Business Fail: The Apprentice Reviewed - Week Three

Before I start my review of last week's episode, I just want to pay tribute to all the children in primary schools across the country who have mastered the art of baking cakes and selling them. Many master it from a young age, and they've done a really good job.

 I just needed to say that.

 So yes, the task for the remaining candidates this week was to, well, bake cakes and sell them. That's it. That's all they had to do.
 Lord Sugar woke them up at half past six. The mental toll is beginning to show on some of them, and it's only week three. Melissa was spied boxing at thin air whilst muttering "raring to go". There's also a "bring it on" from Chris Bates the Ladykiller. Oh God.
 They are driven to some tea rooms in central London. There, Lord Sugar feigns to appear in person, and explains why this task is relevant to the world of business. Thing is, it's never anything profound, it's alway something like "People, will pay through the nose for beach products/cakes/camels/trips to the Moon" Lord Sugar's closing joke this week is "This is turning flour, into serious dough". Some of the girls giggle churlishly.
"Oh Lord Sugar, you card."
 Then he rearranges the teams, so Shibby and Chris go over to Apollo and Melissa moves over to Synergy. It's rather like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, since they still end up bollocksing up the task.

 Melissa and her Shoulder Pads become team leader of Synergy. Melissa, remember, has experience of food distribution. Apparently, she's a mixed bag of nuts, and this thing is her bag. Melissa, stop mixing metaphors like they are, uh, bags of nuts.

 Shibby becomes team leader of Apollo, because well, he's a surgeon and he's good at putting his hands in gooey stuff. LIKE HUMAN BODIES. And cakes.

 It turns out, in pitching to clients, that Melissa [who has food distribution experience] is afraid of maths, all kinds of numbers. In their first meeting with a hotel, she punches at a calculator like there is a small hamster trapped inside it. It falls to Alex, with his amazing propensity for names, to step in. Apparently, they are called Le Pain Artisan, and they have "a passion for high quality baked goods". Umm okay. You have a passion for high quality baked goods, since nine o'clock this morning. They have to go out of the room to do some mental arithmetic, for like fifteen minutes.The hotel manager and Sean, an angry chef, are left waiting for them.
 Meanwhile, on Apollo, Shibby and Paloma become drunk on power and promise to make hundreds, nay, thousands of bread rolls, and croissants. That is, until Shibby puts the brakes on and, in a brilliant display, just goes "no" to 400 bread rolls.
 I hope he doesn't just stop in the middle of surgery like that.
 "Shibby, come back, this man will bleed to death"
 [Long pause]

 "No"

 It turns out that Shibby's team can't make bread rolls very fast or, at all. They come up against Sean the angry chef, having only made 16 of the 1000 bread rolls he promised. He gives Sean £120.
 Meanwhile, one bakery refuses to sell Melissa's muffins, because the cherries look dodgy. Melissa has food distribution experience, remember. Who has she been distributing it to?
Then they have to sell on the street. Melissa and co go to Kingston upon Thames. Melissa continues in Stuart's fine tradition of following and generally insulting passers-by. Shibby and the gang go to Covent Garden, or "the muffin zone" as Shibby calls it when people make the mistake of making eye contact with him.
 They have to shift all their muffins, leading to Nick's grim observation that "they sold fast and they sold cheap, and, uh, it wasn't a pretty sight". Cut to a shot of pigeons feasting on a crumbling muffin.
 Love a bit of symbolism, me.

 So, in the boardroom, Shibby goes absolutely insane, as he tries to blame everyone but himself. Also, Lord Sugar is full of the jokes this week and, to make matters worse, people keep chuckling. Of Shibby, he asks, "so was it Dr Doolittle, or Dooalot?" Chortle. Roflcopters.

Shibby is fired. Meanwhile the winning team get to go to a restaurant with exotic dancers. Melissa has apparently forgotten she can't count to ten and gets all gloaty. Jamie does his Yoda impression again, warning the camera - "There's only one thing Melissa should do now. Learn."

Try, or try not. Do or do not.

Next week and they're in the Science Museum and it's all inventions n stuff.