A row of beans
The Apprentice: Week Ten
[SPOILER ALERT! . . .]
The least interesting episode yet, I'm afraid, although the outcome was a nailbiter. With a 3.45 call ("What? In the afternoon?" said Paul, wishfully), the five alpha contenders were whisked off to Istanbul and cast away on a huge floating nightmare called the Grand Princess. (Some members of my own family love cruises, but the idea has never appealed to me, I'll be honest.) Sir Alan was on holiday, linked via satellite phone and laptop like a modern-day Charlie, so Nick and Margaret, suitably attired for the Mediterranean like two diplomats, took charge, while Syed and Ruth set out to prove that two heads are no better than three - at least not when one of them belongs to Syed, who, to his credit, unspiked his hair for the occasion of playing a jumped-up floating redcoat. Velocity - Michelle, Paul and Ansell - always looked like the stronger crew, and - with Ansell once again edited into the background - they took the lead early on, with what can only be described as A Good Idea: organising a Strictly Come Dancing competition. Simple, contemporary, effective.
Meanwhile, Invicta squabbled and brainstormed and spoke over each other (not bad for just two people, and a portent of what was to come) and eventually cobbled together a "Fun Day" that was to have involved driving golf balls into the sea (vetoed by a no-bullshit entertainments officer and Sir-Alan telltale), later amended to driving golf balls into a net (or through it, as it turned out), then driving golf balls at a sheet (also vetoed by our man in the epaulettes, seemingly on aesthetic grounds). They ditched golf altogether, and went for "pool aerobics", an event that attracted a sum total of zero punters. The quiz was a success, in that some people turned up ("What do the letters HRT stand for?" - a line I wish I'd written for a sitcom about a cruise), but Ruth had bought too much prize champagne and they had to give it to the ship's staff - thus reducing their final profit, potentially sinking Ruth later on. The backwards egg-and-spoon race seemed to go off alright for the three old gentlemen who took part. And the tennis was so exciting, even Syed and Ruth didn't bother turning up for it, their instincts exercised instead by - guess what? - some selling. The raffle tickets! The fact that Syed didn't know how to sell raffle tickets, or read from a sheet of paper into a microphone, or whoop with any feeling for the wrinkled passengers, surely marked him out for the long walk home. Surely!
You had to admire Paul, once again. He threw himself into it, and got himself on telly - the onboard satellite channel, which probably had a bigger audience than Davina (satire), and was anchored by two "wired" Americans who laughed at everything anyone said. Even getting up and sitting down was a riot for these two. The guy fancied Paul, bigging him up with the curiously American description, "The jacket's going, the hair's gelled!" Paul weatherd this particular storm of humiliation, and the punters with numbers on their backs and little interest in daylight turned up for the event, despite Invicta's advert in the ship's newsletter being in a box.
The profit said it all - over a grand for Velocity, three hundred quid for Invicta (or was it dollars?) - and despite other considerations, like customer satisfaction, being "factored in", there was no getting round it: Syed and Ruth had arsed it up royally. The other three went off for yet another victory holiday, to "fucking Rome" (our tour guide, Paul: "There's the Colisseum where Gladiator was filmed . . . there's . . . pause . . . There's just shit there!"). Syed and Ruth battled it out in the boardroom, where Sir Alan, jetlagged, gave the English language the biggest mangling of the week, speaking of a "row of beans" at one point. My heart sank, after some unedifying bickering and the red cheeks of Ruth, when it looked like Sir Alan was going to fire the woman over the bloke. (She hadn't performed well, but at least she knew how to sell raffle tickets.) But he dummied us. Syed got the finger. A nation stood up and did some shadenfreude aerobics. He turned the collar up on his overcoat, purchsed, one assumes, in the East End where he was raised by stray dogs, and got the hell out of our lives, still giving it 110 per cent in the taxi. Ruth entered the final four.
Who's next then? Two next week, and if impact was a factor, Ansell would be one of them. Mind you, he's had some nice freebies out of it, having been on the winning team almost every week. The quiet man. I'll stick with Ruth as my favourite, but Paul's still in with a strong chance.
Previous reviews:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
posted by Andrew Collins @ 5:16 PM
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8 Comments:
I was getting all ready to swear at the TV as I was positive he was going to fire Ruth, and if he had I'd have been furious: Syed, as you said, can't even sell raffle tickets, lost the keys last week, doesn't know where Wandsworth Bridge is, and (did anyone notice?) is absolutely crap at public speaking. His tannoy announcement was rubbish, and he just sounded so unenthusiastic about the whole thing!
If you've ever had anything to do with students' unions, you will appreciate what I mean when I compare Syed and Ruth to a couple of sabbatical officers, organising a fairly childish event haphazardly while always thinking they know better than anyone else, and rushing around trying to sort it all out.
As for Paul, I wish that Sir Alan had included a tour guide task for them all.
Do you reckon those two TV presenters will be the Next Big Thing? When they are presenting the Oscars we can watch them and say notalgically "I remember them when they were just starting out." Or not.
I was pretty confidant Syed would go, while my wife watched through her hands certain Ruth was on her way out. I wavered a little during the conflab when Syed and Ruth were out of the room as Siralan praised Syed to the skies, until I realised those tricksy TV producers will have done that on purpose to build the tension.
There would have been questions in parliament if Ruth had gone, but in the end Alan Sugar didn't even look that gutted when he fired Syed, as he had done with Jo. High fives all round in our house when the verdict came in.
Ruth & Syed's event was one of those cringe making, cracking good telly moments. We the viewers know it's a bad plan, we're embarrassed for them for having come up with it, it's all going horribly wrong making us embarrassed to watch it, but still we watch eager to go all schadenfreude at the end. Does anyone think Sir Al was testing Syed about his potential raffle ticket fraud to see if he'd lie again (which he did), and thus use that as the clincher to bin him?
Paul (the Peter Kay wannabe) had a great idea, executed it well, got the team behind it and annoyed me slightly less than he has all series, and his team deserved the win.
As for next week, the interview episode last year was great as it showed up the showboater in Paul and the toff who didn't need the job in James leaving the right 2 to go head to head. If that's the case this time, we could be left with Ansell and Ruth as I think Paul could be flaky under interview pressure, and I'm not convinced there's much to Michelle other than having got 110% from Syed at some point.
But what do I the humble viewer know anyway?
I'm glad someone else noticed the Peter Kay similarities - I thought it was just me. Incidentally "What does HRT stand for?" sounded like a line out of Phoenix Nights.
lol I thought it was only me who thought Paul was like Peter Kaye. Or a fat Adam Sandler.
Looks like i was the only one who was gutted to see Syed go...
Why were they messing around with Moet and money when the top prize was so obvious... throw Paul/Syed overboard (in a fun way).
I didn't think this was the least interesting episode but it did present the programme makers with some problems. The team of three sensibly restricted themselves to one room and got on with whatever they actually did in there. Unfortunately it didn't make for great TV. (Michelle wasn't really any more of a presence than Ansell, apart from disagreeing with Paul about the change of prizes after he'd gone.)
The team of two restricted themselves to... the ship. And Syed was probably still thinking bigger. That was pretty stupid and it meant we spent most of the show watching the two of them running around. But watching Syed cocking things up without ever acknowledging the fact made for great TV, I thought. (Did he really throw the golfball at the net to see if it would go through before he checked that the ball was smaller than the holes?)
The strangest thing was that when we saw Ruth in the airport without her boardroom make-up on, I suddenly realised that I fancy her. Blimey. Now I'm hoping she survives the interview next week. She should do: it's all about selling yourself.
And once again Ladies and Gentlemen, we saw the return of the Open All Hours / Arthur English coat. But this time there was a plot twist - Syed turned up the collars. Walk the body!
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