This was a long and energetic 2 hour episode. It was announced in the beginning that Tito Ortiz would not be around for this challenge as he had a fight/match to attend to. The task this time around was to create an awareness campaign dubbed as “Soles United” for the Footwear company Crocs. The campaign’s mission was to encourage people to donate their used Croc shoes which will then be recycled and given to the needy. The team would also have to create an in store receptacle bin for people to place the shoes in and the winner will be determined by Croc’s founder and CEO.

The project manager for Hydra was Piers Morgan and for Empresario it was Carol Alt. The team’s meeting rooms were actually right next door to each other this time around which created an interesting twist. At first the Hydra suspected that the Empresario was eaves dropping on them and as a result Piers Morgan had a plan to send Vincent Pastore as a spy to get information out of them and was dubbed as the “rat”.

They did this by pretending that they had some kind of dispute while being very loud about it and Vincent Pastore sat outside the room pretending to be disgruntled. He then approached the ladies on how he wanted to work with them for this task as a result of the dispute and Empresario had no issues with taking him in.

Hydra’s direction was to once again utilize Lennox Lewis as the celebrity figure and created a receptacle bin using his image. They also came up with the slogan “Wear them, share them”. Empresario created a receptacle bin that was shaped like a Croc shoe while using Carol Alt as the celebrity image with a slogan of “Share the love.”

It got interesting afterwards as Vincent Pastore decided that he genuinely did want to help Empresario mainly in spite of Piers Morgan for assigning him such a task. He did end up providing Hydra with notes about what Expresario was planning to do though and became a double agent of sort. The episode then became like this one big soap opera about morals and ethics in business and life it seemed.

One topic was about whether or not it is okay to sabotage another person/company in order to get ahead. Ivanka mentioned how it was okay In her book depending on the situation. Maybe it’s just me, but when Stephen Baldwin started to talk about morals and ethics it just didn’t seem very genuine as he seemed like he was putting on an act.

Vincent Pastore decided to confess to Empresario about his original motive for joining the group and how he provided Hydra with internal information. In the meantime, Piers Morgan and Stephen Baldwin decided to have a little fun by giving Empresario members hints that they knew their whole plan and believed they were silly for trusting Vincent in the first place with a nudge on the fact that he plays a character in the show Sopranos.

Eventually, Empresario decides to get rid of Vincent and upon returning to Hydra and learning about his disloyalty to them as well it created a lot of tension. In the end, his decision to kind of play both sides of the fence didn’t work out as both teams did not want him and he ended up leaving while awaiting the boardroom date.

In the end, the Croc executives believed that Empresario’s idea was the best overall which gave the team it’s first victory. As the winning project manager, 10,000 pairs of recycled shoes were to be donated by Croc to needy people in Africa under Carol Alt’s name and she will also receive $20,000 for her charity.

Before any type of candidates were selected to be fired, Vincent Pastore mentioned that he wanted to simply resign from the show. There was then a discussion about quitting in life and how many times it is a mental game. Trump then got Vincent Pastore to express how he wanted to quit simply because of Piers Morgan which didn’t seem right. An interesting comment came up as Trump asked Baldwin for his opinion. Baldwin began to talk about morals and ethics again and mentioned how he believed that a big reason why Trump was successful was that he would never hurt someone to get ahead. Trump kind of smiled and just said no comment.

In the end, Trump accepted Vincent Pastore’s resignation and he was he one to go. This episode almost felt like some kind of high school match with people teasing each other along with “I’m telling on you” type of scenarios. The theme was definitely about one’s character overall. I guess as apparent in this episode, inconsistency in your actions and principles in life can sure create one big mess.

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So a new season has started and this time all of the candidates are celebrities. Instead of competing for a job, they are competing for money to give to charity. Too bad there isn’t anything like this here in Canada as I thought the circumstances should make this edition very interesting and cause worthy.

The teams like usual were separated with the men going against the women. The men decided to call themselves team Hydra and consisted of the following people:

-Gene Simmons
-Lennox Lewis
-Piers Morgan
-Stephen Baldwin
-Tito Ortiz
-Trace Adkins
-Vincent Pastore

The women called themselves team Empresario and had the following people:

-Carol Alt
-Jennie Finch
-Marilu Henner
-Nadia Comaneci
-Nely Galan
-Omarosa
-Tiffany Fallon

My first reaction was “Omarosa?” She’s got to be my least favorite person who has appeared on the show. She threw in a comment on how she has changed, but like some say action speaks louder than words.

The task was to sell hotdogs with the team making the most money would win. Project managers were Stephen Baldwin and Omarosa. On the men’s side Gene Simmons came up with an idea where instead of just focusing solely in getting people on the streets to buy hotdogs he started to contact wealthy people he knew beforehand and asked if they would want to show up and buy say a $5000 hotdog for charity. It was funny seeing how carefree he is too whenever he came up with ideas.

On the women’s side they were discouraged to use their celebrity status and to focus in selling the hot dogs by focusing on the product type of approach. Omarosa was stern and one sided about her decisions it seemed.

It was interesting to see how much money both teams were bringing in. There was also a visit from New York’s mayor Bloomberg to each of the team’s venue. Team Empresario was doing poorly it seemed and so one person stepped up and went against Omarosa’s direction to not use their celebrity status and began calling some of her contacts which resulted in purchases such as $5000 for a bottle of water.

In the end though, the men clobbered the women team as team Hydra made $52,286 and team Empresario made $17,038.79. Trump then mentioned that all the earnings would go to the winning project manager’s charity and in this case it went to Stephen Baldwin.

In the boardroom it came down to Omarosa, Tiffany and Carol. Tiffany essential got pinned down by not contacting the people she knew such as Hugh Hefner and she didn’t really try to defend herself too much. The whole thing didn’t make too much sense when you think about it as it was Omarosa’s decision to not use their celebrity status. Gene Simmons referred to her as a “cockroach”.

Evidently, Tiffany was the one that got the axe. I was just sitting there thinking “They must be keeping Omarosa there to make people mad”. That Carol lady seemed like a real fighter though. A comment was then made by Trump on how unfortunately in most cases in business the nicest people are the ones who go first.

Feels like for this celebrity edition it will come down more to who know who where the tasks can kind of won even before it starts. If history says anything though, they sure gave Gene Simmons a lot of camera time which usually meant that the person won’t be the winner. Like they say, sometimes it’s not what you know but rather who you know.

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