The Apprentice Episode 2 – Technical Failure

"This isn't going to lead to a sexual harassment case, is it?"

The series opener saw the candidates rush around London trying to sell buckets and sponges for £300 with a straight face, the teams are now doing the same again but with wearable technology instead infront of bewildered sales executives. Given it’s the second episode and how much a balls up the last task was to both teams, it was always going to go wrong, again. Oh and it did.

Both teams went into this task unsure of who to lead and it’s no surprise really. Wearable technology is still a relatively new thing and even watching it I was wondering what the hell to make and the same clearly applied to the two teams; no one wanted to lead either team and it was a case of someone begrudgely being project manager just to get it out of the way. Even after Lord Sugar heavily hinting that Robert should lead so hard that he was furiously winking at him like he was hitting on him, Scott put his balls on the line and led the men. His reason? He went to a wearable technology conference weeks before. Oh, in that case I might as well become a wine connoisseur after that wine and cheese evening I went to once.  The female team now called ‘Team Tenacity’  wasn’t led by Sarah 'get yer push up bras on ladies' Dales but instead Nurun, who alike Scott had no real experience or knowledge in wearable tech. Only a few minutes in and I knew this episode was going to like like watching a train derail in slow mo.

"What the actual hell is this"

The men fumbled about with their ideas including a selfie t-shirt which would take a photo of something and display it on your shirt (basically a Teletubbie shirt) which then evolved to something I’d like to call ‘The Perv Jumper’; a shirt that had a camera to record moments to an SD card that would be playable back on your laptop for your own pleasure. As soon as this idea became a serious thing, I knew the men were going to lose and anyone agreeing with it is a moron. Therefore all the women had to do was create something that was barely functional to win this round and somehow almost cocked that up, designing a jacket that had solar panels on to charge your phone, a heat sensor so it would heat the jacket up if it were cold and some flashing blue lights on it to “stand out”. The women were also given a science lesson in how solar panels work when they all found out that the panels have to be exposed to sunlight rather than be under material which added to the confusion.

And then it just went downhill from there on. Team Summit were pitching a grey top with "on air" written in Christmas lights without any of their group realising "hold on, this idea is fucking stupid" and didn't know how to pitch it or defend it. Highlights of their pitch included these gems: "It help you get noticed", "privacy is history" and the best quote of them all by Daniel: "I wouldn't wear this in a public place". If you want to see a car crash style of a sales pitch, please watch any of their pitches to the three retailers because they all clearly despise each other, the jumper and wondering why they are bothering trying to sell a product that is effectively, shit. For a team that was fired up by Scott Braveheart's words of "smash it out of the park", it was more like watching a 30 cigarettes a day chain smoker try and inflate a balloon - tedious, painful and tiring. The ladies team however did relatively well in pitching their Swiss army knife of a jacket despite Nurun forgetting how to form a sentence when she pitched and then general concerns from the retailers about the jacket. Maybe they were concerned about the pointless lights or the exposed solar panels but at least the women all said they would buy it rather than the men who just distanced themselves so much from their jumper that they wrote up a 'I have never seen or heard of a grey jumper with a camera on it' statement with a lawyer.

These screencaps together makes it look like Daniel is hitting on James across the bar and he doesn't like it.

So despite everyone hating everyone hating the men’s perv shirt, the ladies’ jacket just won with an order of 250 units from the online retailer, leaving the men to reflect on how much they ballsed up a task like this. Robert the sockless tit was fired on the spot, showing Lord Sugar is already bored of having an extra 4 candidates this year to fire. Scott “woah woah woah woah woah woahhhhhhhhh” McCulloch for the 1224th time put his balls on the line (was starting to wish he literally was going to do this on a train line) and brought Solomon and Daniel back to the boardroom to have another go at them, yet again. Lord Sugar thought Scott's tactics of blaming and shouting at everyone coupled with poor management was worse than Dan's shockingly bad sales pitches and admitting he wouldn't wear the jumper in public so Scott got the finger (of firedness). Daniel and Solomon survive for another week and have another chance to fumble at another task - Selling perfume.