The Apprentice Episode 7 - New York, We Here Baybee

Product placement galore on this week's Apprentice

Judging from the last 6 weeks of this series, you would have thought this task of pitching soft drinks to America would be a great chance to exile certain candidates from Britain, Piers Morgan style. Pretty sure Dan would have been high up on this list given the contempt he holds for his rivals and his general arsehole attitude, but sadly this was purely just a task to flog some drinks to ad lovin' USA. Some had to stay in boring dull England to do the designing, drink production while the others had to fly off to  the flashy US of A to pitch and create ads for their new drink.

Team Summit was fronted by Bianca who's team created an energy drink called Big Dawg, an energy drink looking like watered down blood which explained the sour taste. She dragged James and Soloman with her to New York probably because they both have the two biggest egos in the group. Team Tenacity meanwhile, led by Mark produced Aqua Fusion, a pineapple drink that wasn't particularly pretty but tasted alright I guess. Naturally everyone in the group wanted to go to New York, namely Lauren who clearly was begging to do Stateside to get a tan, so Mark begrudgingly took her and Felipe abroad. 

 

Felipe showed he was more Uwe Boll rather than Steven Spielberg.

For someone so eager to go to America, I can't recall her actually being useful barring the time she showcased her generic American accent in the ad. I think what summed up her time on the task (and why she got sacked) was when her team was editing the ad and the billboard and she was frequently told to help someone else purely so it looked like she was doing something. If anything, she could have at least made the team cups of tea and coffee. Felipe was putting a load of effort in to make a paint by colours drinks ad that proved to be an absolute nightmare with the son actor failing to be able to catch a bottle despite playing as a basketball player. Mark keenly pressured him into actually filming something but this was pointless because the ad was still cringe worthy. Suppose what didn't help was Dan and Katie's cheap logo and dull bottle design but the first rule of The Apprentice is that you got to smile and grin while pitching shite.

However Sanjay and Roison's bottle and logo design was much better and stood out more. Bianca didn't fare too well as a leader due to her poor communication skills and her awful uninspiring advert of three people saying "I like Big Dawg".  No wonder James told her she should have stayed in London. Maybe he's still holding a grudge against her for being a cockblock against him and Soloman when they were blatantly using the casting call to hit on young attractive women.

 

Pitching to industry experts was interesting - Big Dawg managed to impress with a solid presentation even if the product is a bit naff and laughing off any suggestions that the bone in the logo isn't actually a penis. "No it's a bone!" said Soloman, even if it still looks a bit like a penis. Aqua Fusion's pitch on the other hand was more like a lecture on bathroom hand dryers given how lively and fluid it was, completely ruining their own chances in the process. Maybe it wasn't a good idea having a presentation team that isn't 2/3 full of lawyers, after all. 

"Well, at least I've got a future in US soap operas"

Into the boardroom and despite mixed results by both teams, Lord Sugar declared that Team Summit made the less mistakes and won the task. Or perhaps the fact the drink was so American, if it was a person it would be an American waving an American flag in one hand and an eagle on the other. Tenacity argued some more about how everyone else to blame, bar Felipe who stood in silence not blaming anyone or arguing. You have to give it to Felipe, he knows the best way of not looking like a twat on national TV - just don't say anything. No surprises that Lauren was fired given she didn't do much for reasons discussed earlier in this recap but Daniel managed to yet again limp away like a triple amputate cat judging how many lives he's got left.

The Apprentice Episode 6 - Mind Games

The ever enthusiastic Dan

This week's task was board games, a task that was purely set up for the puns from the word Go after Lord Sugar greeted his peasants on a Battleship. GEDDIT? CUS BATTLESHIP IS A BOA- oh fucks sake. Embarrassing joke by The Apprentice writers but it did allow us to see how the candidates could handle making an entirely new and fresh board game after seeing how bad of ideas the perv camera top and an unfunny fitness video were, so on this basis it was inevitable we were going to see at least one awful board game.

I'm starting to see a recurring theme in The Apprentice this series - everytime we cut to a project manager discussion and two people back out for someone else to step in, that person turns out to be the enthusiastic loser who 10 minutes into the job realises she shouldn't have stepped in. Pamela was inevitably doomed to fail from the moment she agreed to develop the relationship game and it's no surprise she got sacked, really. James in a bid to get a chance to tug off Lord Sugar, led Team Summit and decided to go with Rosion's idea of pitching a geography game that was practically Pictionary. As we all know, there's nothing wrong with Pictionary. It's a safe bet to run with and it would have taken a cock up the size of Mars to ruin this pitch. 

Human wrecking ball Bianca came close with offering product exclusively to a single store in Westminster, making the whole team wonder whether or not they should control her like a puppet and dub her voice to prevent her cocking up some more. Despite this, Soloman picked up the pieces to rescue his team's performance and James managed to lead his team quite successfully with minimal fuck ups. Although if you ignore his shutting down of Bianca or deflecting any criticism, but he was otherwise decent, the charming bastard. 

If Soloman wants to be Lord Sugar's apprentice, he really needs to curb his coke addiction

Team Tenacity on the other hand drove with an idea that everyone knew was bad but hey, it's better than nothing. Potential series winner Mark managed to polish a turd so much that he managed to sell a load of games and became the team's best seller. I suppose competition wasn't that tight considering Dan moped around putting in a half arsed shift, making stereotyping question cards and only really putting an effort in to make himself look good and still insist he's a selling machine. We don't think you are mate but we're all certain you're just a massive prick. Pamela wasn't able to be an effective project manager, making me wonder if Team Summit had been watching too much Homeland and brain washed her into being shit in order to let Summit win. Given how desperate some candidates are to win, I wouldn't be surprised.

"After failing a task, how many people should I fire?"
A - 1
B - 2
C - EVERYONE

With no real surprise, Summit steamrolled Tenacity by a margin of over £1000. While Tenacity realised why a relationship board game was a good idea, Summit got the chance to take penalties against David Seaman. For a reward, that's on par with rewarding your son who got 12 GCSE A grades with Ham and Pineapple pizza. Out of Tenacity, Pamela, Dan and Lauren were all brought back for their various cock ups, whether it be Dan's sexist game questions and general unenthusiastic behaviour or Pamela's consistent moaning. Even though Lauren got completely rinsed by Lord Sugar, Pamela got fired. Not surprising considering she chose to lead with the idea and made the car crash of an idea even worse by adding more cars into the mess.

Next week - Battle of the big egos in the Big Apple.

The Apprentice Episode 5 - Carry On Coach Trippin'

Toot toot, all abroad James' banter bus

After Lord Sugar's firing spree and having to be calmed down after threatening to sack his faceless PA and Karen, he woke up at a service station smelling of booze and with a mighty hangover. Oh and to tell the teams that he wanted them to arrange coach trips and tours to try and get a load of money. Woopie, another task to see which team is less socially inept while not really trying to teach their business sense or skills.

Team Tenacity chose Oxford to tour and project manager Dan set the ticket prices at £99.50 (great value knocking off 50p clearly). Unfortunately for him he wasn't really able to sell any tickets until late on, leading to everyone wondering if anyone would mind if he was dumped in Kent and forgotten about. Sanjay meanwhile, lead Team Summit and thought Kent would be a great destination for a tour and set the relatively low price of £60 per ticket. Before James could hold another trademark fire sale, Bianca managed to sell a load of tickets on the cheap while also admitting she did it because she was desperate to sell them. Oh. Dear.

In respect of Sarah's firing, Team Tenacity came out in lemon jackets

James was definitely the face of Summit despite Sanjay's leadership, calling himself "King James" while walking around castle pointing at birds, singing nursery rhymes on the bus, telling people the tour's over before it's done and having his own special fire sale of crisps. Jemma when not hyping up her own team's efforts was giving a tour of Hever Castle in the style of Alan Partridge's tour of Bono's house; failing to think of basic facts of Henry VIII or Anne Boleyn and pointing at a real photograph of Henry VIII despite the fact you could only take photos 300 years ago if you had a time machine and a camera. Team Summit? More like Team Bus Crash on the M25. (I'm so sorry)

On the other side, Team Tenacity weren't perfect but still were good if you ignore the poor sandwiches, selling water at a high price and Felipe's coma inducing river cruise talk. Lauren was able to show off Blenheim really well with her great research and enthusiasm, Mark stepped up to the plate and lead his sub team well, making it a relevantly solid performance. Dan was ineffectual as the project manager, making me wonder whether or not he's better off making sandwiches while the big boys do a decent job.

Solomon's tactic on the task was to hit on young girls

Back to the boardroom and after both teams argued about their own failures even before it was revealed who had won, Team Summit lost by over £500. Had to laugh at the disappointment of Team Summit members then cutting to Tenacity candidates' faces going from pissed off to over the moon while Dan still looked majorly pissed off. Out of Sanjay, Bianca and Jemma, Lord Sugar decided that it was pointless to keep asking what Jemma does every week and fired her. Bet she was still kicking herself when she forgot to edit out "I'm always the one that never wins" bit out of her CV because that was inevitably going to come back to haunt her. Meanwhile back at the house, DanGate continued with everyone and 5 million viewers back home telling stop him being an egoistic lying bastard (could tell that to James too to be fair), making him look like a slopping 7 year old on the naughty step. Can't wait for the Apprentice finale where Mark has had enough of Dan's bullshit, lifts him up over his head and throws him onto his thigh, Bane style.   

Next week - Board games. I wonder who will be fired next in Lord Sugar's own version of Cluedo.

The Apprentice Episode 4 - Please Don't Watch This

Team Summit watching Meatspin

Moving on from chasing people around London with candles, the teams were set the task of creating a Youtube channel and getting Youtube dolla for going viral. A task perfect for a load of mid 20 year old candidates right? Just create ‘Fat man falls downstairs’ and you’ll be rolling in the view hits. Or not, as we learnt this week.

Both Teams came up with really frigid and awkward ideas that only serious try hard businessmen and women would think of. With many candidates saying “I don’t really have any experience with online videos”, this set the alarm bells ringing because how the hell do a load of young businessmen haven’t ever experienced YouTube or used it? No researching Youtube stars or thinking of those hilarious videos they saw during your uni days, it was just “right, let’s do the videos ourselves and completely forget what humour is”. 

Team Summit came up with “Dare to dine”, a video channel all about cooking challenges and James looking like an idiot while Rosion tried seriously hard not to knock him out with a saucepan everytime he made a shite slapstick joke. Team Tenacity on the other hand thought that fitness videos would be a great idea to do and because Felipe came up with the idea, everyone decided they should make him the fat man in the video to be bullied and chanted “fat daddy” at for hours. What we didn't see was Felipe crying in the toilets while eating a Celebrations box.

"Yeah maybe we bullied Felipe a bit *too* much..."

10 year old business man Soloman made easy work of his team’s video, injecting the right amount of entertainment and enthusiasm into the video, which clearly spread out throughout the team. It even got Jemma talking for the first time all series, making me finally be able to give her a name rather than “glasses girl”. Their video could have easily been dragged down by James’ try hard idiot “act” or the cringe worthy unfunny-ness of the video, but hey, at least they had a rough idea of how to make a Youtube video even if they really were scraping the barrel a far bit. Although next time maybe just stick with baby biting his brother or leaking Soloman’s sex tape. 

Female Ed Milliband, Ella Jade, failed to make what could have been a watchable video but instead became a montage of bullying Felipe into losing weight and regularly calling him fat. Daniel raised his hand at various points to say “this is awful guys, please can we not do this” in which everyone glared at him as if to say “yes we fucking know that but please can you help figure out Youtube’s upload system? Ta”. Then I wished he piped up again at the uploading stage because none of them realised that having a video description and tags would massively help their hit count. Oh bloody dear. What didn’t help was Steven’s typical sales pitch of introducing something as mindblowing and revolutionary with Sarah’s confusing answers to Buzzfeed's concerns about the video being offensive. Surprised Buzzfeed didn’t include Steven in a “15 people who should consider a career move” list.

Daniel gutted about not going to Iceland - he's run out of cheese.

 After the two teams struggled to make two watchable videos, Team  Summit’s ‘Dare to Dine’ video got more hits and were immediately flown to Iceland while their opposite team shouted at each other and Kate outta nowhere (RKO style) took down Sarah about her “women should wear short skirts and wear push up bras” comment. With scenes more awkward than a meeting between Oscar Pistolrous and Reeva Steenkamp’s parents, Sarah, Ella Jade and Steven were all back for further bullying from Lord Sugar. Fed up of Steven’s sass, Sarah’s ignorance and Ella Jade’s lack of personality, bollock head told everyone to fuck off and fired all three. Approximately at 9:55pm, up and down the country you could hear a mixture of laughter and “OH FUCKING HELL”, with further laughing at Ella-Jade-I-promise-you’s pleading to stay. Sorry love, but looking like Droopy dog isn’t going to help your case at all.

Next week - Tour buses. Destination - Failure City

The Apprentice Episode 3 - Smells Like Team Failure

"SMELL MY CANDLE"

Week 3 has arrived and Lord Sugar's big task was to get the teams to create a home fragrance product to sell on market stalls and retailers. He called house fragrance products a "hot trend", a statement wrong on many levels considering fragrance plug ins and candles are a solid staple of households and after last week was about wearable tech, Lord Sugar really needs to talk to his grandchildren more about what's hot. 

In an attempt to make sure there are male candidates by the series’ half way point, the teams were mixed up. Team Tenacity’s Katie cannonballed straight into the meeting and volunteered to be project manager because she loves buying home fragrance products, probably to hide the smell of someone talking shit. She went further on and thought buying lower quality wax but selling high would be a great idea because of the MARGINS and MARGINS ARE VERY IMPORTANT GUYS which I then started to worry she bought wax so cheap that they were the causes of at least 7 house fires in London (Alfie Moon should have put that on his insurance claim form). The team produced a candle called "British Breeze" which smelt like of green tea, aloe vera and lemongrass instead of cheap lager, cigarettes and Jeremy Kyle guests. 

Another week, another Steven "bitch please" face.

Team Summit was spearheaded by accountant Roisin, who is all about numbers and margins, so totalling up the sums and figures of this task likely leads to her having to take a cold shower every 2 hours. Her team produce a candle called "Beach Dreams" which most likely smelt of sand, sea and rain. Half of the team went to design the product and the other half made the samples, in which Soloman and Sanjay did the maths and instructions and Lindsay and Nurun who self relegated themselves to doing manual labour because they "wasn’t good with numbers" and weren't confident with smelling candles and reed diffusers. Really. 

Onto the day of selling and both teams had mixed results in selling their products on the market and to trade customers. Katie's sub team rushed around London selling their fragrances to anyone who looked professional and classy including pubs selling her reed diffusers as "they will keep your toilets fresh for a year", a statement that trading standards will have to investigate. Meanwhile the trading sub team struggled to shift their stock, namely Sarah. After publicly having a strop about packaging, she complained about how she wasn't able to sell her candles because of their price. Weirdly no one else was having problems selling more than one candle and she was promptly told to fuck off and sell more.

Lindsay doing her best at doing nothing.

While Katie's team was strict on pricing structure, Summit completely disregarded anything about pricing plans in the same way that Roy Keane is with Sir Alex Ferguson's opinions and threw them out of the window immediately. This was music to James' ears, fresh from blow drying his armpits to sell the candles at whatever price. He doesn't play by the rules but man, he reduces his team's profit margins with minimal results. Nurun's tactic of running around asking people about her candle got to the point I'm pretty sure Roisin wanted her to fail and I started to feel bad for her. Lindsay however got none of my sympathy as she stood around the market stand doing nothing but checking the packing was still in place like the last 8 times she checked. Suppose this is what happens when you allow swimming instructors onto the show, they look so out of their depth. 

In the end, Team Summit sold all their stock yet Team Tenacity had units left, they still lost by £14, making Summit all wonder what the hell Nurun and Lindsay were doing all day if they weren’t able to sell another candle. Lindsay on the spot committed seppuku and forced Lord Sugar to pity fire her and aimed his finger of doom at either Roisin, James or Nurun. Despite James' sucking up to Lord Sugar and Roisin's inability to keep product prices at a suitable level, Nurun got fired for not being able to sell enough. Two very predictable sackings this week considering the pair never looked comfortable with the tasks and just went along with their team's plans. Also makes me wonder if any of them were even suitable for the show when it looked like both women never really watched the show in the first place but to the producers' credit, watching a woman chasing people to sell a candle is pretty hilarious. 

Next week - Online video channels. If no one does a FIFA FUT opening packs video, I'll be very disappointed.

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.

The Apprentice Episode 1 – OH MY GOD WE’RE HAVING A FIRE SALE

Things can only go up from here, Dan.

First off, happy 10^th anniversary to The Apprentice and thank God you’ve returned for another series. Even though it’s got to the point where Lord Sugar is dangerously close to being able to field a football team full of previous winners, I’m still glad this series has returned again so I can get angry and laugh at a new batch of big headed tits in suits. Looking at the candidates so far there’s only a few memorable ones purely because they’re the loudest and more of an arse than everyone else but it’s all a pretty standard group of candidates this year; ‘woman with big eyes', 'egoistic moron', ‘man with ridiculously bad one liners’, ‘bitchy loud woman’ and 'smug arseholes' with a sprinkle of normal sounding businessmen and women here and there. One big change to the format this year is the change from 16 candidates to 20, perhaps this is to just to shake up the tried and tested (But very tried) formula that the show has followed for so many years and to give Lord Sugar a trump card to whip out whenever he’s feeling more fucked off than usual and fire a load of them but we’ll see how it pans out there.

Oh have I missed a Nick Hewer cringe cut away moment

In simple terms, the pitch for this series’ opener was quite frankly 'sell a fuck load of stuff in one day', which included t-shirts, fruit, potatoes, coffee, sausages and their dignity all to win Lord Sugar’s approval for another week before he eventually gets fed up with all of them. So being a new series and all, it kicked off with men v women and with spicy new team names. The female group played on the word decade (oooh topical) and came up with “Team decadence” even if it’s often associated with decline and falls of groups and possibly in this case the decline of their relationships together and their multiple fall(outs). Team badname appointed Sarah who basically just told everyone “sod strategy, show off your legs and chest and we’ll stroll this” even if there were cuts to some female candidates pulling their ‘We’ve made a huge mistake’ faces. The men instead went for something more mighty with “Team summit” to be all heroic and number one and went ahead and appointed Colombian Felipe to lead their group who was a bit of a clumsy oaf but hey, at least he works hard for the sugar.

Nothing new if you’re a seasoned Apprentice viewer – early wake up call at 4am, rush around to get ready for supplies and think of ideas, on the spot confusion and arguing all packed in before the 35 minute mark. Sarah being team leader thought it would be a totally amazing to slice lemons up and sell individual lemon slices for profit because she’s really keen to address that niche market of lemon suckers which basically set the tone for another episode of hapless and typical Apprentice style cock ups by both teams. This ranged from the men printing £500 worth of “BUY THIS T-SHIRT” t-shirts and leaving them at the shirt printing shop all day whereas the women didn’t have enough time to sell their “’#London” t-shirts because they were too busy arguing about who should be making coffee and also forgot to give their sub team the money to pay the shirt shop. No wonder Nick Hewer looked like he should have stayed with Rachel Riley and hosted Countdown instead.

 

“It’s not going to be just a potato, it’s going to be an experience” Steve – you’re selling a potato, not a vibrator.

More highlights included Mark who was very persistent about leading a sales pitch to a children’s party shop and got annoyed that James for butting in with his own pitching attempts, causing Mark ended up repeating James’ name like he had Tourette’s and apologising for his behaviour “because he’s Northern”. Yeah like that isn’t at all patronising and won’t at all cause friction within their group. Sarah and her sub team aggressively sold cleaning products to some bewildered penguin handlers for £250 (deal of the century, that) who probably only paid them to go away so security didn’t get involved.

With all the mishaps and amazing sales pitches, Team Pretentiousname won by £50 after being able to sell their t-shirts (albeit for a massive loss) at the last minute where Team Summit didn’t sell any at all because they were so keen on selling potatoes to an annoyed chef. Team Pleasethinkofabetternamenexttime went off to a VIP booth in the London Eye to point at London landmarks where the men instead pointed the blame at each other in a generic rundown café. Man, this really was a paint by colours Apprentice episode.

After some more finger pointing within the group and Lord Sugar looking more and more like football with an angry face drawn on it, Chiles was fired, a man who was effectively pointless because he couldn’t make any sales and generally sat around doing nothing. Oh and he left the shirts behind at the store, proper balls up there, Chiles. Suppose what didn’t help his case was his depressing haunting looks at the table throughout, making this an easier decision for Lord Sugar to make than who to bully on Twitter, Piers Morgan or a Children’s charity.  Felipe and Robert live on to fight another day until they inevitably get scapegoated and booted out of the series and back to their cushy day jobs.