Dubai, in no way over the top
Last year the Apprentice budget wouldn't stretch to sending the candidates past Edinburgh, but this year we have a proper foreign jaunt to Dubai. I suspect this improvement may have something to do with co-production money. The narrator reckons this is the shopping capital of the world and fails to mention the insane spending on ridiculous vanity projects, the foreign workers with no rights, the obscene levels of inequality or the mental religious laws. But then who cares about that, lets head for the mega malls! Luisa certainly has the right idea and has packed her bikini.
Gratuitous bikini shot
The teams arrive, in a ridiculously over-choreographed car ballet to meet the disembodied head of Lord Siral, who explains that the two teams have a list of items to acquire at the lowest possible costs. The justification for this is that they need to get these for the hotel. A multi-million pound hotel that apparently can't source a pot plant in Dubai. We're not fooled, it's the scavenger hunt! They claim this is a negotiating task, but given the teams have no leverage whatsoever their negotiation tactics essentially boil down to lying or begging. Maybe this is why Luisa packed her bikini?
It's Davros!
Only a small amount of re-shuffling this week as Leah is moved over to team Morse in order to spread the rapidly dwindling cast of women.
Not able to source a coffee pot
Zee has been banging on about how he lived in Dubai for two years and knows the country like the back of his hand. This is in no way setting him up for a fall. The rest of the team are keen to take advantage of his local knowledge, with the exception of Leah who quite fancies being PM herself. When the rest of the team backs Zee she is not happy and quickly appoints herself sub-team leader without consulting Zee. Further conflict ensues when Zee instructs his team to head for the souks where they are more likely to find bargains. Leah ignores him and heads for the nearest mall, essentially because Zee told her not to.
Back with team Evolve and Myles has been put in charge. Though he seems to have given up already after hearing about Zee's local knowledge. His sub-team quickly track down a plant, but he can't even be bothered speaking to the manager and settles for a 15% discount before rushing off to get a flag.
Jason, Jordan and Luisa are wandering around the mall. They pretty quickly track down the kandura, which is traditional Arabic dress, but then stall struggling to find out what the items on the list are, let alone where to get them. In the end Jason takes to accosting random passers by. It looks like Jason may belong to the "'Allo, 'Allo" school of language, believing that if you get the accent right then people will be able to understand you. In the end Jordan has to drag him away before the police are called.
I don't think he works here Jason!
Leah and her team have also arrived at the Mall, but disaster strikes. Zee calls and, when he finds out where they are, insists they head for the souks. When Leah stands her ground he demands to talk to Neil, eventually Leah bottles it and the car turns around.
Not a souk
Myles is waiting around at a flag shop having given up on rushing and having decided to wait while they do the work. Then Zee, Kurt and Natalie waltz in and go straight to the front of the queue having per-ordered their flag in the car. Things are looking bleak for Myles, until Zee's flag in unveiled and turns out to be the size of a tea towel (Nick Hewer thinks napkin, which suggests to me that he must have pretty big hands). Turns out Kurt confused centimetres and inches and Zee's team are stuck waiting for a new flag and paying for one they don't need.
Okay it's smaller than a flag, but definitely bigger than a napkin
Leah's sub-team arrive at the souk and pretty quickly track down a kandura. Neil manages to get it for less than half the price that Myle's team paid and is proud of his negotiating. His tactics seems to consist of speaking in a loud monotone that suggests he might be a psychopath, he also throws in a "very, very rush" just to make sure the shop owner is suitably patronised. I think he just gave him the discount to get him out of the shop.
Unfortunately for Zee, at this point the team stalls. There are always one or two items on the Scavenger hunt that no-one has ever heard of, and the teams can't look them up on the Internet because it doesn't exist in Sugarworld (can't run it on an Amstrad or something). Zee should be of help here with his local knowledge, but he's convinced that the oud the team are searching for is a perfume, but Alex has discovered that that's spelled oudh. Alex is seriously worked up about this, but Zee manages to avoid being labelled a 'silly shit' so he's at least spared Jason's fate.
While we're on the subject of Jason, he Jordan and Luisa aren't having much more luck at the mall. They also think oud is a perfume, but at least they aren't fighting with a project manager who refuses to accept he's wrong. A kindly perfumer informs them that it is, in fact, a musical instrument. The team manage to find it and get a hefty discount.
Perfume-guy plays the air-oud
Back in the car, Zee and Kurt are hard at work trying to source the remaining items. Natalie would be hard at work if Zee would let her get anywhere near the phone. Is there a law in Dubai that women aren't allowed to use mobile phones? The team eventually tracks down a plant and gets it for half price when Zee asks to see the manager. Not that the manager actually shows up, just dropping the name is good enough. Is 'the Manager' a pseudonym of some kind? Is he some kind of Dubai crime lord and the mere mention of his name is enough to secure a discount?
Shut up Natalie!
Back in the boardroom Leah puts the boot in early with Zee. But she may well be right it turns out that Zee's team got some much better discounts, but were only able to track down four of the eight items, and one of those turns out to be wrong. Neil's prided negotiating netted them the wrong k(?) and the team has to pay up the full RRP of the item, as well as the other four they didn't manage to get.
Myles team got six items and manage to secure a win, despite paying much more for the items they did get. Incidentally, this puts paid to the idea that this was a negotiating task, the better negotiators having been beaten by the people who tracked down the items (like in a certain kind of contest that rhymes with bavenger grunt). Local knowledge is defeated by fake tan? Open necked shirts? Defeatism? If I'm honest I'm not sure what Myles leadership brought to the task, except perhaps not being Zee?
Thanks to his boasting, Zee is looking vulnerable. But he has two likely scapegoats: Neil who cocked up the flag measurements and Neil who bought the wrong item. So he brings back Leah and Natalie. I can understand Leah, no-one likes to be insulted to their face, but Natalie's major failing appears to be that Zee didn't let her speak. She's certainly compensating for it now and accuses Zee of blatant sexism. Leah's quite happy to jump on that bandwagon, happy for any excuse to put the boot in.
Natalie loses it...
...and Zee pisses himself
The women don't escape entirely unscathed. Natalie is criticised for failing to show the same level of passion in the task as she does in the boardroom. Leah is in trouble for her insubordination, though, in this case, the problem is that she didn't just ignore Zee out right and go to the Mall because, apparently, the reason Neil bought the wrong kandura is because they didn't go to the Dubai branch of Marks and Spencers.
Zee is pretty much doomed as soon as he steps back in the boardroom. With three women and only one man fired so far, Zee would have to be pretty special to survive. Lord Siral tries to keep up the tension, but to no avail. Zee is given the boot, Natalie and Leah don't even bother to acknowledge him on the way out. Zee still thinks his name will go down in history. Perhaps he's right, Napoleon conquered half of Europe, but he never lasted to week five of a reality TV show did he?
Next Time: The teams run team building events for corporate sponsors which may lead to a bullshit super nova. And Alex dresses in army fatigues, which makes him look like a Third World Dictator.
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