Last week! The notion
of a farm shop morphed into some kind of takeaway task! Kurt’s milk fetish caused ALL THE KELIS
REFERENCES IN THE WORLD! Luisa’s team
took a Buffalo Stance! And Uzma was
finally fired for always being in the boardroom!
430am at Apprenti-towers, and Jason is answering the phone
in yet another pair of pyjamas that you never normally see outside the pages of
children’s books. Or toothpaste
adverts. Apparently they need to pack to
go to Dubai. In a very early moment of
foregrounding, it’s established that Zeeshaan used to live in Dubai. Luisa gets very excited and talks about
packing bikinis. I still can’t figure
out if she really is like that or if some of it is a deliberate act. Either way, Luisa –land seems a much more
happy place than I would have imagined it to be in episode one when I thought
she might be being set up as queen bitch.
They go to the SPLENDID OPULENT WALDORF ASTORIA which is
being built and it’s time for the ten items task! Except this lot are not good enough for ten
so they only give them eight to source.
And, as we shall see, even that’s a tall order.
Leah is ported over to Endeavour. The voiceover lies that all 300 rooms in the
hotel are in need of ‘top class touches’.
Yes, I’m, sure sixteen pieces of tat (or as this task usually goes,
twelve pieces of tat, one very overpriced luxury item where the vendor saw them
coming and three things they couldn’t find) would be just the ticket.
On Endeavour, ‘international property expert’ Zeeshaan is
blabbering on about how he is perfect for the task because he used to live in
Dubai and we see one of his video interview clips about no human intimidating
him. Just don’t let him near any
animals, because he’ll run whimpering like a child. Leah would also like to be team leader
because she is amazing at everything and has been to Dubai before. Neil votes Zee and because he is Regina
George, everyone goes along with him. Zee tells people to put away the maps
because he knows Dubai like the back of his hand. Leah’s eyes start rolling. SPOILER: They will not stop.
Myles is PM for Evolve and we see him interview bragging
about his glamorous lifestyle and how his business idea is about luxury brands. Whatever, Myles, you’ve still been reduced to
appearing on The Apprentice. Also: LOL
at the idea of SralanLudSuga ever having a bar of ‘luxury goods’. Have you watched this show or followed any of
the products his companies have made, Myles?
Time to see what the products are and Endeavor identify that
a kandura is Arabic clothing, a falcon hood is a hood for a falcon (for why is
this a hotel requirement?) and Zee says that Oud is a perfume. Not one of them, NOT ONE, makes a Doctor Who
joke. YOU ARE ALL DEAD TO ME,
APPRENTI. Alex points out that the
instructions mention mahogany and asks if that’s the container. Zee says it smells of mahogany. I think he may be getting confused with SANDALWOOD. Zee assures them it’s easy
to find.
Evolve wonder if an oud is a statue. Jordan says the important thing is to ‘take
it back to 50,000 feet’. WHAT DOES THAT
EVEN MEAN?? They start to phone around and then make the
decision to go to the mall. Meanwhile,
Zee says the key will be to get as much as possible from the souks and as
little as possible from the mall. Leah
expresses doubt they’ll have time to find everything at the souks but Zee says
he’s just ‘telling you what the facts are’ which are that he could get the
kandura from a souk for 100 dirams and at the mall the other team would get
them for 1000 dirams. To be fair to Zee,
there is potentially some merit in this idea, as usually on this task we’d be
expecting teams to go to markets over shopping centres, for example – but then
that assumes the markets and malls in Dubai are anything like the ones over
here, which is not necessarily the case – and it is possible that the markets
wouldn’t have all the items either. Leah’s
crash!edit! from quiet, competent and above all this shit to Apprentice-crazy,
the real theme of this episode, continues apace as she declares that she will
take her sub team to the mall and Zee’s all ‘you what now? I never said you could lead a subteam’ and
then has to make her sub-team leader because everyone says she should be. Such a glorious mess already. Leah, Neil and Alex are sent to Souk Medina
and Zee confirms they shouldn’t go to the mall. [I have no idea what happened here, or why - Helen]
Dubai porn! Their
shard is longer, thinner, taller and shardier than the London one!
Car conversation time!
Jordan is excited by the scenery, Rebecca has a failed conversation on
the phone with someone who doesn’t speak Arabic, Zee is up for some hard
negotiating and Natalie concurs (SPOILERS: LOL), Leah is worried about being
able to source things at the souk, so much so that she tells the driver to go
to the mall instead. Alex and Neil remain
quiet. [again Leah, WHY? - Helen]
Louisa, Jordan and Jason arrive at the mall, which is the
world’s largest, apparently. Jason tries
on a kandura but it costs 300 dirams and he says, in a bizarre accent, that he
doesn’t want to pay that. They find
another store and negotiate one for 110.
Leah’s strategy is to go straight to the perfumery. Zee rings them and finds out they’re at the
mall, which he isn’t happy about. He
asks to speak to Neil and Leah says Neil can hear him and he needs to stop
trying to appease Neil – which is all the men have done so far all series, as
far as I can tell. Zee tells them they
have to go to the souk and asks them to get the coffee pot, the kandura and
anything else they can see – so two of the eight items? Bokay then.
Neil snipes that just because Zee knows Dubai, it doesn’t mean he knows
it all. Leah points out that she would
have been a better PM – and were it not ZEE that were the PM I’d say they were
setting her up for a ‘you didn’t respect the PM’ type firing/telling-off a la
Miranda in series one.
Myles’ sub-team go to get the plant and decide they need to
go in and out very quickly. Myles tries
to get more than 10% off and the saleswoman offers to get the boss who can get
them a bigger discount. Myles refuses
because he’s in a rush (oh the foreshadowing) and gets 15% off. Karren says he was a bit hasty and should
have spoken to the boss.
Zee’s sub-team are in the cab calling ahead to a flag shop
to get theirs made. It needs to be a UAE
flag, 4x6 feet. Kurt says to Zee that a
foot is 12 centimetres. Natalie looks
confused at first but then says ‘yes’ and Zee orders a 48x72cm flag because
clearly no-one has learned last week’s lesson that KURT NO DO MATHS. Zee does say 48x72, 4 foot by 6 foot on the
phone, and the seller doesn’t seem to question which but quotes them 10 dirams
for it.
Myles’ subteam of him, Rebecca and Francesca, go to the flag
place where Francesca gets a tiny discount bringing the price down to 175
dirams. It’ll take an hour to produce
and Myles saysthat he hates waiting, but they will anyway, and then, for…
reasons, I guess, they pay up front.
They phone the other team and Myles says he doesn’t mind them spending
time in the mall as long as they get good products in the manner of a dad who’s
just let a bunch of teenagers loose in Meadowhall.
Leah’s subteam are in one of the souks and having no luck
sourcing an Arabic coffee pot, and given that is probably one of the easier
items, good luck with the falcon hood.
They seem to find one but Leah’s increasingly strong accent means there
is some sort of confusion over inch/ounce [And yet they picked on me – Kurt]
and they don’t buy one from a place that seems to sell them. Some randomer then offers Alex Viagra: ‘I don’t
need that, I’m from Wales’. Heh.
At the mall, Luisa, Jordan and Jason are hunting for falcon
hoods to no avail and Jason’s accent becomes even weirder. They want an Arabic coffee pot too but the
man says they should be searching for Deller.
Hey, I’m right here, guys. Karren
tries to create a sense of panic that they might be late because that’s always an
alleged danger in this task.
Back at the flag shop and Myles’ subteam are still waiting,
when Zee’s arrive there… to collect their tiny flag. They gripe that it’s not 6ft and the shop
owner says 42cm x72cm. Then we have the
best Nick Hewer face and Apprenti penny drop face since the sandalwood episode
as Kurt slowly realises what’s happened.
Kurt then tries to blame Zee but sticks to his story that there are 12
cms in a foot… and eventually says ‘inches?’
They order another flag for an hour, but instead of waiting an hour,
they leave and Zee says ‘let’s head out boys…. and ladies’.
Searching for the Kandura, Neil says he’s not interested in
quality, only price, because he knows what Sralan is like. He aggressively negotiates a price down to 60
because he’s in a ‘very very rush’ (which is more offensive – this kind of
language to help the forrins understand, or Jason’s accent straight from a
dodgy 1970s sitcom?).
In the car and Kurt is looking up numbers for sources. Natalie asks to look up glass in the book and
Zee says there’s no point. She suggests
ringing perfume shops and he point blank ignores her.
Myles’ subteam are still waiting for the flag and he goes
into the back to track it down and they say it’ll be another ‘five minutes’. The people in the shop couldn’t care less.
In Leah’s car and she’s trying to track down OUD – OIYD -
perfume and, remarkably, the person she speaks to understands her and says it’s
OUDH. Alex looks in the Dubai yellow
pages and confirms that oudh is perfume.
Luisa, Jason and Jordan go into an Aoud shop but the man doesn’t know
what an oud is. Jason then has ‘had a
flash… do you think an oud is something else’.
Bless.
Zee is having a phone call with Leah’s subteam. Alex, perhaps looking to be Apprentice gold
with how quotable he is this episode, points out the spelling differences to
Zee with a ‘Listen sunshine’. Zee is
convinced mahogany is a scent whilst Alex says it’s a wood and he’s talking
crap. Alex and Leah get stressed, and
Neil – NEIL – is the voice of reason: ‘just let him do that and we’ll get on
with what we’re doing.’
Myles’ subteam are trying to negotiate a discount on the
flag that took forever and the shop owner, the smuggest seen this side of Smug
Cow (TM Monkseal) just smiles and shakes his head at the suckers. They phone the other sub team who are still
to buy several items and Myles bitches that the other sub-team hasn’t done enough. As opposed to sitting in a shop the whole day
waiting?
Natalie, Zee and Kurt go hunting for the plant and speak to
the boss of the plant shop for a 50% discount.
So apparently in plant shops, asking for the boss is the way to go. I’m sure garden centres everywhere will be
thrilled at this piece of information being fed to the public.
Francesca can’t find mosaic tiles, Jason gets a cheap coffee
pot with his terrible accent and then nows at the sales man, Rebecca and Alex
grab some Frankincense and Zee tries to negotiate on the flags. The man forces him to buy both flags – the small
one is being offered to them for 40 – even though they said 10 earlier. Zee gets him down to 28, or 200 for both,
because he wants to do ‘future business’ LOL like anyone falls for that, but I
think smug flag owner is just glad to see them off. The voiceover tells us they paid 25 dirams
more than the others but as they got two flags they got the bigger one for 3
dirams less. But anyway.
Luisa and co finally find someone in a perfume shop who
knows what an oud is – a musical instrument.
Jordan decides to take the negotiation and Jason says ‘go for it’ – this
sub team actually seem to have worked well together for a change. Jason and
Jordan between them negotiate it from 1850 to 990 and Luisa congratulates them.
LAST MINUTE BUYING!
Leah’s team are having no luck with oud and no-one is having any luck
with falcon hoods. They run to the hotel
and put their items on tables to be inspected by the hotel manager. They will be fined the market value for any
incorrect items or missing items – we see that one of the kanduras is marked as
‘not correct’.
Zee boasts that they got a good bargain on the plant (whoop)
and that the other team would totes have got ripped off at the mall so it’ll
all be fine. I love how his strategy essentially
relied on the other team being really crap and total mugs.
BOARDROOM TIME! Sralan
says they had an ‘important client’. It
always amuses me when this show pretends to be real. Bless.
He asks Endeavour if Zee was a good team leader and gets a resounding
no, with Leah (whose hair has gone as big as Mike and Monica’s in that episode
of Friends when they go to Barbados) and
Alex particularly going for it, Leah saying she wanted to be team leader all
along and Zee snapping about her trying to take over. Zee’s ‘expert’ credentials are trounced and
he keeps blabbering about oudh being a scent, whilst Alex goes for another
line: ‘no-one wants to smell like a dining table’. Oh Alex, bless you, you may look like
Nosferatu but you are very endearing. Nick
and Sralan go on about the spec mentioning size and wood, whilst Zee continues
to dig about the oudh in the very manner of NOT TAKING THE HINT. We’re then reminded of Kurt’s bad maths and
Nick Hewer overplays his part in the way he so often does by exaggerating both
the size of the hotel and the smallness of the flag. Oh Nick, all your best work is subtle. Try to remember that. Neil says he got a good price on the kandura
and Kurt says he did well on the plant.
Over to Myles and Sralan: ‘Kurt would call you kylometres
most probably’. Not only is this a
genuinely funny joke, it’s even better for Kurt’s face as he doesn’t get it,
but then pretends to when everyone else bursts into fits of giggles. Amazing.
We hear about Jordan and co in the mall and Myles and co waiting around
for ages (90 minutes). Myles’ reason for
not going away and coming back is that the man had started. Karren points out that they shouldn’t have
paid upfront for the flag. Sralan
berates Myles for going to the garden centre shop assistant and not the boss as
you do when buying plants. He then makes
an awful palm-tree related joke which I won’t repeat, but you can guess.
Evolve got six items for £311 with no falcon hood or tiles
giving fines of £384.16 – which I presume is for the tiles, else those are some
very well dressed falcons – leaving their total spend at £695.16.
Endeavour got four items (plant, kandura, frankincense and
flag) and ‘negotiated a whole lot better’ but their kandura was wrong: modern
and not traditional, so they therefore had five fails, spending £783.36 (we’re
not told what they spent and what was fines though). Endeavour win by £90 and get a genuinely good
treat in the form of LOVELY BOOZE!
Hooray! Jordan manages to save
his glee for outside the boardroom this time.
There is flirting between Luisa and Jordan – who were
rumoured to be this year’s couple – and Francesca and Jason, which seems…
unlikely. But then cocktails will do
that to you.
Over at NotLoserCafe (where’s the Bridge café these days?)
Neil thinks their strategy was wrong and Leah thinks the entire problem is Zee. Kurt is pissed off because Zee doesn’t know
anything and he’ll probably get brought in for getting centimetres and inches
wrong. Zee thinks the other sub-team are
at fault for only getting two items (as did his sub-team), one of which was
wrong – even though it was the item that required ‘local knowledge’ so should
maybe have been on his shopping list instead.
Sralan lies that if they found one item more they’d have won
because they were better negotiators.
Surely depends on which item?
Sralan tells them off for not going to the mall and Leah says she tried
to but Zee told her not to. Sralan tells
her to ignore him – oh Sralan, half the time you berate candidates for
undermining their PMs. Zee snaps that
the other sub-team got one item and Leah reminds him he got TWO despite his ‘regional
knowledge’. Zee asks what the other team
members did and puts his hand up in Leah’s face which she snaps at. Nick says Leah’s sub-team is full of fighting
spirit and Natalie and Kurt don’t really say anything. We then revisit the tiny flag and Zee
actually looks kind of proud of it. Who
was responsible? Alex says Zee, Zee
whines that everyone is saying he is wrong and ‘the sub-team’s effort was under
par’.
Leah asks him why he didn’t acknowledge he was unsure and
just said he had a bit of local knowledge but didn’t know everything. Oh Leah, as if any acknowledgement of
weakness is in Zee’s capability. He’s
one of those Scrappy Doo types. He gets
all offended by this ‘A BIT of local knowledge?
I LIVED THERE.’ He decides to
bring back Leah for the failure of the sub-team and after Neil staring at him so
hard he brings back Natalie because he and Kurt were booking appointments in
the car. Natalie goes mental and says
she was trying to do that and he wouldn’t let her.
So, Zee sexism-gate then… Is he sexist? I suspect he is and certainly there is plenty
in this episode that would suggest that in the way he treats Natalie especially. But I think it’s the sexism of ignorance - i.e.
just not realising women exist to be useful in any way - rather than his consciously
hating on women. I also think he’s just
got so used to being with Kurt and Neil and trying to join their cool gang that
he would never dare offend them. The
team shuffles felt a bit late coming this series which probably didn’t help. Natalie’s fury at him seemed pretty heartfelt
and I suspect there have been tensions behind the scenes or on tasks outside of
the footage we see.
Sralan sends them out and points out that all Leah does is
accuse Zee of being a bullshitter. Nick
says they fell out right from the start.
Sralan hopes Natalie has a lot to say for herself. Karren says she says more than she does. NotFrances sends them in and Zee lets the
door shut in Natalie’s face, which gets a curt ‘don’t bother about the door.’ Sralan says he asked for people to be
brought in for the right reasons and wonders why Natalie is here. Zee says she didn’t contribute much or take
initiative but is ‘lovely to be around, don’t get me wrong’. He said Kurt made an error and Natalie said
that lost them the task. So didn’t. But she then goes into uber-maul mode and
berates him for not listening to her, not letting her have the yellow pages and
asks him if he has a problem with women after bringing them both back and calls
him chauvanistic.
Zee tells her to ‘calm down’ although doesn’t add the ‘dear’
as I thought he might. Leah says that
there is some merit in that. Zee snaps
that he respects her but she got the kandura wrong. She says that was Neil and he hasn’t even
bothered to have a go at Neil, which causes Natalie to tear back into him. Zee says Leah was the sub-team leader and
forced herself into that. Leah says two
men made key errors but he still brought back to women. Zee says he made her sub-team leader and
Natalie says he didn’t have a choice. Leah
says all she’s done in the process whilst Sralan says she was weak on this
task. He says she has indecision, which
seems a bit harsh as she did decide to go to the mall but her PM told her not
to.
Sralan reads from Zee’s REZ-HOO-MAY and says he doesn’t like
criticism. Zee thinks this is good and
completely normal, especially if people don’t have your respect. Sralan says he comes across as pretty
arrogant and that travellers should uphold modesty in Dubai ‘well they must
have loved you there’ and then says Zee was fired from Phones4U. Zee says he was their top salesman EVER (and
got fired anyway?). Jennifer Maguire
laughs in his face at this. BEST
SALESWOMAN IN EUROPE BITCHES.
Sralan says Natalie shows passion in the boardroom but not
on tasks, she says she does. Both say
Zee is responsible.
Sralan says Zee thinks too much of himself but clearly has a good business and everyone else seems
to be against him. He hopes Leah hasn’t
used personality against him. Natalie
gets the fire-tease for it being ‘regretful’ she’s back in the boardroom, but
she has shown him some passion so she gets a last chance. Zee’s business plan is for international
trading but he’s shown he can’t deal internationally and the failure of the
task was his fault, so he’s fired.
Natalie cries what look like tears of relief and she and Leah march past
Zee without even really looking at him never mind hugging or shaking hands.
Coatwatch: black, high-collared, like the big boys
wear. Zee says his name will go down in
history although he’s not exactly sure why?
Fifth most annoying contestant on the UK Apprentice, maybe?
Back at the house, Luisa asks why Natalie got brought in and
Kurt says she was criticised for not doing much. There is relief at Leah and Natalie returning
and Leah says Lord Sugar thought Zee brought back the wrong people. Kurt says ‘do you mean me and Neil?’ Leah says yes, and Neil nods as if he agrees,
which is interesting given the lack of humility he’s shown so far.
Are we in for a REDEMPTION ARC, people?
I think we may be.
Next week! They
organise corporate away days. Oh my
days, best task ever? I was convinced
this series would be awful given the diminishing returns of the show lately but
I think it’s turning out to be the best one in a while, certainly the best since
series six. Anyway, join Steve then!
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