Celebrity Apprentice week 3, 1/17/08: Gene Simmons fires himself

Trump gives Gene Simmons a $20,000 check for a pediatric AIDS charity and puts him in charge of the womens' group, virtually guaranteeing a win for Empresario. Simmons promises to be a "benevolent dictator." Tito Ortiz takes the reins for Hydra.

The task is to create a sales campaign for selling Kodak printers out of an RV. (The competition is the campaign, not the sales amount.) Perhaps in an attempt to address the complaints that were directed at him the previous week, Simmons sends Nely Galán and Carol Alt to meet with Kodak; he says there's no need to tie up the whole team with a meeting. Galán does most of the talking, even interrupting the Kodak executives a few times. However, she and Alt do get the point that Kodak wants to emphasize that their ink is better and less expensive than their competitors'.

This doesn't matter to Simmons, who comes up with the slogan "It's a Kodak World. Welcome!!!" printed over and over again which, he proudly points out, can also be read as "Welcome!!! It's a Kodak World." And that's all he wants to put on their signage. No photos or drawings - not even, say, some sort of a picture of the world. Just text. Galán points out that this is about an affordable printer and ink. Simmons says Kodak is wrong. His confidence rubs off on his teammates. Galán seems genuinely mesmerized and smitten. Even Omarosa seems to admire him - though she coolly says only that she hopes for a win.

Meanwhile, over on the mens' team, Stephen Baldwin is hopped up on so-called energy drinks and spewing acronyms like a madman. Piers Morgan comes up with an idea: Ortiz and Lewis Lennox sprawled out next to the printer, having been knocked out. Frenzied Baldwin accidentally spills his drink into their laptop, and they lose all of their work. They start over.

Finally, it's time for the sale to begin. Despite the meaningless, vague slogan and the lackluster text, Empresario's RV looks very neat and professional; Hydra's artwork is much more compelling, but because the men had very little time to get their materials printed, the signage is small and cheesey. Alec Baldwin comes by to help Hydra show off the printers. At Empresario's RV, Simmons doesn't know a thing about the printer.

In the boardroom, it's revealed that Kodak was miffed that Simmons didn't bring his entire team to meet with Kodak, and that Galán talked too much for the second week in a row. On the other hand, Hydra's materials weren't very good. Nevertheless, Kodak was much more impressed with Hydra's overall approach. Empresario hangs out in the boardroom for the fourth week in a row.

Simmons defends his ignorance of the product (he doesn't even know what it's called) by saying "I sell emotion." Unfortunately, Kodak is selling a printer and some ink. Simmons insists that Kodak is wrong. Nevertheless, for reasons that aren't clear to me, Trump seems to focus most of his dissastisfaction on Galán.

Simmons decides to bring Omarosa and Jennie Finch back to the boardroom. (These were the two women whom no one had blamed for the team's loss.) Out in the lobby, Omarosa complains that she's tired of always being the scapegoat.

Mad Money's Jim Kramer, who is the Gray-Haired Guy of the Week Who Isn't George, is visibly offended by Simmons's choice; I guess he was hoping to see Galán fired too. Simmons admits that he likes/admires Galán. He very stubbornly stands by his opinion that Kodak chose the wrong winner. Trump has no choice but to fire him.

My question is: did Simmons deliberately create an ultra-lame campaign with the intention of being fired? I think he did. I think he didn't want to keep doing Celebrity Apprentice because something else came up that he wanted to do, so he threw himself under the bus.