"The Apprentice 5' - Ep. 5 -or- "Whose Ship Was Sunk Tonight?"

It's Week 5 of the 15 week "interview." I'm finally getting to know some of the names of the quieter folks or those not really highlighted by the show's editors. After tonight, I got to know who Leslie is. And, um ... Dan.

The show opened with the candidates wondering who would be fired. The Synergy folks really wanted to no longer see Brent while many of Gold Rush were hoping for Brent's return because of his detrimental inflluence on the team. All were shocked that Brent was gone. Some relieved; others wondering if they need to worry about Synergy now. Andrea went at Roxanne for saying that Tammy did a better job as a Project Manager. Ohhh! Catfight! Well, not quite. I personally don't think Roxanne's a really strong candidate for winning, but at least she's personable. Andrea irks me. Be gone, witch!

Ahem.

This week's task for the teams was a bit more along the lines we've seen before. They were brought on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, the Norwegian Jewel, and instructed they must make a 30 second television commercial touting the cruise line's new "freestyle" cruises. They're cruises without any organized events time schedules. (Okay, that's a cruise I'd like!) The hitch was that the teams only had 3 hours to complete the filming with a crew and equipment provided. If they didn't finish by then -- the ship leaves port. And, but of course, they're stuck on a cruise. Hey ... that doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Dan decided he wanted to be the Project Manager for Gold Rush and the team instantly liked an idea Lenny had with a storyline of a castaway coming aboard and showing all the fun activities. They set about with the film crew. Over at Synergy, Roxanne went for the Project Manager position much to the dismay of Andrea. They came up with the idea to contrast traditional cruises with the more fun and exciting freestyle ones. Now, Roxanne did look a bit bewildered and overwhelmed at times, but Andrea irked me more. Please, please get her off my television set!

The foreshadowing of the error a team would make came after a commercial. This time it was the quote "Listen to your people" along with a little lecture by Trump. Okay. So, we know one Project Manager wouldn't listen to his people. It was so easy from that point on to see who would lose the task. While Roxanne didn't particularly listen to Andrea (can't blame her), she listened to the others on her team. Ah, but Dan tried to do everything by himself, didn't delegate tasks and, more importantly, didn't listen to Lenny when he said that text alone wasn't good, the commercial needed a voiceover, too. When Bill Rancik peeked in on the team, all was chaos. Dan was more worried about Lee shmoozing with Carolyn and Bill than he was about actually assigning Lee a task.

The results were pretty clear. I knew the castaway part of the Gold Rush ad and the first thing that struck me was you didn't know he was a castaway! Synergy easily won and with no help from Brent! They won big time, too. They got to go to a secret (yeah, right) Brinks diamond vault where they played with diamonds and got to select $30,000 worth of them to take home.

Gold Rush was in turmoil. Lenny came up with the castaway idea which, even beyond the confusion, didn't fly well with the thought of a cruise. Tarek shouted down Lenny's balking at the text only on the ad and pushed that as it's something he can do well. Dan wasn't a good leader at all. He didn't delegate tasks and he didn't listen to his people. Tarek told Dan he would back him up in the boardroom, but then went on to say he (Dan) didn't have any friends in the boardroom. The plot thickens!

Once the whole team got together in the boardroom with Donald, Bill and Carolyn, all heck broke loose. They argued like little kids. Here's the corporate future, eh? Dan decided to take Lee into the boardroom mainly because he doesn't like him. Lee really didn't do anything wrong on the task. He didn't do much, but he wasn't asked to do much. Again, no delegation. Dan didn't want both Lee and Lenny in there and Leslie actually spoke up for herself, so he chose Tarek. I thought Tarek was going to be a goner, but Donald fired Dan because he didn't bring Lenny in and the whole concept was his idea.

"Tell Lenny he hasn't long to go!"

The best line of the night was Trump to Tarek: "Mensa should change their test." I'm sure that Mensa is rescinding Tarek's membership right now.

Next week's show will be on at 10 PM instead of 9 (ET). Until then ...

Dollar bills, y'all...