by David McAlpine

Tonight, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. Now that the Olympics are over, NBC is bringing out the big guns: 14 kind-of-known celebrities in a cutthroat competition to see who can raise the most money for charity and make Donald Trump the most satisfied. With names like Summer Sanders, Rod Blagojevich, Cyndi Lauper and Sharon Osbourne, who wouldn't want to watch the third installment of the Celebrity Apprentice?

This season kicks off at Grand Central Station where the 14 celebs are split up into the two token teams: men and women. Their first tasks aren't too hard, but 7 heads make it much harder than one. Each team has to select their own team name and the other team's project manager. The women chose Tenacity while the men chose Rock Solid, and Bret and Cyndi ended up being picked by the other team to be their team's leaders for the week.

The next task was the actual challenge, which was making the most money possible by running a diner for three hours. Immediately, it's a contest of who can raise the most money and call in the most favors, which the men seem to have the women beat on in terms of star power. Trump makes that awkwardly clear when he makes a blatant reference to Darryl Strawberry's former drug use. Classy.

Selita Ebanks (Victoria's Secret model) is the first one to say she can cook (am I the only one who was a little surprised here?), while Rod Blagojevich talks about how he never cooked when he was governor, since he was too busy getting results for people. Yeah, we all know what results he ended up getting, so I'm not too sure he should be talking about that.

Cyndi decided to take the role of team leader above and beyond any of those who came before her by being a giant snob to Donald Jr. and not talking to him when he came to visit, then belting "True Colors" while she was waitressing. Then she turns to the camera and starts personally bashing Donald himself. You know, she took the wife angle and the weight angle--she hit him on a couple hard points.

Tenacity decides on charging $35 for their meals and had a ton of people coming to their restaurant (especially since Cyndi Lauper was basically underselling Ticketmaster on her yet-to-be announced comeback tour), while Rock Solid nearly triples their price at $100 a plate. Their line was substantially less long, but they had the semi-celebrities rolling in--like Al Roker. Enter Joan Rivers, Trump's spy who was assigned to hand $10,000 to the team she liked the most. Joan's sandwich got cold thanks to Rod trying to convince everyone he's innocent, so naturally she gave it to the women.

But even that gift couldn't help the women, who still came up about $20,000 short of the men. Trump especially fed it back to Cyndi, who had some nasty hair going on. And it got worse when none of the women who throw anyone else under the bus. This is the Celebrity Apprentice! Where's the cutthroat attitude and the competitive spirit? Eventually Carol said one negative thing and the finger landed on her.

It came down to Carol and Cyndi, but NBC wouldn't get someone like Cyndi Lauper on the show just to fire her first, so Carol was the logical first casualty. On her way out, she even asked Trump for $10,000 for her charity, which Trump gladly gave her out of his own pocket.

Tune in next Sunday at 10/9c to NBC to see which celebrity is the next one to get fired from The Celebrity Apprentice!

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