Tom Beasley reviews the latest episode of The Apprentice. This week, the world of children’s literature floors the teams as they try to separate their onomatopoeia from their alliteration…
Candidates on The Apprentice are seldom short for words. This week, however, that proved to be a good thing as the teams were tasked with producing a children’s book for kids aged between three and five, before flogging it to retailers big and small the next day. Lord Sugar issued a pretty explicit signal to Sam, shifting him over to Team Connexus in a move that may as well have been accompanied by a t-shirt reading “project manager”. Sam duly stepped forward, rambling about Aristotelian tragedy in a way that suggested he was far more comfortable with Homer than Homer Simpson.
Charleine was made PM for Versatile and elected Richard sub-team leader, before telling the camera how brilliant a move that was, shutting down Richard’s more difficult tendencies with a shiny title. Needless to say, it took Richard about five minutes to work that out when Charleine demanded to talk to other members of the team, and he was subsequently even more difficult than usual. Cracking work, genius. Their idea, though, was relatively decent. Joseph came up with the notion of a bee on an adventure to make honey, meeting various other creatures along the way in Gruffalo style.
Meanwhile, Sam was flapping about like an elephant’s truck trying to nail down his story. He wanted some sort of morality play about a half-dragon-half-elephant… with a cold… called SnuffleBum. Elle and Brett, increasingly exasperated by their leader’s dithering, finally managed to have him settle on Snottidink – who was ostracised from his group for breathing water instead of fire, before eventually finding his unique talent. That team deserve plenty of credit because the resulting story was solid, but there were concerns over Sam’s distinctly non-preschool phrasing.
The next day, the books arrived and they both looked pretty good. The task was pretty finely poised at this stage. Charleine opted to lead the pitches to major retailers for Versatile, leaving Richard in charge of selling to smaller stores. Charleine’s pitching style seemed to involve a lot of stumbling, very little enthusiasm and reading the book aloud to very experienced retailers who were almost certainly able to do so themselves. It feels a little dirty to agree with someone as outwardly obnoxious as Richard, but he definitely would have done a better job of those pitches given his experience.
Thankfully for Charleine, the pitches were going pretty badly over at Connexus too. Sam failed to energise the major retailers and a poorly Natalie made an absolute boob of herself when a shop owner asked her to clarify her profit margins for the product. She subsequently started shuddering and stuttering like a teenager whose parent has just found a box of porn mags, right in front of Karren Brady. Not a good look. Connexus did, however, benefit from some strong work by Scott, who is emerging as one of the strongest competitors in this series of The Apprentice.
In the boardroom, it turned out that a last-minute bulk deal done by Charleine had taken Versatile to victory. Sam came in for major criticism for his indecisiveness and it looked like he’d sealed his fate when he couldn’t even make a decision on who he wanted to bring back for the final boardroom. It was Natalie, however, who ultimately felt the force of Lord Sugar’s ire, with her dreadful pitch in the shop proving to be the final nail in her coffin. Sugar toyed with firing Sam, but again shied away from a double dismissal despite the fact that it probably would’ve saved him the trouble of kicking Sam out later. With so many people left in the process, there could be a bloodbath on the horizon.
Speaking of bloodbaths, next week on The Apprentice has the teams setting themselves up as handymen and handywomen. Given the sharp suits and posh education of some of the contestants, it could be rather interesting to see them with a bit of dirt under their fingernails.
They’d probably take Snottidink back in an instant.
Tom Beasley – Follow me on Twitter for movies, wrestling and jokes about David Cameron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=ajiqDmBADMc
Originally published November 6, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
