The Apprentice Week 4 Review - Jane Gets Fired After £10s Worth of Sales
This week’s valuable business lesson:Nobody likes the union jack.
rating: 5
Week 4 of series 8 of The Apprentice sees all manner of new things. Sour faced Jane remaining Sour Faced, Misogynist Adam being a Misgoynist and, On the 8th Day I invented God Steve still thinking hes the greatest business mind since *enter famous business type who isnt Alan Sugar here*. Yep, dont say the BBC doesnt bring you originality; this is it at its greatest. I shouldnt protest, because if these delightfully charming and in the same vain irritating charicatures of real humans werent who they were, we wouldnt be being treated with such a brilliant series of The Apprentice. Of which this episode will be one of its highlights. Lord Alan continues to annoy Apprentice reviewers and Nun teachers alike by integrating the guys and girls teams further. Snake Hips Ricky (of last weeks boardroom fame) jumped across to Sterling, whilst Aggressively Voiced Jade moved across to Phoenix where she could be thoroughly talked down to by Misogynist Adam and she made as much of a contribution to the task as a piece of ear wax contributes to hearing. Lord Sugar then set the task, which is to source second hand stock (junk and antiques basically) and sell it on for profit. Hed booked them out two, 700 square foot shop places for the big day of completely ripping off the public and given them a day to source their materials. To give them an idea of what they are doing he lays out two shops for them in the style theyre looking for. Its a rather dull sequence with people nodding, looking intently and giving off the general aura of people who know what they are doing... Jenna then suggests buying an old bin and turning it into a funky bin ... Well that didnt last long then. Here was where the fun really began... Rottweiler Laura became project manager of Sterling, introducing herself to the camera with the modest opening Its tough being a good looking business woman. Well isnt she a delight. (Just a note, she after that described herself as a Rottweiler, hence the nickname) Over on Phoenix, Fine Wine Investor Tom became project manager and preached a policy of Buy as little as possible for as cheap as possible, at which point I couldnt help but think the whole Investor tag he had given himself had been a little bit over ambitious. Luckily for the BBC editing team, and me because it helps me differentiate between the two teams, Rottweiler Laura took a completely different approach to Not Quite an Investor Tom, and wanted as much stock so that they could upcycle it by turning it into shabby sheeq house ware; at which point a nation collectively sighed as they all had to pretend they knew what on earth shabby sheeq is. So the teams split up and all go off on a great hunt for general rubbish to sell to an unexpected and TV fame hungry public. Over on the Phoenix side of things, Tom gave Misogynist Adam, Quiet Katie and On the 8th Day, I invented God Steve £200 and sent them to an auction to find some stuff, asking them to spend as little as possible. They do this in the most reasonable way by not bidding on anything and instead taking stuff from the bins behind the auction house, preach Entreperneurial enterprise all you want, thats just stupid. Over on Sterling; Rottweiler Laura, Snake Hips Ricky and Dwayne The Bin Man go on a spending splurge, in the middle of which they ransack a dead persons house in a sequence of pure taste and business acumen while it shows Snake Hips Ricky trying to rip the carpet off of the floor. After more items are bought, and audiences spent more time smacking their heads against a wall, the shops start to take shape. With Patriotic Gabriella, in charge of the upcycling and design for Sterling, painting the Union Jack on EVERYTHING, because apparently theyre selling exclusively to the skinheads from This Is England, and Phoenix, whose minimal selling approach gave them a grand total of 12 items to sell. Not Quite An Investor Tom Starts to Panic, so he should. The sales days eventually kicked off with Phoenix having something to sell, and Sterling over doing their shabby sheeq look by making it look like a kindling room for the worlds largest bonfire and sprinkling dead leaves over the floor. For what purpose? Nobody knows. Sales moved along steadily with each team, Sour Faced Jane, who had been unusually quiet this episode, decided the best sales tactic was to be pushy. Therefore she chased the customers into the shop with all the subtlety of an axe murderer, whilst Tom caved and bought more stock as their 3 items were selling out far too quickly. In a truly dignified ending to do that, Sterling started giving their stock to people in the street for 50p, if you see a homeless man in London holding a suitcase with legs then you know who to blame. Rather surprisingly though (I say surprisingly, as this task went so badly I expected everyone to lose), Not Quite An Investor Tom won the day with over a grand in profit, causing much dismay over on Team Sterling who took very little time to dig the claws into one another. Everyone blamed Patriotic Gabrielle for spending too much on upcycling materials (which she did). She blamed Rottweiler Laura for not giving her a set amount or list of desired materials for the upcycling (which she didnt); and Lord Sugar pointed out that Sour Faced Janes axe murderer sales technique had only £10s worth of success. £10s?!?!?! However, despite every reasonable person in the world thinking Rottweiler Laura should go due to her complete lack of organisation skills, and her save me plea involving the phrase Ive succeeded in everything Ive ever done, 10 minutes AFTER losing a task. Lord Sugar fired Sour Faced Jane; making her face go that perfect look of sour for the country one. Last. Time. Who was fired: Sour Faced Jane Was it the right decision? No, not at all. Rottweiler Laura offered very little as a project manager, her failures there led to the failure of the task and I think she should have gone. This weeks valuable business lesson: Nobody likes the union jack. Episode Enjoyability: 5/5