Tenacity: Maria Kanellis, Sharon Osbourne, Holly Robinson Peete, Summer Sanders, led by Cyndi Lauper who was chosen because she was the obvious choice based on the task. (Osbourne would have been the obvious choice, but she didn't join the task until after the PMs were chosen.)
Task/Sponsor: Give makeovers, prepare press kits, and provide pre-interview coaching to boost the careers of two country music singers.
The teams evade global thermonuclear war by actually NOT both wanting the same singer for their makeover. No hotly contested coin flips or anything! RockSolid chooses Luke Bryan, and Tenacity chooses Emily West. (Peete would want me to add: LAUPER chose Emily West.)
Goldberg quickly hands over the entire task to Bret Michaels, who is still distracted by his daughter's health problems and must be pretty exhausted by now. Luke Bryan seems to go along with their ideas for a while; there's a hilarious moment where all the men have him trying on their clothes. But after the photo shoot (during which Goldberg repeatedly orders Bryan to "SMILE!!!"), Bryan gets cold feet. He's not comfortable with the new clothes, and he hates the neck-chain, and he's unhappy with most of the photos they've taken. Furthermore, even though Michaels coaches him NEVER to tell an interviewer that he's "tired," that's pretty much how Bryan opens with the interviewer from People Country. He's not particularly articulate, and things get worse when he yawns multiple times during the interview.
Trace Adkins (guest ear/eye) convinces Bryan to wear the neck-chain, and evidently there was a baseball cap that they convince him to stop wearing too, but his overall look isn't much different.
Emily West is a much more cooperative subject for Tenacity. She seems willing to try out anything they suggest, and she is calm and poised during her People Country interview.
Relations within the team are less harmonious: Lauper, the one who complains that Peete is "bossy," rules the task with an iron fist. Peete grumbles a lot and thinks that Lauper should show more respect for what her teammates have achieved, but she also says the PM should have the last word. The real trouble actually comes from Maria Kanellis, who feels that Lauper should take her advice because she's done some of these things before herself and she used to dance to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as a kid. When Osbourne finally returns from sick leave, she assures us that Lauper's expertise and experience in this area are certainly sufficient: Lauper does this kind of stuff every day. (Literally every day. For a living. Not as a hobby or a once-in-a-while thing. That anyone would whine about an actual expert taking control of the task just boggles my mind.) Adkins agrees with Osbourne.
Outcome: The execs, and indeed even Tenacity, feel that RockSolid did a better job with the press materials for Bryan. (The photos of West weren't even touched up; Lauper felt it wasn't necessary to touch up photos of such a young woman.) However, they also felt that West received the more transformative makeover, and that's what they were really looking for. Tenacity wins!
Boardroom:
Before the winner is announced, there is a lot of wincing when Kanellis tells Trump that Lauper had once been her idol, but no longer was. Osbourne tells Kanellis that they're on the show to do a task, and not to be fans. Later, Lauper counsels Kanellis never to meet her idols. (Excellent advice for the starstruck of any age!)
The Rocksolid boardroom meeting is mercifully short. Michaels says he would fire himself. Stone eagerly, oops I mean somberly, agrees to this, but all in vain, because Goldberg has committed himself to a death spiral. Goldberg tells Trump that he gave 95% of the task to Michaels... then 90%... 87%... 70%... finally he admits he's been hit in the head too many times to do the math. But that's not even the point; Trump says he should have taken the lead on a previous task instead, or at least let Michaels take this one.
Fired: Goldberg, for picking the wrong time to step up.
Donation: $20,000 plus the first month's profits from sale of the songs on iTunes goes to Lauper's charity, the LGBT equality outreach organization Stonewall Community Foundation for True Colors.
Goldberg's charity, Communities 4Kids - One Good Turn Ranch 4Kids which runs camps for kids who have lost a loved one due to military action, gets nothing from this show that we know of.
Remarks:
- Curtis Stone gets a nice surprise when he finds out that Right Guard added another $20,000 to his winnings from last week's task.
- Due to scheduling issues, I usually watch the second hour of each episode before I see the first. When I saw Luke Bryan and heard him speak, I thought, "he's a cross between Elvis & Gomer Pyle." Then I played back the first hour and heard someone else describe him the same way. Golllllllllly! Unfortunately, he has the charisma of neither.
- Goldberg is the second of TWO PMs who have attempted to offload all authority to Bret Michaels. RockSolid has lost both tasks that Michaels ran as unofficial PM, and teammates have gone after Michaels in the boardroom because "he was responsible," even though someone else was PM. Nevertheless, they still turn to him because he's the only one who has these skills. Plus, he never says no; I think Stone is hoping that will be his undoing.
- Kanellis felt that it was "mean" of Lauper not to want her advice in an area in which Lauper makes a living, especially because Lauper was once her idol. What, if anything, do our idols owe us? They make stuff, and we buy it. If you get your money's worth from their CDs, movies, books, etc., what else can you reasonably expect from them - especially on a personal level?
However much mental real estate you choose to dedicate to your favorite celebrity, that choice is yours, and they don't get a say. You can't expect more from them, especially at the cost of their professional integrity (like taking advice from a relative amateur when there's a win at stake!). If they somehow manage to measure up to your high expectations when you meet them in person, that's a bonus. Not a debt. Sheesh!
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