The third season of "The Apprentice" is shaping up to be the most intense yet. While the dynamic of "Street Smarts" versus "Book Smarts" is interesting in theory, neither team seems to have any real competitive edge, making each week a very close call.

So far, the success of each group has hinged almost solely on the performance of the project managers, with the rest of the team exerting minimal influence on the outcome of each task. John did a great job mobilizing Net Worth (Street Smarts) in the first challenge, managing a Burger King restaurant, and his efforts paid off. But the next week, Brian led the very same team to disaster with his mismanagement of their renovation of a Jersey Shore motel. In the third episode, it was project manager Danny's complete incompetence that led Magna (Book Smarts) to failure.

For the fourth challenge, the teams met with advertising guru Donny Deutsch to develop 30-second advertisements for a new product from Dove: Cool Moisture Body Wash. (Say what you will about the product placement on the show, it makes much more sense here than on "Survivor" or "American Idol.) Deutsch gave the teams very little guidance, only briefly suggesting that they try to go out on a limb with their ad campaigns.

Magna may have gone a little too far out with their idea, which amount to--in their own words--a "vegetable porno with a gay twist." This is where the lack of real-world experience really brought the team down, as not one member considered the fact that even a hint of homosexuality in a mass market ad campaign could be disastrous. Erin, the project manager, took the idea and ran with it, dragging the rest of the group along for the ride.

The first sign of trouble for Magna was when Erin got a little too excited looking at the head shots of potential models for the ad. This was only the first step in a complete lack of focus that culminated in the hired actors waiting around the set for nearly two hours before the team showed up. Erin clearly had no idea how to deal with one very pissed off actress, but thankfully for Magna, Bren was there to calm things down.

No sooner had filming gotten underway than things went off track again, with Erin inexplicably getting some hands-on experience washing one of the male models abs, creating footage that was essentially unusable. Throughout the whole mess, the look on watchdog Carolyn's face was absolutely priceless--I don't think she's ever looked so disgusted before.

Net Worth didn't fare much better. John and Craig actually came up with a rather clever marathon-themed idea for the ad, but project manager Kristen quickly removed them from the directing process, sending them off instead to create music for the ad so that they were not even present as she single-handedly destroyed their concept.

Needless to say, the footage that Net Worth wound up with was also virtually unusable, resulting in an incoherent, poorly executed message. While their ad wasn't as potentially as offensive and inflammatory as Magna's, it was so oft-putting as to almost certainly steer any right-minded person away from Dove products for good.