Guest Post: Murphy Rants About... The Apprentice S10E9

   In this week’s Apprentice, it was the discount buying task they have every year. The task is always as follows: The groups are given a certain number of different items, usually very specific, that they have to purchase. Whoever gets all the items for the lowest cost wins, with lateness or a lack of items punishable by fines.

 In this case, the items were all ones from previous years’ buying challenges, and included such things as: Rope, an anatomical model of a skeleton, a diamond, scallops, and a kosher chicken.

 Tenacity made Daniel the leader, although not without some browbeating from him, while Summit made Sanjay its leader, and the hunt was on.

 There were errors abound - like Sanjay’s team being unable to locate a kosher chicken (who can’t locate a kosher chicken in the middle of London? There are kosher chickens everywhere), and Katie from Daniel’s team having the bright idea to get some old rope for free to fill the rope requirement (it did not fill the rope requirement).

 The biggest mistake, though, has to be the one made by Philippe and Daniel. Instead of buying an actual anatomical model of a skeleton, they attempted to rules lawyer their way around it by buying a paper skeleton, claiming that the product brief didn’t mention anything about materials. This was, I imagine, obvious to everyone viewing to be a terrible, terrible idea, but apparently wasn’t obvious to the angry football enthusiast and the man who refers to himself in the third person.

 The biggest triumph was probably Roisin getting a diamond for fifty pounds. Diamonds price at, obviously, enormously high costs, and Roisin charming a professional diamond dealer out of one of his wares - buying it from him for a price that was probably far, far less than what he bought it for in the first place - was an almost supernatural feat of persuasion. Someone clearly maxed out their charisma stat.

 There was an alarming moment when they met back up with Lord Sugar in which Philippe murmured huskily about Daniel becoming a man, and even went so far as to clarify he wasn’t one before this task.

… What did you do, Philippe? What acts has that paper skeleton witnessed?

 In the boardroom, Tenacity initially seemed like they were going to win, having come out with almost three hundred pounds less in costs than Summit, who were fined severely for being late and missing two items. But they were brought down by the skeleton, which offended Lord Sugar so much that he fined them the price of an actual anatomical model of a skeleton, resulting in them being pushed into losing.

 In the boardroom, Daniel for some reason brought back Katie, who was never at risk, having never been in the boardroom before ever, and Philippe. Philippe, as the man who had the ludicrous paper skeleton idea, was fired in short order, with Daniel very nearly following.

 Highlight of the end: Katie arrives back at the house and everyone cheers. Daniel arrives back a moment later and everyone is deathly silent. After an awkward pause, someone - possibly Roisin - whoops sadly in the background.

 Next week, they’re doing a dessert range. Should be fun.