Andrea Lake becomes tenth contestant fired from 'The Apprentice 5'

Andrea Lake, a 31-year-old sticker company owner from San Diego who had shown herself to have something of a brash and abrasive personality, became the ninth person fired from The Apprentice 5 after she became cross with her team and they turned on her in the boardroom.


The Apprentice 5's ninth episode began with Lee Bienstock, who had barely survived the previous episode's final boardroom session, returning to the suite to find a birthday cake for Leslie Bourgeois, the contestant Donald Trump had just fired. Upset about Trump's decision, Charmaine Hunt, who had become good friends with Leslie, was visibly disappointed and somewhat confrontational with Lee. However Lee appeared to shrug off the criticism and instead resolved to step up his performance by becoming the project manager for the next task.

The next morning, the teams met with The Donald and an Ameriquest executive to learn about their next task. Also joining them were "true apprentii" Ivanka and Donald Jr., the Trump children who were taking the place of his usual project overseers George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher this week. This week's task was to create a limited edition Ellis Island souvenir tourist program for Ameriquest and sell as many of them as possible in order to raise money for the restoration foundation of the Statue of Liberty. The team that made the most money would win the task.

Over at the highly successful Synergy Corporation -- winners of the last four tasks -- Allie Jablon, who had previously served as the winning project manager for the first task of the season, stepped up to become the project manager for this task as well. Things almost immediately became tense between Andrea and Allie as Andrea, who had previously openly stated that if it were up to her she would be project manager for every task, attempted to usurp Allie's authority -- drawing the ire of not only Allie but the other Synergy women Roxanne Wilson and Tammy Trenta as well. Afterward, Synergy's problems were further compounded when Tammy misplaced her notebook and Allie and Tammy ended up missing the ferry back to the city, giving Allie little choice but to let Andrea determine the creative design of the tourist program while she and Tammy waited for the next ferry.

Meanwhile, Gold Rush seemed to work well together for one of the few times this season, with the only relatively minor dissension being between Lee and Charmaine. Rather than (like Synergy did) taking the whole team to Ellis Island, Lee sent Tarek Saab and Michael Laungani to take photos and research the island while he and Charmaine remained at the suite and attempted to call local area businesses looking for a large scale sale -- an endeavor that admittedly appeared to be fruitless at the time.


As the program designs progressed, it became clear that things were a bit chaotic on the Synergy side, with Andrea’s creative efforts appearing to be somewhat jumbled. Meanwhile Tarek, the MENSA member who has previously taken flack for his bad ideas, appeared to finally have a good one when it came to the program's design.

After catching the next ferry and rejoining her team a couple of hours later, Allie expressed some disappointment with Andrea's design. Rather than react well to the criticism, Andrea appeared to get up and abandon her design role, leaving Allie to attempt to drastically rework the design in the minutes leading up to the printing deadline. In contrast to Synergy's issues, Lee loved Tarek's program and although Charmaine complained that the task had seemed like it was Tarek's project instead of Lee's, the entire team agreed that the program design portion of the project had been a success.

Early the next morning, Lee cleverly got his team up and out of the suite before the other team had even awoken in order to stake out Battery Park, the Ellis Island ferry boarding area that was the program's logical prime selling location. By the time Synergy had gotten to the location, Gold Rush had already worked the captive tourists well and there was little for the Synergy team to do other than find an alternate location.

Agreeing to Andrea and Roxanne's suggestion, Allie decided to move to Ellis Island itself -- a decision that appeared to be very costly as once on the island most of those people who were interested in purchasing a booklet had already purchased a Gold Rush program prior to boarding the ferry. To make matters worse, one of the bulk sale clients that Lee and Charmaine had called the previous day called in with an order of 100 booklets, further cementing Gold Rush's lead.

After the task was over, it was announced that -- as anticipated -- Gold Rush had easily won the task, raising twice the amount of money that Synergy had raised. As their reward, they got to play a golf with The Donald and PGA star Vijay Singh and also received a set of the same Cleveland brand golf clubs that the PGA star uses.


Back at the suite, Allie, Tammy and Roxanne plotted their boardroom strategy while a highly annoyed Andrea alternately confronted them and attempted to get the more neutral Sean Yazbeck on her side. Given the build up in the suite, things appeared to be set for a fiery conclusion in the boardroom, however the final result ended up being anticlimactic as the contestants, appearing to reign in their emotions, put on a more measured defense in front of The Donald. In the end, despite the numerous mistakes Allie made, Trump sided with the argument that Andrea was not a team player and was a disruptive influence on the team itself, and -- without even calling for Allie to select someone to accompany her to a final boardroom session -- fired Andrea.