Its week 9 on The Apprentice and its getting closer to the end of the road for the candidates on the show, pretty soon Lord Sugar will have to decide who he is going into business with. But it was a very enjoyable episode which involved the two teams having to create a brand new biscuit to market to retailers.
So the two teams Logic (lead by Zoe) and Venture (lead by Helen) decided which biscuits they decided to go for. Helen decided to go for a star shaped biscuit which they called Special Stars, which Helen's team successfully managed to pitch to Asda to make a massive sale of 800,000 units. Mr Personality Jim headed the pitch, while Natasha contributed to the pitch, but she ended up being shut down by Helen for adding any unecessary info during the pitch. I felt that was a bit unfair to Natasha as she was again largely sidelined on the task, unlike Melody, Natasha does know when to back off when faced with authority and work as a teamplayer. Natasha also raised the fair point that the slogan for their product was "treat time is any time" which is very confusing because clearly a treat isn't for any time, so its contrary and doesn't make sense. However Jim also made some ridiculous promises that their team could adhere to a massive scale marketing strategy as if they had millions of pounds at their disposal, which they didn't. OK they did well but Jim once again came off like a real dick. But I must say I am getting fed up hearing the same phrases being used in the series, especially "we've identified a gap in the market", ahh shut up! If there is a gap in the market just cover it over with some canvass or something and that will do it! ;-) I can just imagine businesses saying "if we hear that one more time!".
However Zoe's team were not so well lead, Zoe struggled to come up with a target market to sell the product to, and after one pitch, which featured some really cringeworthy roleplay from Melody and Tom. To be honest though I preferred Logic's product, OK they said the biscuit itself wasn't so great, but I thought the name BixMix was good and the package was very good. But Zoe just totally lost control of her team and got flustered, she also had to deal with an impossible to control Melody, who while she is very shrewd she just doesn't listen to anyone.
And in the boardroom of course team Logic lost to Venture, as they had zero sales, nil points, which is pretty bad. So as Lord Sugar brought Zoe, Tom and Melody back into the boardroom, cross words flew across the table between Zoe and Melody who did not see eye to eye at all on the task. I can see why Zoe doesn't like Melody though, she just bulldozes her way through tasks, isn't a team player and just doesn't listen! But in the end I think Lord Sugar made the right call, Zoe screwed up, and she was a bit of a pain herself.
Now there is only 3 weeks left, and 6 candidates left, next week will be the last team task and then it will be into the gruelling interview process, which is always the best part of the series. I really do think that Helen who now has won all the tasks so far in this series is the strongest candidate, yet in the boardroom she has largely gone under the radar from Lord Sugar, he usually just praises her with the odd "very well done!". In next week's clip we saw a team argument and obviously the team Helen was in wasn't working well so she offered to step in and take over the as PM, good idea??? Oh aye I would let her! But if you are doing something right and not getting any lip back she certainly is doing something right! However it remains to be seen who will stay and go.
Fin.
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