With Penn gone, The Celebrity Apprentice is now down to its final six. Niceties like modesty and patience are wearing thin, or have long been dispensed with. In every shot of Aubrey, you can practically see inside her visions of ascending to sit alongside the Trump throne. All of the animosity that’s been building this season is barely below the surface. The home stretch of this show depends on that. At this point, it’s unlikely that the celebrities are going to be thrown off by the challenges so much as worn down by their competitors.
And everyone is worn down. What’s interesting about the way tonight’s episode plays out is that both Unanimous and Forte deal with the same problem: Two players butt heads while a third tries—and fails—to make peace. The task this week is to write a 90-second jingle for Good Sam’s auto-protection program and perform it in front of a live (and bewildered) audience. It’s a musical challenge, so the natural choice on both teams would be the professional musician in the bunch. But on Unanimous, Arsenio steps up to avoid an O’Day project manager doubleheader. (He’s no fool, though. Even in the beginning he forecasts Aubrey “constantly stealing [his] thunder.”) On Forte, Dayana offers to lead instead of Clay.
“Jingle All The Way” was teased as the episode in which Dayana drives her team into lunacy, and damn if it didn’t deliver. Her choice to take over on a task out of her wheelhouse was clearly a political move. With either Lisa or Clay at the helm, there’s no way Dayana would have a voice anyone listened to. As project manager, she still doesn’t, exactly, but she has the chance to take credit for an Aiken-sung jingle if it goes well, and to duck out of the way if it doesn’t. Unfortunately, it’s not just that music isn’t Dayana’s forte (ba-dum!). It’s more that she’s completely unfamiliar anything outside of Duran Duran. When she asks in the car if jingles had to do with Christmas music, Clay puts on his mask of infinite patience to explain to her that they don’t while Lisa winces.
Lisa and Dayana have never been cozy, but I do think Lisa made an honest try to be affable to her this time. Usually it’s Lisa berating Dayana for driving her nuts while Dayana asks for reasonable human things like respect and charity. But Dayana, intentionally or not, gets in quite a few passive-aggressive digs at her teammates. As Clay’s explaining how songwriting works, Dayana throws up her hands and says, “Can we just call Debbie Gibson?” Clay and Lisa keep it civil, save for some eye rolls at Dayana’s attempt to rhyme “track” and “Sam” and her request to have the song sound more “yellow,” until Don Jr. comes in and asks about the process. Dayana feels cut out of the loop, and rightly so, but she tells Don Jr. that Clay has been doing all the work. It’s this jab that pushes Lisa into toddler-tantrum zone. After a hail of insults back and forth, Lisa storms out of the room and vows to take Dayana down in the boardroom.