The Apprentice (American TV series) season 8

Candidates

Weekly results

Episodes

Episode 1: Cupcake Contest

• Airdate: March 1, 2009
• Task scope: The making and selling of homemade cupcakes at the Institute of Culinary Education and having them tested in a taste contest
• Athena project manager: Joan Rivers
• KOTU project manager: Herschel Walker
• Judges: Donald Trump; Ivanka Trump; Donald Trump Jr.
• Winning team: Athena
• *Reasons for win: All of the women managed to bring in at least one contact to raise money, with Brande Roderick and Annie Duke being the most successful in this regard. Representatives from Crumbs bakery sampled both Athena's chocolate ganache cupcake and KOTU's Vanilla cupcake. Athena won an extra $15,000 for having the better-tasting cupcake. This turned out to be the difference between winning and losing, as the men's team would have been at nearly $65,000 had they won this vote. Athena were also praised for bouncing back from an early disaster, caused when the chocolate cupcakes did not raise properly due to an incorrect mixing, which the team recovered from by adding extra chocolate topping. The team committed another blunder by giving one of these cupcakes to Crumbs instead of the more popular vanilla with chocolate chip cookies, but fortunately this turned out not to matter because KOTU's cupcake tasted far worse.
• Losing team: KOTU
• *Reasons for loss: Neither Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Rodman nor Jesse James brought in a single donor between them, with Herschel Walker and Tom Green bringing in three-quarters of the team's revenue. Despite this, the team still earned enough that they could have edged the women by winning the $15,000 from Crumbs; unfortunately an earlier blunder cost them severely, as they did not add enough sugar to their cupcakes and had to resort to brushing syrup onto them. This did not make enough of a difference, and the representatives from Crumbs called the men's cupcake the most disgusting thing they had ever tasted, costing them the $15,000 and with it, the task.
• *Sent to boardroom: Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Rodman, Herschel Walker
• Fired: Andrew Dice Clay – by process of elimination and for potentially implying at one point that he wanted to quit. While Dice said that he didn't intend to actually quit because he would be effectively admitting the loss was his fault, Trump became convinced that his heart wasn't in the competition. Even though Herschel was responsible for his bad leadership and baking a lousy cupcake, he did bring in much of the money, as well as fighting to stay along with Dennis, leaving Trump to eliminate Andrew Dice Clay. Dice was also fired for not contributing much on this task and for not bringing any donors in. Andrew also referred to Trump as "Donny Trump", which Trump took as a major sign of disrespect and was a big factor in choosing to let Andrew go.
• Notes:
• *Athena raised $76,267.39.
• *KOTU raised $49,449.
• *This is the fifth season that started the job interview process with teams of men vs. women
• *Andrew Dice Clay was the first candidate to express the urge to quit but not actually do so.
• *KOTU is the first corporate name that is an acronym—Kings Of The Universe
• *The total money of profit was $125,716.39, which is a Celebrity Apprentice record of winning money as project manager.
• *Claudia Jordan was very vocal about Annie Duke being too controlling—especially in making the cupcakes.
• *Members of KOTU didn't even like their own cupcakes with Clint Black saying it was a not sweet enough muffin Tom Green saying it was like perfume on a turd and Jesse James saying KOTU'S cupcake tasted like ass.

  Episode 2: E instead of Z

• Airdate: March 8, 2009
• Task sponsor: zappos.com
• Task scope: Creating a four-page comic book with a central comic book character represented by zappos.com.
• Athena project manager: Khloé Kardashian
• KOTU project manager: Scott Hamilton
• Judges: Donald Trump; Donald Trump Jr.; Erin Burnett
• Winning team: Athena
• *Reasons for win: Although Claudia Jordan fumbled the presentation and Natalie Gublis did not do her team any favors by saying she wanted to get out of the costume, the CEO of Zappos generally liked their comic more than KOTU's.
• Losing team: KOTU
• *Reasons for loss: The CEO of Zappos said he was impressed by both teams. However, while Tom Green's presentation appeared stronger, the CEO couldn't quite understand why the character was named EEE. This was ultimately the deciding factor.
• *Sent to boardroom: Scott Hamilton, Tom Green, Herschel Walker.
• Fired: Scott Hamilton – for giving the comic book character a name that did not start with a Z, for not controlling the strong personalities on his team, and for bringing Herschel Walker instead of Clint Black.
• Notes:
• *When Donald Trump Jr. came to check on Athena's progress, Melissa Rivers took all the credit for the name of Athena's comic book character and the concept of their comic, even though Claudia Jordan was the one who came up with the concept and Joan Rivers was the one who came up with the name. When it was brought up in the boardroom, Khloé Kardashian confirmed that the ideas stemmed from Claudia, but did not contradict Melissa's claim.
• *Claudia fell ill later into the day and asked to go home from the task, despite being the one who was presenting the comic in front of the CEO. She also claimed in the boardroom that it was the team that made her go home. This also affected Claudia's presentation that morning, but the women won nonetheless.
• *Annie Duke was angered that Claudia left for the night because she had such a pivotal role in the task. Annie also wanted to write the script of the comic instead of Joan Rivers, which infuriated Joan.
• *When Claudia fumbled Athena's presentation, she thought she would grade herself a "2.0" or "C".
• *Dennis Rodman wanted to make KOTU's comic book character a transvestite.
• *Khloé gradually stepped into her role as project manager after several hours of people talking over each other. However, the consensus among her team was that she did quite well, even though it was acknowledged that she was famous for virtually nothing.
• *Khloé won $20,000 to her charity.
• *The men took much longer than the women to come up with a concept. A feud erupted between Tom Green and Scott Hamilton during the task, after Scott thought that Tom was being distracting and Tom thought that no one was listening to any of his ideas. Herschel Walker told Tom to shut up numerous times, and Herschel was even brought into the boardroom to solely advocate against Tom.
• *Originally, Scott considered bring back only Tom, but decided to bring back Tom and Herschel after mentioning the events that happened last season with Gene Simmons. Herschel was then sent out before Trump fired Scott.
• *Clint Black was frustrated with the lack of work being done and tried to take charge. Several celebrities commented about his demeanor and said it looked like he thought he was project manager. Jesse James also commented on how demanding and obnoxious Clint was and said that if he was Trump, he would fire Clint.
• *Clint also had many tense exchanges of words with Dennis, which would come to a head in the fourth episode.
• *Natalie Gulbis had to wear her team's costume, and then made a negative comment about the costume in front of the Zappos executive, which she was criticized for by Donald Trump Jr.
• *Although the episode made it look like KOTU lost purely because their character's name started with an E instead of a Z, the show's website revealed that the Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, had another problem with the fact that their name was very similar to the Asus Eee PC and potentially a violation of the Asus trademark.