Not a frame of The Apprentice had been screened this week, and already, I figured Stuart had to go. The minute he even steps onto the boardroom carpet after losing a task, I figure the taxi may as well be called for him there and then. But that wasn’t set to happen this week. Kicking off with a little bit of xenophobia, the posh cars took them to the German embassy. The plan this week? Making crisps, and then flying off to Hamburg to flog them. You could almost sense how this was going to turn out. I took a swig of my exceedingly cheap wine at this point. I figured this could be a long hour. Stella’s team, then, starting working around a traditional Sunday roast theme. Let’s play on British strengths, they wagered. And then Joanna suggested curry. Laura started complaining. It was business as normal. More interestingly, my red wine was actually surprisingly good, given that it was part of a three for a tenner promotion. Drink that, Baron von Sugar. Meanwhile, Stella got assigned to Gloucestershire, while Stuart and Joanna got sent to Germany. They, too, stumbled on the idea of curry, interviewing someone who looked like Leonardo diCaprio in the local supermarket. Stuart concluded, surprisingly adeptly, that sausages were a good idea, and proceeded to eat a lot of them, and drink some beer. The conclusion from the research? Sausages and curry. What was Stella making? Ham, beef and other stuff that people didn’t seem to want. Hmmm. Stella ignored the market research, the editing suddenly seemed a bit stop motion, and the potential boardroom battle was already brewing. The teams then proceeded to make crisps with strange white powders, making Karren Brady choke in the process. Nick Hewer, meanwhile, was pulling a face akin to a bulldog licking piss off a proverbial thistle. I, meanwhile, was onto my second glass. Oddly, the episode was improving too, as I consumed more of my glorified paintstripper. Stilton and paprika, and chilli and beef flavours were chosen by Stella. I’d drunk enough by this point for both to be quite acceptable. I quite fancied a bag, truth be told. Stuart, meanwhile, was doing his bit for the diplomacy, seamlessly managing to convince Germans that he was a bit of a tit, as well as taking swipes at Joanna. Stuart also described himself as “endearing”. I nearly choked on my drink. That would never do. So then. Local businesses were lined up to sell to, and each team lined up appointments. We’ve seen this several times over the years, and once we’d got past the fact that very bad German was being spoken, the orders were starting to roll in. The comedy gold, of course, was when Stuart starting to speak terrible German, and the production team enjoyed this, by putting on screen the English translation for everything he said. Laura was speaking in English, meanwhile, and the subtitles would have been just as useful, the speed she was going at. Bluntly, I didn’t have a clue what either of them were saying. I was, however, wondering what happened to red wine when you put it in a Soda Stream, but you probably didn’t need to know that. Chris went off selling next, and the problem appeared to be that the crisps looked genuinely vile. But at least he found an English speaker. Reading between the edits here, and finding someone that the teams could communicate with looked like the hardest job of all. It was interesting, I thought, how most of the candidates way of approaching talking to German residents was by reference to back episodes of ‘Allo ‘Allo. Put on a fake German accent, speak English, what could go wrong? I instantly did the logical thing, and recharged my glass. I’ll need it to get through the upcoming treat sequence, I figured. To be fair, for all the toing and froing of the episode, it was unclear who was going to win. Deals were being done and lost, some were coming across better than others, Laura decided that her team shouldn’t win and kept grumbling, and the usual dash for final orders kicked in. I figured it’d be a heavy win one way or the other when the totals were calculated, but ultimately, I figured wrong. And so we were off to the boardroom to find out more, while I sketched out ideas for a Stuart-related drinking game. Baron von Sugar, meanwhile, was still trying one-liners, that weren’t even funny with the help of a glass of the shit I was drinking. Can someone not make him stop? It’d be much appreciated. Onto the results. Chris’ team picked up a couple of big orders, but Stella’s team won the task off the back of the appointments they set up. And Nick was pleased with Joanna. He said so, too. He’s getting happier as the series goes on, bless him. Anyway, in the boardroom, it turned out that it was the Marriott deal that was pivotal, and Jamie and Christopher’s switching to a later appointment time lost them the task. Chris, I thought, might just survive this. Although Baron von Sugar didn’t seem that keen on him. The seemingly endless boardroom sequence then went through the usual motions, as everyone’s words seemed to merge into a prolonged jabbering of nothingness. They all could have gone, from what I can see. Eventually, Christopher came out from behind the rock of anonymity he’s been hiding behind all series, and promptly got the sack. Both Chris and Jamie appeared to have their cards marked. And a fairly conventional episode of the show came to an end. It wasn’t bad telly, to be fair, but it was The Apprentice going through the motions a bit. A traditional task, traditional mistakes, and the removing of a non-ratings friendly candidate. Just business as usual, really. Read our review of the seventh episode, here. 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