Falling asleep on the job? Claiming to invent the bin? It looks like The Apprentice is back to bringing us more entertainment gold. Stuart Heritage gives us his thoughts on all the goings-on in the second episode of Lord Sugar's show.
LAST WEEK
Nobody did a particularly good job of printing stuff onto things and then selling them to people. Bilyana was fired. I convinced myself that my heart would heal, one day.
THE BRIEF
Design a new household item. Alan Sugar doesn’t care what, so long as it doesn’t suck. I’d make a joke about the Amstrad E-M@iler phone here, but I can’t help feeling that you’ve all probably made about 12 of these already. Each.
TEAM LEADERS
The girls pick Jane, possibly because they’re scared that she’ll start screeching ‘MARGINS’ like a broken car alarm again if they don’t. Meanwhile, in what looks set to become a pattern, the boys force Azhar into it because he put up the least fight. And so begins two days of Azhar mumbling “As team leader...” and then immediately being cut off by everyone else.
THE TASK
Blissfully unaware that it already exists, the boys decide to invent the composter. This is partly because they claim it’s fashionable, and partly because their better idea is a rubber glove that lets you punch saucepans clean. Even though it was Duane’s idea, Stephen decides to gab on at all the meetings with retailers. This is what Stephen will do every week until he’s fired. They should have invented a kit for sewing up Stephen’s mouth. I’d happily buy 10 of those.
Meanwhile, the girls almost invent a tap cosy, for people who like baths but hate taps with the intensity of a billion exploding stars, but then go for a sort of inverted sneeze-guard for baths instead. They take it to Amazon and ask them to spend nine million pounds on it. Then they go to Lakeland and get their costing so muddled that Maria’s eyes burst into flames and she falls out of a window. Figuratively.
THE BOARDROOM
Although Amazon liked the splash guard more than the composter, Lakeland didn’t like it at all. The boys win again. Alan Sugar agrees, summing up the nation’s mood by saying that the splash guard sucks. As a reward, the boys go to The Ivy for a night of loudly disparaging everything that Azhar has ever said or thought. Meanwhile, Jane brings Jenna and Maria back into the boardroom, possibly because their voices both sound like a bag of cats being flung through a log chipper.
YOU’RE FIRED
Maria, for falling asleep during the task. That’s not a crime in itself, but it did expose the world to dangerous levels of neon eyeshadow. And for that she had to be punished.
IMPORTANT BUSINESS LESSONS
Always listen to market research, even if the sum total of that market research consists of three distracted mums who’d approve of exploding knives for kids if it means you’ll just go away.
Nobody will ever buy a million of anything, especially if it’s a bit of plastic designed to make your children feel like they’re being kept under quarantine.
Alan Sugar overuses the word ‘sucks’ and it sort of freaks me out.
NEXT WEEK
Inventing tomato ketchup.
How well did the teams perform this week? Did the right person go? Who are you hoping will get fired next? Let us know by heading over to our Facebook page or Twitter feed (@TVOnVM)!
