We're half-way through the series. Sir Alan Sugar's dragged the teams out of bed to Hackney Town Hall for another tenuous link (somehow linking his birth certificate to greetings cards), and chooses two first-time project managers: Michael heads up Alpha, which includes Lee, Jenny M, Helene, Raef, and Lucinda, while Kevin takes charge of Renaissance, with Claire, Alex, Sara, and Jenny C.The task this week: both teams must design greeting cards to celebrate a brand new special occasion, then pitch their product and idea to three market leaders -- Clinton Cards, Tesco and Celebrations.
From the start it's clear that both teams' ideas are below par: Alpha consider National Joke Day (not too bad) and cards for people about to undergo cosmetic surgery (seriously!) Renaissance don't do much better, with Sara considering Eid cards (huh?) and Prom Night (limited appeal). Eventually, Michael's Alpha settle on a National Singles' Day as an alternative to Valentine's Day, and Kevin's Renaissance go for a Love Your Planet environmentally-focused campaign.
Lee and Alex sit down to compose limericks and rhymes for their respective teams' cards. The next day, the photoshoots for the cards get underway. Jenny C, Alex and Claire help manage a group of professional models who are going to illustrate their environmental theme – with kids riding bikes and a Scotsman having his kilt blown up revealing his bare buttocks, demonstrating "wind power". Cheeky.
For Alpha, Michael has the girls take charge of the photoshoot for their Singles' Day campaign, while he and the rest of the boys spend 3 hours arguing over where the apostrophe in National Singles' Day goes. They even ring the editor of a major newspaper in their quest for grammatical accuracy!
Bank manager Kevin decides he'll be the one to give Renaissance's pitch, despite the fact Claire does pitches regularly in her job, and Jenny is particularly passionate and knowledgeable on environmental issues. He's "one hundred and fifty percent confident" that he'll "smash" the pitch, until Claire and Jenny C help write the complex pitch with just a few hours to spare. Suddenly it looks like a huge amount of effort for Kevin to remember everything, so he tries to shirk his responsibilities. But Jenny C and Claire are having none of it now.
6pm. The representatives of the three retailers meet the teams. Raef's pitch for Alpha doesn't go very well, as Clinton's Cards and Tesco both don't see the logic in competing with Valentine's Day with a Singles' Day on February 13th. And who's going to send someone a singles card, or appreciate receiving one? Celebrations are slightly more responsive (possibly because they drop the February 13th element to the pitch), but how many will they buy?
Renaissance fare even worse. Kevin's forthright pitch to Clinton's Cards and Celebrations uncovers another crucial oversight: why would environmentally aware people buy cards (which use up materials), and who wants to receive a card that preaches a message? Kevin doesn't really have any answers for these criticisms, and his temperament comes across as combative. Acting on advice from Claire afterwards, he tones his style down for the last pitch to Tesco, who seem more receptive to the idea...
Pitches over, it's back to the boardroom for the results. Michael and Alpha's National Singles' Day wins 22,500 orders in total. Kevin and Renaissance's Save The Planet week only musters 6,000 orders from one retailer. Michael bellows his enthusiasm rather too loudly, causing raised eyebrows from Sir Alan and a look of mild shock from Margaret. He's chastised for the rowdy outburst, before his team are sent home to enjoy a classical piano recital from Myleene Klass. Yes, this was a "treat", not punishment. In the losing team, Kevin decides to bring Sara and Claire back into the boardroom with him to discuss their failure.
Sir Alan is disappointed that Claire wasn't more forceful in assuming control of the pitch from Kevin ("who better than a retail buyer to pitch to other retail buyers?"), and he's also bewildered by the thinking behind sending a card to promote green issues! It's also a puzzle why Kevin brought Sara into the boardroom, but Sir Alan smells an attempt to gang up on a weak team-mate. Sara has definitely spent the past 6 weeks loitering in the background, meekly complaining about not being listened to, but did her "non-effort" here cause Renaissance's failure? Not according to Sir Alan: "... this whole task turned out to be a fiasco. As team leader I hold you completely responsible. Kevin, you're fired".
This wasn't too bad, as I enjoy seeing people flounder when trying to pitch their (usually weak) ideas, and the comic value of Kevin sinking deeper into a hole was amusing. But someone really needs to spice up the tasks on The Apprentice! Most of the tasks this series have been similar to one another, so I'd appreciate a few brand new challenges. It's fine to bring back some favourites (I love the task where they have to find numerous obscure items, and the QVC presenting one), but only the laundry task stands out as something relatively fresh this year. Fortunately, the preview for next week shows the teams travelling abroad to Marrakesh, which suggests the production team realized things were getting stale. The language barrier should be particularly good fun.
Did Kevin deserve to go? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. If he'd let Claire do the pitch, he could have blamed her and Jenny C for the whole project's failure, as the basic mechanics of getting the cards designed and printed went rather well. Oh well, too late now. For Kevin, it was only a matter of time before he was fired. And can someone fire Alex, please? He's constantly taking a backseat and generally appears on-screen to grumble about somebody. There are more obviously ineffectual candidates, but Alex is so clearly game-playing – and I hate that.
30 April 2008
BBC1, 9.00 pm
