"The Celebrity Apprentice" Tally: Two fired, one quit

(CBS) Two "Celebrity Apprentice" contestants were fired and one quit in a three-hour, double-episode show Sunday night, leaving four celebs to battle it out in next week's finale.

Pictures: "The Celebrity Apprentice"

After bringing LaToya Jackson back into the game - a first for the show - host Donald Trump shook things up even more this week by moving NeNe Leakes to the men's team and rocker Meat Loaf to the women's team.

That's when Leakes, who had been feuding with teammate Star Jones, quit, enraging the boss.

"I say, you're fired. And you're a quitter," he told her on camera. "Star Jones kicked your a-- whether you liked it or not."

The first task was to organize and sell tickets to a comedy show with the team that raised the most money - the men's Team Backbone - winning. LaToya Jackson, who raised the least amount of money for the women's Team ASAP, was sent home for a second time.

In the second task - creating a commercial to announce that OnStar navigation system is now available in stores, team ASAP again came out fighting - with one another - and again ended up losing. This time, Star Jones and Meat Loaf were fighting. Noting Star's penchant for angering teammates, Trump fired her.

Two things became obvious over the course of the three hours. First, Meat Loaf is very emotional. He was brought to tears by the fear that he wouldn't earn money for his charity and even John Rich's offer to make up the difference, should they lose, failed to staunch the flow.

The other is that Maree Matlin is a superb player.She has consistently been praised by her colleagues and, despite being project manager of a losing OnStar effort, she deftly deflected blame onto her colleagues.

She will be hard to beat as she goes on to the finals with Meat Loaf, John Rich and Lil Jon. And coming back for next week's finale, we're told in the preview, are the three previous "Celebrity Apprentice" winners - Piers Morgan, Joan Rivers and Bret Michaels.