The Apprentice recap: this week’s most ridiculous moments, ranked
Another week of The Apprentice, another week of cacophonous shouting from people in suits squabbling over loose change.
The Apprentice episode 4 saw the two teams sent off to Brighton to barter for vintage and second-hand items at low prices.
It was a week of small spending, small gains and, well, not a whole load of drama. But as usual, plenty of ridiculous moments made us despair for business today.
Here are the most ridiculous moments from tonight’s Apprentice.
Karren Brady dialling up the coldness to frozen
Baroness Brady is always cold, sometimes arbitrarily so, like the head mistress stomping around sporting a frown on sports day when everyone else is beaming.
This week she dialled up the coldness to freezing point, disparaging the contestants at every turn. I can only assume Brady finds her on-camera rants about contestants therapeutic. They miss a vintage item in a store, a simple mistake, and there she is, pursing her fingers tightly – like she’s holding a stress ball – and slating them. At another clearly rehearsed point she glances at her watch and raises her eyebrows above her Tom Cruise aviators.
The contestants mistakenly think ‘sahara desert roses’ are a type of rose, and Brady won’t drop it that they haven’t thought that the item could be something else.
It’s fun to have a bad cop good cop vibe but Brady could suck the life out of Dracula.
The stakes have never been…lower?
Part of the jeopardy on The Apprentice is that large sums of money stand to be lost or gained. But this week the contestants were bartering with 10 and 20ps, like school children learning how to deal with money rather than actual business people.
It takes away from the drama slightly when the hazardous deals are over the equivalent of a Curly-Wurly’s worth of dough.
“£2.25,” haggles one shopkeeper selling an item. “£2.15 and it’s a deal, ” the contestant roars back. “C’mon Alex, £2.20, deal?” All money is money, but this was painful.
Producers running out of ideas?
I love Brighton as much as the next Londoner who likes a weekend by the seaside, but really? Wandering around the city looking in antiques shops and buying items for small amounts of money with no reselling challenge seems weak.
There was no second part to the task where we could watch the contestants embarrass themselves flogging things, just them drudging around The Laines looking for ABBA vinyl. It was hardly a trip to the Caribbean like in an earlier episode. It felt like the producers were running out of ideas.
Watch this week’s episode of The Apprentice here
Read about the first episode of The Apprentice this year, and about the third episode here