Tonight, NBC rolls out Celebrity Apprentice, the seventh installment of Donald Trump's reality series celebrating capitalist cut-throats. Although one TV critic opened an article on the show by writing "looks like the worst cast ever," we strongly disagree and in fact look forward to watching the illustrious cast -- which includes Merilu Henner, Piers Morgan, Trace Adkins, Gene Simmons, Carol Alt, Lennox Lewis, Tito Ortiz, Omorosa, and Stephen Baldwin -- battle and connive for their favorite charities. We'll so far as to say we'll watch anything with nutty Stephen Baldwin. If you need more reasons why you should watch, The Donald supplied three:
"I think the number one reason is it’s great and rather - not rather -- it’s great and vicious television."
"Number two, you’re going to learn a lot educationally and that’s the reason I originally did The Apprentice because I was asked to do many reality shows for every network and I always turned them down. And they wanted to follow me around with cameras and I always turned the down. I like this because of the education aspect."
"And number three, you have celebrities that are great people and great characters...they have their fans and I think those fans are going to really like watching them in action."
Trump is pleased with the way the latest version of the show turned out. "I didn’t know whether or not they were going to take it that seriously," he said recently. "I didn’t know whether or not they were going to be as competitive as kids getting out of Harvard and Yale, and Wharton, and all the different schools who, you know, were fighting for their lives. It turned out to be, I think, the best Apprentice we’ve done and that includes Apprentice Number One which actually became, for many weeks, the number one show on television."
"I mean, the level of the spirit and viciousness even was just unbelievable," he added. "And I realized - at first I didn’t understand why and then I realized that each one of these folks have a big reputation to protect and a big brand to protect, whether it’s Marilu or Gene [Simmons], or Lennox Lewis, or Tito Ortiz who as you know is a great fighter also. And, you know, it’s - it was amazing. There was no game playing. There was no fooling around. There was no laziness. There was just a degree that I would never have thought possible.
