The Apprentice 2016: Week 1 Review

18 candidates sitting in the boardroom,

18 candidates sitting in the boardroom,

And if one of the candidates should be told ‘you’re fired’,

There’ll be 17 candidates sitting in the boardroom….

Yes, it’s back, and we have 18 fresh faces (with nothing between the ears as usual) wanting to prove their worth and win the £250k investment from Lord Sugar. 17 will fail trying, but 1 will win and have a 50:50 business partnership with Lord Sugar.

In my weekly review, candidate names are in red, with nicknames for them in black, *and my asides whilst watching/writing are in purple like this*

So after the general ‘I want to see your business brain’ chat, we find out some facts about the candidates from their CVs (LAS didn’t call them ‘rez-uh-mays’ this time, odd). We have Karthik, who says his friends and family call him Big K, then tells LAS ‘but you can call me K’. Special K it is then Karthik (well, someone always has to be special). We also have Alana who doesn’t take well to being told off. Hmm, perhaps not the right show for you then my dear. There’s Oliver who makes Cumberland sausages *I must resist the urge to fit in as many sausage jokes as I can*. Also JD, who apparently has ‘gumption and balls’ (sounds like a really crap firm of solicitors); and this year’s designated comedy contestant Jess, who I love already – so chances are she’s going to go early.

Boys v Girls split as always, and first job is to decide team names. The girls eventually go for Nebula, suggested by Aleksandra, who I think may turn into the ‘Smug Git’ of the series if this initial showing is anything to go by. ‘An interstellar collection of dust and clouds’? This is far too intellectual for ‘The Apprentice’! Alana reckons it sounds like a disease and LAS seems to agree, asking if it was toxic gas and saying they should have called themselves Smog *Smog, Smug, eh, close enough* The boys? Well JD comes up trumps here, suggesting Titans, as they are supposedly ‘titans of industry’ and ‘leaders of men’ *hahahahaha* (I just think of Teen Titans, and I now realise why Courtney looked so familiar…); his explanation to LAS later of ‘mythological Greek badasses’ shows that JD is my kind of guy. I personally preferred Assassin, which was what Dillon St Paul came up with. He describes himself as ‘King of the truth bomb’, and yet he can’t even tell the truth about his own name (take out the St and switch around); think he’s recently been rewatching too much ‘Ugly Betty’.

As for the task? Well the title of the episode is ‘Collectibles’ and that’s what the candidates will be dealing with. They need to work out what is going to sell for the big bucks, and what they can flog on the cheap. Half of the team will be looking to sell the big items to trade, and the other half will be on a market stall/car boot selling the less worthy items to members of the public. Whoever makes the most money will win.

But before they can get out there, they need to appoint PMs. For Titans, you have Sofiane who used to work on a market stall, and Oliver who has ‘friends that have antique shops’ (of course he does); but ultimately it is Paul who gets the nod. Why? Because he watches ‘Bargain Hunt’. Ladies and gentlemen, ‘The Apprentice’ has now officially started!

For Nebula, well, no-one wants to volunteer. Quelle surprise, this seems to happen with the female team every year. Jess admits to having experience with car boot sales but reckons she wouldn’t know how to manage the task; so in the end it falls to the unfortunate visage of Michelle, who deludes herself into thinking that she was picked because she was the strongest and that the others see her as a threat. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Karren is going to follow the boys *doesn’t she always do that anyway? I still have nightmares of the Neil Clough love-in*, whilst Claude is chasing after the girls (if this seems like an odd end to a sentence, in my defence, the Smyths toy shop advert (the one going ‘If I were a toyyyyy…) came on as I was writing this, which made me think of the Beyoncé song, which made me, yeah, you get the picture).

On the way to the garages, Sofiane is appointed sub-team leader for Titans as he gets that the point of the task is to get the right price and have a strategy in place for that *good decision there Paul, who for some reason reminds me of a rugby player. Doesn’t matter which one, just a rugby player in general*. Over on Nebula, Alana reluctantly admits to being a market trader so Michelle promotes her to the role.

When they get to the garages, Jess immediately spots a certain item and proclaims ‘what a nice pair of jugs!’ and insists that if there actually are any diamonds to be found then they’d be going straight down her bra. This is veering into Bake Off territory already and I’m not sure if I like it. She also pretends to drop items. It was funny the first time but then was just annoying after. Still love her though. The boys just get it into the van and go. Well, that’s men for you.

At the market and Sofiane is in his element: telling the boys to start high and work down *always the way, and not just with antiques eh lads?*, before stating that a leather chair was easily worth £200, an opinion that was later backed up by an expert that Paul got to quickly check over the items at the start, reckoning that they could get up to £300 for it. Over on Nebula however, everything seems to be £15 or lower, and the girls taking pretty much whatever offer they could get *I really need to find a way to not make innocent things sound like innuendo, maybe stop watching Bake Off for a start*. Natalie flogs a pair of glass vases for £15; whilst Frances manages to sell the leather chair, albeit for £17.50. Ouch, and yet she does a happy dance after. I guess as long as you got at least one sale, no matter how bad it was, chances are you won’t be fired. Not on week 1 anyway.

Michelle heads over to see an antiques expert and spends lots of time there, then promptly ignores what they tell her (go to Portobello) to ‘go with her gut’ *I hate that phrase, it always sounds like they mean they’re going to throw up sometime soon* and head to Camden instead. And yet when they spontaneously decide to visit a dealer on the way (after a call from Jess), they forget to tell the van driver and so they go to the dealer with no stock. *facepalm*

Contrast this with Sofiane suggesting to the market boys that they move to Portobello, with PM Paul agreeing. They carry on with their pricing strategy there, and Karren tries to inject some tension Great British Menu-style, only saying ‘will they get the sales?’ instead of ‘but does it meet the brief?’.

Over in Camden with Nebula and it’s got to the point where everything is going at 3 for a quid. Stay classy girls! Rebecca asks sub-team leader Alana about dropping the prices *why? It’s bargain basement already* and is told to stick with what they have at the moment but that she can go lower if needed *minds out of the gutter please, I’m also telling myself this*. Rebecca then has to ask what lower is *not higher, you twit* and gets the reply of ‘up to 50%’. Rebecca’s like ‘ok so just cut to 50% then’ and Alana’s face is a picture as she goes ‘NOOOOOOOOO!’.

Back to Titans and the trade team is having a hard time trying to flog the chair and a drinks trolley to snooty antiques dealers in Chelsea, being told ‘nay, that is too low-end for me, forsooth’ *apologies to any offended posh people reading this, but you do always sound as if you’re reading Shakespeare aloud* Samuel starts the ‘lack of leadership’ argument (first thing he’s said all ep I think) whilst Sausage Man is not happy about being demoted to polish the chair *but as he’s the posh one of the team, I think this was a metaphor for Paul getting his own back on those dealers*. Paul responds to this in typical Alpha Male fashion along the lines of ‘I’m your PM, you trust me’. Whoa ok. Sausage Man wants to get a sale in the bag though, and he’s doing well with Dave, attempting to sell the leather chair to him. However just as they’re about to shake on the deal, Dave says he’s unable to get the money until the following day at least, and Karren reminds them ‘no cash on the day = no sale’; and they have to leave Dave behind. Samuel and Karren both point out that the potential buyer should always be asked if they have authority to purchase the offered item (well why did Samuel not pipe up with this whilst in the shop is what I want to know). Paul then calls Sofiane to tell him, but Sof is not interested and pretty much shuts him down.

Michelle’s trade team finally get to Camden and after an embarrassing exchange where they were trying to find the rest of their team (you think they would have sorted this out BEFORE they got there), they decide to try one last time to get rid of their high-end goods, and head into a shop where they promptly sell everything to ONE GUY. This one guy is called Michael, and boy he takes them for a ride. They make the mistake of telling him what the items were priced at by the expert (why, just, why?), so of course he tells them he’s not going to pay that much. Trishna (who wasn’t happy at Michelle’s decision to go to Camden instead of Portobello) has bad luck as during her closure of a deal on an item for £50, Jess butts in and offers £25, which Michael accepts, obviously. To be fair to Jess, she does admit fault immediately after and doesn’t speak again for the rest of this clip. The market team also go for broke, although Aleksandra does manage to get a slight increase on an item that was going to be bought for £30 – a £3 increase to be precise. 10% more, not bad I guess. Insert smug face.

Over at Portobello, and Paul and his titanic (see the name does make sense after all) trade team have finally arrived to help Sofiane try and muster up some enthusiasm (and sales) from floundering teammates Courtney (aka Teen Titan) and Mukai (a name that should be heard in Scotland more considering it’s pronounced McEye). This doesn’t work, and Paul takes the decision to slash the prices.

Michelle does a quick aside to camera saying that they would have done badly if she ‘had no strategy at all’. Erm…..

Moving swiftly on to the boardroom, and Alana is boasting about how quickly she managed to sell out (you did that when you got on this show), LAS then asks her whether she had it valued beforehand, and oh how quickly her face fell. Michelle gets told off for ignoring the advice of the antiques expert and also managing to turn up to the dealer without any stock (mild spoiler: this isn’t the last time that this happens this series; you think a lesson would have been learned). Michelle then claims that her team all supported her, until Rebecca pipes up about the lack of pricing strategy and is put down with ‘everyone else on the team knew the strategy’ (well clearly Alana didn’t so…).

Sofiane is praised for managing to sell what he calls a ‘garden, porcelain thing’ (Courtney saves him by interjecting with ‘a vase’) for £175 when it was actually worth £7. In contrast, Natalie (the Scottish hairdresser who for some reason sounds Geordie to me – clearly my job has finally got to my hearing) managed to sell some vases (you remember the ones I mentioned earlier) for £15 when they were actually worth £300. Natalie reacts to this by swearing (the F word, you can hear it and on YF later, the firee confirms they heard it too).

Time to crunch the numbers, and we begin with the trade teams. Titans made £371 whilst Nebula made £540. Was the usual reverse edit going to come into play again?

Thankfully not. Nebula’s market team got £419 making a total of £959 altogether; whilst Titans (and Sofiane’s pricing strategy) made £1057.10 for a total of £1428.10 (yep, the boys have done it again. When was the last time they lost a week 1 task? I might be wrong but the last one I remember is when ‘Roll with the punches’ Edward was fired (series 7?))

As a treat, the boys get a vintage dance class. Lindyhop I believe it was, Mukai was particularly awful. The girls trudge off to the Café of Broken Dreams to start debating (ie bitch about and scapegoat) the loss of the task.

Returning to the boardroom, Michelle gets lambasted by pretty much everyone, and then she blames the sub-team for not being able to come up with their own pricing strategy. Alana is understandably annoyed at this, and thus Michelle decides to bring both her and the only other person to mention said pricing strategy (ie Rebecca) back to the final boardroom. Rebecca tries to worm her way out of it with Jedi Jim tactics but LAS puts a stop to it (shame he didn’t do that when it was Jim), and so they are the first final 3 of the series.

Rebecca does get criticised for not selling much *and she said ‘pricing strategy’ so many times that I was willing her to be fired*, but ultimately Michelle falls on her sword and is the first firee of this series.

My take: right result for me. Sofiane had the correct strategy for a task that’s measured on pure sales - ie be cautious to get the right price early on and then slash later if needs be. He was seen turning customers away at the start as the price they offered was too low, a risky move but one that worked. Paul was a good PM in that he knew Sofiane was best-placed as sub-team leader and seemed to leave that team entirely up to him, but I do think that he could have used Oliver more in terms of where to go to as Oliver did say when choosing the PM that he had contacts who ran antique shops. Perhaps the rules of the task didn’t allow for that, but it would have been an idea otherwise. Also, whilst the trade team did lose time after having to leave Dave without a sale, Samuel (who piped up later about checking to see if the person you’re selling to has authority to buy) should have stepped in to ask the pertinent question before Oliver got to the point of agreeing the sale. I’m surprised that he wasn’t picked up on this actually. As for the girls, well they were all over the place. What they needed to do was (and I mean the market team here, Alana should have made sure of this) group the items according to worth (checking with other traders as Titans did) and note down a clear strategy for what price they’re looking for and how much they are willing to drop down if necessary. As well as that, they were selling stuff straight from the van before they had even properly set up; to me, they should have said to the prospective buyers that they were still setting up and could they come back in a few minutes when everything was ready as they might find something else that they also like. Just little things that might have helped them. I do feel that Alana got off lightly considering it was really the sub-team that failed; and perhaps should have been a double firing. She must have a decent business plan I guess.

Next time: the candidates have to advertise jeans, and one team manages to turn up to the photoshoot without said jeans (I did mention this earlier). No prizes for guessing which one.

This week’s firee: Unfortunate Visage of Michelle

The marked cards: Alana and Rebecca

The frontrunner: Sofiane

The ‘oh I’ll tell you that AFTER the event’: Samuel

The Gordon Ramsey: Natalie

The ‘can’t sell’: Teen Titan and McEye

The polisher: Sausage Man

The good delegator: Paul

The Less Pouty Candice: Jess (Bake Off fans will know what I mean)

The Intellectual: Aleksandra

The ‘one sale and safe’: Frances

The forgotten ones: everyone else