The Apprentice: time to throw in the towel?

I can’t lie.  At this point my weekly column is starting to become a real struggle. Not because I don’t enjoy writing, but because yet again, we’ve been served another extremely disappointing and underwhelming dose of The Apprentice – and quite frankly, what even is there to discuss?

At this point, I think it might be better for Lord Sugar to just completely throw in the towel and put The Apprentice – and its viewers – out of their misery.

The format is tired, the tasks are boring, the candidates are sub-par and this series as a whole is a far cry from my series last year – and an even further cry from the earlier days of the show. It needs to be completely revamped. Please Lord Sugar, breathe some new life into the format before it suffers a cardiac arrest.

This week, the remaining candidates took to the streets of Brighton and Hove as part of the scavenger hunt task in search of nine particular and eclectic items, sourced primarily from second-hand and vintage shops. The goal was to find the correct items while spending the least amount of money  – equipped only with a directory, a map of the local area and a phone.

Financial controller Denisha, who was appointed as project manager for this task by Lord Sugar during last week’s boardroom, took the lead of team Apex while Simba put himself up as PM for team Affinity.

Simba sadly didn’t seem to have so much as a shred of strategy, with teammate Dani taking the reins and ultimately guiding the team to victory. Unsurprisingly, Denisha also didn’t have a clear plan of action – and for some bizarre reason when dividing her team into two groups, delegated four members to be in the sub team, while only tasking them with finding three items – opting for only three candidates to be in the main team (Denisha being one of them) and giving them four items to secure.

Make it make sense, please!

The candidates galivanted around the town searching for the required items, and in typical Apprentice style didn’t have a clue what several of them actually were or even what they looked like – these included desert roses, trugs and palourdes.  And don’t even get me started on their map-reading abilities.

With Denisha’s team Apex sitting in the loser’s café, she chose to bring Mark and Reece back into the boardroom with her. While Lord Sugar was unimpressed with Mark’s performance and Reece’s ‘wild asparagus chase’, he decided to fire Denisha over her poor logistical skills.

I think we all saw that one coming.  Just read last week’s column where I predicted this would be her downfall.  But for the first time so far this series, Lord Sugar definitely did make the right decision. I think he knew she would be a disaster as a PM of a logistical task that required good leadership and strategy, which is why he appointed her PM of this task last week.  She never stood a chance.  He knew it – and he wanted her out.

So now we can look forward to another dose of the same predictable disdainful looks and comments from Karren, force-fed disapproving lines from Tim, and Lord Sugar’s terrible prewritten jokes, while he no doubt continues to point his firing finger at the wrong person.  On to week five.