Celebrity Apprentice 2012 Winding Down to Top Five & Contenders Get Testy

Pic of Day

Looks Like Best Being Sent Home!

By this point in Celebrity Apprentice 2012 http://www.nbc.com/the-apprentice/ viewers normally have some clue of who seems to be headed to a win as well as the strengths, weaknesses and personalities of the celebrated contenders.

As of this writing there are six contenders left on this competitive reality show. They are:

Arsenio Hall
Aubrey O'Day
Clay Aiken
Dayana Mendoza
Lisa Lampanelli
Teresa Giudice

Aresenio Hall has always been an affable guy, former talk show host, face always wearing a big smile. Arsenio has shown some nastiness during this series, when required. But no matter his solo vignettes that sometimes had him snarling and growling over this contender or another, for the most part Arsenio keeps a low profile and tends to stay in the background during all tasks. So far Arsenio has only been on one losing team and his one time as Project Manager he led his team to victory. So while one might view him as lackluster, he is very much still in the competition.

Aubrey gets ripped every episode, complained about by her team mates and Project Managers. Aubrey has been on FOUR losing teams. She was Project Manager on the losing team for the challenge to create a living wall for Crystal Lite and was winning Project Manager for the most recent challenge as of this writing of producing a n in-store display for Macy's for Trumps new men's cologne called, what else? SUCCESS! I do not see Aubrey as winning this thing as her record's pretty spotty, not the stuff of winners and leaders.

Clay Aiken openly admits he is gay on almost every episode of Celebrity Apprentice. Which makes me smile because I remember when Aiken was a contender for American Idol and all the speculation about his sexual orientation. Not that it matters much who he sleeps with but it sure is a sign of how schizophrenic we are in America about this sort of thing.

Clay has been on a winning team eight times, a losing team three times. He's been Project Manager twice, once for a winning team, once for a losing team. Clay could win this thing in that his skills are close enough. HE did come so close to being outta there during the Trump cologne challenge but for reasons that are murky to me, Trump fired Penn Jillette.

Dayana is beautiful. She's been on the losing team eight times, she's been a Project Manager twice, once a winner, once a loser. More importantly, she's been in the boardroom, called back in by her team mates, almost as many times. She is depicted through the scripting and pathos as having one major good point to bring to the challenges and that is: she is beautiful.

Lisa has a mixed relationship with Dayana, alternately loving and hating her. The Donald is smitten with Dayana, as The Donald often is with beautiful women. There's no reason in the world why Dayana is still hanging in there when much better than her have been sent home.

Teresa is a good contender. She's been on a losing team six times our of eleven, she's been a Project Manager for both a winning and losing team. Teresa has not stood out during the competition in any major manner but she hasn't been brought into that Board room all that often and seems like a team player.

Lisa Lampanelli is the contender I see to win that thing. I base this prediction mostly on the strength of her personality. People with strong personalities tend to win these things. Whether this is planned or unplanned I don't know. If ever there was a forceful in-your-face brutally honest personality, it is Lisa. Lisa too openly proclaims her homosexuality and by this time I really just wish people would shut up about it because, who cares, really?

Lisa's been on seven losing teams so she's not running away with this thing. She's only been a Project Manager one time, as of this writing, and that's interesting. Lisa is seldom brought back into the board room. This is mostly because Lisa is very smart and a forceful leader and most challenges, win or lose, involve her greatly.

The surprising thing to me is the ejection of two contenders that I saw on a path to win. One was Pal Teutul, who was ejected for being Project Manager of a losing task involving creating a puppet show.

The bigger surprise was the ejection of Penn Jillette. Penn is always touted as a great contributor by his team mates, has never been brought back into the boardroom save by Clay Aiken after losing the Trump cologne task. By me Aiken should have been ejected as he was the Project Manager of the task, Project Manager of a challenge that had his team making some serious mistakes.

It was, yes, Penn who came up with the slogan for the store display of Trump's cologne that the Macy's people so hated. Penn came up with "You Earned It" and the Macy's team hated it. Even The Donald didn't think it was such a bad slogan. Further, I think it's L'Oriel hair color for women that has a similar type slogan…"because you're worth it".

Clay's team also came up with a good picture of Dayanna loving some guy but the Macy's people thought the picture was way too big and overpowered the display.

I believe that once you get a bunch of missteps in a task the fault lies with the Project Manager, as opposed to one player who made one contribution to the overall effort, however misguided. And again, I really thought Penn's slogan was a pretty good one, never mind the taste of the Macy's people.

But Trump fired Jillette and so it is.

For the top three, I predict
1-Lisa Lampanelli
2-Teresa Giudice
3-Arsenio Hall

Earlier posts on this Blog about Celebrity Apprentice 2012 below.
Celebrity Apprentice 2012 Begins-An Intro, Some Snark, The Celebrity Contenders

Celebrity Apprentice 2012 Continues, Women Bicker, Men Stay Strong, It Becomes a Hoot

Celebrity Apprentice 2012 Begins-An Intro, Some Snark, The Celebrity Contenders

Celebrity Apprentice airs on NBC on Sunday nights at 9pm.

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