Category: reality tv

Despite a loss, Lucinda managed to impress some people on her team as project manager in The Apprentice UK Series 4 Episode 5. Those most unimpressed were given the blame for losing the task, and Lindi was fired. Claire, meanwhile, bounced back from being thrown out of Sir Alan’s boardroom and led her team to victory.

The teams will be entering the greeting card business. Sir Alan appoints Michael as project manager and moves him over to Alpha. Kevin is appointed team leader of Renaissance. A good chance to get to know two of the more under the radar players thus far.

Michael’s idea is to have greeting cards for plastic surgery. Where do we start with what’s wrong with that concept?

Sara wants to again go with what she’s familiar with, rather than what the general public will be interested in buying. She eventually comes up with a pets idea, which has potential, but now Jenny’s got her sights set on her. Alex is just sitting in the middle letting them have their cat fight.

When they arrive at the card shop, the idea of supporting the environment comes up as something that they don’t sell yet. That’s either because it’s really stupid, or just nobody has tapped into it yet. Jenny really pushes for the environmental idea, and that’s what they decide to go with.

Claire believes Kevin is a pitbull terrier. He bites quite easily, is quite arrogant, too serious, and has a Napoleon complex.

Raef comes up with an idea of a singles’ day, sort of an un-Valentine’s card.

Because he does pitches over the phone, Michael doesn’t want to make the presentation to an audience. Everybody else is up for it. He chooses Raef to make the presentation.

Kevin asks his team for their input as to whether they’re confident about their ability to do the pitch. He gets suggestions of Claire and Jenny… and ignores them, deciding he’ll do it himself instead.

The irony of using a card made out of paper to preach about the environment isn’t lost on Margaret.

Helene still hates Lucinda. Not that she likes anybody else either.

Michael doesn’t know whether the word singles has an apostrophe in it. So he starts making some calls. He tries some editors. Then he tries the British Library. Ever heard of Google? The person he finally gets an answer from apparently has, deciding that there is no apostrophe in the word. So then they talk to someone else and get a different answer. Granted, I don’t know how thrilled he’d be that NSD stands for Nuclear Safety Directorate, in addition to this new National Singles’ Day acronym. After three and a half hours, Michael finally makes the call to put an apostrophe after the s.

Kevin’s team is concerned about him giving the pitch because he’s too boring. When they arrive to check out the work he’s been doing for the past 6 hours, he tells them to take a look, but once again lets them know their opinion doesn’t really matter. Having spent all that time on the card, Kevin hasn’t started his pitch. Not that he could have because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about anyway. He wants his space. They hope he doesn’t go nuts. Kevin eventually realizes he’s not qualified to make this pitch, and he asks Claire if she can do it, though Claire suggests Jenny. Jenny’s not interested because Kevin dragged his feet all day. He agrees to do it.

The first stop for Alpha is Clinton Cards, Britain’s biggest card chain. Raef will pitch National Singles’ Day, scheduled for February 13. The buyer is unimpressed with the date selection, as at that time, Valentine’s Day is taking up 40% of their stores.

Next up is #2 in the greeting card business, supermarket Tesco. Tesco also doesn’t like the date, or for that matter anything about the concept.

With that in mind, Michael decides to remove the date from the pitch.

Lastly, they will pitch to the Celebrations Group. One of the questions asked is: do you have a date in mind? Raef can’t backpedal out of this one, but Lee is able to give a somewhat reasonable answer.

It’s Kevin’s turn to pitch the environmental concept. Clinton’s doesn’t get what the motivation is. Jenny points out that she’s buying less cards because of the environmental impact the paper has. Is that supposed to help?

Celebrations also doesn’t understand the idea of buying paper cards to save the environment.

Claire gives Kevin some advice to help him seem less angry and hostile.

Their last chance is Tesco. It doesn’t appear that Tesco is opposed to the idea.

The team is pleased with Michael’s leadership. Nick is also pleased… but not thrilled with the four hour long debate over the apostrophe. Michael corrects him and says it was more like three hours.

Tesco’s bought 6,000 cards from Renaissance but only 1,500 from Alpha. Clinton’s didn’t buy from Renaissance but did buy 1,500 from Alpha. Celebrations didn’t buy anything from Renaissance, but they bought 19,500 from Alpha. Alpha wins quite easily. Both sides got their best results from pitches that were more well thought out, but it took each of them two of the three tries to figure it out. Even with the win, Sir Alan isn’t happy with Michael’s “outburst” of celebration, and Margaret looks shocked. Despite the win, Michael seems to have sunk himself in this boardroom.

Clinton Cards found Kevin’s pitch dreadful and that he was cocky and preaching.

Jenny blames the alleged lack of ideas from others for causing her to come up with the lame idea she did come up with. This leads to an argument with Sara, who was coming up with a lot better ideas than what Jenny shoved down Kevin’s throat.

Claire believes Sara should be fired. Kevin also sides against Sara. He will be bringing back Sara and Claire. Jenny, who had the bad idea to begin with and made the stupid comment at Clinton’s about how she doesn’t buy as many cards any more because of her environmental conscience, is allowed to escape.

Kevin brought Claire back because she didn’t recognize that the product wasn’t good for the marketplace. Sir Alan lets him know he would have understood more if he brought Jenny back.

Kevin blames the bad idea, not the pitch. Somehow that means that Sara should be fired. He defends Jenny for working very hard and being very creative to come up with the idea that cost them the task. Sir Alan suggests Jenny railroaded Kevin into the theme.

He may have had a prayer if he brought Jenny back, but with the two he decided to bring back, resistance was futile, and Kevin has been fired.

The fireworks aren’t done there, though. When the surviving contestants return to the loft, much arguing ensues over the decision.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 7.

Simon told Sir Alan that he was more than just a physical worker but was unable to prove it in The Apprentice UK Series 4 Episode 4, resulting in his firing. In a pitiful victory, Helene proved she’s also not going to win the job, though she squeaked out another week. Letting Claire know she’s on thin ice, Sir Alan threw her out of the boardroom and told her he’s sick of looking at her.

Sir Alan rings the doorbell when everybody is sleeping. He wants Kevin to move (back) to Renaissance. As discussed last week, Renaissance’s project manager will be Claire. Since Lucinda has proven useless on more than one task (though in each case she had incompetent project managers), she will be the project manager for Alpha.

The task is to visit farms that make ice cream. They’ll develop flavors of ice cream to expand their business into London.

Claire’s first order of business is to tell people that she realizes she can be overpowering so they should reel her in. Jenny’s got an interesting but not particularly good concept of various liquor flavors.

Helene still hates Lucinda for proving last week that Helene isn’t a manager.

Renaissance will be making three flavors: berry mania (blueberries, strawberries, and cherries), chocolate orange, and cider/eldeflower. They’re warned they’ll need to buy and hand squeeze about 50 oranges for the chocolate orange flavor, which can be very laborious but will deliver a good flavor.

Alpha’s having difficulty coming up with their flavors. They go with cosmopolitan, toffee apple, and avocado.

Now that they’ve got their flavors, they must drum up business for a local taste testing before bringing the products to London to sell to stores and bars.

Margaret likes Lucinda, who lets her team know what she needs but isn’t a dictator. She even seems to be getting along with Helene.

After they set up the taste tests, the next job is to book appointments. Jennifer is focusing on independent cinemas and manages to score multiple bookings.

At 6:15pm, Claire’s team finally returns with their ingredients, which were necessary to complete any more than just the berry flavor. This gives them just two hours to prepare for the tasting session, which they haven’t invited anybody to yet.

Lucinda’s team is finishing up with their production at about 7:50. The cosmopolitan fails to make any impact. People like the avocado with a hint of a chili, the strangest ice cream flavor I’ve ever heard of. Toffee apple also gets the thumbs up. Good thing they only wanted to pick two.

Renaissance is still in the kitchen and 30 minutes late for their tasting. Michael decides to head into the local pub because they still don’t have anybody to taste their ice cream. The guy he gets isn’t so sure how discerning his pallette will be since he’s drunk.

Although alpha is booked with appointments, Renaissance only has two guaranteed appointments setup, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Alex is particularly unimpressed by the sales team that’s only been able to get two appointments having worked on it all day.

Jennifer is reluctant to give away appointments she’s made to the other half of her team. One appointment she does give them is at an ice cream parlour, where the guy makes his own ice cream. Lindi’s response is that, even if they have their own ice cream maker, they’re still going to buy.

Renaissance believes they’ve gotten a break. One cinema house has 18 cinemas, and they have another meeting setup to see whether they can sell them across all of them.

The other team, however, has a meeting with the same cinema chain, but they were able to secure a meeting with the head buyer already. At this meeting, they agree to buy 100 liters. Afterwards, Alex gets a call breaking the bad news that they won’t be able to purchase any ice cream from them.

Their door-to-door strategy due to lack of appointments has only managed to move 30 liters. Claire’s last hope is her second pre-booked appointment. All they’re able to get there is an agreement to fill their fridge one time. Nick thinks the shop is perfect despite the small order, but it’s too bad they didn’t have one of those orders every hour.

Lucinda isn’t happy with her poor leads from the other half of the team, so she takes a different direction and gets an order from a specialty restaurant that was just about to change its menu. Lee thinks she’s been brilliant and that she is clearly a manager.

The other half of her team gets an order of 130 liters at the agreement that this will be a timed exclusive for their pub of three months.

It’s looking like this is going to be a blowout, but there’s one last glimmer of hope at a trendy bar and grill for Renaissance. This place makes their own food but is willing to buy ice cream if it’s at a discount. It’s a nice 200 liter deal.

Jennifer and Raef downplay Lucinda’s contribution.

Jenny and Michael are pleased with Claire’s performance. In the boardroom, Jennifer is happy that Lucinda was positive for a change, but she refuses to compliment her.

Sir Alan thinks it’s funny that half of the appointments that Alpha booked were with people who made their own ice cream. He’s not surprised that this was a waste of time.

Lucinda points out that she considered mixing up her teams. Sir Alan thinks this is a great idea. She didn’t do it, though, as she didn’t want to make people unhappy since their response was negative. Jennifer, with her guilty conscience, speaks up to say she wasn’t negative.

Alpha had total orders of £1,273.64. Renaissance had £1,455.45. Based on the editing, this is not what I was expecting at all, though when I heard Alpha’s flavors, I wasn’t expecting them to have much luck. The last deal, netting £800, was the difference.

Sir Alan and his advisors are happy that Claire seems to be a changed person. Renaissance is happy to see Jennifer, Raef, and Lindi’s bragging fall short of what they’d promised.

Lee doesn’t like that people didn’t complain about the team until the boardroom. Helene was impressed with Lucinda. Now she’s set her sights on a new target: Jennifer.

Sir Alan wants to know who was the main opposition to reassigning the teams. Lucinda starts to give an answer, but just decides to sum it up in one word. Jennifer. She follows that up by saying that Helene said some bad things about Jennifer. Helene interrupts and says Lucinda is lying and that she doesn’t need anyone to speak for her and that, if she was going to be uncomfortable working with anybody, it would have been Lucinda.

Jennifer offered exclusivity to the cinema chain, without being asked, which had not been discussed prior to the appointment. Jennifer’s response is that Lindi offered exclusivity for the pub, which was only for three months and only when asked, but Sir Alan considers even that to be too much. After these exclusivity appointments, they had to cancel others because of the agreements. Had Sir Alan known about this, he would have voided the exclusive sales, which would have brought them down to almost nothing.

Lucinda wants to bring back Jennifer and Lindi.

Sir Alan’s concerned about Lucinda’s lack of control over her marketing team. He’s also concerned about Lindi’s leadership of her marketing team. Nick feels a chill between Jennifer and everybody else but thinks she’s a good salesperson.

Lucinda and Jennifer want each other fired. After a long-winded response, Lindi wants Jennifer fired based on the task but Lucinda fired overall (well, at least I think that’s what she was going to say, but Jennifer didn’t let her finish).

Because she was second in command in and in charge of the sales team (and also less likely to cause drama than Jennifer), Lindi is fired. In her application, Jennifer says that one of her worst qualities is giving idiots a second chance. With that in mind, Sir Alan’s decided to give her a second chance.

In closing, we get some parting shots at Jennifer. Michael’s not a big fan at all. Alex thinks she’s a wannabe ice queen.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 6.