Feature
The Apprentice: season 11, episode 12 recap: "Apprentice and Chill"
TV Feature
Becky Suter
10th January 2016
I could go into the whys and wherefores as to why I'm almost three weeks late with this recap, but let's just say it was a combination of festive cheer, booze and a could-be-serious internet gambling addiction.
1. First up – Joseph looks weird without his moustache. Bring back Dick Dastardly.
2. The "task" this week is to create a video ad, digital billboard and presentation. Kind of a "greatest hits" of the past 13 weeks.
3. Oh look, they're all back: the soft lad who liked poetry, Merguez Sausage (Mergim), and err, the rest of them. Vana and Jo have to pick teams – it's like picking sports teams at school.
4. It's EXACTLY like picking sports teams at school – gobby Natalie is last. Vana tries to assure her that she wanted her anyway. No you didn't, Vana; you didn't pick her, you "got" her! (There's a Friends quote for everything, isn't there?)
5. Vana has to prove there's a market for dating via gaming apps, whereas Jo has to explain how he'll make his business grow – by making lots of money? Apprentice is a piece of piss; I'm deffo applying next year. You watch me.
6. Vana is going the full 100mph about a professor of desire. I hope we get to meet him, I have questions. Firstly, what is love?
7. Tricky Dicky's been chosen to go on the billboard: will he share it with his brother? (if you cast your mind back to the previous ep, it was revealed Richard was in a 50/50 partnership in another similar business to the idea he was pitching to Sugar. If I'm going to have to explain everything as we're going along, this recap will take some time, just warning you.)
8. I don't know why, but Joseph is having to come up with new names for his business, something like Prime Time Plumbers, but better. Mergi comes up with "Furplumenterprise". Jo goes for Prime Time Plumbers.
9. Vana has opted for DatePlay, rather than the much better "PlayDate" or the even better "LayDate". She's cast Richard and Charleine as the game-crossed lovers in her ad.
10. And I can see why; there is such a strong sexual chemistry between them. They're enjoying it a bit too much.
11. Somehow, Jo has plucked renewable energy out of the air as the main focus of his business. Can such an 11th hour change to his business plan be made? How is this fair? THEY'RE LITERALLY MAKING THIS UP AS THEY GO ALONG.
12. Elle is delivering the bad news from market research that no one wants Joseph to work on their pipes. Renewable energy won't be a "thing" for another 15 years, right after the return of corduroy bell-bottoms and Harry Styles's solo career.
13. Joseph does not like this news, saying "I've had this vision". For all of five minutes.
14. How is this happening? Vana is getting advice from someone at eHarmony, who would be a direct competitor. Which business does this? Do McDonalds and Burger King give each other advice? I DOUBT IT.
15. Charleine is standing up for Vana in her meeting with eHarmony, claiming DatePlay is not cheesy because it has brains and science behind it. Except that it sounds like a brand of lube.
16. Richard thinks he could market it. Shut it, Dicky. You couldn't market a ... cat. He doesn't want to focus on just "males and females". Will they be marketing to some third gender I don't know about? What does the professor of desire think about this?
17. Joseph has spent about three days working on his logo, and it's got a superfluous full stop. It looks like something he could have done in half an hour at one of the card machines in Boots.
18. His billboard looks exactly like how you would expect a plumber's billboard to look. Elle and Mergim are in this ad and it's looking a little, how you say, porny. (*shudders*)
19. Vana's opted for day-glo jugglers in her ad. Symbolism.
20. Jo's had a change of heart – it's about "smart" technology now. WHY IS HE ALLOWED TO DO THIS? AND WHY AM I SHOUTING?
21. He's meeting with a corporate focus group, which looks like a meeting of the Elders of Plumbing & Registered Gas Fitters. One Elder tells Jo he has a "personable personality". I ... I'm not sure what that means.
22. Vana is on the phone to the boss of eHarmony. She realises she's going to need more money, but is this just a ruse from eHarmony bloke? Why is it in his interests to help her?
23. The "market research" they're employing is dreadful: Brett has just asked a bloke wearing a "Get Smashed" T-shirt if he's concerned about renewable fuels and smart technology.
24. Charleine only managed to find three single people to answer questions about the dating app; from that Vana extrapolates that 100% of single people asked would download the app. Statistics prove that statistics prove nothing.
25. It's pitch day. It looks like the Galactic Senate from The Phantom Menace, and about as exciting.
26. Vana's up first: it's not bad, but she doesn't bring out the Doctor of Desire. What's he got to hide?
27. Joseph is trying to place an emphasis on the future of plumbing – engineers in spacesuits?
28. Sugar is worried that Jo wasted a day coming up with a name. I've just thought of a better one – You Benders. I am amazing at this.
29. Weirdly, both of their ads have the same song. I wonder if Vana and Jo could combine ideas – a dating app for fans of Super Mario?
30. Final pitch – Jo gives it "I'm just a boy, sitting in front of a man, a man who wrote a book that his boy read ..."
31. Vana's saying something about pies. Mmmmm, pies.
32. Sugar says technology has been his best friend for 50 years. Claude looks hurt. But now it's time to make new friends ...
We all now by now, (if not, *spoiler*) but Jo and his smart plumbers and 80s porno ad got Lord Alan's investment.
Yeah, and he leaves the office like he's leaving court on a technicality. If a man can make it in Peterborough, a man can make it anywhere.
And that is how it ends, on a whimper and not a bang. As well as a quarter-of-a-mill investment, Jo's prize is to shoot penalties at David Seaman until it gets dark and his tea's ready. Vana gets to go on Celebrity Big Brother next year, where she'll eventually clash with someone from Ex On The Beach over who used the last of the bog roll.
Becky out.
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