it when Donald Jr. comes to check on their progress. Claudia doesn’t think it’s appropriate to fight in front of him, so she stays quiet. The women present their idea to the focus group, a group of typical comic book readers. The comic book fans are visibly uncomfortable by the hot women on Team Athena, especially Brande. They can’t get over that she’s a Playboy Playmate. The focus group men give their advice for how to make the character more attractive to comic fans, and the women leave feeling accomplished.

Next, the men pitch their ideas to the focus group. Unfortunately the team is entirely UN-focused. Tom goes on a funny but useless tangent, and Scott starts to shut down from his frustration. The focus group leaves without giving much help, because the men still don’t have a solid idea. Jesse worries that they won’t have a character by the time he needs to make the costume. Hershel and Tom butt heads over Tom’s Senor Zappos idea, and the men continue to throw out bad ideas. Jesse accurately calls their meeting a “clusterf---“ that is getting nowhere.

The women have a model who will wear the costume, but Joan asks Natalie if she would like to be the character. Natalie is up to the challenge, but she has understandable jitters. Joan, T-Boz and Natalie go to meet the costume designer, and the men are still on square one trying to develop a character, and they finally come up with a working woman character. Erin drops by and worries that they wasted a lot of time during the day. Scott gets fed up with Tom interrupting their script writing with name ideas, and Tom feels like his ideas are getting no respect. Scott picks the name EEE (Everywhere, Everything, Every time)… and Tom realizes what a stupid name that is, not to mention an explicit drug reference, which is weird. Tom makes enough fun of the name that the rest of the team begins to worry that the name is going to kill the idea, but PM Scott puts his foot down for his idea.

At the costume shop, Natalie’s superhero costume looks a bit dominatrix. Jesse, Dennis and Brian go to their designer with some loose ideas for the costume, and Jesse’s artistic skills come out. Scott calls Jesse to tell them the name, and even the costume designers lampoon it. (“Eee! Eee!”)




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