by David McAlpine

Last night on The Celebrity Apprentice, it was another clash of egos as the ever- famous "who can raise the most money in 24 hours?" challenge pushed celebrities on both teams to the brink.

Rewind to after last week's boardroom, where NeNe is upset that legend Dionne Warwick called her a coward before she slithered out of the boardroom before the last time. Marlee and Star try to cheer her up with a positive attitude and a go-hung speech, but everyone knows that the women have now lost three in a row, and beating the guys might be tough to do.

Before the task even starts, though, Backbone loses a member due to family issues at home. A tearful Jose Canseco tells Trump et al. that his cancer-stricken father has taken a turn for the worse and he needs to go home, which Trump understands. He gives $25,000 to Canseco's charity and he leaves, giving the men a 2-up advantage.

This week's task: each celebrity gets to design their own unique baseball hat, which are then shown off in a gallery and auctioned off to the public. Whoever can raise the most money (whether or not they buy anything) wins. Marlee and John take the lead for their teams because of their backgrounds in philanthropy, putting together a pretty epic fight.

However, epic doesn't begin to describe what chaos would ensue on the men's team. After going to Michael's to shop for items, Gary Busey repeatedly asked Meat Loaf to buy him things, which Meat Loaf refused to do. So, when they get back to the studio space to make their hats and Meat Loaf's art supplies are missing, he goes off the deep end and starts attacking Gary like anyone who has been watching NBC in the past week has seen on the promos.

But Gary takes it like a champ, surprisingly, and keeps his cool. Eventually, someone finds Meat Loaf's supplies in another bag, leaving him undoubtedly embarrassed. He apologizes to Gary, but not before John scolds them for not realizing that all of this is for charity, especially since the task has so much to do with philanthropy to begin with.

In their gallery, the men start making money left and right, getting nearly $5,000 for every piece of art they sell. Richard Hatch, the least connected of the group, seems to have trouble selling his, so he lowers his price point to $1,000. John Rich, on the other hand, flies up all his friends from Nashville, one of which donates $470,000 for a guitar that all the Backbone members signed.

On the women's side, Marlee tries to keep the peace right away by setting a tone for all the women: it's all for one and one for all. La Toya jumps in and starts the giving by donating a limited edition T-shirt, apparently the last T-shirt Michael approved to wear on his "This Is It" tour.

The women have a significantly harder time pulling their gallery together, including their artwork, which arrives 5 minutes before opening. They get everything up and sell many more pieces at a higher price point, but no one brings in the big bucks like John did (although Jill Zarin does make a brief appearance to make a donation).

In the boardroom, La Toya wins for best hat, netting her charity $25,000. At the end of the day, both John and Marlee, the teams' leaders, were responsible for most of the fundraising, but for Backbone it wasn't enough. Their impressive $626,908 was dwarfed by the women's $986,000. All of it went to Marlee's charity, plus an extra $14,000 from Trump, rounding it out to $1 million.

Because everyone did so well, Trump asks ASAP if he should fire anyone since Jose left. The women are on board with firing someone else. Not only that, they take aim at Richard for raising the least, the same target that John had going into the boardroom.

John also goes for Gary over Meat Loaf, even though it was clear that Meat Loaf was the one out of line. Sure, Gary is a little strange and he's not the nicest to look at, but he still did a decent job on the challenge and he's dedicated to the show.

Richard, however, is put under the spotlight for not trying hard enough to get donations. Trump is onto him right away about floating under the radar and digs him out before he has a chance to defend himself.

(Photo courtesy of NBC)

The Celebrity Apprentice airs Sundays at 10/9c on NBC.

Follow David: @DavidMcAlpine