The Celebrity Apprentice Season 5 Preview: Names And Fame

This Sunday night, NBC will bring The Celebrity Apprentice back for its fifth season. In the reality competition series, a new crop of celebs will be split into two groups and set up to battle against one another in weekly business-related challenges. We have some videos from the premiere episode, one of which have the men discussing team names, and the others feature the women trying to figure out how best to utilize the fame among their group.

I love Celebrity Apprentice. While the degrees of fame and success among the contestants seems to vary, fame and success is generally a shared trait among them, which can make for some interesting television. As I see it, most, if not all of the people competing in any given season of this show have had enough success to have grown used to being one of, if not the biggest attention getter in most rooms they’re in. Whether or not that’s gone to their heads tends to vary, but it seems like each season, there are at least a few contestants who don’t seem to play well with others. Whether it’s clashing egos or simply a struggle to handle group situations, heads occasionally butt and that can lead to boardroom drama and eventually, elimination.

While it’s probably too soon to accurately predict where the tensions will be among the celebs set to compete in Season 5. Disagreements and tension is inevitable, especially at the start when people are just beginning to get used to one another and are probably a bit hyper-aware of the cameras on them.

This Sunday night, we’ll see the the celebrities come together to begin Season 5 of Celebrity Apprentice.

This first video shows the guys trying to come up with team names. Given the number of funny men (Adam Carolla, Arsenio Hall, George Takei among them) on the team, laughs are inevitable...

In these, the women are brainstorming ideas for the first challenge. Debbie Gibson offers her gift of music...

While Aubrey O’Day admits in the confessional that she can “run circles around most people here” and has the most Twitter followers...

Does she have a point? We’ve seen previous tasks in this series where certain celebrities are underutilized and underestimated.

On a related note, and at the risk of completely dating myself, I’d have an easier time recognizing Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World, True Lies), Victoria Gotti (Growing Up Gotti), Lisa Lampanelli (various Comedy Central Roasts) and Debbie Gibson (late-80’s/early 90’s pop music) before O’Day. But that's probably a generational thing. The diversity of the groups and their claims to fame is part of what makes the dynamic so interesting on this show, and it can make or break challenges, as each team attempts to use their resources, which includes their fame, to the best of their abilities. While I may not be familiar with O'Day, she has a point in not being underestimated. Many Twitter followers can prove to be extremely useful in promoting an event. We'll have to see if that comes into play at all this season.

The Celebrity Apprentice Season 5 premieres Sunday, February 19th at 9:00 p.m. ET on NBC.