Correct. Correct. Correct.
The Apprentice: it's wicked, man!
More woeful ineptitude and cloying lack of self-awareness from what are now the final eight. (One of them - Ghazal? Simon? can't remember, somebody idiotic - noted in the people-carrier that they were now "contenders" - which just goes to show how perverted this format has quietly become, with not one truly outstanding candidate among them, leaving Siralan, rendered soft by his own TV stardom, with the equivalent of a walking tumour on his payroll in a few weeks' time, someone who will make him long for Saira or Paul or Syed or Ruth from the old days. Can you seriously imagine any of the surviving candidates working for Alanstrad Holdings and taking home 100 grand a year for it? Wasn't that once what this programme was about? How quaint that seems now.) They were, to be fair, being set up for a fall. Designing and marketing a new, unbranded trainer in a "billion pahnd market", in two days, was only ever going to bring out the worst in our hapless heroes. A quick flipchart brainstorm about what The Kids want was never going to dig very deep - they want to "reclaim the streets", according to Jadine's team (but, seriously, do they?); their defining ethos is "image is everything", or "music is everything", according to Ghazal's (don't worry if, like Siralan, you don't understand this Big Idea - neither did Ghazal, Katie, Kristina or Naomi, and it was their idea).
I know very little about kids or trainers, but my guess is: they just want what everybody else has got. The bloodless men from the "top" advertising agency, called something like CCCP (clients include: Carphone Warehouse - did they think of Mobily?), were, if nothing else, honest. They actually said, "Nobody needs another trainer," and that the only way to sell one was to dress it up in a big cloak of bullshit. To this end, both teams weren't so far off the mark. Bullshit, they can do. However, Siralan made it clear, from the dome above Piccadilly Circus (the prime advertising spot in the world, he boasted, as if working for the Mayor's office, although I think Times Square may have something to say about that), he did not want an ad that won the "Montrose Award for Advertising Tossers", a statuette given out every year in the Scottish coastal tourist resort. I know it's his persona and it sells the programme, but did the Apprentice producers use the word "tossers" when they were booking the ad agency for the programme? Such contempt.
Jadine's team called their shoe STREET, to subtly suggest STREET. Isn't this like calling it COOL or WICKED or BUY THIS TRAINER? (Actually, I could work with that last one.) Having had it designed so that it looked like a designer had attempted to replicate graffiti writing down the side, they moved swiftly to knocking out an ad. Had Ghazal's all-female team not called their trainer JAM (having rejected the Asbo-friendly likes of STAMP, PUNCH and, er, CHEEK), and designed its logo to look like something doodled on a pencil case, Jadine's team's efforts would have seemed laughable, but in comparison, they looked world class.
Amelia, one of six who came to audition for Jadine and co's "street dance" advert, was classic. Her incompatability with the task was not her fault: she was just sent to an audition she shouldn't have been sent to. "I dance on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays," she said, sweetly and promisingly. What kind of dance? "Disco, rock'n'roll, Latin, ballet and tap." What about "street"? "Er, I don't do street." Encouraged to give it a go, she agreed, as Tre started human beatboxing (another of his talents, besides saying "fuck" and explaining how talented he is). Amelia giggled and said, "It would be easier without ...", referring to the man with the long face's funny mouth noises. Tre's long face fell, as it so often falls. Because Simon comes from Hampstead Garden Suburbs and was the only Caucasian member of the team, it naturally befell him to do the rap for the advert (another amusing ethnic impression from the man who did a comedy Indian last week, a regular little Jim Davidson) and throw some outdated breakdancing shapes for the TV spot. Mind you, next to Amelia, he was Jay-Z. His rap actually wasn't that bad, and nor were his shapes - for a white guy - but all Tre could do was piss and moan and make faces. He, you see, was the most "street" and this allowed him to throw his weight around in that special way that means he doesn't really do anything. If his team had lost, there would have been a postmortem, and this question would have been asked: who called the casting agency? Who actually called them and booked the auditionees? They were the weakest link.
The moment Jadine jettisoned Naomi (because she "doesn't like working with women", according to Naomi - nothing to do with the fact that she doesn't like working with Naomi - if in doubt, shift the blame from yourself to your gender), Ghazal's team were doomed. She already had counterproductive, hot-flushing drama queen Katie and the scheming, lined wench Kristina. Now she had sweet, jawless Naomi. The dream team. All four of them hated each other! You could have cut the air in that brainstorming session with a knife, once Katie had taken it out of Kristina's back. I don't mean this to be sexist, but they needed a man, just to break the all-girl configuration. To stop the in-fighting. As it was, they were as weak as piss, failing to agree on anything, and with a 23-year-old leader seemingly incapable of exerting her authority except by insisting they stick with a shit idea, then changing her mind at breakfast. This U-turn was reached totally independently of course, and had nothing to do with Katie's Iago-like whispering in her ear. "Reclaim the street" is a Big Idea. (They even planned to give ten per cent of the sale price to youth charities in order to stop anyone buying the trainers, which, incidentally, would not be available to buy in Asda, nor on a website. Take that, common sense!) "Image is everything" is a vague, meaningless catchphrase, and only really works if your trainer has an image, rather than JAM written on the side in biro. (Not "crayon", Katie. Too busy rehearsing her bons mots for the camera to actually think through what she's actually saying.) Anyway, the new Big Idea, which was Katie's, was "Music is everything", which would have been fine if they were selling musical plimsoles.
Predictable fun with Margaret and Nick using young person's phrases like "bump", "grind", "R" and "B" - didn't really need that - but the real toe-curler came with, guess what, the pitch. Various among the candidates are people who claim to work in advertising or brand management (this programme is really about creative CV-writing), and yet none of them know how to pitch. Jadine read hers from a sheet of paper, as if reading a psalm in church. Katie managed through her tone of voice to patronise an imaginary "consumer" called Jay and the assembled ad execs. She carried this through to the boardroom and patronised Siralan too. Gah! Why is she still on my television? Why? Ghazal's team lost by a mile, not based on money spent or money made, but on whether the results were any good or not. Hers were not, with a TV ad that didn't appear to be about trainers (not a crime in the real world of advertising but we're not in Montrose now), and a print one based on the clever play on words, "soul" and "sole", which Katie helpfully explained. Jadine's team went off to make cockatils at the Savoy, luckily when the American Bar was closed to the public, by the look of it. I wonder how long they have to film these "rewards" in order to get enough footage for a quick montage?
Although it was always going to be the borrowed-time Ghazal who got fired (she's all talk and no do, apparently - her "talk" mainly repeating the word, "correct"), it was impossible not to will Katie to push Siralan too far and find herself on the end of his disagreeable working class boot. Her tactic is so dangerous: she smiles at him as if she thinks he is, like the rest of the human race, scum. She talks over him. She throws his analogies back in his face ("You're a loser" he barked, having compared her boardroom record to a football team that loses six out of eight games; "I understand the math," she oozed, even though I don't think she is an American). But he will not fire her. Ghazal was "no good" in the final analysis. Her wild card was torn up.
Seven left, then. Correct. The invisible Lohit, the grinning Katie, the featherlight Naomi, the blustery Tre, the childlike Simon, the perfunctory Jadine and the vicious Kristina. Correct. I hate them. Correct. I hate them all. Correct. Correct. Correct.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:10 AM
27 Comments
Contact
Andrew at
27 Comments:
The Nick and Margaret 'street slang' moments were the only highlights of yesterday's episode. But then I like their 'stylings' every week...
Sir Alan just seemed bored and grumpy of this bunch of eager beavers.
Kate
Andrew, very good. And whilst your last paragraph goes some way to corroborating my Orwellian thesis (only 2 minutes hate?), I'm inclined to think that the whole project is more like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which they forgot to invite Charlie Bucket.
Aw why do you hate Lohit? Is there anything to hate? I mean, we've barely heard from him. For the first few weeks I barely realised he was even one of the contestants.
Whatever you may think of Simon, comparing him to Jim Davidson is a little harsh. (Comparing ANYONE to Jim Davidson is a little harsh.) If the implication is that he's racist, why? If he'd imitated Adam's accent (which he probably did at some point, I can't remember) complete with whippet comments, would you think he was Northernist? (I would argue no, just stupid). And why shouldn't he try rap, in the absence of anyone else bothering to do anything other than criticise (i.e. Tre)? I think you were bang on with childish, but not racist. Don't worry, though, assuming Sir Alan doesn't want a "rapping acrobat" you probably won't want to put up with him for much longer.
Px
Perhaps Katie uses Homer's make up gun?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp0Eie413iU
It's very difficult to see who'll win. I've heard - but it can't possibly be true - that the winner, when offered the job by Surallan, turns it down there and then.
But I say it can't be true because I thought the final was only recorded a couple of days before tx so no one gives it away. In the interim, the final three have all been working for Surallan over the past few months.
Anyhoo, it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
Borderline racist, at least wouldn't you say, PX? His asian 'impression' last week may have been accepted by Tre, but for the rest of us it was hard to watch...
I actually quite like Tre. I also agree that there's not that much to hate about Lohit. I don't really even hate Kristina. Or Naomi. Naomi is one of those girls that you see everywhere in London, particularly around SW7 who has gone to public school and lives well of their trust fund. But at least she's not as obnoxious as Katie.
"I've heard - but it can't possibly be true - that the winner, when offered the job by Surallan, turns it down there and then."
Wouldn't that be excellent. I'd love to see Siralan's reaction to that one.
STREET reminded me of the old SPORT logo I used to have on a school bag, not a bad idea if aimed at the under tens, but both teams seemed incapable of thinking that clearly. Great description of the 'Jam' logo as a 'pencil-case doodle'. Adrian Chiles described it as 'a rather apologetic little logo' which is good too.
Last night's 'wtf' expression - Naomi's, 'you closed the arena' (I think it was Ghazal who closed the arena). For some reason I also liked the way she put a pause in 'fool...hardy'.
Thought 'sole' was potentially a relatively ok joke but that tiny spark of creativity was stamped on by Katrina and Naomi who insisted it all made perfect sense, don't think they've heard of humour.
Judging by the last couple of weeks and his interview with Jonathan Ross, Srln seems to like Katie, which is interesting - perhaps she reminds him of his glory days in the 80s.
Somewhat surprising that Jadine jettisoned her confident Naomi over "that monkey" Simon. I'd try to work out why the producers would instruct her to do that if I cared. Perhaps she secretly loves Simon like they all do but Tre does the most.
For the record, I hate them because they are contestants on this programme, and yet I love this programme, so perhaps, after all, I love them all. But I hate their self-belief in the face of obvious incompetence. I hate what they represent about this useless country: all talk and no do. They think the world owes them a living. It does not. I really do hate Katie, though. Although I suppose I love hating her, in a way. Perhaps I love them, and hate the fact that I love them.
I didn't say Simon was a racist. I compared him to Jim Davidson, because Davidson represents, for me, a nadir for comedy in this country, when he could appear on national television and gets uproarious laughs by doing a funny black man's voice and wobbling his lips. Maybe Davidson isn't and wasn't racist, but he helped to maintain a casual xenophobia with his "acceptable" racial stereotyping. Simon is probably too young to remember how ugly this country was in the 70s and even into the 80s, with casual racism directed not just as blacks and Asians, but at the Irish too. Things have come a long way (so far, in fact, that it's "acceptable" again for Little Britain to do comedy black and Asian characters again, "blacking up" in the traditional sense). I know it gets a bad press, but Political Correctness had an urgent job to do, to redress the balance in a society mired in lazy racial and gender and sexual stereotypes. Ben Elton, again discredited now, did a good job in highlighting these issues. Comedy was influential in leading the new enlightenment. Which is not to say doing a comedy Indian voice, as Simon did last week, exposes him as a racist, but for me at any rate, it has unhelpful echoes.
Hope that clears it up.
I’m getting addicted to this blog!
I enjoyed the whole Apprentice piece but really just wanted to endorse the point you make above about ‘Political Correctness’ Andrew. It really hacks me off how it’s become such a detrimental cover-all term for anything the middle classes don’t like because it stops them doing what they wish. The plain and simple fact is that a an awful lot of people in this country needed ‘telling’ what to do with regard to casual racism and sexism in this country in the 70s and 80s. If the only way to do that was to make something unfashionable - like drink driving - then I’m all for it.
What is PC anyway? If you think about it at it’s most basic level, saying please and thank you, holding open doors (for both sexes obviously), eating with the correct utensils, giving up your seat on a bus, helping old folks across the road (whether they want to go or not), any form of ‘knowing your manners’ as my mother used to say, are forms of PCness. And we are all the better for them.
Let political correctness go mad...
Do any of these candidates watch the previous series? Have they not cottoned on to the fact that Siralan prefers his advertising to show the product in every shot. I do believe he'd advertise trainers like he'd advertise Ronseal wood stain - functional, long-lasting and cheap. the slogan ought to be "Buy these Blahdi trainers kids!", and he'd probably call the line Amstread, which given names Umbro and Adidas isn't that bad. Isn't good but then again New Balance doesn't roll off the tongue.
Anyway Mr. Collins, any chance of a Wire recap now the fourth season has ended please?
I can't really hate the younger ones simply because they are on the show. If you saw the audition for Ghazal, she clearly had bucket loads of ambition and self-belief and that is why they are picked.
At the auditions, it seems all you have to do is say "I desperately want this job, I'm great, I love Sir Alan and really want ot work for him and I want to be a millionaire before I'm 30/40".
Interestingly, people are clearly picked on this criteria rather than their ambition to be on tv like they are on other reality shows.
Lohit clearly has no ambition to be on tv because he hides in the shadows all the time.
A lot of the people who leave university are too full of ambition and self-belief. I can't hate them for that. By the time they reach Katie and Kristina's age they should know a bit better and I find their approach pretty unedifying.
This talk of Sugarbabe being turned down by the final contestant is surely the wrong way round. The only possible thing he could do to retain any credibility whatsoever is surely to turn to the last person left standing and say "you made it to the end, but you're still no good, you're fired".
The Apprentice really is a 'love to hate them' show. There's little more rewarding than watching a bunch of pompous bell-ends being set on each other, then picked off one by one. Marvellous.
For some reason, I'm fascinated by the weekly shots of each fired contestant emerging from Sir Alan's building with their trolley-case, then heading towards the awaiting cab. I'm fascinated, because it's like a shot from a movie, complete with (presumably) dollied camera. I'm tempted to believe that production filmed all these scenes on the same morning, with contestants taking their turn to adopt a steely expression and walk the stylised walk of doom...
Oh, and did anyone notice the brief useage of music from John Carpenter's The Thing soundtrack last night, or something ludicrously similar? Random.
While packing a suitcase after each task must be tedious, then unpacking it again if you don't get fire, this part is surely staged.
The suitcases they bring to the final Surallan meeting are hand luggage small, and if they're living in that house for a few months they'd need more than a couple of pairs of pants and a toothbrush.
The important thing is that Ghazal, like all the other sacked contestants, PROVED she can lead a team (by failing to lead it), PROVED she can sell (by failing to sell), PROVED she's got what it takes... by failing to have what it takes.
That's my favourite bit each week - in the boardroom when they loudly proclaim their excellence at precisely the things they've just illustrated themselves spectacularly crap at. It's like the England football team declaring after the World Cup last summer that they've PROVED they're the best in the world. By losing.
Those Street trainers would have looked good in the "Close To The Edge" Green Cross Code public service film. Or on the cover of Streetsounds Hip-Hop 12. I love that Ghazal's surname is Asif. She should have put that on her trainers.
It should be pointed out that Naomi and Kristina directed the where-are-the-trainers video. No one mentioned that in the boardroom, did they? Not even Katie (who unbelievably actually said she was proud of it even though she didn't make it and she knew Sir Alan hated it). Funny that. Good photo though.
Simon's street moves reminded me of Kyran Bracken(?) on Dancing On Ice (ahem, research). Is there a big breakdance scene in our public schools? Do Harrow and Eton gently pump to the Rocksteady Crew? And did Simon's parents really tell him to do E (and F)? Perhaps they were hoping he'd pick up some slightly more modern moves.
As was pointed out in You're Fired, Katie's behaviour towards Sir Alan in the boardroom was basically shameless flirting. She missed a trick with her pitch though: "Jay is a northerner..."
Those 'jam' trainers looked like a bad GCSE project. They all take themselves far too seriously, it seems to me, except for the rapping posh white guy.
Jason Arnopp - at last, someone else has the same fascination as me with the taxi shots.
Last year, posters on here kept commenting on how each firee left wearing an Eric Morecambe style brown overcoat. Obviously, Michelle Dewberry was allowed to keep it as a prize, as this year they all appear to be leaving in the same long black overcoat.
And, the clothes they wear on the walk to the taxi are often not the same as they were wearing in the boardroom or subsequently in the taxi interview.
Lazy continuity really spoils the whole magic of TV doesn't it? I mean, I genuinely believed that the boardroom decision gets made in 10 minutes and they've all lived out of those small wheelie cases for 8 weeks, and then my belief gets shattered by the taxi scene.
The scales fell from my eyes back in the 80s, when the NME did a feature on Blind Date, and the writer described how they re-shot the moment when the door goes back and the Date is seen for the first time ie. they made two members of the public pretend for the cameras. From that moment forward, I have assumed that nothing is as it is presented on the television. A good starting point, I think.
We're all smart enough to know that programmes are creatively editied, and yet we want to believe we are seeing reality. We are not. The reaction shots of Tre are probably taken from an entirely different sequence.
Siralan's secretary isn't his secretary. That isn't a boardroom, it's a set. Etc.
I believe that Siralan himself was made using leftover animatronics from "Lion King - The Musical".
Andrew
I actually agree with you about political correctness; it's just that I loathe Jim Davidson and only mildly dislike Simon, so felt it was an unfair comparison.
I wondered about his secretary. How much do you think she's paid to say "You can go into the boardroom now" every week?
Have a good weekend.
Px
If the winner turns the job down, I can only think that siralan will be enormously relieved.
Wouldn't you be?
Can you imagine hiring or working with any of that shower of poisonous shits?
ST
Some of the "soapy" elements in this series have looked horribly staged. Most notable of these was the story arc of the Paul/Katie relationship, the revelation of it in the boardroom, the "let's not mention that" conversation in the taxi home, and the subsequent reveal to Katie in the boardroom the following week. This bothers me much more than some creative editing or the use of a studio for the boardroom.
There are two contestants left who I for one find it hard to believe are for real. I'm still trying to figure out whether Katie is simply a shark or the shark. I guess we won't know until she and Paul turn up as stars of BBC2's new reality show It's Grim Up North this autumn.
On the subject of the taxi ride, when do the contestants find the time for the workouts that they must be doing during the series? All the firees seem to have such strong arms that they put their case in the taxi with such ease that a cynic might suggest the case is empty.
I know you don't read the Grauniad anymore, but do check out the piece in G2 today from last year's winner.
In amongst the usual self-aggrandisement and delusion is the admission that her "business" for Siralan involved trying to get people to pay for something they can get for free (still, it worked for Evian...)
They never learn do they?
Post a Comment
<< Home