Ten things about... Week 3 - Cross-Channel Discount Buying
1. Kissing in the blue dark, playing pool and wild darts, video games - We learned some interesting things about the group dynamics during this week's task, but perhaps the most telling interaction of all happened before the task even started. While the candidates were lounging around and waiting to receive instructions, the men of Versatile (presumably trying to offset the absolute Grindr-ness of their team name) sat around playing FIFA in the most #masc way possible. All of them, that is, apart from Richard (who was quietly sat by himself reading) and Sam (who was nowhere to be seen, but was probably upstairs tinkering with the script to his one-man show). It's #ladzontour this year, basically. God help us all. (Also throughout this section Joseph was apparently cosplaying as Super Mario, I don't really know what's going on there.)
2. Channel hopping - Despite Selina's hope that the teams would be mixed up again this week after the abject failure of Connexus last week (translation: Selina was really hoping there was a chance she wouldn't have to work with Charleine again), Lord Sugar decided to keep the men and women split for the time being. He didn't show up in person to announce the task (very busy and important, you know) but informed them that to add a bit of variation to the usual "source these items" task, this year Lord Sugar split it between two countries - half of each team would be sent to Calais and the surrounding area and the rest would remain on the Kent coast. The general impression I got was that success here would be dictated by the PM who was able to correctly deduce which items to buy in which country, but Connexus PM Vana arbitrarily divided the items between the two subteams and informed them that she did not intend to switch. She then instructed them all that it was important not to get along and not be catty. Spoiler: this will be important later.
3. Mind your language - Sam and Richard were selected for Versatile's French subteam because they claimed to be able to speak French at least a little bit. Joseph also went, presumably because he's PM and he wanted the jolly, and David went to make up the numbers. As we learned from series seven and Melody's market research about French people's use of their automobiles, you cannot automatically assume that someone who is translating for you is accurately reporting the situation. In Melody's case, of course, she was twisting the facts to suit her own agenda, whereas in Sam's case, it turns out that his A Level French wasn't quite refined enough to grasp the difference between "I can order you a mirror" and "I actually have a mirror", meaning that he dragged the entire team to an antiques shop looking for a mirror that was not actually there, and then made sure the owner got the blame for the misunderstanding afterwards. Over on Connexus, PM Vana went to France for much the same reason as Joseph, I assume, along with April (who speaks at least a bit of French), Selina (who at least knew a few words), and Natalie (Gallic shrug).
4. Say cheese - Every so often we encounter a tertiary villain-of-the-week on The Apprentice who instantly endears themselves to us by fucking with the candidates just because they can. Obviously the gold standard will always be the woman from the bus tour task in series six who basically convinced Chris Bates to give her half their profits if she let him sell tickets in her office, but the sneaky fromagier who served as the gatekeeper of the Maroilles cheese in this episode was definitely up there with the best. He played hardball with Connexus, only allowing Natalie to negotiate a 30 cent discount (also they bought the wrong one anyway, only buying a quarter-piece instead of the designated whole) - however, his best work was done with Versatile, when Richard went in and attempted to charm him into offering his best price. Sneaky Fromagier offered him the block of cheese for 15€. Richard negotiated 20c off this price, and turned to crow to the others that he was down to 14.80€ already - at which point David pointed out to him that 14.80€ was the price listed on the counter, so all he'd done was negotiate his way down from an overpayment to the list price. We salute you, Sneaky Fromagier.
5. Sail of the century - Connexus spent a lot of their time in one shop by the marina in Dover where Charleine originally went in search of a four kilo anchor. The nice woman who ran it told her that she would have some anchors in later for £13.50, and Charleine rather charmingly got her down to £12.50. When they returned to pick it up, Charleine asked if the woman had another item from their list - an inflatable boat, minimum size 1.5m. The woman had a 2.3m boat for £259, which Charleine and Elle (as UK subteam leader) agreed was too expensive. Having had no luck at all, they went back later and asked if they could get it cheaper. The woman agreed to drop it down to £250, while Elle was hoping more for £200. They decided not to go for it, and were driving away just as Vana rang and told them to just buy it, so Elle had to go back in and grudgingly pay £250 for it...just as Gary was buying a toy inflatable boat of the correct size for £10. Whoops.
6. Selina is amazing - Sometimes it takes me a while to truly grow to love an Apprentice contestant, but I am fully aboard the Selina train right now. Some of her highlights from this episode include: a torrent of Year 8 French trying to convince someone to sell her some snails (see below), huffing at Vana for making them go all the way to Boulogne just for some cheese, ripping apart Vana's total absence of strategy every chance she got, and stoking up the fire of her bizarre feud with Charleine, which had the knock-on effect of making Charleine pull crazyrageface repeatedly in the boardroom. Seriously, just look at some of the quotes below and try to tell me you don't think Selina is amazing.
7. The Brady crunch - Karren, meanwhile, reached previously unattained levels of uselessness this week. When Jenny attempted to buy some mussels from a restaurant, and was told by the waitress that the chef was not willing to sell them because 10 kilos of mussels was their entire stock, and selling it to them would mean taking it off their menu. Karren decided that this was badly handled by Jenny, because she should have asked to speak to the chef or the manager personally, and if she'd done that she'd probably have her 10 kilos of mussels right now. Or! She'd still have no mussels, and she'd just have wasted another 20 minutes, because maybe the chef/manager would prioritise having food to serve in his restaurant over selling it to randoms. Clearly since Karren became a Tory peer she doesn't believe in taking the word of anyone who works a minimum wage job. In the boardroom, Karren also laid into Elle for not following her gut instinct that told her not to buy the boat, when a) THE PROJECT MANAGER LITERALLY INSTRUCTED HER TO DO IT and b) even if they'd not bought the boat and just taken the fine for returning without it, the chasm between what the men spent overall (£409.21) and what the women spent overall (£725.90) was so vast that it's hardly likely that overspending on the boat made any difference in the grand scheme of things - not getting the mirror and the mussels hurt them just as badly. Then when Selina and Charleine started fighting and pulling each other's hair in the middle of the boardroom, Karren sneered at Vana "I don't know why you're laughing." BECAUSE IT IS FUNNY, KARRRRRREN. Basically I'm inclined to just ignore everything Karren says for the rest of the series because she seems mostly to speak for the sake of speaking right now.
8. Dicking around - After his success in the advertising task last week, this episode was all about the subtle deflating of Richard. Joseph made it his personal mission to take the wind out of Richard's sails as much as possible because he'd become utterly unbearable. It seemed to work, since the inevitable "Good team leader?" moment in the boardroom lead to Richard grumbling that actually he didn't think Joseph had been that great, and that actually he wished (UK subteam leader) Brett had been PMing the whole thing. I'm all for this becoming a full-on feud, but Selina and Charleine have got such a headstart at this point that they're going to have to get their arses in gear if they don't want to be left behind entirely.
9. Quotes of the week - Elle: "Where's Dover? I know it's on the coast, but what coast? Maybe we're going to Ireland!"
Joseph: "Selling is negotiation, but the other way around."
Brett, spotting a field of free manure: "Ahh, mate! Look at that shit!"
Vana, buying cheese, getting philosophical and making things up on the spot: "It’s about the milk, guys. Whole milk. It’s not about the actual whole piece. Cos if you think about it, any cheese could be a whole piece."
Richard: "I want to be the charming, bumbling English guy." Well, three out of four isn't bad.
Elle, shovelling manure: "I've never seen a cow look at me like I'm a mug before."
Selina, right after Vana informs her that Natalie's been trying much harder than her to source the mirror: "What were you saying earlier about not being catty?"
Elle, going back to the boat shop for the fourth time: "This woman's going to think we're mental."
Selina, negotiating for escargots: "J'ai très faim! Mon chien est mort! Mon père est mort! Ma mère est morte! Por favor - no, not por favor, s'il vous plaît!"
Charleine, twitching with fury: "Selina, d'you not think that maybe rather than being a morale vacuum...?"
Selina, with a smirk straight out of Once Upon A Time: "Obviously Vana is culpable for this. If I was project manager, this shit wouldn't have happened."
Elle on the art of the deal: "Imagine going into a shop and trying to negotiate when you’ve been back in there four times. It’s not a great way to start a deal, to be honest."
10. Jenny on the block - Because this is week three, traditionally a time when the fired candidate is someone of negligible importance, Vana escaped despite her disastrous PMing and instead Jenny was fired for not bringing anything to the table. Vana went for the interesting boardroom strategy of actually taking the blame for 90 per cent of what went wrong, and Lord Sugar gave her the ANTM-worthy aesop that she should start looking out for number one in future. That's right folks, this show actively endorses blaming others for your own fuck-ups. Best of all, Vana and Elle (the other candidate in the final boardroom) then went back to the house and told them that they needed to stand by their mistakes - the exact opposite of what Lord Sugar had just told them. I don't know if this was strategy - I don't think either Elle or Vana is crafty enough to pull this off, so I'm inclined to think not - but if it was, it is genius.
Next week: showjumping bunnies!
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