Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
You know me, I don't wish ill on anyone, but how absolutely fantastic was the end of last night's Desperate Housewives? I'm not really going to discuss it today because I don't have much to say about it except for how utterly happy it made me, but boy did it make me happy. Even if you didn't watch but have been paying attention to the promos and the news coming out of the show you know what happened last night. I won't say anything as silly as "shocking, positively shocking" but it was definitely wonderful.
So, instead of the sublime, let's focus today on the ridiculous, The Celebrity Apprentice. It's incredibly difficult to make heads or tails of why exactly the celebrities on the show act the way they do. Last night was marked by not one, but two, weird, disturbing outburst.
The first one, of course, is the one that NBC spent all of its time promoting, "the Dennis Rodman meltdown." For reasons only known to Rodman – all of the other men were asked and no one had an answer – Rodman went off on Clint Black last night. Rodman started yelling about how they were supposed to be a team and act like a team, made a few threats, said a few curses, and stormed off. To me, that sounds like perfectly normal Dennis Rodman behavior, odd and disturbing for a regular person, but exactly the sort of thing one would expect from Rodman.
What I really didn't understand about the whole thing is why Rodman was upset about being excluded from the team. Clint Black and the rest of the guys had just invited Rodman to take part in the discussions a few minutes earlier, Rodman had declined. I would have thought that if Dennis Rodman was going to yell and scream about something for no reason he could have come up with a better tirade than the one he did, one that made it seem as though he has zero short term memory.
To me though, the more disturbing moment last night took place in the boardroom. Claudia, the women's PM, prior to it being announced that the women lost, started to go after Melissa Rivers. Claudia thought (not wrongly) that Melissa had tried to hog much of the work on the project for herself. Melissa, though she had to have known that Claudia was going to attack her, seemed unprepared to defend herself. She asked her mom (who was sitting right next to her) to help defend her.
One has always gotten the impression watching Melissa, that as good as she may be at her job (and I really don't want to take anything away from her on that score), she relies too much on her mom. Asking mommy to help fight the big bad Claudia was incredible. Why Melissa wasn't ready with a retort to Claudia I'm not sure, but she asked mommy for help.
What could Joan do? She came to her daughter's aid. I'm not sure she should have, Melissa seems old enough to stand on her own two feet and fight her own battles, but Joan helped her anyway.
Melissa had the perfect opportunity to change the way that everyone thinks about her, but she opted not to do it. And, what's worse, is that I'm sure we're going to see the exact same thing happen again down the line. Melissa may not have to ask for help next time, but I'd bet Joan will jump in and try to save Melissa once more.
