The Apprentice (American TV series) season 13

Candidates

Draft

Weekly results

Elimination Table

Episodes

Episode 1: The Wolf in Charge of the Hen House

• Air Date: March 3, 2013
• Prologue: Trace Adkins and Bret Michaels are called out to pick their teams because they were the most successful on their previous appearance of the show. Trace Adkins forms what will become Plan B, and Bret Michaels forms what will become Power.
• Task Scope: Teams must run their own meatball shop and sell them.
• Power project manager: Brande Roderick
• Plan B project manager: Trace Adkins
• Judges: Donald Trump, Piers Morgan, Ivanka Trump
• Winning team: Plan B
• Reasons for win: Despite a slow start by having the shop closed to the public, the big-check donors donated tremendous amounts of money, with the team earning a grand total of $419,539.
• Losing team: Power
• Reasons for loss: Even though they earned the $20,000 bonus from their appearance on Live! with Kelly and Michael, their donations came up well short. Despite Brande Roderick believing that the team had raised around $350,000, when the actual totals were verified by the Trumps they added up to just $250,533.
• Sent to boardroom: Brande Roderick, Bret Michaels, La Toya Jackson
• Fired: Bret Michaels – for competing on the show instead of advising Donald Trump in the boardroom like the rest of the past winners. Trump also disliked the fact that he allowed Brande Roderick to be the project manager and fell way short of the amount he claimed he could bring in, although Brande could not clarify exactly how much money each teammate raised, due to Omarosa's poor book-keeping.
• Notes:
• * At the beginning of the show, Trump called out Bret Michaels and Trace Adkins, as the two most previously successful candidates from the line-up, and had them choose the teams, with Bret forming what would eventually become Power, and Trace picking the candidates who would form Plan B. On Plan B, Stephen Baldwin initially volunteered to be project manager, but quickly ceded the position to Trace after he revealed some of his particularly rich contacts, while on Power, Bret and Brande Roderick both argued for some time over which of the two should be project manager, eventually leading to Brande literally getting down on her knees and begging to be the project manager, which led to her officially being the project manager.
• *This was the first project manager victory for Trace Adkins in his two Celebrity Apprentice appearances.
• * Other past Celebrity Apprentice candidates such as Niki Taylor and Paul Teutul, Sr. showed up to give donations to the two teams. John Rich, while not appearing himself, also gave a substantial donation to Power by way of La Toya Jackson.
• * There was a strong argument between Piers Morgan and Omarosa in the initial boardroom, continuing the feud that had started in the first Celebrity Apprentice season. Virtually every member of Power stepped up to defend Omarosa however, with Dennis Rodman and Claudia Jordan in particular speaking strongly in her favor.
• * Prior to the task result being announced, Stephen Baldwin openly admitted that he had held out on his contacts and brought in no money whatsoever. Trump, Ivanka and Piers were stunned by this admission, and Trump indicated that if Plan B had lost, Stephen would have been fired.
• * Despite being an all-stars edition Bret Michaels was the only previous winner on the show. Trump pointed out several times during the episode, including at the final boardroom verdict, that he actually wanted Bret to be a judge on the series along with the other past winners instead of competing again. Bret Michaels responded by saying that he couldn't raise money for charity if he was a judge.
• * After Bret Michaels was fired, Trump strongly criticized Brande Roderick's lack of control over the team, lack of knowledge of what was brought in, and the fact that she brought back La Toya Jackson instead of Omarosa, adding that the only reason she avoided dismissal was his policy of never firing whoever makes the most money in a given task.
• *Trump called out the Power members over their false claims over how much money each member was responsible for bringing in, after they gave him numbers that were so wildly over-inflated that Power's total would have been almost $310,000, were they telling the truth. Omarosa alone was then asked for who brought in what, but while closer to the actual total her estimate was also off, as her total added up to around $265,000.
• *Since Bret Michaels was fired, there are no more Celebrity Apprentice 3 contestants.
• *Mr. Trump repeatedly throughout the episode stated that Bret Michaels should not be a contestant on this season, leading to Bret being fired after the first task, causing everyone to think that Mr. Trump planned this firing throughout the episode.
• *Bret Michaels would be the only candidate to not serve as Project Manager this season.

  Episode 2: Just as Simple as Making Soup

• Air Date: March 10, 2013
• Task Scope: Team members must create a 3D interactive photo experience for Universal's marketing campaign.
• Power project manager: Omarosa
• Plan B project manager: Dee Snider
• Judges: Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump
• Winning team: Power
• Reasons for win: Even though the brand messaging was poorly given by having the "Orlando" part of "Universal Studios Orlando" put in a position where it was illegible, their creativity of making it all about the films and characters made it very precise and not about the celebrities. The overall construction quality of their experience was also judged to be far better than Plan B's effort.
• Losing team: Plan B
• Reasons for loss: Even though they loved the slogan, they didn't like the simplicity of the project and that they disliked that they had cardboard cutouts of the celebrities, who were stood nearby in exactly the same clothing they had on the cutouts, meaning that passers-by were more interested in the actual celebrities. On top of that, the Universal executives felt that the display was generally poorly executed and cheap-looking, and that the specific celebrities would have very little appeal to the theme park's main target audience of children.
• Sent to boardroom: Dee Snider, Gary Busey, Stephen Baldwin
• Fired: Dee Snider – for admitting he was wholly at fault for the failure of the task, and for passing over a better idea that Penn Jillette suggested. While he criticised Stephen Baldwin's questionable behavior in the task and accused Gary Busey of having a limited skillset, Dee said that neither of them really deserved to be fired.
• Notes:
• *Trace Adkins did not participate in this task due to a previous engagement.
• *Dennis Rodman was singled out for praise by Trump, for asking several pertinent questions to the Universal executives during the task, which helped the team secure their victory. Despite this, Omarosa actually accused Dennis of being her weakest player, and praised Lil Jon for his creativity and work ethic.
• *Omarosa won $40,000 for her charity. This was also the first time Omarosa has ever been the winning project manager in all three stints on the show, when in The Apprentice she went 0–1, and in The Celebrity Apprentice when she went 0–3.
• *Omarosa became very emotional about her win as project manager. She was playing for Sue Duncan's Charity for her late fiancé, Michael Clarke Duncan, who died not long before shooting of this season began.
• *Donald Trump "fired" Penn Jillette for not pushing harder for his idea to be used. Trump followed up by stating that he was just kidding.
• *In the final boardroom, Dee said that he didn't actually want to bring anyone back, and that the only reason he did so was the incident the previous season where Adam Carolla refused to bring anyone back after losing a task as project manager, only for Trump to fire him anyway and then fire Michael Andretti as punishment for Carolla's failure to bring two people back.

  Episode 3: I'm Being Punked by a Jackson

• Air Date: March 17, 2013
• Task Scope: To make a Soap Opera themed stage play for Crystal Light Liquid. Teams will be judged on the following criteria of creativity, audience reaction, brand messaging, product integration, and overall presentation.
• Power project manager: La Toya Jackson
• Plan B project manager: Stephen Baldwin
• Judges: Donald Trump, Arsenio Hall, Ivanka Trump
• Task Tension: On Power, there was a major blow-up between Omarosa and La Toya Jackson early in the task, as Omarosa openly questioned La Toya's leadership and refused to take direction from her. Just before the halfway point of the task, Omarosa learned that one of the tabloid news networks was going to release the 911 tape of Michael Clarke Duncan's heart attack, and left the team to deal with the issue. She returned just before the play started, but this was much too late for her to take any real part.
• Winning team: Plan B
• Reasons for win: While the executives didn't like the fact that they only used one flavor of Crystal Light, their play was well received by the audience, and the product was central to the storyline. Trace Adkins also received particular praise for his various roles in the play. Plan B won two-thirds of the audience vote.
• Losing team: Power
• Reasons for loss: Their play had rushed, inconsistent pacing due to the audience interaction segments, and the product integration wasn't highlighted consistently. The executives also felt that while Claudia Jordan was okay as the villainess of their play, the role would have worked much better with Omarosa, who was originally in the role but had to drop out of much of the task due to a personal problem. Power got just a third of the audience vote.
• Trump's thoughts: Trump called La Toya Jackson's decision not to bring back Omarosa the most shocking boardroom mistake he had ever seen in all thirteen seasons of doing the show, and surmised that La Toya was simply too afraid of Omarosa to want to confront her in the boardroom, though La Toya herself stated her belief that Trump had "bought into" Omarosa's pleas for sympathy and that there was no way he would have fired her.
• Sent to boardroom: La Toya Jackson, Brande Roderick, Dennis Rodman
• Fired: La Toya Jackson – for having inconsistencies of the brand messaging during the play and not bringing Omarosa back into the boardroom. Trump felt that Omarosa should have been fired due to her disrespectful behavior to La Toya and the fact that she missed over half of the task, but due to La Toya's decision to bring back Brande Roderick and Dennis Rodman instead, she was fired by default as the losing project manager.
• Notes:
• * Stephen Baldwin won $50,000 for his charity.
• * Gary Busey was unanimously deemed the weakest link of Plan B by his teammates during the initial boardroom, leading to him becoming visibly upset.
• * La Toya was strongly criticized for not bringing back Omarosa. Additionally, she was again criticized for earlier stating that Brande was the strongest player in the task, but selected her to come back to the final boardroom over Omarosa.
• * In the boardroom, Arsenio Hall openly questioned whether Omarosa was fit to continue in the process, considering she was still visibly affected by Michael Clarke Duncan's death. Despite becoming tearful, Omarosa made clear her determination to continue in the contest.
• * Trump strongly hinted that Omarosa would have been fired had she been brought back to the boardroom.
• * La Toya Jackson requested Trump to have the liberty & opportunity to fire Omarosa, but Trump refused it because of La Toya's record of getting fired twice.
• * La Toya Jackson became the first ever Apprentice candidate to be fired on three separate occasions.
• * In her exit interview, La Toya Jackson accused Omarosa of "pulling the plug on Michael Clarke Duncan". Omarosa later announced that she would be filing a lawsuit against La Toya.