The Apprentice: season 13, episode 8 recap: "It's a Doggy Dog World"

Unlike cars, dogs are interesting. There are lots of dogs. Some I can name. Some I can't. But I love all of 'em. This week's show has plenty of doggos, coupled with hilarious dog lookalikes of some of the candidates sourced by my own hand. No bones about it, this was one of my fave episodes, not least because Charles called himself a turd-catcher. His words, not mine.

The task

It's 8am and the doorbell rings. It's Lord Sugar with a box of dish rags he's selling for a fiver each. With clear disdain for people who spend money on their pets, Sugar informs everyone it's a doggy daycare task before his contractual three minutes are up and he's in a helicopter back to Acton.

It's said that every dog has its day, and after eight long weeks Charles finally gets his time in the sun in charge of Team Vitality. Considering we're two-thirds of the way through, it's practically a given that he's going to be headed straight to the doghouse because there are just too many Apprenti hanging around at the moment. Rather than appointing fellow dog-owner Anisa as sub-team leader, Charles opts for an incredulous Andrew, presumably so he can throw him to the hounds later on.

James, who is a good boy, yes he is, yes he is, takes the lead for Graphene with Elizabeth as his number two, because as we discovered last week, much like a dog she is also good at chasing after geese. In order to run their business, they must choose to either run a dog spa or run training courses. Because you'd be crazy not to want to spend a day giving poodles and pugs facials, both teams opt for the spa. The first pat on the head goes to Charles as Vitality nab the shampooing Shar-Peis gig, but this is mainly because Joanna made no bones about the fact she knew nothing about dogs. In an attempt to remain positive, Elizabeth declares it "a close second" (that's out of two by the way), but she then proves to be an absolute natural at training all the puppers. Could she be this millennium's Barbara Woodhouse?

The second part of the task has the subteams literally pitching to pick up shit. It's like the producers aren't even trying any more. "It should be quite simple to allow people to pick up poo," sighs Claude, over the deafening sound of hounds whining and howling as The Beastmaster asserts himself as their alpha. Andrew quite literally lands himself in doo-doo when he swears in front of a potential client, unable to control his inner lad. Sarah Lynn is outraged, but yet somehow they win the contract; that's the contract to pick up poo, btw. Actual faeces.

Over on Team Graphene, they appear to be having a ruff time of it. James decides to go over Elizabeth's head and charge more for the training courses, making for some awkward conversations the next day when, who woulda thought it, some of the customers want to know why they're being charged more than others. All power to Liz, she's upfront and honours all the bookings at the lower price.

The Apprentice is often criticised for plunging the candidates into areas out of their depth, and never more so than Bushra acting as photographer for a dog photoshoot. When questioned whether she has any photography experience, all she can muster up is, "I have eyes, and I can see things." At least she's cooler at her shoot than Anisa, who absolutely loses her shit at being a in room filled with doggos, although to be fair I can't honestly say I wouldn't have acted the same way.

Even though she is good with the eye, Bushra makes a right dog's ear of the photoshoot, leaving the client with 100 blurry photos of dogs they can't use which look a lot like my camera roll after I've been to the park.

Back at the spa, Michaela and Jade are having fun pampering the pooches, whilst Charles orders them around like ... dogs. Eight weeks in the background has taught him nothing, thinking that delegation is the way to getting a belly rub from Lord Sugar. Later on, as the hapless trio are forced to scoop poop from the gardens of people who are inexplicably home in the middle of the day and have spare cash lying around ready to spend on passing trade, Charles declares himself "The turd-catcher". I'll just leave that there.

The boardroom

Much as I hate to admit it, it's down to Elizabeth and Joanna that Team Graphene clinch it, despite them losing out on the spa and shit-shovelling task.

The fur flies when Charles decides to bring back Andrew and Anisa to the boardroom, both of whom believe they did the bulk of the work, both as equally clueless. Despite swearing in front of a client, Andrew claims his customer service is impeccable and that because he's "not from the corporate world" he doesn't know why he can't swear, bitch.

Anisa believes no one listens to her because she's too much fun, not because she's just incredibly irritating when she gets excited on a task. Charles is rightly pulled up on the fact that he did absolutely nothing, but who will be sent to live out the rest of their days with a nice family on a farm?
Who got fired?

"Man-boy" Andrew – you're fired! Anisa, pack your bags too. Charles, get out of my sight. Karren, Claude, you can get going as well. Frances, here's your marching orders. Camera crew, pack up. Shut it down, everyone! Lord Sugar has had enough and YOU'RE ALL FIRED!
Did they thank him?

Andrew gives a curt nod and a "Cheers, fuckface!" before heading to the nearest Walkabout to do shots and declare he never wanted it anyway.

Anisa fails to find the fun in this situation and manages to splutter out a "Thankyoufortheopportunity". Thinking he's safe as he's the last in the boardroom, a shell-shocked Charles offers a quick "Thanks" because he can't find someone else to do it for him.

Next week, the candidates must create an irreverent TV review site and commit to writing witty recaps of reality shows every week, despite it being a completely thankless task.