The Apprentice (UK) S19 - Week 2
And I'm cutting them some slack.
Yeah, I’ve even surprised myself with that! But, sometimes, the tasks are so obviously a set up to fail, it’s pointless pointing out that they failed. I’m an ex musician/song-writer, so I think I’m qualified to say: if you give a bunch of non-musicians two days to write, produce and record a song - and an accompanying video - it’s going to be rubbish. Guaranteed. And guess what? They were rubbish.
So, rather than dissing the end-product of this pointless and stupid task, lets look at how the candidates dealt with it. Which of course, is the whole point. Throughout the whole process, most of the tasks are “engineered” to make it more difficult than it ought to be. For instance, if you send half of the team out to buy a product/service, and you send the other half out to sell it - without knowing how much it cost - and, for unknown reasons, unable to speak to the team-members who know the cost - you’re stacking the odds against making a profit. And most of the tasks are contrived to work like that.
Team 1 (If they’ve got team names, I missed that! - sorry.)
We actually got two candidates putting themselves forward for PM - and, of course, they picked the one that was most unqualified to manage this task: Amber Rose. I can only assume they wanted to give themselves the best chance of failing, by not picking the guy that does video animation. Hey ho!
Amber Rose’s “vision” is to produce a rap song about money - to “encourage young people to go out and work hard; make money.” Bearing in mind they have to pitch this to a bunch of image-conscious corporates, how do we think that’s going to work out? But more importantly: why not encourage kids to - I dunno - maybe do stuff like:
be kind and thoughtful - and not go round stabbing each other
spend less time on their phones - and help the needy
help their parents with stuff - rather than perfecting a pout for Tik-Tok
Let’s face it. If you’re on The Apprentice, you are already lost. None of the above would ever occur to them.
Whilst Amber Rose is utterly lacking in any of the skills needed for this task, she does have an abundance of bossy sarcasm and put-downs. I’m beginning to take to her. Although she also seems determined to lose this task. Rather than making the video animation guy sub-team leader for producing the video, she picks the guy who doesn’t want to do it.
Nadia volunteers to sing - she was not as bad as I was expecting - and is joined by “rapper” Frederic, to form the duo: “Fred and Nadz”. It could have been worse. The other option was “Cash and Banks”. As we saw in week one, Nadia can do a lot more than sing. She’s an expert at being obstructive and disruptive. She doesn’t want to be PM, but she does want to call all the shots - and those shots are invariably the exact opposite of what the PM wants. I can’t see her going far in the process.
Team 2
Anisa, who was PM last week - and lost - offers to take on the role again. Her “qualifications” for this task are… she lived in Japan for a year? No, I can’t figure that out either. Anyway… of course, everyone else takes a step backwards and lets her do it.
Anisa’s “vision” is Taylor Swift. Easy-peasy! But what they end up with is a middle-aged mum, called Mani, who’s as close to Taylor Swift as Kier Starmer. Yeah. That will work - not ever! The song, (if you can call it that), is pretty bad - but nowhere near as bad as Team 1’s song.
If I had to sum up Team 2 - and their creation - I’d go with “dull”. And it’s surprising to hear one of them complaining that there’s been too much conflict. They clearly have no idea what conflict looks like. The other team is what conflict looks like. Team 2 looks like a game of Bingo at a care home, in comparison.
Summary
No spoilers here. This was a painful episode to watch - maybe because I’m a musician. In particular hearing non-musicians trying to come up with a melody had me hiding behind my pillow. And the pitches were off the scale embarrassing. Just your average Apprentice episode then.