With last week's The Apprentice 4 episode having narrowed the field for Donald Trump's latest apprentice position to only Rebecca Jarvis and Randal Pinkett, last night's Apprentice set the stage for next week's live finale.

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After last week's firing of Felisha Mason and Alla Wartenberg, The Apprentice 4's twelfth episode featured The Donald individually assigning Rebecca and Randal their most complex tasks of the season. Rebecca, a 23-year-old financial journalist from Chicago, Illinois, was tasked to run the Yahoo! All-Star Comedy Benefit to raise money for Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation. Randal, a 34-year-old consulting firm owner from Somerset, New Jersey, was tasked to run the Outback Steakhouse VIP Softball Challenge to raise money for the charity Autism Speaks.

To help them with their assigned tasks, Rebecca and Randal were given the ability to select three previously fired Apprentice 4 contestants to help them in their assignments. However, since they both wanted several of the same people, the finalists had to negotiate with each other -- and even flip a coin in one case -- in order to decide who would receive which previously fired Apprentice candidates. In the end, Randal ended up with Josh Shaw, Mark Lamkin, and Marshawn Evans, while Rebecca's team consisted of James Dillon, Chris Valletta, and Toral Mehta.

While neither Randal or Rebecca selected former Final 4 competitors Felisha or Alla -- or even former Final 6 candidates Adam Israelov and Clay Lee -- the only "surprise" selection was Toral, who had previously demonstrated herself to be a rather inept Apprentice contestant.. However given Rebecca’s previously strong support for her, Toral's selection wasn't that astonishing -- especially since Toral certainly has something to prove.

The planning efforts of both teams appeared to start off well, but storm clouds soon appeared both literally and figuratively. At Rebecca’s comedy event, just when everything appeared to be going great and the sponsors and the charity representatives appeared happy with the preparation, Joe Piscapo, who was scheduled to be the MC of the event, called to say he wouldn't be able to participate due to some objections from his union. Meanwhile, at Randal’s outdoor softball game, the forecast appeared to call for rain, and Randal and his team appeared unprepared for that event.

On next week's live finale the outcomes of the events will be shown, and the winner announced. Until then, viewers can only speculate as to whether either of these developments might truly unravel Rebecca and Randal's events or are simply made-for-reality-TV drama that is actually much ado about nothing. After all, after thirteen weeks, can a little rain really derail what seems to have been an almost preordained victory for Randal?

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