Happy Fun Gang (okay, Rocksolid): Maria Kanellis, Bret Michaels, led by Sharon Osbourne who was the only one who hadn't led a project or won anything for her charity yet.
After School Study Club Plus Cindy Lauper (okay, Tenacity): Cyndi Lauper, Summer Sanders, Curtis Stone, led by Holly Robinson Peete who pretty much does fund raising all year round.
Task/Sponsor: Develop a workout class for 24 Hour Fitness and raise money. Donors don't have to show up in person, but each donation must be represented by a class participant. If you have lots of donors, but nobody wants to take your class, some of the donations won't count.
RockSolid decides to forget about trying to create the perfect workout, and focuses on a good concept that will attract people. The concept: a rock concert workout. Michaels promotes it, and classes are packed with his fans. The class consists of classic aerobic, calisthenic, and yoga exercises hastily slapped together with rock 'n' roll-themed names. The promotional materials are packed with typos and misspellings ("you ll work your muscle" is just one example), but it's all so much fun that nobody cares. However, the 24 Hour Fitness representatives seem taken aback by the likes of "Tour Bus Thrust" (aka "pelvic tilt").
As RockSolid predicts, Tenacity chooses a different strategy, with Stone and Summers preparing a very serious, carefully researched, balanced workout with lots of variations for different fitness levels. The name "Tenacious Buns 'n' Guns" is as frivolous as they dare to get; Stone is worried about "making a mockery" of their sponsor. Lauper reaches out to her fans on a radio show, but the team struggles to get people to attend, especially in their earlier classes. (I suspect that some of their later attendees are overflow from RockSolid's packed sessions.)
Bonus: 24 Hour Fitness donates $24,000 to whichever team has the better workout, as judged by the company. The execs are impressed with Tenacity's balanced workout and rapport with students, but they feel that RockSolid's "fitness concert" concept gives them more to work with. They can tweak the exercises as needed ("tour bus thrust" will probably not be among them). RockSolid wins the bonus!
Outcome: RockSolid raises $107,803, plus the bonus for a staggering total of $131,803. Tenacity earns an even more staggering $206,090 - low attendance isn't a problem when each attendee is representing a huge donation. Tenacity wins! It's the most money ever raised in a single task for a non-finale episode.
Boardroom: Before the winner is announced, Trump tries to get his contestants to trash one another. Peete is quick to report that before the task, Osbourne had expressed frustration with the dynamic on the women's team and wanted to go home. Osbourne says she no longer feels that way with her new team.
When Trump asks Tenacity who he should fire on the other team, Lauper again declines to bad-mouth anyone. Stone surprisingly defends Michaels this time, citing his team loyalty, and adds that Kanellis is not so loyal. But he'd also be in favor of Trump firing Osbourne since she was project manager.
Peete thinks it should be the person who raised the least money; that person was Michaels. But Osbourne takes the blame for that, saying that wasn't his task. (It's true. He actually wanted to raise money, but she had him tied up with so many other duties that he wasn't able to.) Osbourne seems tired and practically invites Trump to fire her.
Fired: Nobody, because when somebody raises that much money, you can hardly call them losers.
So Trump says, but in the past, he hasn't let stellar performance keep him from firing people on the losing team. It's just that with Johnson quitting and Ebanks being fired in a single episode, he had to skip a firing one week so as not to run out of people a week early.
Donation: To confuse the math a bit, Trump adds in the $10K that Peete won a few weeks ago when Kanellis won the free throw challenge; Peete hadn't collected that yet. That brings the total winnings to $347,893, all for Peete's charity, the HollyRod Foundation, which is building a family center for autism intervention and treatment. Peete promises to write a check for Osbourne's own charity, the Cedars-Sinai Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program, which provides help for colon cancer sufferers and their families.
Remarks:
- Bret Michaels has suffered two serious health crises in the past month. In very brief announcement at the end of the episode, NBC wishes him well.
- Lauper misses the first part of the task due to a prior engagement with Lady Gaga, but manages to get a pretty nice donation from her. I don't think Peete says a single negative thing about Lauper through the whole task, at least not that we see. On the other hand, Sanders mocks Lauper while she's gone. (Meanwhile, Michaels mocks Sanders.)
- One of Tenacity's few early attendees is Lauper's mother, who represents her own $500 donation by taking the fitness class herself. What a trouper!
- No one on RockSolid can spell "gynecological."
- Before the winner is revealed, Peete is sure that her team was at a fund-raising disadvantage compared to the star power of RockSolid. Peete raises money all year long, but Osbourne knows some seriously wealthy people too. Is it strange that she didn't win? Is she pulling a Jesse James - holding back for the finale, which she couldn't safely assume she'd reach unless by prior agreement with NBC and Trump?
Osbourne sets a goal of $100K, while Pete clearly has no upper limit in mind. Other project managers have failed for not thinking big; on the other hand, $100K isn't exactly thinking small. Unless your opponent is a professional fund-raiser....
Osbourne mentioned something about Ozzy being in town to promote a WWE event. Several people at the WWE made donations; perhaps those pockets have been deeper if this had been the finale.
In any case, Osbourne is the only one left who hasn't won a nickel yet. - Peete has been criticized for making statements in support of an already widely discredited belief in a link between vaccines and autism. However, there's no indication that the HollyRod Foundation uses any of its funds to discourage parents from vaccinating their children. (Please correct me and provide a supporting link if you've heard otherwise about HollyRod.)
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