TV Review: Circus Returns to NBC in ‘All-Star Celebrity Apprentice’

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CHICAGO – Donald Trump, the P.T. Barnum of modern television, is back with the highly-anticipated “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice,” the ultimate edition of one of TV’s guiltiest pleasures. Long ago realizing that people would have more fun watching egocentric and largely incompetent quasi-celebrities than actual job-hunters, Trump turned his original “The Apprentice” into a variation on “The Surreal Life” in which famous people try to make money for their favorite charities. Although they mostly just try to make good TV. For the most part, they succeed.

Television Rating: 3.5/5.0

“Our most anticipated season ever” (as per Trump, every single season) includes fourteen former “Celebrity Apprentice” players, including one former winner and a former runner-up. Those two gentlemen are made team leaders and choose their teams in a schoolyard fashion. The fourteen celebs are Dennis Rodman, Lisa Rinna, Bret Michaels, Claudia Jordan, Penn Jillette, Trace Adkins, Brande Roderick, Lil Jon, Omarosa, Stephen Baldwin, Dee Snider, Marilu Henner, Gary Busey, and Latoya Jackson. Clearly assembled for peak entertainment value, Dennis is hitting on another celeb and Gary is yelling before the credits roll. Whatever one may say about his political leanings or grandstanding in the press, Trump sure knows how to assemble the right players for escapist TV.

All-Star Celebrity Apprentice
Photo credit: NBC

The first episode of the season of “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice” features a task in which the teams have to sell meatballs to raise money for charity. Trace Adkins takes charge of his team while Bret allows Brande Roderick to take over his meatball store. Donald Trump starts pitting people against each other immediately, suggesting that Bret shouldn’t even be playing the game (why risk the likelihood that he won’t win two in a row), and smiling just a bit every time Omarosa and his judge Piers Morgan, who notoriously fought on their season, go at it yet again.

All-Star Celebrity Apprentice Photo credit: NBC

In fact, Morgan gets significantly more screen time than most of the actual players in the premiere, going at it with the absolutely horrendous Omarosa, a woman who betrays the man who chose her for his team before the task has even begun. In some people’s eyes, she’s the tough player who will do whatever it takes. In Piers’ eyes (and mine), she’s just not a good person. In everyone’s eyes, she’s great for TV. (And if you don’t think she and Trump knows that, you’re crazy. She’s playing a character here and knows full well that, even if you hate her, any response is a good one since it will likely keep her around longer.)

As for other high/low-lights — Busey is typical Busey, suggesting that the team name themselves “Sperm Farmers” or “The Invisible Witches”; Dennis seems about as lost as you’d expect even if he may be clean; Latoya is still hard to figure out but fascinating to watch; Trace is aggressively out to win it this time; Stephen Baldwin is surprisingly abrasive, choosing this time to take an enormously risky approach to fundraising that could send him home.

It’s this simple — if you’ve enjoyed “The Celebrity Apprentice” in the past, it’s simply impossible to believe that this season will be a let down. Other than maybe Meat Loaf, it features all the personalities that you’d like to see come back from previous “Celebrity Apprentice” seasons. As he has done with so many professional ventures (including his own cult of personality), Trump has finetuned this into a B-TV machine. Fights, backstabbing, personality issues, crying, blaming — we love to watch our celebrities act like children and few are more childish than the team of 2013’s “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice”.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]