'The Celebrity Apprentice': Jesse James' magazine means nothing to Clint Black

Those folks over on "The Celebrity Apprentice" seem to be taking the whole show awfully seriously. The venom and bile and hatred that spewed tonight from all directions was quite impressive. I'm not sure whether to be amused by it or disgusted.

Jesse James went back over to Kotu tonight, which was mostly awesome because it put Melissa on a team with Brande and Annie. I had trouble believing that Jesse was upset with the move, but he was, he wanted no part of Clint Black's team. Surely Jesse realized that Athena without him was going to be doing nothing but fighting amongst themselves.

Brande was in charge on Athena, which was a little unfortunate because I would have loved to see Melissa try to control Annie and Brande. As it was, Melissa got ignored by the other two whenever she tried to do anything with the task, which involved making a print ad for a new Right Guard deodorant.

I haven't been a big fan of Melissa this season, but the more I've watched the Melissa-Annie feud, the more I've come to appreciate her. I do think Melissa read a little too much into it all tonight when Annie called Brande on the phone early on, but the two women have certainly appeared to be in cahoots against Melissa in the past. Tonight Brande may not have been participating in an "eliminate Melissa scheme" (the jury's still out on that), but she definitely doesn't like Melissa, so it's not unimaginable. Annie on the other hand was unquestionably going after Melissa. I don't care that Annie denied it, she was.

Of course, Kotu did have Clint as project manager, which led to fighting on that team, too. The project was more up Jesse's alley (he has a magazine apparently), and while Clint didn't instantly accept everything Jesse said, he didn't insist on going his own way either. If you ask me, Clint was much better this week than he has been, and Jesse should have cut him some slack.

Jesse said relatively early on that he had "a feeling of doom" about the task due to Clint's management style. It was a little dismaying to hear that from Jesse, but he has proven himself thus far in the competition, so perhaps I should cut him some slack, but I won't. In the end, Joan hit on the right idea -- it very much looked like Jesse was trying to sink Clint. Clint helped because he wasn't utilizing Jesse's ideas as much as he should have, but Jesse was definitely comfortable watching Clint hang himself, and even gave him some rope.

You're right, you're right, Jesse of course knew that Clint was going to do whatever Clint wanted anyway and Jesse figured he shouldn't stress himself about it all. That's true, but I still didn't like the tactic as it played out. Jesse should have worked with Clint instead of against him, even Joan saw that, and Joan defending Clint ought to tell you something.

After all was said and done, the funny thing was that in the boardroom even Jesse admitted that Kotu's ad was better than Athena's. I'm sure it hurt Jesse to say it, and I'm sure that his idea would have been better than both, but I do like that he admitted that Kotu's ad deserved to win, and win Kotu did.

Sure, great for Kotu, they won, but they still may have lost a player tonight.

In the boardroom -- I honestly believe because she wasn't smart enough -- Brande opted not to take out Annie. Annie ran the show on the team this week, and having raised the most money is one of the strongest players out there. It was the perfect opportunity for Brande to get rid of her. She didn't, even though she later claimed that it's all about her raising money for charity, something she won't be able to do as well with Annie there. Instead, Brande halfheartedly went after Melissa. In the end, with Brande and Annie having been good fundraisers so far, they got to stay while Melissa got sent home. Melissa didn't actually do anything wrong this week, but that's neither here nor there.

Of course, with Melissa disappearing, Joan left too, and neither went quietly. There was screaming and yelling and cursing and Melissa refused to do a post-firing interview. Joan claimed that she wouldn't be in the next day, but we'll see about that. I think it's all a question of which "Apprentice" person goes to talk to which of Joan's people and what is said. I'm betting on an eventual return of the elder Rivers.

Odds and ends:

• Apparently Jesse doesn't use deodorant. That's neither here nor there, but I thought you'd want to know.
• One of Joan's ideas for the project was to have David Lee (a white guy) be surrounded by African American basketball players to show the pressure Lee was under in the NBA. Wisely, and silently, both Clint and Jesse shot that down.
• Brande honestly believed tonight that she didn't "forgoo" the opportunity to be in charge of the important things in the task. Even Trump grimaced with that butchering of the English language.

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