The Apprentice 2013 Week 5 Review

First rule of The Apprentice– never claim to be an expert in something, because you won’t be. And in the end, you will be exposed as a fraud.

It seems every year we get a candidate who misses this memo and claims things like “this task was made for me”, “I’m brilliant at this sort of thing”, “this is my area of expertise” and the always popular “I know this place like the back of my hand” only for them to get lost moments later before going on to lose the task. Within the first 5 minutes of the show, Zee claimed that Dubai was his second home so his bed had already been made - he was clearly heading for the door.

This week saw the candidates fly out to Dubai to do the annual ‘buy stuff for cheap’ task for one of Lord Sugar’s ‘important business clients’. If they were that important, he wouldn’t be sending out this load of Muppets to buy falcon hoods. Seriously, what hotel requires falcon hoods for every room?

Of course Zee was going to lead Team Endeavour, but plucky Irish Leah put her name forward too because, well, she’s good with numbers I guess. This started an episode-long war between the two as Leah called Zee out on his “knowledge” (or lack thereof) from the outset and then proceeded to ignore everything he said. Luckily for her, she was right. But that didn’t stop her being an arrogant and simple minded fool.

Over at Team Evolve, Miles took leadership which gave us the first real chance to see what he can do. Apart from lead his team to victory (spoilers), he didn’t show much else. Although there was one hilarious moment where he spent an hour and a half waiting for a flag to be made and then criticised his sub-team for not doing anything. Because you have been off your feet all day my friend haven’t you.

Aside from that moment, there really wasn’t much to report from their team. Luckily enough, Local Knowledge Expert Zee’s team was making a right old balls up of things for our entertainment. Not only was his sub-team quite happy to not listen to his advice and go to the wrong places, they also bought an item incorrectly because Neil didn’t “care about the quality” on a task where quality was required. Furthermore, Scoucer Kurt (who is still my totes faves) gave Zee the wrong measurements for the flag in a re-enactment from that scene in This Is Spinal Tap involving Stonehenge. It wasn't a 'box on wheels' level of incompitancy, but it was pretty close.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that Zee’s team lost. Despite actually getting better deals, they only got 4 of the items they needed and one of them was wrong. Credit to Zee, he did hold his hands up in the Sad Face Cafe and say that he didn’t want sympathy for the loss and he would find out who was behind the failure of this task (spoilers – it was him).

Back in the boardroom, Leah and her horrible lip-gloss annoyingly went on about Zee’s lack of local knowledge that really came across more as a woman scorned than a genuine business complaint. She was right in her assessment, but the delivery of her pitch and her brash and condescending manner throughout the task were doing her no favours. Just because she wasn't picked to be project manager, she threw her toys out of the pram.

Lord Sugar was quick to bring up that the wrong item purchased lost them the task (which was Neil’s fault) and that the wrong flag measurements didn’t help matters (which was scoucer Kurt’s fault) which lead to Zee bringing back Leah and Natalie into the final three.

Wait, what?

Yes, for some reason Zee felt that Natalie hadn’t contributed enough to the task (which is true to an extent) and was therefore the weak link in his team. Despite her claims to the contrary, he was right to bring back Leah because her bad attitude and pessimistic nature didn’t help the team move forward. Plus her lip-gloss was horrible.

When they returned to the board room, Natalie was quick to play the gender card which led to her and Leah ganging up on him and clamining him to be sexist. While I can see her argument, I actually think this was more of a tactical play by Zee more than a gender thing. He knew that her card had been marked along with Uzma two weeks ago so bringing her back into the final three was a sure fire way of seeing her in the Taxi Ride of Shame while he moved on to the next task. Seemed like a winning plan right?

Sadly it didn’t work out for him as Lord Sugar saw through his bravado and clear lack of knowledge on anything and gave him the Fingerpoint of Doom.

Bye-Zee-bye (sorry).

Bringing in Natalie was the wrong move, but I don’t think he should have brought in Kurt either. The measurement cock up was a bit of an error, but it didn't cost them the task. Neil would have been a smarter choice as his balls up was bigger than anyone elses, but at the end of the day Zee was to blame for the failure of the task. It didn't matter who he brought in, his time was up. He talked Zee talk but could not walk Zee walk (sorry).

Apprentice Advice of the Week - *sigh* Never claim to know anything. Ever. You don't. Be like Jason, he doesn't know anything and he's still here.

Apprentice Quote of the Week– “I don’t need Viagra, I’m Welsh” – Alex reveals something about the Welsh heritage I knew nothing about.