Last night featured my favourite task on BBC's The Apprentice – Discount Buying, or in other words, Bargain Hunt (wink, wink) and it certainly didn't disappoint.
Dean was a fairly decent Project Manager, perhaps rather more relaxed in handing out advice than you might expect a leader to be, however I thought he did really well in not just domineering and handling all the negotiations himself, but giving his colleagues their time to shine and only stepping in when necessary, especially when he gave Frederick a second chance at leading a deal once he realised he'd intercepted the previous one.
The subteam of Jonny, Amber-Rose, Mia and Melica was chucking us gems all the way through this episode, but seeing how long they picked the rhubarb for when it didn't end up counting was painful to watch.
That did actually annoy me a bit – I don't think that they should have been punished for getting too much rhubarb, or the other team for the business with the boat hook – business is all about innovation, being flexible and working with what you've got, and I thought they showed this brilliantly through their ability to think outside of the box and find solutions in the situation where what they needed wasn't directly in front of them. And as Jonny said, everybody 'loves a freebie' – if a business gave me .7kg more of something than I ordered, I'm going to be one happy customer as opposed to leaving them a bad review.
One of the highlights of the episode for me was when Jordan was leading the negotiation for the concave horse shoes, and literally all he said was 'but how much can you actually do?' and promptly got money knocked off the price!
The standout performer for me this week was Jonny, for consistently getting good prices, and stepping in to save a couple of pounds on one deal. I also felt for the guy because being an English tutor he must have been hurting so badly inside when Lord Sugar misquoted the Shakespeare speech from Twelfth Night in the boardroom – as an English literature student myself, that one hit me hard.
Interestingly, something I've noticed is that Keir appears to be being given the edit of someone who goes very far in the process, possibly to the interviews, contributing a little each week, but not pushing himself to the forefront.
Another favourite moment of mine was when Carlo decided to teach his team 'how to do business', and the look of joy on his face when he told the camera that he'd 'built rapport' with the client was a moment of comedy gold.
And speaking of Carlo, it brings me to that time where I talk about the firing...
To be honest, it felt like Lord Sugar made the fines so high just because he'd already made up his mind that he wanted to get rid of Carlo.
Carlo being fired for 'being disruptive' was such a joke when Nadia, who has been intercepting people's deals and not giving others a chance to speak from day one, plus going in at one pound fifty for a whole sheep coat, is quite frankly ridiculous, and it felt like Lord Sugar had already decided that he wasn't going to work with Carlo, so the easiest way to get rid of him was by using the excuse of others calling him disruptive.
So if you haven't already guessed, no, I did not agree with the firing this week. In my opinion, he should have fired Max – ultimately Max put himself up to lead the team on a task all about getting the cheapest items, and he incurred fines of over two hundred pounds alone just for not getting the wine, and that is where the failure of the task fell. Obviously Carlo also didn't have his finest moments, such as not having written down the correct facts about the phone calls in his notebook (or at least not being able to find them when they were needed) but a minor error like that doesn't result in the failure of the task.
I personally feel like Lord Sugar should have fired Max and done his typical 'Carlo, you will be Project Manager next week whatever the task speech', and given him the chance to see whether he thrived or crumbled under that pressure, but unfortunately we will never know.
In other news, will we see Anisa running for Project Manager for the third time in four weeks as the teams take on the challenge of making and selling their own pizzas next week? Only time will tell, but I am here for it if she does.
And of course, we all learnt a valuable lesson last night that can be applied to any area of life, not just in business – 'you don't need a title to lead...you just need to do it'. - Tim Campbell.
The Apprentice is aired on BBC1 at 9pm every Thursday evening.
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