So, two corporate corpses strew the business super highway and we’re only two episodes in. The body count is only going to rise from here on in. Do you have the stomach for it?
Because I’ll be back here next Wednesday to basically type all of this again. Join me!
Back at chump HQ, the wallies eat pasta and await the return of their “friends”. There’s a lot of American whooping but they’re all aware that their corporate death is but weeks away. It’s like life, isn’t it?
We all end up on the receiving end of the firing finger, one way or another. Oh my god we’re all going to die!!!
Who says The Apprentice is just a reality TV show? It’s actually quite profound isn’t it? Am I reading too much into it?
How about them apples. I truly think he chooses these early sacrificial lambs on the basis of who jips him the most. Try to imagine he and Aisha actually working together. She’d drive him to drink.
You're fired
The plinky music of doom begins. The final protestations are silenced as he sums up his concerns... “And for that reason...” is the tease phrase he uses to trick us into thinking he’s about to sack someone.
But he’s actually sacking... come on Alan... he’s actually sacking... Aisha!
I don’t think Natalie is going home. Aisha butts in and tries to play the superior card, pointing out further reasons why the other two should go. I think he’ll fire more than one of them.
“Sorry, don’t touch me,” snarks Aisha as Natalie’s elbow brushes against her. Fight!
Natalie gets it in the neck for delivering a shite pitch. She was rubbish, to be fair. She blames the product and says her pitch would have been fine it it weren’t for the crappy shampoo.
Vana’s sour chops say it all. She’s got to stop the sulk or she’ll be out of the door faster than you can say, “Thank you for the opportunity, Lord Sugar”.
Natalie gets both barrels from Karrren (both barrrels) for saying that people over 45 don’t like new things and generally fear change.
Coming back to the boardroom are Vana, Aisha and Natalie. Who to fire?
Focus switched to Vana as she gets that face that candidates get when they start to wine and hurl excuses any which way to deflect the blame elsewhere.
Claude points out that Elle is the naysayer of the group, constantly criticising group decisions but coming up with nothing of her own. She tries to blend into the wall and luckily for her, someone else starts talking.
Alan is already quite cross with Aisha and she is raising her defensive shields as the team descend into blame and in-fighting. Wise move, Aisha. You have made no friends this night.
Aisha is suddenly very quiet in the sad cafe. Elle seizes the opportunity to slam her and doesn’t mince words when she declares the project manager to be a total bust. Who will Aisha bring back to the boardroom with her? If I were her, I’d nix Vana and Selina. But I only say Selina because I can’t think of a single thing she’s said or done since the show began.
The anti-gravity yoga appears to be normal yoga, but in hammocks.
A man went last night, which woman are we sacking off this evening? Aisha has been fairly awful throughout but will she try to drag Charleine down with her?
Alan announces that Western is the winning shampoo. Well stone me, the boys have done it. He tells them they have done the best advert in Apprentice history and sends them to an anti-gravity yoga class. What a crud prize.
“As guys” says Richard, we don’t want to see hair blowing in the wind. This doesn’t make any sense at all. David directed the video but basically that involved doing what he was told. By the way, this is my first awareness of David. He is like the Jenny of the boys’ team. Stealth candidate, trying to fly sub-radar for the first few weeks.
Richard begins his pitch not be executed early. Spoken like a man who knows he is shortly to beg for his corporate life.
The Desert Secret TV advert is so, so creepy. “Thanks so much for the massage, mum.” Yeesh. Sack the script writer. Alan needles Charleine about being shoved into second place by Aisha. Go on, Charleine, say it. Say you hate Aisha and want her head on a stick.
Alan's zinger!
He has made himself smile with a dreadful “Fifty shades of grey” gag that the contestants all dutifully guffaw at. How they must hate themselves.
The boardroom
Alan says that this task has been 60 years in the making. What is he on about? Apparently the candidates are literally recreating something he himself did back when he was a smooth-skinned lad. This explains the cactus randomness.
Aisha begins to explain her idea bus still can’t explain what the secret in Desert Secret is. Cut to Ruth pursing her lips like she’s got a whole lemon grove in there.
There’s no way the boys are winning this, is there?
Lord Sugar has a conference call with the experts. Is he too good for face-to-face meetings now? He’s changed.
So, you have dry hair. Which shampoo are you buying? Desert Secret or Western? I think I’d trust lard above both of these.
The chaps have at least put a cactus on their pitching lectern. “Simple. Clean. On message,” says Richard as the rest of his team watch on a monitor, saying he looks like David Brent. One panellist points out that there is no visual evidence of the benefits of their product.
The boys hand out their butch, black bottles of Sherrif or whatever it’s called. All I can think of is Joey in Friends having a fragrance-off with the Hombre guy. Remember that? Just me?
The Desert Secret advert is rubbish. The expert panel look unimpressed. “It went really well,” the pitching panel all lie to their team. Vana has a big go at Elle for her negativity.
The panel featuring industry experts assemble for the girls’ pitch. Natalie says she is delighted to be there. She looks delighted to be there in the same way a sheep looks delighted to have arrived at the abattoir.
Aisha makes the mistake of voicing her confidence about tomorrow’s pitch. Her team is going to totally knob the pitch.
At King’s Cross station, the Desert Secret advert featuring a slomo Ruth, catches the public imagination on a big digi billboard. The boys are doing the same at Victoria and their video, of a man with soap in his eyes, doesn’t have quite the same impact.
Richard is confident as Sam records the voiceover for the boys’ advert. There’s a lot of air-punching and yessing when he nails a take. “That’s the one,” yells one of them. He was just reading words from paper. I don’t get it.
The lads survey their cactus-lite advert and the team members sense Richard distancing himself from all the decisions so far, in case he gets blamed for them.
The girls focus group their non-descript product and Charleine literally puts words into the participants’ mouths. She gets a spoon full of words, wedges that poor woman’s mouth open and forces the words in.
Charleine and Natalie step forward to lead the pitch and Aisha picks Natalie which incenses Charleine who says they’re all obviously intimidated by her expertise. Yes, you’re on The Apprentice, love. The whole world is intimidated by your expertise.
Elle and Vana try to steer Mussolini, I mean Aisha, away from her very specific ideas about their product. She doesn’t listen and they are secretly delighted about this.
Joseph wasn’t the guy in his pants washing his hair, it was just a model who looked a bit like him. He does seem very pleased with the shots they got of the beardy man with soap in his eyes. I’m not sure it says, BUY MY SUCCESS SHAMPOO but what do I know?
Ruth (snappy dresser, stands out from the crowd) is the only one in the “silver” demographic and has to step in as hair model because the models are all 12.
Jenny speaks! I like it when she does this because it makes a nice change from all the not speaking she does the rest of the time. She says if she were project managing, this would all be going far better.
The boys’ advert features Joseph (I think) in his pants, washing his hair under a watering can. Aspirational.
The girls are trying to choose a model who embodies the busy executive lifestyle they all think they live.
The girls have also opted for an arid them and call their shampoo Desert Secrets. Most of the girls don’t like this name but Aisha overrules them, meaning several of them hurriedly make their feelings known on camera so that she can’t drag them down with her when it all cocks up.
That said, if the boys actually beat the girls on this task, I’ll eat rancid squid.
Scott asks the boys if they’re happy with his spelling of cactus. He has spelled it C-A-C-T-U-S. They seem happy with that. He is also unconfident about his spelling of desert/dessert. The boys decide to call their shampoo Western. Their concept is all about defeating hair. Defeating hair? Their shampoo is actually Veet. Have I got this right?
Manly Moist is suggested as a brand name by one of the boys. I’d rather stare at that fetid tub of off squid than wash my hair in Manly Moist.
Richard leads the boys’ team and asks them all to come up with a pitch. Karrren watches from the sidelines and doubts his management style but we’ll see how it pans out.
Back at the girls’ table, there’s a lot of cross-talk but Vana passionately advocates chasing the grey pound. She was the one who 100% committed to mayonnaise yesterday. I like her passion.
Let’s get this straight, they have 48 hours to think up a shampoo name and film the commercial plus formulating a digital strategy? I am not optimistic.
Charleine, she of the montaged shit fit, owns a salon and will be absolutely in charge of the girls’ team whether they like it or not. If she cocks this up, her career is over. We like the stakes to be nice and high. Aisha chips in with her own pitch (she owns a hair extension business) and pulls the rug out from under Charleine who sucks lemons quietly in the corner. Fuming.
The task
The wallies must brand and advertise a shampoo based on the moisture-retaining qualities of the cactus. Sugar’s “prickly customer” gag goes down like a lead balloon but he is undeterred.
A lot of spiky specimens in the conservatory. And Lord Sugar is there with Claude and Karrren too! Ahem.
It’s 5.50am (hahahaha) and the chumps are off to brutalist masterpiece The Barbican to meet him among the palm trees in the conservatory atop the roof. They are all hoping for “less fish” this time.
I think that was Charleine having a shit fit during the montage. Looking forward to seeing that in its entirety. A quick recap reminds us of the “twist” from last night. Seriously, not dividing the teams by gender can not be described as a twist.
We did not need another shot of the rotten, putrid squid. I’m glad I’ve already eaten and it wasn’t seafood. Are we all agreed that April totally dodged the bullet last night and used Dan as a human shield?
We’ve already said goodbye to Dan, the mild mannered man. Who will perish on the end of Alan’s digit tonight? My money is on *scans print-out* er Gary? Yes, let’s go for Gary.
File in quietly, please. We’ve got a lot to get through. Well done if you remembered that there was another episode tonight and you kept some of your pithy comments back for this evening.
Connexus vs Versatile, round two
If you’re reading this, Lord Sugar and his circus of buffoons have got you by the jaffers for another series. You are powerless to resist the lure of pillocks in cheap tailoring . You might as well admit it so we can all get on with watching episode two.
Tonight, the remained 126 candidates must apply their very particular talents to coming up with a new brand and accompanying marketing strategy. What will be tonight’s nine quid salad? Who will be tonight’s biggest plonker? Upon whom will Alan’s furious finger land next? So many questions.
Join me here from just before 9pm so we can discuss all of this at length.
