The seventh series of The Apprentice tonight saw episode 10 and it was one of the most entertaining episodes of the series so far.
This week the two teams Logic (lead by Natasha) and Venture (lead by Melody) had to sell wholesale items to the public and reinvest by buying in more of the same items they've sold, and the team with the most assets will win the task.
However the two teams had a fair bit of misunderstanding over the meaning of the task, Natasha for example refused to budge on reinvesting their profit and Jim on their team who really came into his own on this task, kept pushing that point to her but she didn't listen. Melody and Helen also struggled with the point of the task as well, and Melody made the bad decision of neglecting to pick up popular items such as the nodding dogs which Tom had managed to sell quite well, and instead she casually just picked items off the shelves of a wholesalers, while they sold fairly well, they didn't get the figures in they were looking for. This episode also was unique for a couple of reasons, the first being that Helen suddenly offered on the morning of the second day to offer to step up and take over managing the task, as she felt Melody had no structure and strategy in leading the task. Naturally though Melody refused to let Helen do this and they carried on and Helen wanted to sell to retailers (I think I might have got this wrong myself, its very confusing!!) in bulk when the idea was really to sell to the public, and retailers could just buy from wholesalers anyway! So they had to resort to buying these new items and sell them to the public.
On Natasha's team however Jim sold brilliantly and finally started to show some signs of personality and likeability, as he did at last use some of his charm which worked very well on the customers. But Natasha herself despite being project manager didn't do a good job, in fact she pretty much just hung around while Susan, who also sold quite well, had the good idea of selling some bracelets she bought from a local shop. And while Susan did that all Natasha did was whinge at her for not keeping her sales updated in the order book, and generally she was being quite aggressive toward her and Jim when she refused to let them reinvest until they sold all their current stock, and by the time Jim had sold it all and got more they had ran out of time on the task.
However in the boardroom two surprises were revealed, first Helen for once was not on the winning team, as team Venture failed in securing the most assets and therefore lost. And the second surprise was while team Logic won the task, it was a very hollow victory as they neglected to reinvest much of their profit, which really pissed off Lord Sugar so much that he decided to not let them have their treat, which was a first in the programme. I thought that was a harsh decision personally, and the winning team went back to the house where they argued about how they failed to get their treat, which Natasha unfairly pinned right on Susan. This week I really think that Natasha has gone way down in my estimation, not that she was far up it in the first place, but all she did was boss her teammates around, be aggressive and get flustered. And in the end she contributed far less to the task than her teammates. In fact I feel a bit of sympathy for Susan because she quite often gets bullied and used as a scapegoat for the failure of tasks throughout the program by certain candidates. I quite like her also because her naievity is quite funny and she is rather gormless, especially when she saw a parade lead by mounted police and she said "why are they walking in the middle of the road? Can't they walk faster??". The bit in the car when her phone was ringing with a call from Natasha and she was nodding off to sleep was also priceless, and I think the audience see her as a favourite of the show, she's almost like this year's most amusing character like Stuart Baggs was, except for different reasons.
But in the boardroom despite making a very vocal and impassioned plea, Melody ended up leaving the process, mainly because Lord Sugar felt he couldn't go into business with her and he didn't even understand what her existing business was about!! In fact I don't think anyone did. I'm also surprised how she did so well in business in the first place as she doesn't seem to listen to anyone, and how can you get ahead in business if you don't listen!
So that's us down to the second last week, week 11 next and in the next episode its another task instead of the interviews stage. I guess because this time its about going into business with Lord Sugar rather than working for him, there won't be an interview stage, not unless they will do that on the last week.
And that's enough o that.
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