The Apprentice: season 10, episode 7 recap: "The Big Snapple"

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AAAAND back to reality. It's episode #768809 of The Apprentice, the longest running serial on British television where Lord Sugar interviews every person in the country for a hypothetical £250,000 investment. Why has no one pointed out that the title doesn't make sense any more? It's not The Apprentice he's looking for, is it? Wouldn't "Convince Me To Put My Money In You" make more sense? Apologies – I've been playing The Relationship Guru all week, and it's messed with my brain a bit.

The candidates assemble at the American Embassy. Nick and Karren flank a widescreen TV; the screen shows Lord Sugar swivelling around in his chair and starts talking about a doomsday device when an off-screen Frances informs him that's the video they're shooting next.
The task

It's either inventing a new drink, creating a marketing campaign or a big pitch in America – I'm not sure which. Lord Sugar is quite specific in that he wants a "website TV advert", which is the exact kind of thinking that brought us the email phone. It falls on deaf ears, though, as all anyone cares about is who's going to New York.

Mark "puts a pole in the ground" (he's no rocket surgeon) and wangles his way into being PM of Team Tenacity by being a bit vague about what he does. His first point of order is to put a dampener on Danyewl's dreams of hitting the Big Apple, because they still all hate him. Danyewl's response is to pitch "Love Water" as their drink to grab the American market; my response is to gag. He follows this up by stating he will "work his nuts off", which I pray doesn't contribute to the secret ingredient of his health drink.

Bianca is PM of Team Summit, and judges James to be the lesser of two evils between taking him or Roisin to New York, which makes me think there's something about Roisin the producers aren't showing us. And why has she picked James? He looks like he only guzzles gallons of Monster and is still an utter prick.

Tenacity decide on making a pineapple drink called "Aqua Fusion" and in his infinite wisdom Mark decides to leave Danyewl in charge of design. Come on, Mark – we all know by now everything Danyewl touches goes down the pan. He's like a shitty Midas. It's only the moral fibre of a beleaguered graphic designer which prevents Tenacity's logo for Aqua Fusion being emblazoned across Times Square in 50 foot high Comic Sans.

Over in New York, Summit have landed on calling their drink "Big Dawg", presumably so during the pitch James can whip out his knob and shout, "Look at the big dawg!" Bianca takes control of their advert and informs the actors she wants them to talk about how the drink has affected them, and saying it gave them the squits is not an option.

Felipe (you know, Fat Daddy) wants to prove lawyers can be creative and imagines himself to be quite the Spielberg; that's Jeff Spielberg by the way, who works at a plumbing merchants in Hull. Felipe walks up and down a picturesque New York street, framing it with his fingers even though everyone knows that doesn't actually do anything. Lauren gets a starring role, and her delivery of "Thanks, MORRM!" is Oscar-worthy.

Before their respective pitches to industry experts, including the Tetley Tea Folk and the bigwigs from Um Bongo Corp, the teams get to see their digital billboards. It pains me to say that the ad for Big Dawg actually looks quite snazzy, even if the logo looks like a massive dong. Felipe weeps with the kind of pride you usually reserve after having your first-born child at the ad for Aqua Fusion, which makes picking on him far too easy.

Both pitches are spectacularly bad, even worse than the ones for cat calendars from years back. (Aaaah, Nargis, we hardly knew ye.) Bianca tries to cover up the fact her ad is boring by waffling on about it being some kind of metaphor for the American Dream. Horseshit. Lauren stumbles through Tenacity's pitch in the manner of a 16-year-old in platforms who's had too many Bacardi Breezers after getting her GCSE results. It dawns on Mark he may just be headed for the boardroom and it will be all his own fault for picking the wrong people to do the wrong jobs.

It's all too awful and too close to call. My nerves cannot take it.

The boardroom

Lord Sugar is dismayed at how badly both teams performed in their task; why is it so hard for a couple of lawyers, a pub quiz master and a very vague "multiple business owner" to come up with a flawless advertising campaign, even though it's not in any of their skillsets?

Using ancient divining methods, Lord Sugar declares Summit and their Big Dawg to be the winners. Their prize this week is an afternoon of falconry with Pat Sharp and one of the twins from Fun House.
Who got fired?

Inspired by last week's board games, Tenacity play an exhausting round of "Let Me Finish" before Mark brings Lauren and Danyewl to face the finger. Mark reveals himself to be in a quandary; should Lauren, who contributed nothing, be held responsible, or Danyewl, whose contributions were awful? Lauren claims to have invented the concept of health drinks, even though all she really did was repeat Mark's ideas back to him.

Despite their mutual loathing, Mark and Danyewl agree it was Lauren's slurring in the pitch that cost them the task, and Sugar agrees. Lauren pouts and goes off to apply more lip gloss, whilst Dan claims people call him "the cat"; I think he must have misheard Mark's Australian accent...

Next week the candidates must man the cake stall at a country fair, and I will be taking pills for my nerves.