There is no way in the world that a jury would have let Vana go free today. Elle says she has learned that there is nowhere to hide in the boardroom and they must all stand by their mistakes. Surely there won’t be enough room in the boardroom for the contestants AND all of their mistakes?
Next week, the gits attend a pet show and make a small boy cry. We can’t miss that can we?
I’m diving down among the comments now but thanks for coming. See you next week!
He is 100% allowing Vana to stay because she’s shaping up to be one of the worst people of all time. The Apprentice needs her sort.
Hang on, will he fire another one? Elle is given a free pass...
The moving finger fires...
Elle’s boat was too pricy, Jenny bought nothing and Vana was in charge so should take the bullet but will she?
We wait, they wait. He’s saving Elle for the last blast, isn’t he? No, it’s Jenny. Totally disagree with his decision. She was the least awful by a hundred miles. I guess the other two are better TV.
Elle says it’s all Vana’s fault for making bad decisions about where to buy what. Jenny agrees that it’s Vana’s fault and Vana blames Jenny.
Lord Sugar will see you now (to fire one of you)
Vana, Jenny and Elle await their fate. Vana accuses Jenny of wavering and energy-sapping. I do not get this from Jenny at all. Alan points out that Jenny bought nothing and there’s no excuse for that.
Elle is back, according to Vana, because, as set up earlier, she gave her full UK responsibility.
“You got covered in bullshit,” says Alan as if reading from the script I have written for him. How hilarious that his new book is called “Unscripted”.
Natalie incurred £61 worth of fines for buying the wrong cheese. It’s the wrong cheese, Gromit! But she says the tasks didn’t fail on the cheese alone. At which, Vana turns on Kent bureau chief Jenny. She describes Jenny as “dead weight”. Ouch.
Selina finally lets rip with her opinions on Vana and Charleine and Vana seem to band together and turn on her, dubbing her a “wasp at a picnic”. Karren cautions team leader Vana not to laugh.
Surprise, Vana fingers Elle and Jenny for a boardroom return. Oh it is on.
Does anyone else think that April has totally wound her neck in this week? I miss April giving it some chat. Even her bun says, “oh don’t ask me, I’m just a follower, not a leader”.
Elle describes the agony of being sent back into the same shop four times, only to buy the boat she didn’t even slightly want to buy. Karren slams her for going against her gut instinct. Are the boys really getting away with Gary’s toy boat? What a swizz.
Team Versatile tasting wine is the new thing I’ll now think of when I don’t want to laugh, say at a funeral or similar.
At the sad cafe, Elle and Vana finally pull their knives and start stabbing. They’ve been waiting all episode. Charleine calls Selina a morale vacuum. Nice turn of phrase but WOW she wanted to draw blood with that one. And so it’s back to the boardroom of doom for the women.
Joseph grins and jigs like Rumplestiltskin before the queen finally guesses his name. He really thinks he’s a success.
Meanwhile, the jewel-colour girls reflect on their wild goose chases to buys naff-all.
The result
£409.21 is the boys’ final total. £725.90 is the girls’ total. I did NOT see that coming. The boys win and girls suck cheese.
“Did you get a loyalty card?” he asks the girls on hearing about their FOUR trips to the same shop. I like him again.
Alan’s zinger comes from an expected place. He gives himself a little mental cuddle as he tells the shit-shovelling girls that their Jimmy Choos must have turned into Jimmy Poos. I couldn’t hate Alan any more than I do right now. Which is ten hates.
Alan smirks at the teams’ ignorance over the Frenchie’s tendancy to “go on strike” over lunchtime. Joseph - Dandy Dan - is beginning his decision not to learn French at school. But it’s OK because Gary chips in about his toy shop diversion with the inflatable boat. None of the boys commit to shouting down Joseph. They should have done this, I think.
Vana says the man who sold her the flutes had “very open body language”. This sounds like the Vana equivalent of “He was wearing a short skirt” because the women almost physically went for him in order to get those glasses.
You can go through to the boardroom now (doom music)
Our candidates line up like some dread choir at the gates of hell, to listen to Alan’s up-sum. And we’re reminded that the boys are Team Versatile. (Waffly Versatile, I call them.) Sam begins his stuttering defence of the mirror debacle. Debacle is a French word so extra points to me.
The girls continue their kitchen raids on random restaurants, demanding mussels with menaces. No one has any though, so it doesn’t work. It can only be a matter of time before a contestant shoves their hands into the coat, fingers pointed, and snarls a warning about the gun they are currently pointing at their unfortunate negotiating target.
What the hell was Charleine just saying to that man. My dog is dead? My mother is dead? Por favor. I think she just invented a new language and also a new negotiating technique involving lying about family mortality. Amazing. I don’t know if I’d give her all my money but she can have this biscuit.
Gary is the true culprit of the “cardboard skeleton” miss-hit. He thinks that he is taking risks by buying a child’s inflatable dingy instead of a proper one. Yes, that will go smashingly in the boardroom. High-five all you like lads, in that car par. Apprentice candidate high-fiving in a car park is actually the thing I think of when I don’t want to laugh at a crucial moment.
Everywhere is 45 minutes away for the girls. Just go to London, they sell everything there.
Oh MY. For the fourth time, the girls visit the now completely bemused anchor-purveyor who flogs them a boat after four, count them, four visits and massive amounts of faffing.
The way a 2015 Apprentice candidate talks to another one is so labyrinthine it gives me a headache. “Are YOU saying that I am not allowed to express an opinion on this? Because I am casting doubt on that and some of your other choices.” It’s hilarious. Imagine speaking every word knowing it was going to be quoted back to you. You’d go mad. And they do. Hurrah!
Jenny fails to get the mussels from a restaurant who say that would clean them out of mussels. Karren thinks Jenny wasn’t pushy enough. I never want to go for dinner with Karren.
Elle walks away from the Kentish anchor purveyor when she tries to charge them a fair price for an inflatable boat. That woman must wonder what the hell is going on today and why dullards in suits keep bursting in, trying to cut deals with her for beach items.
I actually really like the flutes the boys just bought. Sturdy looking things that probably even I wouldn’t manage to smash immediately. But I’m sensing that everything they buy is more expensive than the girls’ purchases.
Vana insists that they buy escargot from a restaurant. That’s a restaurant that massively marks up all the raw ingredients it sells. Good work. Selina expresses this opinion and is shut down. Vana kind of sucks this episode.
Mergim closes his latest deal with some excruciating smarm about the female shopkeeper having the “privilege” of meeting him. And giving us the worst of female stereotypes over at the farm, Elle squeals that she has shit on her tights and someone else complains about bespoiling her manicure. The worst of humanity, male and female, there.
The boys get their anchor but pay over the odds for it. In France it’s lunchtime and the antiques shop is shut to the boys. You have to love the French. They’re probably sat out the back, playing boules and drinking pinot, laughing their heads off. Stupid English.
Charleine strives for a big galvanised anchor and bargains furiously with a woman who doesn’t even have them in stock. There’s a shop in Covent Garden, London that just sells anchors and knots and what-not. Can’t work out for the life of me why it’s there, so far from the sea. Could it be a front for drug-running? I hope it never closes.
Jenny advises Vana that she would be better placed to buy the mirror in Canterbury because Jenny’s dad is an antiques dealer. “I’m not giving you the mirror,” rasps Vana into her horizontal smart phone. End of conversation.
The boys visit the same bemused cheese shop keeper and he barters with them, or they think they do. He offers over the asking price and they seem pleased when he knocks off 20 cents. So the actual ticket price.
Sam interjects with the first “Guys, guys!” of the series. The nice, middle-class weed who uses this vernacular is usually out within the fortnight. Shame, I was warming to him.
Back in France, Vana’s women head into la fromagerie to source (they would so say source instead of “get”) some cheese. Maybe this cheese is the oud/cardboard skeleton. April, ever alert, doubts that they’ve bought the right cheese. Don’t tell the camera, April. Tell your team leader!
Brett and his chaps follow their noses to some manure and find a big pile of the stuff, going begging. Please tell me they’re going to fill up the people carrier with it and run behind.
I was once interviewed by a French journalist about The Apprentice. They can’t get enough of it over there but they also find in utterly baffling.
Vana goes straight for the double-kissing and simpering to get a good deal on some crystal flutes from her list. Business student Jenny (it’s Jenny, everyone!) is trying to track down some of the Kent items. Elle glazes over as Jenny enthuses about the cheap deals one can get at universities.
Joseph is going to spend a lot of this episode asking French people if they speak English, over and over again. Sam can at least form half sentences in a foreign tongue but Claude, fluent in French, lurks behind a baroque plant stand, listening to every word.
He clocks Joseph’s total inability to parlez French and Sam isn’t doing much better when it comes to buying a mirror.
Dandy Dan from Bugsy Malone (Joseph) says the girls may have an advantage because they’re all so pretty, simultaneously flirting with a whole team and marking himself out as a reactionary pillock.
I like Vana’s confidence that the best manure can definitely be found in this country. No need to cross the Channel for shite. Vana, knowing full well what she’s doing, tells her all-female team that they mustn’t get catty. Being incredibly catty herself. It’s like she’s already preparing for the boardroom back-peddling. Oh, I told them not to be catty, Lord Sugar.
Joseph really wants to lead the boys but can’t speak French. This will not stop him, I feel. Several other team members have French language qualifications but none of them insist that strongly so it’s Joseph. They want him to fail so their silence is strategic.
See? Dover Castle is cool. Karren looks quite at home in a war dungeon. As does Claude. Sugar couldn’t be bothered to turn up, as is usual for the foreign task.
The Max Headroom version of Alan tells the contestants that some of them will be dispatched to Calais while the rest stay in Kent. Who will find the best bargains?
Karren tells them to remain in their girls v boys configurations, but who will lead the teams? Vana can speak French and Elle says working in construction means she should have a crack too. Logic? No idea. Vana believes in karma and offers Elle the deputy role. Cattily.
The candidates are summoned to some “wartime tunnels” underneath Dover Castle. I strongly recommend you get an English Heritage membership because they run the show down there and it’s too cool. Or the National Trust. Other middle-class tartan blanket associations are available.
Last week, of course, we lost Aisha after her Desert Secret was left standing by the boys’ man-with-soap-in-his-eyes.
Who dodged the bullet last week and hangs by a tender thread this week? Let’s separate them from the pack and savage them by the puny throat for failing to keep up with Sugar’s alpha herd. God, why can’t everyone just be nice?
The narrator reminds us of the “quarter million pound investment” that awaits the winner. Not a quarter OF a million? This isn’t Donal Trump’s Apprentice, mister? He’ll be all sidewalk this and elevator that before the episode’s through. I do not approve.
Traditionally, in the foreign-set scavenger hunts, there’s always an “oud” or item that the teams completely misinterpret because of that classic arrogance/ignorance combination so often found in candidates.
What will be the oud tonight? Cheese? Poo?
Bienvenue à la France
And that’s the last French I’ll attempt this evening because I did German at school, no French at all. But we can look forward to plenty of appalling Franglais and a bunch of inappropriately dressed nerks stepping in cow plop, judging by the trailers. Yes, the candidates are crossing the Channel to ruin British-French relations once and for all as they undertake a fiendish scavenger hunt through Kent and into France.
As well as champagne flutes and cheese, they appear to be tasked with bagging up animal excrement. I’m already resigned to Sugar’s inevitable “bull shit” zinger. There’s no avoiding it. All we can do is bend our knees and brace.
Stop pretending you were going to read a book and join me here at 9pm for every second of the merde-shovelling joy.
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