This week Lord Sugar had the candidates meet him at David Beckham's Academy, raising hopes for a meeting with "Golden Balls" himself, or perhap a task involving football. But no, this week's task was all about spotting talent in the art industry -- just as Becks supposedly spots talent in the sporting industry? Right? Get it? Oh, who knows how Lord Sugar's tenuous mind works...
The teens were split into two teams: Tim (who put himself forward as Project Manager in the boardroom last week to save himself) led tiny Kirstie and spaced-out Hannah, while Emma (she "sells eggs and sweets") is put in charge of brainbox Arjun and the infinitely-perplexing Zoe, who has the gait of a shepherd's crook someone's hung a blonde wig and haute couture on.
It's a familiar task: each team had to schmooze various artists in their studios, assess the prices of their work, negotiate discounts, then hopefully sell the work of whomever was willing to partner them for a one-night-only exhibition.
Zoe had the upperhand because her parents are both professional artists and she's been visiting galleries since she was five. She also paints her lips with a can of crimson gloss every morning. Despite her eccentric demeanour, Zoe's bohemnian background was enough to entice the artists her way, while brassy Kirsty had the exact opposite effect on potential customers. She instead breezed in clutching a clipboard, barely looked at the artwork, rattled off some dull financial questions, mumbled a bit, then left. To be fair, she was doing everything solo because, annoyingly, each team only has three members now -- so how can Nick and Karren possibly be the "eyes and ears" for their respective teams? Imagine being 16-years-old and being driven around London to meet arty-farty strangers with a camera crew scrutinizing your every move and utterance. I have sympathy, actually.
By far the biggest fruitloop was an artist who goes round people's homes to look aftter their cats, and has photos of herself taken wearing their clothes. It's okay, I think she's strapped to a bed in Broadmoor now. Predictably, neither team wanted to do business with her.
Eventually, Tim's team got their hands on some affordable photographic landscapes and extravagant abstracts that cost around £4,000 each. Yes, they'd fallen prey to the risky "if we sell just one, we'll win the task" strategy. Emma's team managed to get the reasonably-priced urban prints that Tim's team coveted (as Zoe's hippy brown-nosing impressed the artist more than Kirsty's abrupt disinterest), and a few contemporary sculptures that included fragments of a broken mirror glued onto black backgrounds.
Tim's team arrived at Brick Lane, which is apparently a hotbed of artistic types, but resembled a street-wide bring-and-buy sale for vagabonds. They fell behind getting their shop ready for the opening, meaning the event began when they were still sticking up prices and preparing the drinks. The actual sale didn't go that well, although the photographic prints sold okay eventually, but clearly nobody wanted to spend £4k on art that looks like a toddler spilled some paint onto a canvas and smeared it around willy-nilly. Tim showed his ignorance for art by mishearing David Hockney as Anthony Hopkins, while some woman (most likely a fantasist) demanded a 30% discount because she owns a gallery. In her loft, I suspect.
Emma's team did a lot better, but ran into difficulties because Zoe's arrogance kept making her interrupt Emma and Arjun's conversations with prospective buyers, mistakenly believing that they were struggling and she's the only one capable of communicating with these arty types. Despite Zoe's unwanted, exaspering interjections, it was obvious that Arjun and Emma both had enough natural charm to sell just fine. More importantly, their pieces were commercial and affordable.
In the boardroom, it's wasn't much of a surprise to learn that Emma/Arjun/Zoe made £6,000 profit to Tim/Hannah/Kirsty's £2,000. The winner disappeared to get some bespoke suits made, while country boy Tim again argued that art wasn't really his "thing" (oh, for a sheep-shearing task!), and naturally he sided with "secretary" Hannah in berating the fact Kirsty's temperament lost them the urban prints that would have been perfect for their Brick Lane location. A valid point. Hannah also came in for criticism because she'd spent half her time taking notes.
Lord Sugar made a decision based on the past four weeks, that Hannah's academic qualities haven't translated into tangible evidence of any "spark" he's after. He's always after that elusive spark. What he means is that he prefers people who can talk bollocks and fight their corner, rather than quieter types who would probably make better apprentice-material. So, Tim and Kirsty somehow survived for another week, while Hannah was fired. But she did get a business card from "Lord Sugar Of Clapton", which must have given her a giggle.
There are only two episodes left, so who should win? Zoe will definitely be in the final, because she's assertive and enough of a "character". Emma seems efficient enough, but needs a task to totally ace to justify her progress at this stage. Kirsty will be the next one fired, I'm predicting, despite her resolve. Tim is lucky to have lasted this long, wnd the most "normal" of the remainder. Arjun is actually the dark horse of the series who could sneak to victory (good with figures, a decent salesman, improved quickly at pitching.) Arjun to win?
2 JUNE 2010: BBC1/HD, 9PM
