OA EXCLUSIVE: The Final Tasks

We've been gathering more information on the final tasks. We've told you about guest appearances by Michael J. Fox, Jaime Pressly, Denis Leary, Jason Priestley, Stephen Baldwin and the Barenaked Ladies. We've also told you about the celebrity hockey event and the rock concert.

Now we're ready to provide further details and to share some photos and videos.


Celebrity Hockey Task

One finalist was challenged to put on a celebrity hockey event. Michael J. Fox and Denis Leary are huge hockey fans from Canada so we suspect they were involved with this task. Along with NHL hall of famer Cam Neely, they're heavily involved in charity work, supporting The Leary Firefighters Foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and The Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care. The three of them (pictured together in uniform, but not from The Apprentice) appear together annually at the Betting On A Cause & A Cure event that supports all three organizations.

We reported earlier that the rock concert task took place on Tuesday, November 8, 2005. We don't have the exact date for the hockey event, but we know that Leary and Fox were together in Toronto Monday night, November 7th, for Cam Neely's Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Will this interfere with the celebrity hockey event? Final tasks on The Apprentice have a history of celebrity no-shows, including Chris Webber and Joe Piscopo. Stay tuned to see what happens.

Stephen Baldwin played hockey in Slap Shot 2, so we suspect he's also involved in the sporting event.

It's more difficult to figure out Jason Priestley's role in the show. He's also a hockey fanatic from Canada. On the other hand, he's close friends with the Barenaked Ladies (pictured here with the band, not from The Apprentice). They performed at his wedding and he directed their documentary. They even use the same webmaster. He could be involved with either the hockey event or the concert.


Barenaked Ladies Concert

For the other candidate's final task, BNL played a private concert at Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. As Jessica Simpson did for her Apprentice event, the band members appeared at a "meet & greet" event prior to their performance.

Then they went on stage to play at least 15 songs, including fan favorites such as It's All Been Done, One Week and If I had a Million Dollars. Their encore performance was Brian Wilson (video here). We don't know if they played any of their three chanukah songs.

Thanks to this blogger, we have pictures from the event. Unfortunately, none of the candidates are visible.


SLS International investors are speculating that the company stock may jump after an appearance on the season finale. They're wondering how much airtime their company's product will get. Much to their dismay, the SLS audio system is not the focus of the show. As seen in the picture below, though, their speakers were visible to the Taj Mahal audience. As you can see, Pontiac is the corporate sponsor. Earlier rumors of Best Buy's involvement in the finale appear to be false.