Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

February 20, 2012

Fresh from his win as Project Manager on The Celebrity  Apprentice (Miss the show? Click here for the recap.) Paul Senior returns, on what aims to be a sad evening. Tonight’s show seems, at least in part, to have been filmed concurrently with yesterday’s Apprentice, where Senior led the men’s team to victory in a sandwich challenge. He raised the most money with a donation of $300,000 from an anonymous donor. Frankly, assuming he didn’t somehow donate the money himself, I have no idea who it could have been.

THE APPRENTICE BIKE Feb. 20, 2012
Senior deals with the death of his mother and is hurt then he does not hear from Junior or Mikey. Then, while PJD starts a build for One Call Concepts, OCC unveils a gold bike for Donald Trump.

Of course, given how many of you feel about Senior, there may not be a lot of sympathy for him.

As we found out last week, Senior’s mother died. Senior explained this later on. It was not Senior’s biological mother, it was his step-mother. Not that anything changes in the relationship, they were very. very close, but it is not Paulie and Mikey’s biological grandmother and they were simply not as close.

OCC is continuing the Trump bike. PJD is hired by One Call Concepts to design a bike. Digging in the ground? Afraid of power lines? Call them. Their joke was they were the original OCC, so Paulie is building a bike for OCC. Get it? Hey, it was their joke, not mine.

During the builds Rick did the talking for OCC and Brendon was on camera for PJD, a nice change. Most of the readers here love Rick, but Brendon is professional and an asset to PJD too.

Meanwhile, in some cross-promotion, OCC brings some bikes to Manhattan to set up in front of the shop where Senior’s team is selling their sandwiches. Good idea. Problem is, if  you watched the show last night, this only went one way. Nothing was shown or mentioned of OCC’s bikes except for, perhaps, in the background. Clearly, The Celebrity Apprentice trumps American Chopper. (Ok, that bad pun was mine.)

The builds are continuing, with a little more emphasis than usual on the builds, (not that it says much, especially compared to last week) and even Senior got in on the fabrication. For once. He’s going back and forth from Manhattan to upstate and back during downtime on Trump’s show. He was very impressed with how respectful Don Jr. was to his father. On the other hand, I wonder if Donald Senior ever treated his son like Paul Senior did.

As for family, neither of his sons reached out to him, which I will let you guys debate. For contrast, Vinnie texted his sympathies to Senior, and Vinnie can’t stand him. Senior was touched by Vinnie (his words) but hurt by his sons.

At the half-hour mark, there was the usual Teutul Trivia. I generally don’t pay much attention, but this was interesting. Helen, Senior’s step-mother, played pinochle religiously for 25 years against Senior’s mother and father. The father, mother, and step-mother all played cards together. I am wondering what that relationship was like. Years after his wife died, the father married Helen. That could have been an interesting reality show.

Over at OCC the Trump bike is moving along, and it is being painted in gold leaf. Looking nice.

As I mentioned in the comments last week, the editing of the show lately is very choppy. There is no flow. We are used to going back and forth from OCC to PJD and back, but they are also jumping between plot threads- the bikes, the death, Senior’s disappointment with his sons, the bikes, The Apprentice, etc. For example, if you just follow Senior through the show, he is happy, he is sad, he is angry, he is disappointed, he is happy, he is sad. It makes the show seem disjointed. However, unlike this week, the last 15 minutes of the show were not simply short segments and commercials. Sometimes, like last week, it seems like the show is over at 9:45, more or less.

Senior has a reason to be disappointed. His sons did not show up at the funeral. He heard that Paulie was at the wake but Senior didn’t see him. Mikey was there but he never said a single word to his father. All that left Senior determined to fix his relationship with his sons. We’ll see next week:

OPERATION RECONCILIATION Feb. 27, 2012
OCC builds a bike for Veterans Airlift Command and PJD finishes a bike for One Call Concepts. After his mother’s death, Senior is more determined than ever to reconcile with Mikey and Junior, inviting Mikey to join him at a painting class.

The Trump bike is nearing completion and OCC really delivered. It is about as gaudy with swirls and flourishes as you’d expect a Donald Trump bike to be. Love it or hate it, the motorcycle screams “Trump.”

Mikey related a story about how Helen called him gay and tried to get him to make out with a nurse. That was some mother. Mikey also claimed that he never saw Senior at the wake. About twenty minutes earlier, Senior said Mikey was not more than five feet from him. Mikey also said he didn’t say hi to his father at the funeral because it was not the place, he didn’t want it to be the focus, but Vinnie convinced him he was wrong, he should have gone up to him. Good guy, Vinnie.

At 9:57 Donald Trump made an appearance on the show as Senior arrived in NYC to unveil the bike. then at 9:58 Jason appeared on-screen and ruined it all. Two minutes more and we’d have had no Pohl!

“Thanks for trusting your brand to us.” Jason to Donald Trump. “Us?” I will bet on it, that guy will end up running OCC one day. Probably into the ground.

Tags: 811, American Chopper, bmj2k, Brendon, Celebrity Apprentice, Cody, Donald Trump, Free Rick, Jason, Jr, Junior, Mike Ammirati, Mikey, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, Mr. BTR, OCC, Odie, One Call Concepts, Orange County choppers, Paul Jr, Paul Sr, Paulie, Petko, PJD, Pohl, Rick, Senior vs. Junior, Sr, The Apprentice, Trump, Vinnie