by David McAlpine

Last night on Celebrity Apprentice, everyone was on the chopping block as Trump wanted to narrow the field down to two contestants. So, Trump turned to the three previous winners for help: Bret Michaels, Joan Rivers and Piers Morgna.

The three previous winners grill the final four like it's a national secret, and then they give their recommendations to Trump. Long story short, it's an overwhelming majority for Marlee and John to make it to the final two.

So, Trump drags it out as long as he can, but he follows their advice. He fires Lil' Jon for not being aggressive enough in the interview, while Meat Loaf gets the axe for being, well, Meat Load (i.e. way too sensitive for this whole process).

But the final two couldn't do the final challenge without a little help, of course. So they get a smattering of past fired celebrities: LaToya Jackson, Star Jones, Mark McGrath, Lil' Jon, Meat Loaf and Richard Hatch. The task is to create a print campaign, can design, box design, commercial and launch party for 7-Up Retro, the soda with real sugar.

John ends up with Lil' Jon, Star and Mark, while Marlee gets Meat Loaf, Richard and LaToya. I'm going to go with advantage John on this one, even though this isn't the standard "how much can you raise?" final competition, so his country friends can't help him on this one.

John takes on a 1980s theme and somehow gets Def Leppard involved in the whole thing. Mark and Lil' Jon take on the can design and give it some zebra stripes, which I wasn't such a fan of until I actually saw it.

For the commercial, John gets Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister to star, where he's auditioning for something now and can't nail it until he takes a drink of his 7-Up Retro. Then, of course, he can channel his former rocker and totally impress the people he's playing for.

The one snag John hits: Def Leppard won't be playing a kick drum at the launch party. No one really knows why this is such a big deal or why it might matter, but John is freaking out.

Marlee is having a much tougher time with her team and her concept, which is the 1970s. Richard is sitting back, watching things happen (unlike the very proactive Star), Meat Loaf has his hands in everything per usual (and Marlee's argument was that he's very '70s) and LaToya…well, Marlee got stuck with her.

Moment of the episode: Meat Loaf kept insisting on using a boombox as the box for the '70s cans, something that Marlee didn't want. It got to the point where Marlee had to remind Meat Loaf that her charity was for deaf people. Ouch.

Meat Loaf also takes it upon himself to write the whole script for the commercial, which turns out to be a really bad parody of everything that happened in the '70s. Literally, everything. With no storyline linking it.

To make matters worse, Marlee's team thought they had the original voice of 7-Up, Geoffrey Holder, lined up to appear as well as to be in the commercial. However, his lawyers said otherwise, barring Geoffrey from appearing, which caused Meat Loaf to freak out. Similar to the kick drum situation, it seems like they're freaking out over something that shouldn't be important.

The two-hour finale of Celebrity Apprentice airs next Sunday at 9/8c on NBC.

(Photo courtesy of NBC)

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