Monday, 7 November 2016

The Apprentice 2016: Week 5 Review

13 candidates sitting in the boardroom
13 candidates sitting in the boardroom
And if one of the candidates should be told ‘you’re fired’
There’ll be just 12 candidates sitting in the boardroom.

This week, the candidates have to do some crowdfunding to launch 2 new cycling products. The teams will need to create a PR stunt, a campaign video and also pitch to industry bigwigs; will they put their pedal to the mettle and succeed, or crash and burn? *there’s probably going to be a few cycling puns, just warning you in advance*

5am, and Paul (shirtless) answers the phone. They’ll be off to Lea Valley Velopark and it’ll be 30 mins for cars. *how many shirtless scenes did they want? Paul, Sofiane, Courtney….; not complaining though, no siree* Liking Grainne’s optimism that Nebula will win this task but reckon she’ll be wrong.

At the Olympic velodrome: the candidates will need to bring a new cycling product to market, launch a crowdfunding campaign, and pitch their product to retailers, with the win being based on who makes the most money *really it should be for ‘who is the least crap (would have used a stronger word here but I shall censor myself for you dear readers and use Paul’s choice of word for Mukai back in week 3)’ but then that would be too boring I guess*. Sofiane, Jess and JD move to Nebula, whilst Grainne and Karthik head over to Titans. LAS wants to know who will be PMs *bit early for that eh? Normally we at least have them in a random room going at it until someone wins (just realised I could be referring to Jess and Teen Titan’s little romance here, think I’ll leave that in)*. Samuel will be leading for Titans as he’s done crowdfunding campaigns previously, whilst JD steps up for Nebula.

Products are novelty bike accessories for kids, headphones, and light-up gilets. Samuel goes for the gilets, JD for the headphones. Titans sub-team: GBBD and Special K lead the incentive pitch with Lucy (maker of the gilets). On Nebula: Incredible Sulk is sub-team leader, Jess is leading the questions, but the team struggle for what to ask and don’t agree on what rewards will be provided for what price *it’ll come back to bite them later on, it always does*.

JD wants a gospel choir to sing their product, but Frances wants to change some of the lyrics of one of their songs. Samuel on the other hand wants mime artists to pretend to have a collision (car/cyclist) then a bit of singing after (‘Oh nooo, if only he had a Lumo…..’ – I actually want this to become a meme for Samuel whenever he’s on YF, he’s not a bad singer). Grainne and Trishna have ‘WTF’ looks. Frances and Rebecca seem to have the ideas, and Karren calls out JD for not actually managing *he did give you a clue last week Karren, when all he did was make the tea*.

Titans’ sub-team leader is Special KGBBD wants an ad along the lines of ‘what price would you put on your safety?’ *an extremely good idea I must admit*. Special K however wants to use Dillon’s creative skills; GBBD feels she’s being pushed out in favour of the boys *this will be a theme this ep, keep your eyes peeled*. Over on Nebula: Sofiane is trying to ask Incredible Sulk about a point of safety, but Incredible Sulk blocks him out saying his points aren’t up for discussion *again, a theme of this episode, we will revisit this later*

Samuel is pushing through his vision, but Claude says he’ll ‘eat his shorts’ if it gains traction on social media, #concerned *I never thought I would see the day when Claude Littner would use a hashtag, clearly the ineptitude of the candidates this series is getting to him; either that or he's been watching re-runs of 'The Simpsons'*.

Nebula filming: Incredible Sulk is backseat-directing when Jess is meant to be leading that, and even Sofiane is getting in on the act at the end, with Karren saying it would be a miracle if they got a video out *miracles happen Karren, after all, Tom Pellerau won after being on the losing team most weeks*.

Titans filming: Special K gave directing duties to Dillon, but Special K is taking over *first bit of leadership and he goes all dictator; clearly the pressure of always having to be special has gone to his head*. Final filming seems to go well though, and it was a masterstroke putting creator Lucy in the campaign vid itself, nice touch.

Nebula sub-team don’t want JD’s side to head to them, and JD concedes this pretty much straight away, to the worry of Frances. Dillon throws shade at GBBD in the editing studio *#PoorAlana*. Sofiane trying to make some input, but again is shut down by Incredible Sulk *this is pretty much a re-run of the Mukai/Grainne argument from last week*.

Next day at 7.30am: JD loves the video, Trishna tries to make out they spelled gilet wrong (that’s how they spelled it but she reckons it’s gillet – I knew she was wrong as soon as she said it and more fool the rest for not questioning it). JD is all about the chilling *how on flipping earth does he run a business in real life?*. Incredible Sulk shuts down Sofiane again, Sofiane fights back and Jess suggests to work in silence *cue a few moments of awkward tension, thanks editors*. Titans make their page live.

Waterloo Station: Grainne argues with Samuel and walks off from the rest of the team, Samuel affirms he’s PM whilst Grainne reckons they’ll lose if they don’t listen to her *funny she should say that……*

Town square: Frances blames JD for not going to see the sub-team *the others didn’t want any of you there* Incredible Sulk speaks to the product designer (called Bruce) about the rewards.

Back to Titans: Grainne still pissed off, Claude takes Trishna to task about the spelling of ‘gilet’ *told you*. With Nebula: website now live, Karren not happy that activity belt being pledged for £5 when retails at approx 3x that *they tried for £10 Karren and Bruce said it was too high, they have to go with the creator after all*. Frances not happy with Rebecca’s filming, but Rebecca says she had restrictions on the tablet she was using.

Prep for pitching: GBBD not happy at being sidelined by Special K when he was asked who was strong at pitching from his sub-team, Special K admits that he couldn’t remember her name *storyline of the ep: Alana is forgotten*. Samuel initially said he wanted Trishna to pitch, but then takes it off her last minute to do himself. JD, Sofiane and Frances to pitch for Nebula.

At the pitch: Special K starts very well, gets a laugh from the room. Teen Titan messes up his words. Samuel gets the tumbleweed moment when he describes his fantasy of mime. JD and Sofiane start off well, but Frances is questioned on pricing, something which Sofiane should have been talking about, and she blames him when she duly screws up.

BR: Titans: £99 for pre-order of gilet, which they were told was spelled wrong (Trishna admits it), GBBD came up with concept which Claude thought was good, Special K was disruptive but explains himself well. LAS wouldn’t have a clue what the PR stunt was about, Samuel tries to defend himself, Claude calls it absurd and LAS says Napoleon had better luck at Waterloo than the team did. Samuel and Grainne argue, again. Pitches mentioned (Trishna meant to do it), one retailer said Special K was superb *the clue is in the name: SPECIAL*. Asked if Samuel was a good PM and Grainne immediately says no, she and Samuel argue again. Samuel told by Claude he didn’t listen *cue smug face from Grainne that rivals those on the Secret Escapes adverts*. Nebula: Rebecca called out for bad video, Frances did the lyrics. Incredible Sulk and sub-team were called out for activity belt pricing which Incredible Sulk took the blame for (well done, surprised he did). JD criticised for his part of the pitch (preaching to the converted), and Frances was that told she didn’t understand the audience either (she held her hands up *a bit of a pattern emerging here, thank you You’re Fired for saying everything I wanted to*). All of them said that JD was a good leader.

Nebula: £681
Titans: £788 (including 2 orders from retailers)

Titans win again – LAS said Special K pulled it off whilst Samuel is a lucky man *cue Grainne bitch face*. Treat is a restaurant where they learn to cook.

LAS says that he is disappointed as Nebula had the best product.

Treat: Champagne quaffed, the team get to work in the kitchen. Grainne now happy, she helps Samuel with an icing bag, Teen Titan quips ‘best bit of teamwork from you two all day’ *he has a sense of humour this guy, I like him*. Samuel reckons he needs to learn to work more cohesively with Grainne *no kidding*.

Café: JD feels that all the blame lies on the sub-team. Sofiane says that the page with the pledge information was the problem, to which Incredible Sulk replies that Sofiane had input towards, they blame each other. Jess says that maybe that’s where the loss of the task is and that things only got done because she was there (she might be right).

Losing team BR: Rebecca and Frances called out for 5 losses from 5. JD blamed for not going to other team – Karren told him ‘go anyway, you’re the PM’ *very true*. Incredible Sulk and Sofiane clash, again. JD says that if they had worked together it might have been a game-changer, and he admits that he should have put them on separate sub-teams as they had clashed before *when was this?*. Sofiane shaded for not mentioning pricing, leaving it all to Frances. Rebecca ‘does marketing’, said £200 of pledges came from social media, Frances blames her for the filming. Incredible Sulk tries to blame JD, JD says that the fundamental error was the crowdfunding page. JD chooses to bring Incredible Sulk and Rebecca back.

Aside: Incredible Sulk – not shy about passing blame, Sofiane brings out the worst in him, but he can’t fall apart. Rebecca – claims that she’s marketing expert, the early pledges were down to her, Karren sniffs £200 isn’t much *meow*. JD – ‘we needed Jay Z and got JD’ *I’m not usually a fan of the scripted quips of LAS but I did like this one*, needs to show that he’s not given up.

Final 3 BR: LAS says that JD let Frances and Rebecca get on with it and gave the site responsibility to Incredible Sulk, he is then asked what he did. Rebecca called out for £200 not being much, she defends herself saying that if there were no hashtags then less people would have seen it *and thus she is the frontrunner for this series’ ‘Department of the Bloody Obvious’ award*. Incredible Sulk claims that this was his first mistake in 5 weeks, it just turned out to be the task that’s closest to the field he’s in. LAS brings up his CV saying he listens to people, which Incredible Sulk is apparently happy to answer saying that Sofiane is a maverick *yes Paul we got this in week 3 with him and the football club*. JD is asked why Sofiane was not brought back *because Paul has been moody and had arguments before whereas Sofiane hasn’t, maybe?*, LAS says that he is only agreeing that he made mistakes, is he throwing in the towel? Why should he be kept? LAS states that he can’t go into business with someone who makes mistakes. Incredible Sulk says that he has most to offer, with a range of skillsets. Rebecca asks if he’ll do that by shouting more *funnily enough this was what I was thinking at the time*, Incredible Sulk replies saying that she needs to stand up for herself. Rebecca brings up that she did a good pitch in task 2 (she did), that she can win people over (she didn’t on task 2), and wants to be PM (which she should have been on task 2 had she not been tricked out of it by GBBD and Trishna). LAS says that he needs to consider her future. JD – mistake in bringing Incredible Sulk back instead of Sofiane? Incredible Sulk – instability should not be apparent in the partner that he is looking for. LAS can’t ignore that all JD has done is just admitted mistakes, FIRED.

Incredible Sulk is told to grasp the mettle and man up *odd choice of wording there*, Rebecca is told that she will be given one more chance but that she needs to pull out all the stops. Incredible Sulk was going for a handshake but JD went for a hug *I wanted to see this on You’re Fired like the Dillon/Alana non-hug from last week*

Teen Titan reckons that Incredible Sulk just squeezed through (Frances agrees), Trishna reckons Rebecca has definitely gone *and she is definitely wrong, as she was earlier in this ep*.

My take: the right team definitely won. Despite Samuel’s obsession with mime and the arguments with Grainne, they won this task from the campaign video (kudos to Alana there, she came up with a good concept) and also the pitch (which was down to Karthik really, his redemption arc continues). Nebula did have some good ideas (the choir were the right way to go) but these were offset by other factors (Rebecca’s awful video, Paul and Sofiane clashing). JD *and you don’t know how hard it was to not just nickname him JD Sports* absolutely should have checked with his sub-team as to the pledge page as he could have spoken to the client to get the information and Frances and Rebecca could have helped Jess to keep the boys under control. I did feel sorry for Jess in that regard, as she was trying to keep everything heading in the right direction but Paul and Sofiane undermined that. Frances too, with Sofiane throwing her under the bus at the pitch, although she could have handled that better and really, she should have known the pricing too.

Next week: it’s the treasure hunt task. The teams have to find 9 items each, but here’s the catch: they have to perform an all-nighter to do it.

Tonight’s cast:
The Firee: JD
The Last Chance Saloon: Rebecca
The One with his Hands Up: Incredible Sulk
The ‘Maverick’: Sofiane
The Peacemaker: Jess
The ‘I’ll Blame Everyone Else and Then Admit I had a Part to Play’: Frances
The Mime Artist: Samuel
The Argument Starter: Grainne
The One who can’t Spell: Trishna
The Redeemer: Special K
The Creative: Dillon
The One Line and Done: Teen Titan

The Forgotten, but not on Purpose: GBBD

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