Double Dose of The Apprentice

4/10 UPDATE:

More on tonight's first task...

During tonight's first episode of The Apprentice, the teams will be challenged to complete their own Ace Hardware "New Faces for Helpful Places" community renovation project. Vinnie and Mike Costello, owners of 12 Ace Hardware stores on Long Island, assisted with the production of the episode, providing help to the teams, as well as Ace products for the two projects. Each team bought approximately $5,000 in products from two Ace stores on Long Island, including paint, tools, hardware and more.

More on tonight's second task...

7-Eleven will unveil the new wedge shaped P'EatZZa Sandwich, which will be available April 18 at participating stores. As we suspected, the product is not being launched simultaneously with the episode since the air date was moved up.

The teams had access to two Manhattan 7-11 stores (82nd St & 3rd Ave and 23rd St & Park Ave) to perform the task. Team 7-Eleven race car driver Tony Kanaan makes a guest appearance between Indy Racing League races to assist each team. In the P'EatZZa Sandwich (pronounced Puh-Eat-Zuh), pizza slices substitute for sliced bread. Between the two slices of cheese and pepperoni pizza flatbread, the sandwiches are filled with deli meats, cheeses and spreads. Served cold, the triangular sandwiches will be available in two varieties -- turkey and pepperoni on pepperoni flatbread with parmesan ranch spread and romaine lettuce; and a ham and salami on cheddar mozzarella flatbread with banana and red peppers, oil and vinegar dressing and romaine lettuce. (NOT KOSHER!!!)



ORIGINAL POST:
In case you missed our announcement earlier today (in the comments to this post), back-to-back episodes of The Apprentice will air on Monday, April 10, starting at 9 PM ET/PT. Episode 8 was rescheduled to make way for a new reality series - Celebrity Cooking Showdown - which will air at 9:00 nightly during the week of April 17.


APPRENTICE SPOILERS BELOW



Episode 7 - 9:00
Ace Hardware is using this episode of The Apprentice to launch a national charitable campaign. The task is to create themed activity areas for a local Boys & Girls Club. Lenny Veltman volunteers to be project manager for Gold Rush, but he has trouble managing a negative teammate. Synergy's project manager, (Arinash) Michael Laungani, has a good concept but drives the team crazy because they can't make a decision. The winners help make a child's dream come true by partnering with the "Make A Wish Foundation". One candidate will be fired. It won't be Tarek Saab or Lee Bienstock (the remaining Orthodox Apprentice candidate).

At the end of this episode, we'll see Bill Rancic in an Ace Hardware commercial to launch a national charitable campaign to help local communities around the country.


Episode 8 - 10:00
The ten remaining candidates sell a new pizza sandwich for 7-11. Filmed on Thursday, October 20, 2005 (Chol HaMoed Sukkot), one team is stationed at 7-11's new store on Manhattan's Upper East Side (82nd Street at Third Avenue). A passerby reported that the sandwich was described as "two slices of pepperoni pizza on the outside – with sausage and pepperoni in between." Definitely not kosher!

Also in this episode of The Apprentice, a losing team gains an opposing teammate who volunteers to switch sides. The winners jet out of town for a meal with U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Tarek will not be fired.

This episode was originally scheduled to air on April 24 (before it was moved to the 17th and then to the 10th of April). 7-11's plan was to keep the new product a secret and then launch it in their stores the day after the show. Now that the episode has been moved up by two weeks, it will be interesting to see if 7-11 can accelerate their product launch. Let's hope they have a strong project manager working on it.


Moving to another topic...

christinaboo blogged about witnessing the filming of fired Apprentice candidates leaving Trump Tower on November 3, 2005. Based on her description of "a blond lady n a white guy," it appears to have been Pepi Diaz and Stacy Schneider.

There's always been speculation that each candidate is filmed walking out to the cab at the beginning of the season. When there's a multiple firing, however, the original footage can't be used so they need to stage the scene at a later date. This could explain why Pepi and Stacy would be filmed leaving Trump Tower in November. Or it could have been Allie or Leslie with Lenny, Tarek, Lee or Sean. We suspect it was Episode 2's double-firing.