We kick off this episode with some violin music, because Lord Siral is dragging his Apprenti to Wilton's Music hall, London's oldest Victorian music hall. The Apprentice has always liked to introduce a task by talking about an old thing and establishing a tenuous link to a new thing, and the modern equivalent of a Victorian music hall is apparently YouTube. We now get to watch Lord Siral, a man who didn't full understand computers when he ran a computer company and who is responsible for the Amstrad Emailer, explain YouTube to a group of mostly twenty-somethings. Karen Brady seems unusually irritated by his performance for some reason.
Happy to be here
The teams job is to set up YouTube channels and the winner will be the team that gets the most hits in 48 hours. Jemma is moved to team Summit, because she hasn't done anything for four weeks except put on her lipstick. Lord Siral has realised that when he makes suggestions people don't realise they're actually orders and so he decides that the Project Managers will be Solomon for Team Summit, because he knows about the Internet and stuff and Ella-Jade for Team Tenacity because she wants to be a documentary film maker.
At the Team Tenacity brainstorming session, Pamela says she did a great video at work involving rugby players and hand cream, which is already starting to sound suspiciously euphemistic so Ella-Jade rapidly moves rapidly on. Pamela is less than happy and this dismissal will colour her and Ella-Jade's interaction for the rest of the task. This is a bit of a problem because apart from the fact that Pamela has slightly wavy hair, she and Ella-Jade can only be distinguished from one another by the accents. So we're now stuck watching two basically identical women argue, like a pair of identical twins at a family reunion. Ella-Jade says her strategy is to be herself. Maybe she was worried that she might accidentally be Pamela.
Katie, apparently, already has a YouTube channel showing fitness videos. Is there any aspect of life she doesn't have experience with already? Last week it was home smells, this week it's YouTube. Felipe suggests that as the least un-fat and oldest member of the team he could play "Fat Daddy", attempt to get fit and bring some comedy. Lauren and Daniel are worried that this may be offensive to fat people. Though if we remove all the potentially offensive videos from YouTube we're pretty much left with a logo, and that'll probably be taken down soon.
Ella-Jade doles out tasks. Felipe and Katie will be on camera, she will direct with Pamela acting a first AD, or something. Lauren will take charge of the sub-team who will be responsible for editing and other miscellaneous tasks that we will get to later. Sarah is put in charge of timing, because she's "very organised". Which sounds a bit like giving the special needs kid the stop watch on sports day because you can't trust them to run in the right direction.
Over at Team Summit, the team wants to do something funny involving food. Solomon is thinking of reaction videos to people eating odd-looking things and has come up with the name "Gut Reaction." Someone is worried that word 'gut' may be offensive. Between this and Team Tenacity worrying that they may offend fat people, I think this year's Apprenti may be too timid for the Internet.
James' magnificent physique
In the end, Solomon puts Roisin and James, wearing an apron, a chef's hat, a funny accent and very little else, in front of the camera. Roisin's job is essentially to present a fairly dry life style video about cookery while James jumps up behind her with plastic fangs and generally gets in the way. The team think this is hilarious, but their sense of humour may have been stunted from too much exposure to Lord Siral's boardroom jokes.
There really isn't much I can add to this
Meanwhile, at Team Tenacity, Ella-Jade is trying to direct. Pamela thinks she is doing a terrible job and that she assumed that someone who wants to be a documentary film-maker would know how to make films. Though, to be fair, it's probably quite hard to make a film while you pissed-off doppelganger yells across you. Karen Brady, who started the episode in a bad mood, now looks solidly fed up to be there.
There may be something in Pamela's complaints, though. For their second video the team put Felipe and Katie along side a personal trainer who, due to lack of clear direction, seems to think his job is to abuse Felipe to his face. It's one thing to refer to yourself as 'fat daddy' in a self-deprecating way, and quite another when an obviously fitter, younger man calls you that as you lie on the floor exhausted and gasping for air. Karen reckons that the whole thing is "quite cruel", which coming from someone who works closely with Lord Siralan is really saying something.
For the following day, the teams will be making a video with an established YouTube partner and so the sub-teams are having video conferences with potential collaborators. On other tasks, the teams usually meet their potential partners face to face, but as this is a YouTube task everything has to be done by laptop and the end result is, like most virtual meetings, a bit like shouting at a hobbit through a faulty magic mirror.
Team Tenacity quickly choose a couple of fitness themed comedians, but Team Summit face a dilemma. The team have to choose between Barry, who makes food themed videos and Ollie, a 19 year old the purpose of whose videos is not established, but has twelve and a half million teenage girls watching. Mark favours Barry because of thematic consistency, but Solomon overrules him and goes with the numbers. Mark responds to this by deferring to Solomon's judgement as project manager and resident Internet expert in a calm and professional way. This is the sort of sensible, normal behaviour that usually indicates a megalomaniac who, when he gets to be project manager, will spend the episode bellowing insane orders and demanding respect.
Twelve and a half million teenage girls can't be wrong
The Tenacity sub-team are trying to edit their video, but are struggling because what was supposed to be a comedy fitness video has ended up like something leaked by the US military. Sarah tries to keep the time and when they ignore her, tells them not to blame her when they run over, The team spend so long on the editing that they forget to give their video either a heading or a name. When Ella-Jade calls, Lauren is left apologising, but, naturally, the team decides to blame Sarah, whose role has been expanded to scape-goat.
For the last day the teams will be divided again, with half making a final video with their collaborators while the other half pitches their channel to representative of Buzz Feed in attempt to persuade them to give the channel a mention. Which is not so much begging for scraps as begging for someone to put in a good word for them with the scrap merchant. Ella-Jade doles out individual tasks, but forgets about Sarah. Sarah thinks she is being left out and she's taking it personally. Probably because everyone on the team thinking you're useless is fairly personal.
Tenacity seem to be having a better time filming having gotten rid of Ella-Jade, they're certainly enjoying themselves more. Summit's collaborator, Ollie, is having a competition with James to see who can eat a cream covered banana the fastest. Fortunately, that is in no way a euphemism for anything. Jemma, who we haven't seen much this week or any week, says her job is to manage Ollie. So nothing again. Ollie, seems happy with the final result and promises to mention it on Twitter and his Channel. This could potentially expose a million teenage girls to James in an apron and nothing else. In the current political climate that may be enough to put you on the sex offenders register.
To the surprise of team Summit, Buzz Feed don't find their video funny. One of them thinks it might be better aimed at 8-10 year-olds. Another has written "kill James" on their pad. A few more weeks with Lord Siral and he may be willing to take them up on the offer.
Steven is rehearsing his pitch in the back of a taxi. He's a bit too fond of the phrase "the hardest part of a journey is the first step" and repeats it so often that it looks like the rest of the team are going to strangle him with a seat belt. Steven's over earnest pitching style doesn't go down well with Buzz Feed, especially as he's rapidly using up the Earth's supply of oxygen and still hasn't actually communicated anything.
Buzz Feed do laugh when Felipe introduces himself as "fat daddy" but the laughter dies away as they discover they are essentially watching someone being bullied. Sarah tries to salvage the pitch by claiming it's self-deprecating, which is a defence that more bullies should try. "We weren't bullying him when we flushed his head down the toilet miss, we were self-deprecating him." Sarah suggests a whole fat franchise, 'Fat Mum', 'Fat Sister', 'Fat Dog'. I think when your videos look like torture, the solution isn't to offer to torture many more people.
In the end neither team gets a mention on Buzz Feed. James find this surprising because they built the channel based on what Buzz Feed would like. Which Buzz Feed should probably take as an insult. Solomon feels he let his team down, but did everything he could, which is weirdly self-contradictory.
Back at the boardroom the team's watch both videos. Lord Siral is less than impressed saying that James comes across as a "grade A pillock". Which, to be fair, is true and very much the point. But he does think Solomon made the right choice of collaborators given Ollie's hit rate and the team think Solomon did a good job as project manager.
Lord Siralan doesn't like Fat Daddy at all, thinking Felipe is as fat as James is funny. But he does like the idea of torturing a lawyer, which is pretty much the entire video. If the team had re-named their channel "Lawyer Torture" it would have been a hit. Pamela thinks there was a lack of leadership from Ella-Jade. The team also think that Steven's pitch was terrible. He responds by repeating the first line of it, as though we haven't heard it enough times.
In the end Summit got 3532 views and Tenacity 3314. So Summit wins for the first time and the team are flown off to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. That's a bit odd. If they're flying them out of the country you would think it would be for a task. I'm not convinced it's real. The BBC probably stuck on them on a set they use for Doctor Who. Still, it does allow for gratuitous swim suit shots of the other half of the candidates.
Unconvincing
Back at the cafe Katie thinks that 3,000 views proves their videos weren't offensive. Because the collective response of the online community to offensive material is not to watch it. Ella-Jade is already gunning for Sarah and Steven claiming they didn't contribute. Fair enough for Sarah, but Steven definitely contributed, albeit doing more harm than good. Steven says if he'll highlight all of Ella-Jade's faults and "she'll look like a fool, not me". Steven, I'm sure you can both manage to look like fools.
Back in the boardroom, the team, and Pamela in particular, put the blame on Ella-Jade for a lack of leadership which left them not knowing whether they were making a comedy or serious video. Lord Siralan is less than impressed because in Sugar World, making documentaries is exactly the same as YouTube videos so this task should have been perfect for Ella-Jade.
However, he also wants to know why the video went out without a name or a description and the team blame Sarah. Sarah objects that Lauren was the sub-team leader and all she did was timing, but this just emphasises how little she had to do. Sarah questions why the team don't take her seriously and Katie points out that it's because her week one sales strategy consisted of wearing short skirts and makeup. Honestly, all you do is claim that women are better at sales than men because they look nicer and suddenly no-one takes you seriously as a business woman.
Ella Jade brings back Steven and Sarah because anyone else would eviscerate her in the boardroom. Lord Siralan thinks Ella-Jade is educated but has no experience. Karen, who seems to be in a particularly bad mood this week, says that no-one can be bothered waiting for Steven to get to the point and that although everyone ignores Sarah, it may be because she has nothing to say worth hearing.
Lord Siralan hits Ella-Jade with the claim that she has never had a proper job and isn't impressed by the number of University societies she apparently ran. Unfortunately, in Sugar World, if you weren't paid to do it then it doesn't count. He also wonders if the team are patronising Sarah because she used to be PA. It turns out she also used to be a Hypnotherapist, though that revelation doesn't do wonders for her credibility. She does have a great plan to set up a dating website, but Ella-Jade points out that her experience of the industry consists of going to dating websites.
Lord Siralan turns to Steven, but his pain thresh hold must be very low this week because he's barely offered to be Project Manager next week before Lord Siral boots him out of the door. Steven looks like he's restraining himself from saying something rude. The one time he doesn't have to restrain himself is the one time he does. I'd really like to hear Steven say "well Fuck You Lord Sugar".
But with all these extra candidates no-one is safe. Sarah is booted next because no-one has confidence in her. Sarah thinks Lord Siralan wouldn't have made a good business partner for her. Too late Sarah, Lindsay already pulled off the "you can't fire me I quit" last week. With only Ella-Jade left will Lord Siralan make it a hat-trick for the first time in Apprentice history? Ella-Jade begs him not to, but to no avail, the record is to tempting and she is fired. But with only her dignity left to lose, Ella-Jade pushes out a plane in the amazon jungle without a map, begging for another chance. She's half out the door when she has another go. Lord Siral has to deploy the finger for a second time to get her to leave, making her the first candidate to be fired twice and taking the total firings to four.
Back in the house, the surviving candidates are waiting for three people who will never return. Lord Siralan phones them up to put them out of their misery. I was hoping he might send Francis from reception to let them know. It would be nice to see her out of the office for a change.
Next time: the Apprenti are orded to set up coach tours. Are the program-makers insane? They've done bus tours before, but this relies on finding a group of people willing to spend an extended period of time with the candidates. No wonder they got rid of Steven, if he'd been on board it would have led to a homicide.
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