| Season 13 | Episode 9
Why is Gary Busey still in this? It's not funny anymore, and it's bordering on sad. It's only because Team Power keeps losing. Lil Jon wants to step it up and secure a win as the last original member of Team Power. Lisa and Penn want to offload Gary.
For the final six task, Joan Rivers and Ivanka Trump are the advisors. They're back in Times Square, this time for Donald Trump to hock LG a little bit. The teams will be making a video talking about how great LG is. The executive tells the teams the video should excite, explore, and encourage. Lil Jon steps up as project manager for Team Power, and Lisa and Penn make Gary the project manager for Plan B, even if it means his firing.
Penn says he is not worried about Gary being the project manager on a tech challenge because he will be there. The LG guys show up to the custom team show room to demonstrate the tech products, and repeat themselves loudly and slowly for Gary. Gary gets up and moves around during the mobile device presentation, and admits that he doesn't really care about smartphones. He must be exasperating for these guys. He even walks away during the refrigerator tutorial. Something about cats and closets and Halloween.
Team Power is, of course, doing much better. They are not working with a rude idiot or child as a project manager. They do have, Trace, though. He's here to point out the obvious, as the experts show the celebrities the phone's "cheese feature," which has the camera take a picture when you say, "cheese." But what happens when your fridge tells your phone it needs more cheese? Does it take infinite pictures of the inside of your fridge until you refill it? That must be a bug they've worked out.
The executive emphasizes to Plan B that LG delivers great products that are easy, and possibly even fun to use. Lisa calls it a "feel good company," and notes that it shouldn't be too wacky. They'll have to hold Gary back a bit. But Gary holds everyone else back. Penn and Lisa offer half of their ideas, but Gary tells them to stop talking. Gary's idea is a mechanical dog, as the thing LG will create (not one of the products listed).
"Gary wants to play a crazy person who turns into a mechanical dog," Penn says. Gary enjoys barking, and not listening to ideas. So that's the concept, I suppose. "His vision and LG's vision do not overlap in any way, shape, or form," Penn says. He asks Gary if he might understand it better if he sees it and Gary accepts that. Lisa is still upset that he told her to shut up, so she's defying Gary.
| Season 13 | Episode 9
Team Power is wrapped up in more rational, expected concerns. How do we put all this information into 90 seconds? Stuff like that. It's going well. As long as they spell everything properly, they are likely to win.
Back in the crazy house of the mechanical dog, Penn takes dictation from Gary's brain. There is no mission statement, no idea, just a man turning into a mechanical dog.
Lil Jon is working hard to create the best product possible and set up the shots. Joan Rivers visits and worries that they might be wasting too much time getting the shots perfect, but she hasn't seen the state of things at Plan B yet.
The actors arrive at Plan B, and Penn notices that Gary chose two women of the same age to play his wife and his daughter (yes, Gary is starring in this as the man who turns into the dog). This episode just gets better and better. The actors listen to Gary's diatribe about acting in earnest. Soak it up, kids, it's about to get weirder.
We all watch, rapt, as Gary crashes through the scene he wrote and pushes the cameramen out of the way. Meanwhile, Trace goes to the editing bay to work on stuff that Lil Jon sends him quickly so that they won't get clocked for taking too long on production. But this is really all about Gary and his improv scene from hell somehow turning into an LG product demonstration.
"Everything associated with LG should have a sense of warm optimism, confidence, and a sophisticated, premium, quality tone," Lisa reads from their branding guide as Gary asks the actor to hold him back as he barks at nothing. She shakes her head in defeat watching hours and hours of rehearsal. She suggests they start shooting and Gary tells her he'll decide that.
"I know how to deal with crazy, I'm not sure I know how to deal with this right now," Lisa says in a confessional. She and Penn have been cordoned off, left to hold their heads in their hands. Ivanka stops by, and Penn confesses that they might not even have a video. They have half an hour remaining and haven't shot anything. Ivanka asks if they have a storyline, and Penn says they have one, but it's odd.
"Plan B seems to have descended into chaos," Ivanka remarks. Then she asks Gary if the dog is barking or vomiting, a polite question, and Gary gives her an example of that retching noise and promises her he will be the mechanical dog in the boardroom.
Lil Jon and Marilu head to the editing room, where Trace is telling an actual editor what they want. They are very proud of their work so far, but Marilu is worried about continuity and how she looks in the video. That is something Gary won't be concerned with.
| Season 13 | Episode 9
Penn and Lisa watch in editing as their futures on the show go down the toilet. They collapse into laughter at suicide jokes because at this point, there's little else to do. Penn predicts that LG will be pissed, but wants it to be clear that he and Lisa kept their promise to Gary as project manager. Gary is convinced the executives will not only get it, but love it. I can not wait to watch them watch the videos.
Team Power presents first, of course, and the executive has a poker face, making Lil Jon nervous. Trace believes they won, but is willing to admit that sometimes Gary is so far out of the box he comes around from the other end and surprises you with something brilliant.
The moment we've all been waiting for has arrived: Plan B presents the video to the LG executive and the advisors, Ivanka Trump and Joan Rivers. Admittedly, the Plan B pre-video presentation is better. And the executive seemed to be smiling. The mechanical dog bit doesn't make sense or go over well. If the young actor's line reading of "last time you became a mechanical dog it lasted for two days," had been better, that might have salvaged it. But maybe I'm living in the monkey house, too, at this point. And the LG phone does not keep you from turning into a mechanical dog. Other oddities: Gary making remote control and TV noises, and the amount of time spent talking about what to watch while the camera focuses on the back of everyone's head.
"I have no hope whatsoever of winning this task," Penn says. I look forward to hearing what Joan Rivers will say about it. Kindly, James, the LG executive, says the presentation and brand integration of Gary's video was good. James says the team "missed on some of the other categories," and that he did not understand what the dog had to do with anything. He did not find it funny.
James did not like the presentation of Lil Jon's team as much, and thought Marilu and Penn were standouts overall. Not much is said about Power's video, because it was so clearly superior.
The mess to worry about is the boardroom. Donald Trump starts off with the good-ish news: LG has decided to donate a full suite of LG smart appliances to everyone's charities. What some of these charities will even do with them is beyond us, but they'll have the most cutting edge technology that is perfect for a home and maybe not a business or charity organization.
Team Power admits they think they did well in the task. Then, Donald Trump has Marilu perform her memory magic trick with Joan and asks her if she could count cards in Vegas for him. He must have just watched Rain Man. Penn tells Donald Trump that they have updated how they do things and there are better ways to cheat now. Donald says it's not cheating, and Penn raises his eyebrows and shuts his mouth. For charity.
| Season 13 | Episode 9
Before getting to the meat of the boardroom, Donald tells Trace that he sort of fell into the background on this task and asks him who he would fire. Trace deadpans that he would fire both of them. I still can't tell if he cares or not, about anything. We know so little about Trace Adkins, except that he believes in caveman comedy.
On to Gary's team. Gary confesses that he felt abandoned. He tells Trump that he would fire Lisa because she yelled at him, and was disappointed in both of them for not helping him to their full extent. Usually, he gets to be dead weight. Gary paints a somewhat different picture of what actually happened, and Lisa and Penn try to combat that as eloquently and politely as possible.
Penn explains that earlier there was not really any brainstorming. They weren't allowed to finish any of their ideas, and only proceeded with Gary's ideas. Donald tries to get Gary to admit that he doesn't like Lisa or Penn. Gary tries to explain the mechanical dog concept, it still doesn't make sense. Penn speaks his case, and Gary is just no match for logic. Before they digress too much into the classic "barking or vomiting" argument, Trump rolls tape on the video.
Donald Trump says he doesn't know what was going on, or whether vomiting was involved. He asks Lil Jon what he thought and Lil Jon says it's "cool." Then, they discuss a line that Gary wrote, "I like to go slow and let nature take me." It is worse than the way Donald heard it, which was "let nature take its course." Nobody knows what was happening in the video.
They watch Lil Jon's video, and Donald Trump asks Gary what he thought and whose was better, and Gary says, "even." Trump criticizes him for this, so Gary rebukes his statement and says he thinks they won, because it's what he wants to hear. Finally, and obviously, Donald announces Team Power as the winners of this task. May he be swift and merciful.
But what will the reasoning behind firing Gary end up being? That is the only remaining mystery. There is more quibbling about the mechanical dog, but this isn't really about the mechanical dog, is it? It's never about the mechanical dog, you know?
"Why would I fire Lisa instead of you?" Donald asks Gary. Gary tries to say that Lisa was yelling, but it just exposes more bad behavior on Gary's part. They discuss the "cameraman incident," and Ivanka redirects the conversation to the overall team dynamic. Everyone is at fault, but really mostly Gary. Penn notes that Gary walked away when the technicians were explaining the LG products and Gary denies that.
| Season 13 | Episode 9
Gary continues to deflect reason, and Lisa is asked about her yelling again. Lisa says it's utter non-truth and she won't stand for it. So, Donald Trump, being as reasonable and literal as Gary Busey, asks Lisa if she wants to leave now. How should Lisa even respond to that? I guess I would say that if Gary Busey isn't fired I would leave. Instead, she says she doesn't want to leave. Joan Rivers is loving this.
"Gary, do you think you should have been listening to your team as project manager?" Donald says, asking all the tough questions. Trump notes that Gary is completely different from the last time he played (he is not). He says Gary was a flake last time and now he's a rock (again, he's not). This boardroom is stupid and I won't stand for it. Gary is fired, for not highlighting enough of the LG products. Joan and Ivanka affirm Donald at either side. It was not a hard decision and no one deserves our sympathy, especially not Donald Trump. That being said, I think this is why we watch Celebrity Apprentice.