I’m off into the comments now once I have massaged my aching hands. But thank you for coming, once again, and keeping me company in what feels like a simultaneously pointless and completely vital service.
If we didn’t afford a stupid reality show this much attention, we might have to think about actual reality and that would be bloody awful.
Keep it virtual, friends. Until next week, same day, same time. And I’d advise you to have a giin handy.
Next week: well there was a white board with GIIN written on it. This is what Karrren would call her own brand of gin. I can’t wait to see how they ruin gin.
Jess confidently predicts that Dillon will be back at the house.
Even when he doesn’t come back, she doesn’t seem to accept it. Grainne impresses on the rest of the house, how real this shit just got.
No! She goes back to the house instead. THEN she probably visits the conveniences. So a double firing tonight - Dillon and Sofiane are off in separate taxis like a couple in First Dates who’d rather not go for that drink after the meal.
It’s getting close to the end now, says Alan. It really doesn’t feel like it.
WAIT. Sofiane is also fired. Grainne quietly shits herself.
Alan can’t deal with folk who have no regard for others, he tells Sofiane. Grainne says she’s won three tasks which isn’t none. Dillon tries to re-design the stupid game after the fact as Alan’s brow darkens and he gets.....the finger.
Dillon is gone. No, not Dillon. I’d only just really noticed his eyebrows.
Dillon gives an impassioned speech a bit like the one Madonna does about turning up in New York with $37 to her name and a desire to make it in the big city. He is so like Madonna. For a moment there, he is in the spotlight but it is quickly snuffed out by Sofiane.
The other two want Sofiane to go. Sofiane wants “definitely not me” to go. Hmmmm.
I really don’t want Grainne to go. Which probably means she’s gone.
Alana goes back to the house, little believing that she doesn’t have to have a full on verbal slap-fight with the others for her place on the show. I’m surprised too.
Alan and his familiars have a quick conflab and they three marked ones are back in the room. Dillon’s face is all defiance and steel. The other two less so.
Sofiane is bringing back Dillon and Grainne. Graiine????!!! Whut?
Sofiane gets a tongue-lashing for going off-script during the pitch. Dillon says he stepped back because he didn’t want to talk over the others and look unprofessional, which Al and co would 100% have told him off for.
Alana is getting heat for not shouting louder over her teammates when their shit ideas took precedence.
A Gloucester Old Spot has literally just flown past my window.
Sofiane blames Alana for not coating him off about the rubbish idea sooner. Because he’d have loved that and totally taken it on board.
“If it was up to you, Super Mario would be known as Fat Plumber,” says Alan leaving everyone unsure whether or not they’d just witnessed his zinger. Was that it? Did I miss an earlier one?
The arch of Dillon’s eyebrow goes full Ming as his fury develops itself into a blame missile, heading at the rest of his team.
Titans go into the boardroom to flap about and point at each other. Who on earth is going this week? My guess is Sofiane. I’m just not ready to lose Dillon yet.
Trishna’s made up to win as PM and said she “worked” with her “gut” leaving an unpleasant image as the rest of her team say they won despite her not because of her.
Over at the sad cafe the pianist is already banging out the losers’ lament. I think the pianist should actually be there, playing live their face streaked with mascara and contorted into a howl.
Nebula got 222 votes out of 300 from the public and win an immersive dining experience in the sea, that most immersive of environments. OK, not actually in the sea.
Titans win an immersive whinging experience in a poky cafe.
Alana’s gone full Candace from Bake-Off in the lip department.Goth is back, people.
Oh, they are now cussing Courtney for passing the pitch onto Jessica. “You looked terrified,” says a steely Karrren. He replies with a death stare. In turn, she tells Jess that the experts loved her and found her engaging. Maybe The Mask did kick in later in the pitch and it was left on the cutting room floor.
And now for the Coral Kids at the other end of the table. Sofiane tries to justify what he did apart from lead the team like a big dumb figurehead. Alan observes that no one on his team really considered the target market. The bit wear one team member plays the game in the boardroom for Alan’s pleasure is so cringe I can’t watch. So fill in your own scenario here.
Courtney’s excuse for the lack of Gordon in the game is actually brilliant. If you’re BEING Gordon in the game, as a first person player, you won’t actually see him. Zing. Give that guy a job/suitcase of money.
Time for the boardroom. Disappointed it’s the real one and yet still imagining they are dangling in space. The fired candidate will simply be jettisoned into the black endlessness, thus removing them for further interacting with the fate of the human race. It’s for the best.
The Comic Con audience vote on their favourite game. So the geeks will effectively decide their fate this week. I think they should do it every week. All wearing masks and standing in a tight group like a.... wait for it...... Geek Chorus. Thank you, thank you.
Imagine going to Comic Con 2025 and seeing someone dressed up as the Coral Kid. How niche would that be?
Are they designing VR games or just some lame app for the iPhone 3? A little joke for modern youngsters who will clearly all be swanking about town with their iPhone 5s now.
Now it’s the turn of Magic Shells. Sofiane says the ocean is the “most immersive” place in the universe. I will spend the next 20 years of my life trying and failing to unpack that sentence.
Grainne swaps with Alana and plays the Coral Kid game while Alana talks the audience through it. It’s a ruddy shambles. If that was the edited version, I’m glad we were spared the full three hours.
To the pitches!
Jess goes first with Gordon’s Lost His Badger (and the branding’s lost its Gordon). Once again, Jess wobbles on the pitch. She’s all talk off-stage but when she gets all eyes on her, she’s an absolute liability. She should call to the spirit of Jim Carey in The Mask like she did in that first boardroom and just let him take over. What a pitch that would be.
Jess dons a foil cape and VR head set while Trish talks through the gameplay. It looks so incredibly lame. The audience ask some basic “where is Gordon” questions and Trish’s gang look non-plussed. Jess says their “a bit random” idea makes them less forgettable. Yuh.
Sofiane wants Alana to mutely play the game while Grainne talks the audience through what she is doing. On no account must Alana speak. She looks a little bit peeved and I can see why.
Dillon and Sofiane run around the exhibition hall dressed in green and yellow outfits to spy on the other team. They satisfy themselves that the other team stand no chances whatsoever. I can’t call it at this stage. Both games are rubbish and I am shocked. It’s like they’ve just got a bunch of non-experts to knock these thin ideas up in 24 hours.
OH WAIT.
The Magic Shells sales team are surprised when the grown-ups at Comic Con don’t think the baby shell game is for them. And these are Comic Con visitors who basically arrested at 14 and never ever want to grow up. This is a blow. Magic Shells will not be the next Angry Birds.
Jess really wants to do the pitch for Trishna’s team but Trish picks Courtney. He says Jess should do it. It’s like a game of pass the parcel if the parcel contained a big poo.
The designer proudly unveils the logo for Galactic Gordon. It does not contain an image of Gordon himself. “The badger’s got a quiff,” yells Frances. She’s fuming. The designer shrugs and says that’s all he got from the other lot. Oh dear.
It’s the next day and the teams are off to Comic Con. Each team has a stand with the branding designed for them overnight. I really do hope some hapless art department sucker had to sit up all night to make this stuff for them. And then I hope that art department sucker resigned the next day and went away for a bit to think about their options.
Galactic Gordon is the name of the character who stars in Trishna’s game. He has, apparently, lost his badger. A common problem.
Over in the sea, Sofiane is working on his Coral Kid and Claud is moaning that Grainne hasn’t stood up to Sof at any point or questioned his ideas. Her card is marked. Are Claud and Karrren the two most theatrically joyless people on British TV? Yes.
Dillon’s eyebrows are hypnotising me. They are so, so neat and not the same colour as his hair. He’s like a young Cara Delavigngngngnge.
Trishna tells her designer what the space game should look like. I hope they call it Magic Planets.
Grainne thinks their game should be called Magic Shells. “Wow, are you serious?” says Dillon. Alana casts doubt on the magical properties of their particular shells. Grainne and Sofiane assure her it’ll be fine and it’s fine. “Tragic,” is how Alana describes it. Her words, not mine.
Jess and Court try on space costumes which is amusing. Tick. We switch between the two teams, one oceanic, one cosmic, as they perform the business equivalent of taking it in turns to fly into a window while not having a basic misunderstanding of the difference between glass and air.
Grainne and Sofiane go to try on costumes for their pitch. Sof’s tights are clearly for a 10-year-old girl and Grainne’s dress is crusted with sea bits and must properly smell of old bladderwrack.
Courtney mutters some nonsense about an Astro Badger into his horizontal not-at-all-smart phone. Everyone looks at everyone, unsure of how to proceed.
Trishna worries about Court and Jess’s lack of focus. I think this is justified - all astro badgers considered.
Alana is in the back of a people carrier with Dillon and she is, in broad daylight, inexplicably dressed for a glamorous cocktail reception. Meanwhile, Courtney and Jess giggle and sing at each other on the way to their appointment.
Back to Alana and Dillon who bicker about the kind of game they should design. He’s the creative here, OK. And he doesn’t want collaboration, he’s in more of an arty dictatorship vibe. Kay?
I realise he didn’t actually design the Crystal Maze himself, but in the conceit of the show, he lived there with his “mumsie” and I bought into it because it made me feel nice. Nothing has changed in the intervening 20 years. OK?
Tishna’s team are erring on the side of a space theme. “What do Martians look like?” asks Trishna without irony. She wants to know. Everyone looks at everyone, unsure of how to proceed.
Dillon suggests a mediaeval theme for Sofiane’s team’s game. They are basically all just describing Crystal Maze games and Richard O’Brien’s dialling finger is twitching.
Trishna puts herself forward to be PM and is immediately accepted by her team. Dillon (Jedward ran at each other too quickly and created a new person) has a go but is immediately talked down by Sofiane who won’t stop talking. As if leaving no gaps in his mouth noise will win the day. Oh, it does. Dillon is bitter.
I love how they made his image fizzle and break-up as though he were Princess Leah on that R2D2 video.
Cut to the housemates back in their jim-jams, pratting about the VR headsets and snortling among themselves. They hold a meeting with some of them still in nightwear. Good lord.
Trousers round his ankles as the boardroom walls float away and it is revealed they are all floating above the earth while he crimps off and prepares to wipe. I’m sorry. I’ve gone too far.
Yes friends, we are in the future now. Alan no longer needs to sit in a real boardroom designed to LOOK like the future. He could be sitting on the toilet for all we know, giving his preamble while superimposed into a virtual business arena. Let’s imagine he IS on the toilet. Alan’s on the loo.
OK this is it. Prepare for the VIRTUAL BOARDROOM.
Paul didn’t even remark upon his own firing according to this recap. I admire someone who manages to prevent “Thank you for the opportunity,” from spewing out of their sorry mouths at the moment of doom.
The girls all go a bit silly as they get ready for the early morning call. And it’s a bad one. Karrren and Claud turn up and they’re all in dressing gowns. Not Karrren and Claud, they’re fully dressed and looking fed up as per.
That Russell Brand waxwork is genuinely nightmare-ish. I watched the new Sherlock today and I don’t think it gives anything away to say a bit of it is filmed in the Aquarium in London. No Apprentice candidates dressed as shit mermaids in evidence though, which I feel was a mistake.
This narrator says “corter” instead of quarter. Now I’ve noticed, I predict it’s going to grate. If we all accept that I’ll niggle about it at the start of every show, it’ll save a lot of time.
I had to really scratch my head to remember who left last week. Of course it was Paul. Of course it was.
I think she is sad about the tale of her grandfather and his incredible seafaring career but it’s hard to tell.
Be gone, misty genealogy, it’s time for cold hard cash and berks in costumes. Until you’ve seen Alan in his virtual boardroom, you’ve not properly lived. I may also keep this segment for times of great sadness. You’ll see what I mean in a few minutes. It’s spectacular.
Amanda Holden’s Who Do You Think You Are? - it’s no Danny Dyer’s Who Do You Think You Are? But then, nothing is. I keep it to watch in times of sadness. Or just that internet 90-second cut-up for when I’m pressed for time. Like medicine, it is.
Can it really be week nine already? Yes, yes it can. I have grown a long-grey beard in the time it’s taken us to get to this point in series 12 and I hope to have a small family of robins nesting in it in time for the final.
Tonight, Team Nebulizer and Team Tit-uns must turn their hands to virtual reality game designing: an absolutely essential skill when you’re running a digital recruitment agency or whatever dullsville business plan Lord Alan ends up investing in.
It’s basically another excuse for the numpties to dress in amusing cosplay outfits and try to sell with literally no power base at all. It’s really hard to be taken seriously when you’re dressed as a big pudding.
Join me here at just before 9pm as the candidates invade Comic Con and still manage to look more ridiculous than everyone else there.
And hello.
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