The Apprentice 2011: Episode 7 by shoutingatco.ws
Thirty years after it stopped being the home of newspapers, Fleet Street is still seen as the, er, home of newspapers. The teams head there to be given this week’s task. They’ll be making free (or to the sods in the industry, “Freemium”) magazines, and flogging ad space. They’re given generic advice by a guru, and set off to create the next Pick Me Up.
“Miss your deadlines and the printing presses will run without you”
Logic’s PM Natasha decides to create a lads’ mag. Tom writes “boobs” and “nacked girls” on the whiteboard, proving that he’s got 95% of the content wrapped up already. For the other 5%, they just need to steal some jokes off Twitter, and they’re set. To keep Suralan happy, they’re going with a business twist. FTSE with tits. They want a classy feel, so title the mag “Covered”, which makes it sound more like a burka and nun special.
“How do you blow your load?”
Venture and Jim roll with the non-student Countdown-watching market, and find out that the oldies are more interested in articles about bungee jumping and skiing than knitting patterns and crosswords. “Pension Mention” is Glenn’s superb title contribution. Susan doesn’t like the final choice – “Hip Replacement” – because, y’know, it’s pointing out that they’re falling apart. Exactly what their focus group didn’t want. We hate the sub-title, “Out with the old… in with the new”, which really just implies “sod off and die, gramps”.
Logic runs a photo-shoot with an underwear-clad lovely (that’s Emma Frain, tit fans – Ed), inexplicably in specs and a hard-hat, and playing with a surfboard. Venture features some old people twatting about on a pushbike, as though Last of the Summer Wine had never been cancelled. Susan tries her best to produce some young and sexy-looking images from this madness.
Covered’s editorial team goes out to bother the public, asking them the awful “How do you blow your load?” question. Sadly, nobody takes the bait and answers “on a hooker’s face”. Tom doesn’t like the question, but Natasha steamrolls over him once again. Jim’s taken all the fun and irony out of Hip Replacement, turning it into something bleak, joyless and destined to be ignored in a dentist’s waiting room for years to come.
Day Two, and the teams head out to pitch to three advertising firms.
For Covered, Natasha offers thirty five pages of ads for the bargain price of £103,000. Jim refuses to negotiate with them on any level, which thrills nobody.
In the second pitch, Leon’s every word is finished by Natasha (and irritatingly punctuated with “yeah”, as though she’s on Made In Chelsea), and they agree to a rate of £1,500 per page. Jim agrees to £2,000, which’ll give Alan something to gripe about later. “Why did they get £500 more than you, eh? EH? ANSWER ME THAT, YOU USELESS BASTARDS.”
In the final pitch, Natasha’s “blow your load” slogan is torn to shreds for the über-90s, sub-Loaded, Men Behaving Badly-style garbage that it is. Hip Replacement, they’re told, looks like a Viz parody. It’s not looking promising for anyone, really. Except maybe that old man at the bowls club who really liked Viz.
The Boardroom
Oh God, Alan spits out the line “how to blow your load”, which is an image that nobody needs. He is impressed with Leon’s feature on making money from selling rubbish, which is a reference to last week’s show, rather than blah blah, Amstrad joke.
Bizarrely, the advertisers preferred Covered, with one offering to pad the entire thing with ads for £60,000 – a task winning amount.
Jim immediately blames the loss on the terrible title, which he loved up until eight seconds ago, and therefore it’s all Zoe’s fault. Susan points out that she had always hated it, and Jim shouts at her for not objecting enough. That’s why she doesn’t speak up, sodhole, you scream at her every time!
Christ, Glenn wrote a feature on how to make a phone call. That’s amazing.
Jim’s goodwill is wearing out very quickly, as he refuses to accept responsibility for anything and picks on Susan’s difficulty in making her voice heard. The advertising team that Jim refused to negotiate with decided not to buy any space, which is somehow Susan’s fault. Hewer pipes up and quotes Susan’s repeated attempts at getting Jim to negotiate. Nick really doesn’t like him. Nick is right, he’s a humourless, manipulative, bullying shit.
However, Lord Sugar waves his arbitrary process wand, and brooding, ugly Glenn is… fired. Fired because Alan doesn’t work well with engineers. Clearly Glenn has been an engineer longer than he’s been on the gameshow, so they should have rooted him out during the auditions, but fuck it, Jim’s more obnoxious and therefore more entertaining, so he lives on.
Next week: Pillocks purchasing products from perplexed Parisians.
Related Posts
Recent Posts
Television Recaps
Comments
Leave a Reply
© 2012
Well, yeah. Natasha won, yeah. So she’s brilliant, yeah? And not in any way a crappy PM who didn’t listen to the focus group, didn’t listen to her team, and tried to pitch a title in a crowded and declining market just because “porn sells”, yeah? Oh, and she was all over Leon about his dodgy first pitch. That’d be the one which won them the task, eh?
Jim needs to go soon. But please, please, please can we lose Natasha first?
http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/06/16/the-apprentice-sex-sells-as-logic-have-their-bases-covered/
I have decided that Jim is Sith, rather than Jedi. He uses his powers for evil.
Susan appears to be some kind of business idiot-savant. Will they listen to her next week? I doubt it.
Argh! Natasha is just awful. Jim is on the verge of a proper meltdown. But most importantly, Tom won again.
But why haven’t we heard their BLADDY BIZNISS ideas yet?
Poor Glenn, he totally didn’t deserve to go this week. Zoe should have, mostly because she’s a horrible bully that utterly failed last week. So Zoe to go next, or Natasha, because she’s an annoying cow too, yeah? Why are 90% of the women on The Apprentice always horrendous?
Agreed that Jim is getting more and more creepy, but if I was Lord Shugs I’d rather have him on my side than against me!
P.S. – Glenn isn’t ugly, with some slight facial tweaks that made him look less ogre-ish he’d be quite good-looking! Him and Zoe though, didn’t see that one coming…