Sunday 16 November 2014

The Apprentice 2014: board games and the boardroom

Sooo I finally got round to watching episode 6 of the tenth series of The Apprentice and thought I would do a post on it just now.  So let's head to the boardroom and give it a look....

Right so the task this week for both teams Summit and Tenacity was to come up with a new board game and market it to the public and retailers.  Team Teancity, lead by Pamela, came up with the idea of a dating board game called "The Relationship Guru" despite the fact that their market research feedback was that dating board games was a bad idea but Pamela decided to ignore this and went ahead with the idea regardless.  Team Summit, lead by James, after some debate came up with the idea for a geography board game, which was generally considered to be a good idea even if it was a little insulting to the player's intelligence and a bit stereotypical.  James also had some tension among the ranks in his team as he fell out with Bianca and at one point they argued about how James felt she kept trying to run things and interrupt him (when we all know its quite the opposite!).  Bianca also made the poor decision while trying to sell units of the boardgame by giving exclusivity in the borough of Westminster to a small retailer for a mere six units, which further caused friction between her and James and also made selling the remaining units more difficult.  Tenacity's game however was not well received as it was deemed to be quite sexist, offensive and stereotypical and the game questions written by Daniel were considered to be quite inappropriate and were not well received by the retailers.  Despite this though they still managed to sell fairly well to the retailers largely due to Mark's sales skills.

In the boardroom both teams were given the results of their sales and it was team Summit who came out on top with a good win as they sold double the amount that Tenacity did with just over £2,080 as opposed to £1101.  During the boardroom debate with Tenacity Pamela brought back in Daniel, whom she had never gotten on with throughout the process and she also blamed him for writing the inappropriate questions for the game, and she also brought in Lauren who Pamela felt had not contributed much in the task.  But after much arguing and debate Lord Sugar made his decision to fire Pamela for choosing to ignore the market research as well as coming up with such a poor board game and the failure of the task laid firmly on her shoulders, which I have to agree with as she wasn't much use in the task or in the process and all she mainly did throughout was alot of moaning and complaining.  Lord Sugar however was also not happy with Daniel and his argumentative attitude and said to him "this is your very last chance!" before letting him off the hook as he did realise that he did have some fire and spark in him.  So Daniel will need to watch his behaviour from now on or else he will be out the door, although one thing I did notice that was amusing about him was how he kept making a silly gesture, which appeared to be the sign of the cross just as he went into the boardroom and also just before Lord sugar made his decision on who is to go!  (No doubt Darian O'Brien on "You're Fired" will take the mickey out of that!).  

Lord Sugar however also had reservations about Mark and questioned Pamela as to why she didn't bring him back into the boardroom, especially given his reluctance to take on managing the project and he had yet himself to even lead a task.  And this is a fair point as I don't care much for Mark as I think he like James and Daniel, is an arrogant dick, and even though he is quite a smart and capable guy, he is also quite manipulative and has an over inflated opinion of his own abilities.  And there was one moment in the episode where Mark successfully sold some units of the board game to a retailer and afterward to the camera he basically said "I couldn't be happer with how we did this afternoon.  I feel like Lauren and Katie are both my apprentices and I tought them something on how to sell today!".  God!  I mean just shut up you arrogant twat!  Personally I can't actually wait to see Mark get his comeuppance at some point and I think he already is treading on thin ice with Lord Sugar, who can see through him and his game, as clearly Mark is about playing the candidates off one another and seeing how will survive.  And if he carries that on he won't last much longer in the process and he better watch his step as he may feel the wrath of the Sugarnator!  ;-)

As for James well he did do a bit better this week although I'm not still very keen on him either and despite taking on board what Lord Sugar said to him last week to an extent, he lead his team like as Bianca said "more like a dictatorship".  James also didn't really seem to grasp the idea of the board game either that they were selling as Roisin (who came up with the idea) had to keep correcting him on it as they were heading toward a pitch!  James also clearly doesn't like being spoken back to, particularly by a strong minded person such as Bianca, who rightly at one point during their argument said "I am talking!  When I am finished you can talk!".  And if he is to become Lord Sugar's business partner (which hopefully he won't!) he will also need to learn when to shut up as he was still talking over Lord Sugar in the boardroom this week, which prompted Lord Sugar to say "shame the game wasn't charades!".  So James is still in it for now and we will need to see how his progresses although he too might be on thin ice if he doesn't watch out.

Right so that's it for this post and I will be back with another some time soon and next week's episode of The Apprentice will be in New York as the teams will fly over to the Big Apple to advertise a new sports drink to America, so no doubt that might be fun.

Bye the now!  

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