No Love Lost Between Annie Duke and Joan Rivers

Sunday Night's show covered a task and a half. In the first task we had to create a display and take away package for Lifelock, an identity theft protection service. After that, we are asked to put on an Ivanka Trump Jewelry auction to raise money for our charities. I am going to talk about the second task in another blog that I will post right after this.

So, we get the first task delivery and Trump puts Brian McKnight on our team. When we find out what the task is, I thought immediately that Jesse should be project manager. He knows a lot about retail display and design and he had not been PM yet so it seemed like a natural fit. But he didn't want to do it (luckily since he ended up violently ill). I also did not want to do it because I was really trying to wait till a money raising task to step up to the plate. Brian volunteered so we went with him. Natalie stepped up on the other side. I'll talk about KOTU first.

So, I thought Natalie did an amazing job and I thought Joan was very harsh about her in her private interviews. Natalie had a really tough task here as PM since she had to manage Clint and Joan who clearly hated each other. Natalie chose Clint's idea for the packaging and display looking like a safe over Joan's idea which was the bodyguard idea. I honestly think that is why Joan didn't like Natalie as PM, because Natalie didn't pick her idea (going so far as to say something like "I don't know what rock she climbed out from under.")

But I think Natalie kicked ass because she somehow managed to squash the conflict between Joan and Clint which sure seemed like an impossible task. She kept the team incredibly harmonious and I think she went with the best idea during the brainstorming session and really played to her team's strengths in the task. I aslo think she did a great job with managing the deadlines.

Now, onto Athena. When we got in the van to go to our war room one thing was really clear: Brian didn't want to be there anymore. He had just come back from a concert and was basically saying that he really enjoyed being back to his real life and had totally lost his enthusiasm for the game. I totally get that because the Celebrity Apprentice world is completely crazy and surreal and when you get back to your real life when you are done filming you completely realize how nice it is to be normal again. Brian got a taste of that mid show and I think it just made him lose his desire to keep at it full steam ahead.

So we go in and start working. It is clear that Jesse is the one who should design the package and the display because he actually has experience at it. He had designed retail displays and started immediately using all this jargon like "end cap" and such. So he gets to work with that and I started researching the brand since I was assigned to brand message  (which seems to have developed as my niche). Brian is going to manage all of us and Melissa is assigned to work with me on the package insert and getting the presentation together. Brande is going to help Jesse but doesn't really offer up any ideas.

What I found really interesting here is two things: 1) Brande and I have the same comments about Brande's performance on the task and 2) I am alone in my panic the whole time.

So, as for Brande (this obviously becomes important later), I clearly have some harsh things to say about her performance in my private interviews during this task. At this point in the game, I felt very strongly that Brande was not taking any initiative. She was basically sitting around waiting to be told what to do. Now, when told she worked very hard. But at this point in the game with so few people and so much to do that was in many ways a liability to not have someone willing to step up to the plate. I think I compared her to dead wood floating down the stream. Obviously, I felt strongly about this. What I think is really interesting though is that Brande echoed my thoughts. In her private interviews she clearly said that she was just sitting back being told what to do because she felt that if she didn't stick her neck out she couldn't be fired. My criticisms exactly! It turned out we were on the same page about what her strategy was! The problem was she thought her strategy was good and I felt it was a liability to the team and a poor long term strategy for winning the game.

As for my panic...clearly I spent the whole day completely panicked about time. First, neither Brian nor Melissa seemed to realize that we had to get the design team over to the building place in Brooklyn. When I pointed that out, neither of them seemed to think this was a problem. So I offered to call the display house while quietly saying I was not in charge of the display or the deadlines just to make it clear that this was not my issue but I was willing to take up the slack. I found it interesting that Melissa's reaction to this was to say that I was just setting myself up to not be fired. Um. No. I was trying to get the design team over to the construction place so we could actually present a display at all since without a display we would not even complete the requirements of the task.

As for my general panic about the time, I clearly say over and over again, "Am I allowed to panic about the time yet?" and the reaction from Brian and Melissa is to dismiss my worry. They both spent the day incredibly relaxed about the deadlines, not worried about whether or not we could get everything done and, in fact, spent much of the day chatting about music! I really liked Brian's laid back vibe but he really took this one overboard, so much so that I felt like a crazy person for being so freaked out about our time. And Melissa, for all her criticism of Brande not taking the bull by the horns, did not step up to take up any slack on her own part in terms of being aware of deadlines and whatnot.

Now, at the design house disaster struck with Jesse getting deathly ill. Brande took up the slack as much as she could but also seemed unaware of many of the deadlines and was way too non-chalant about them. The report back from Jesse, however, was that Brande did really work hard, despite her time management being poor. That was important in terms of who should be fired. If Brande really did take up the slack for Jesse then it would seem like the argument for firing her if we were to lose would have to be an overall argument about her strategy rather than her performance on this task in particular because the time management would really fall directly on Brian's shoulders.

So we finish the task at about 10 pm solely because we have completely run out of time. It turns out that I was justified in my panic because we just totally don't get everything done we need to. Brian and I head back to his hotel room and work until 2 am to write the presentation together while the rest of the team heads to bed. Mind you, I had to get up at 5 am to start day 2 of the task so this was practically an all nighter. But I had a great time working with Brian. I think we wrote a great presentation together. And I have to tell you I love that guy!  I was really happy I got to have him on my team for a bit because I had a great experience with him writing that damn presentation late into the night. We had a great time and did a kick ass job working together.

So we go in the next day and Brian does a fantastic job on the presentation. That guy is freaking dynamic, I can tell you that. He is an amazing speaker. Jesse was still completely laid out, poor thing. He was still just so sick. But he showed up and that shows what an amazing competitor he is (unlike Rodman with his dog/cat/too hungover to show up to work allergy). Brian's presentation was so well done that I thought he might actually save the task for us.

But, alas, that turns out not to be true. Natalie hits this one out of the park and wins the task for KOTU because they really love the creativity of Clint's safe idea and they like Natalie's use of celebrity in the task. When Athena comes back in the boardroom, the big criticism of our team is time management and George is very harsh on Melissa and Brian on that front. When Trump asks everyone who should be fired, Jesse and Brande and I all point to Brian because, in the end, his management of this task was poor and whatever I thought about Brande's game strategy, Brian's time management was clearly what failed the task and you have to judge on what goes wrong that task in picking who should be fired. I believe that is the only fair way to handle the choice based on the task at hand. It is only when there is no clear choice in the task at hand that I think you should look at overall performance in the game.

Melissa, however, points the finger at Brande and then Trump asks me what I think about Brande. Here is where it gets interesting because Joan announces to her team that I am going to be incredibly harsh about Brande. The first thing that is interesting about that is that Melissa was not particularly harsh on Brande, she just said that Brande was not carrying her weight. The second thing I think is amazing to me is that Joan assumed that I was going to say something deeply personal and cutting about Brande, she seemed to think I was going to call Brande an idiot. She went so far as to claim that I had actually called Brande stupid and an idiot in a private dinner with her and Melissa.

Now, I need to set the record straight here. I did have dinner with Joan and Melissa. And I did express that I felt Brande should go, that I thought she was drafting and never taking a leadership role. I said about the same things I said on the show. But I did not call her an idiot. I think Joan may have interpreted my comments about Brande's performance in the game as me saying she was stupid (because that is how Joan attacks people by going after them as people) but obviously I didn't say those things. We are interviewed privately all the time. You saw my private comments about Brande, which were harsh but not personal. We have cameras on us all day, much of which I am nowhere near Brande. If I had ever called Brande an idiot, wouldn't they have shown it to back up Joan's claims? Of course they would have. But they didn't because I never said it.

What I did say about Brande, however, was very cutting indeed. I said that I felt she was not sticking her neck out, that in poker there are people who play to win and people who play to last. That the ones who play to last might last longer than the ones who play to win but they don't win money in the long run because in order to have colossal successes you must be willing to risk colossal failures. Now, anyone who plays poker knows that is a biting thing to say about someone's tournament strategy...in fact one of the most harsh criticism's you could levy at a poker player. And I lobbed that one right at Brande because I felt it was true.

But apparently that was not enough for Joan. Despite the fact that her own daughter had not levied any particularly harsh criticism at Brande I guess that Joan expected me to be meaner, to be more personal in my comments about Brande (I guess to take up the slack for what Melissa failed to do). I was not caustic enough for the Rivers women I guess and I will not apologize for that. I do not think there is a place for attacking anyone's intelligence in this game, for attacking who they are as a person. This game is about business strategy only so I don't know how to respond to someone who thinks I am not nasty enough about another player in the game.

Anyway, Brian picks Melissa and Brande to come into the boardroom with him which I feel was the right choice, Brande because of her overall game strategy and Melissa because she was shooting the shit just as much was Brian on this one. I was shocked when I watched the show tonight to see that Melissa immediately said she thought *I* should have been brought in with Brian. What? I was the only one even panicked about deadlines, which was our undoing. I did the brand messaging and the Lifelock people said they thought we really understood the brand better than the other team. I stayed up will 2 am writing the presentation with Brian. What did I do that deserved Melissa's comment? I was shocked.

Anyway, Trump figured out that Brian really wanted to go home and fired him. This was the right decision on this task for sure and Brian truly wanted it that way.

When I came out of the boardroom, Joan attacked me for not throwing Brande under the bus harshly enough. I pointed out to her than I had, indeed, thrown Brande under the bus and Joan persisted in saying that I was not cutting or personal enough for her taste and then proceeded to call me a two faced snake in the grass. In her private interviews about me, Joan went so far as to say I would spit on the ground and drown my own mother in it. Joan rivers, you owe my mother an apology. You really do. She has nothing to do with this game and is an amazing woman who doesn't deserve to be caught up as collateral in your hateful comments.

Annie Duke is a representative for www.ultimatebet.com