After a pretty interesting season, the finale of 'The Celebrity Apprentice' took a left turn when Bret Michaels' health problems began. Think about it for a second: When Michaels and Holly Robinson Peete were executing their finale tasks sometime last fall, neither of them thought they'd be sitting at the live finale talking about anything but how they did in the finale and defending the moves they made.

But, months later, all anyone could think of and talk about was Michaels and how miraculous -- and risky -- it was for him to be sitting across the table from Donald Trump last night, just over a month since suffering a brain hemorrhage and less than a week after suffering a mini-stroke. Indeed, seeing him shuffle to the boardroom table, the hospital visits having taken a toll on his weight and strength, was a pretty inspiring sight.

I'd like to say "I called it!", Stephen Colbert-style, because I thought Bret was going to win weeks ago. But, I've also said that the strength and weakness of the show is that Trump alone makes all the hiring and firing decisions. So, since I'm not able to burrow under the Donald's wind-swept 'do and into his brain, there's no way that I can say for sure whether Trump gave Bret the win based on sympathy or just merit.

He didn't really explain his reasoning all that much in the finale. He was too busy faking the audience out, going to Bret, then Holly, then back to Bret in order to build drama, waiting until the last possible second to announce who he was going to hire. And we also didn't get the Snapple executives' overall assessment of who did a better job.

The latter point is the key here. All the evidence points to the fact that the results of the task were a draw. Snapple decided to sell both Holly's Compassionberry and Bret's Trop-A-Rocka flavors, and they gave both contestants' charities the $250,000 grand prize. Bret didn't get an additional $250,000 for being the winner. So it seems the title of "Celebrity Apprentice" this time around is just that: a title.

If that's the case, then really, both Bret and Holly won. Holly has no kick coming with the results: Both the American Diabetes Association and the HollyRod Foundation got much-needed funds from the show and the invaluable exposure both the show and the Snapple sales will provide. And both deserved to win: They put together solid presentations that played to their strengths -- Bret's creativity and ability to improvise, and Holly's organization and ability to get a high-quality job done.

In addition, Holly would be the first to say that, after all that Bret's gone through recently, she had no problem with him winning. So given that, the results of the task and the fact that Bret came to New York against his doctors' orders, putting himself at great risk, even Trump wasn't going to be cold-hearted enough to give the win to Holly.

But if Bret hadn't gotten sick? Who knows? I'm with Bret: Trump's enough of a hound that he may have given the win to Holly based just on her dress.