Trace, Omarosa, and Stephen return to the suite, and Piers, Carol, and Lennox are surprised to see that Tito was the one who got fired. Piers accuses Trace of stabbing Tito in the back, which I don't think is very nice of him. Trace has been keeping his hands pretty clean throughout this competition, after all. Trace doesn't rise to the bait, but he interviews that he just calls 'em like he sees 'em. Anyway, Piers is really only saying this because he's disappointed that Omarosa didn't get fired instead of Tito. "A real tragedy in every way," he mutters.
The Apprenti get invited to Trump's spectacularly tacky apartment, so he can show it off, as well as the current permutation of his family. Melania coaches 18-month-old Baron to utter a few words, and the tot's vocabulary is just big enough to suck up to daddy. Much like that of Don, Jr. Trump explains the task: they'll be working with Moti Hasson at the Moti Hasson Gallery (did he think up that name by himself?), choosing artists from a list and then selling their art. Empresario's PM will be Omarosa for PM, who reminds us that this is the task she got fired on "last season." Yes, Omarosa, it's like the five seasons that occurred in your absence never existed. Piers is going to be PM for Hydra, because he's decided that it's time for him and Omarosa to settle things once and for all.
In the Empresario suite, Omarosa and the team meet with Moti Hasson, asking him for the tricks of the trade when it comes to choosing art. Hasson just tells Omarosa to follow her heart. Which (spoiler alert!) is why Empresario ends up nowhere. Nothing to follow, you see. Of course Trace is once again eager to stereotype himself as a backwoods philistine, dismissing the abstract work that makes up the majority of the art as "three-year-old threw up on a canvas" stuff. Stephen advises Omarosa that Piers is going to use the strategy of selling a few painting for the highest possible price. Dude's been paying attention, at least.
Moti Hassan tells Hydra something interesting about one of the artists, Shirley Shor. Apparently she's "new media," which somehow means her pieces can be sold more than once. And there are twenty of them, so Hydra decides to go in that direction, and Piers suspects that "Omarosa would not be smart enough to work that out." Well, she clearly isn't smart enough to ask the right questions, if the first thing she wondered was basically "how do you sell art?"
Sure enough, Empresario is picking an artist named David Kramer, because he's got the most and the cheapest pieces to sell. And since the PMs' charities teams get any profit over the previously-determined minimum price, Omarosa figures it's to her advantage to go with cheap pieces that she can mark up. Of course, that's assuming she sells any at all. She is so ahead of herself she's in two different time zones.
Stephen also works the phones, begging people to "come buy a piece of art from Stevie B. tonight." Because when you think of art, you think of a guy who wants you to call him "Stevie B."
Piers is also working his phone, and he gets Gordon Ramsay on the phone. Ramsay is never shown on camera, but you can tell it's really him by all the bleeping. Piers interviews that his goal is to not only get Omarosa off the show, but out of reality TV entirely. To which I can only say one thing: Godspeed, Mr. Morgan.
Omarosa pulls Stephen off the phone so he can research the artists, but she's not impressed when he admits that he can't research the internet and talk to people at the same time. "You can't multitask?" she asks imperiously. Multitasking is one thing, but reading and learning at the same time you're talking and listening? I've never been able to get away with that, unless it was a conference call with ten other people and I could drop off for minutes at a time without anyone noticing. Shut up, Omarosa.
At the gallery, Hasson shows Hydra their space, which is in the back room, while Empresario's space is in the front. Empresario arrives soon after, and as the two teams try to get set up in such a way as to minimize or maximize traffic to the back room (depending on which team they're on, obviously), Stephen keeps coming up with excuses to come and hang around while Piers makes phone calls and sends emails. In an interview, Piers accuses Stephen of cheating, which would be pretty rich of him after the whole Vincent Pastore debacle. Except then he says, "I have no problem with Stephen Baldwin cheating. I just wish he'd admit it and stop pretending it's on a different moral base to me." And that's kind of awesome. Piers is an asshole, but he's also usually right. But then he wrecks it by telling Stephen to quit cutting through the Hydra gallery to get to the restroom, and threatening to hit him if he does it again. Let me just categorically say that I abhor violence in all forms, and there would have to be very extreme circumstances indeed in order for me to condone hitting or even threatening to hit someone who is not Stephen Baldwin. So I guess Piers and I are still cool, actually.
The teams rush to get the art hung up. Empresario debates whether to hang up informational stickers to the pieces they're trying to sell. Trace and Omarosa want to keep them off so they can be in control of the pricing (read: not let the patrons know how much they're being gouged for), but Stephen thinks they have to put them up, and Hasson agrees with him. Hasson also issues the teams strips of little red "sold" stickers to put on the stickers when they make a sale. These will be important later. Unless (spoiler alert!) you're in Empresario.
The doors open, and people start flooding in. I have to confess I've been to exactly zero art openings in New York City, but this seems like a pretty big crowd, arriving more or less all at once. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the TV cameras. Omarosa positions herself by the door, sending everyone right over to her side. Piers calls for Lennox to try to counteract her, but Lennox has more shame than she does so it doesn't work. This will be Hydra's first and final setback, by the way. Art sales commence, or at least some very committed encouraging thereof.
Meanwhile, Piers is working his phone, trying to track down a dilatory donor, as he so often does. He takes a break to show off a Shirley Shor piece to a potential customer. The piece appears to incorporate some kind of LCD display with blocks of color that appear to zoom in and out in a totally mesmerizing way. You could get lost staring at it, trying to figure it out, and eventually realize you've just been standing there for a half hour with your mouth open and you're no closer to making sense of it than you were to begin with. Kind of like with Trump's hair. We cut between Piers and Omarosa, giving the hard sell to their respective prospects as though they're battling face-to-face.
Back from ads, Omarosa's customer balks, but Piers manages to sell his customer the Shor. And things go from bad to worse for Empresario when one of Stephen's "contacts" shows up and Hydra poaches him. And sells a piece to him. Stephen's pissed, but Piers says too bad so sad, and if you can't keep a leash on your own contacts, you're "a complete dunderhead." Yeah, see above regarding Piers. Meanwhile, Piers's contacts start showing up in the form of representatives for Gordon Ramsay and Ioan Gruffud. "I am the long arm of Ioan Gruffud," says the actor's rep. As he shakes Piers' hand with a fully extended limb, he chuckles, "Mr. Fantastic has very long arms, doesn't he?" And an idiot for an assistant. Piers doesn't care; Hydra is cleaning up.
The Trumplets show up to look around, and Piers is happy that Don, Jr. and Ivanka -- and Empresario -- can see all of the little red "sold" stickers on the Hydra side. Whereas on the Empresario side, with 15 minutes left, Stephen is too busy chatting up some chicks about Asian restaurants to be trying to sell art. I'm sure those restaurants are right near churches where he speaks. Omarosa calls Stephen "unfocused," which I think is a fairly kind word for a guy whose big emotional moment in The Usual Suspects was shot from fifty feet away, in the dark. Piers congratulates himself, and adds that in Omarosa's place, he'd head to Brooklyn Bridge and do the decent thing: "Drowning myself."
Board room. Trump asks Hydra how they think they did, and they all agree that they did very well. When Trump asks Empresario the same question, Omarosa has to admit that they only sold four paintings the whole night. She flails for a moment, and then Trump puts them out of their misery by asking for the results. Ivanka is almost embarrassed to say that Hydra earned $164,000 from 14 out of 20. "That's awesome," Omarosa admits. And Empresario sold three out of sixteen (not four). And according to Don, Jr., they earned $7,000. Shit, man, that is a fucking rout.
Omarosa tries to say that her contacts can't afford expensive art, and Don, Jr. doesn't even let her off the hook for that, since she went for the cheapest art and still couldn't move any. "This is the biggest slaughter in the history of The Apprentice," Trump declares, and since this is my first season, I'll just have to take his word that no team has ever beaten another by a factor of 23. Piers smirks. "This was personal," he says. He has a rule of never get mad, get even, but he got mad at Omarosa and lost his cool. So now he got even. And part of it, he says, is that this is The Celebrity Apprentice, which to Piers means that you work your celebrity contacts, and Omarosa doesn't have any. He says she's there by default. Omarosa tries to talk over him, saying that by questioning her presence he's questioning Trump's judgment. Piers waits for her to finish, and then asks Trump to not only fire Omarosa, but another member of Empresario to wipe them out. Trump asks Omarosa why he shouldn't. She makes the mistake of saying the men have done well, and Carol speaks up to say that she sold $37,000 on her own -- five times what Empresario sold in total (Even though Don, Jr. says it's only four times more. I'm sure those math skills serve him well in high-powered negotiations). Trump asks for Piers's recommendation on who the second firee from Empresario should be, and Piers says Stephen for being the only one on the team to not sell anything in at all. Trump asks Omarosa why she lost, and she doesn't make any excuses. Not good enough for Piers, who wants Omarosa to fall on her sword right there. Ivanka carves a couple of more chunks out of Omarosa for trying to blame her sales team, and Piers, not satisfied to have kicked Omarosa's ass clear to Hoboken, actually objects to the word "loss." "This was a catastrophe of biblical proportions," he insists. Trump loves a sore winner, so Hydra is dismissed. But before leaving to watch the carnage on the video monitor in the suite, Piers wants to know how much of the money they raised is profit for his charity, which is nice of him. And then when he hears it's about 51 grand, he gets up to leave, asking Trump, "Make it nasty, will you?" So much for nice. He's already waving goodbye to Omarosa as he hurries back to the suite.
Back from the ads, Trump asks Stephen to explain himself. Omarosa says that Stephen has never brought in any money on any of the tasks, according to the men. He's only won twice as PM. Quit making me defend Stephen Baldwin, Omarosa. I don't like it. Stephen makes the mistake of complaining to Trump that his friends showed up and got poached by Hydra instead of buying from him. Because nothing impresses a guy like Donald Trump more than telling him the other team ate your lunch. Trump asks them what they think of Piers's idea of firing two people, and remarks that Piers and Stephen appear to have worked out their differences. Omarosa brings up the fact that Piers threatened to "kick Stephen's ass," as she misquotes him. "He threatened to hit me," Stephen corrects. "I did say that, yeah," Piers mildly agrees from the suite. Heh. Omarosa says that Piers was a formidable opponent as a result of being fired up. "He was fired up because of you," Trump reminds her. Ivanka asks if Omarosa hurt herself by getting into it with Piers, and she defends herself, saying, "When a man calls you a tramp, a bitch, and a whore..." "I never called her a whore!" Piers protests. More to the point is that she started it. Omarosa still doesn't regret the things she said to Piers, because the thinks -- get this -- that Piers is in the closet. "Unbelievable," Piers says. Omarosa explains: Piers has been having the guys take their shirts off for tasks whenever possible, she reminds everyone. Trump is of course deeply offended on Piers's behalf, because the worst thing you can say about someone in Trump's world is that he's a ho-mo-sexual. So he invites Piers back into the board room to "defend himself." And stupid Piers gets up, buttons his jacket, and says, "Tell him I'm on my way." Oh, Piers, you idiot. That's what she wants. We go to commercial on the board room door swinging closed behind Piers.
But then, after the ads, Piers marches into the board room, saying, "I just want to do one thing." Stomping up behind Omarosa with apparent intent, he instead plants one on Trace's cheek and calls him a "beautiful cowboy." And leaves. Okay, that was awesome.
Carol and Lennox love it back in the suite, and even Omarosa laughs. Trace just sits there like his career has just ended. "Never kiss a cowboy," Piers says from the suite, realizing that Trace is actually upset. Oh, suck it up, tough guy.
Trump asks Stephen what he thinks, and he reminds everyone that Omarosa said at the beginning that she lost this task in the first season, and he thinks the PM is responsible for the loss. Oops, excuse me, the "catastrophe of Biblical proportions." Trace says that the people who showed up for him didn't ever have any intention of buying art, and admits that he thought he could do better than the two he sold. Trump asks for Don, Jr.'s opinion, and he's pretty disappointed with Stephen, and the fact that this is Omarosa's third loss as PM. As for Ivanka, she thinks Omarosa was already defeated when she walked in. Trump agrees, and fires her. Stephen and Trace escape unscathed. "That one was obvious," Trump post-mortems.
Limo interview, in which Omarosa recites, "No man is your friend, no man is your foe, but every man is your teacher." And then she throws a gang sign.
By the way, the preview for week features the Hallelujah Chorus and touts an "Omarosa-Free" episode week. Ten episodes too late, if you ask me.