The Knives Out sequel looks great!

Beware: There be leopards in this here recap.

Seeing out The Great Phone War, Kathryn and Harpreet do it together in a pair of a pyjamas that I’m sure Kathryn will claim she designed

Pink and blue stripes? It’s a revolution!

Their final meeting point with Lord Sugar is at the British Museum, the reasoning being that it was the first free museum available to the British public with a mission statement to bring the wonders of the world to the people, and by “bring” he does mean “steal”. But enough with museum discourse, because he had brought his own Wonders of the World to the museum

I’m thrilled that they brought back First Boot Harry back over both Aaron and Sophie who both flopped their way beyond the halfway point – and he was equally confused as to what he was doing there

I mean, he was absolutely there to be a Gremlin in the works, if anything I’m just shocked Sophie wasn’t in that line-up but I get the distinct impression that there’s probably a 5 mile restraining order between her and just about every other candidate.

Harpreet and Kathryn do have to select their teams, with Harpreet doing absolutely everything in her power to avoid picking Akeem; had Kathryn not done her a solid and grabbed him for her team I fully believe Harpreet would’ve asked if she could have the Bust of Ramesses The Great on her team.

The final teams are:

Harpreet: Brittany, Akshay, Nick and Navid.

Kathryn: Steph, Amy, Akeem and Harry.

The task at hand was the usual Final task in which Kathryn and Harpreet had to basically pitch their business to Lord Sugar and the industry experts with Kathryn battling against a crowded market and Harpreet having to prove that her dessert business was scaleable and offered something unique.

Cookie Monsters

In order to introduce the team to her concept, Harpreet did have a selection of her cakes for everyone to eat and if the Silverstone event task taught us one thing it’s that Nick cannot resist a plate of brownies and he did proceed to snaffle them like he hadn’t been allowed to eat since he was fired

The sheer amount of shots of Nick eating was delightfully comedic, so Harpreet at least knows she has one lifelong customer.

For reasons that I’m sure pertain to the BBC’s rules against advertising, they have to start from scratch so Harpreet had to come up with a new name for her dessert business and she was being pickier about the name than I’ve ever seen a candidate be, saying “Let’s skip that one” with the frequency of Chris Witty asking for the next slide during a badly cobbled together emergency Covid briefing

she wasn’t really at fault though given her team were shouting suggestions such as “Ultimate Yums” and “Scrumptious Melt”

which is what they all call Harry behind his back.

Harpreet eventually gave up on letting them name her business after Nick suggested “crumble” because of “the crumbles of a doughnut”

and I would just like him to make me a diagram of a doughnut to point out exactly which part of a doughnut are “the crumbles”?

WHERE ARE THEY NICK? WHERE ARE THE CRUMBLES?

In order to create her brand name in peace and quiet, Harpreet decides to complete the process with just Brittany, which did mean that she trusted Nick and Akshay with putting together her electronic billboard advert with Navid as their own personal punching bag. She and Brittany finally landed on “Oh So Yum!” and having been burnt by the FIRST TIME FUCK DIES fire, Harpreet was now very nervous about logo designing

Brittany assured her that it didn’t sound like a Japanese furniture brand and that Harpreet could stop carefully and slowly mouthing out all three syllables to make sure it didn’t sound like she was threatening to kill children again.

Meanwhile, Akshay was holding an audition between Nick and Navid as to who got the starring role as Annoying Man Who Pretends To Eat a Brownie in their digital billboard with Navid initially landing the role with this stellar performance that puts anything and everything Jared Leto has ever done to shame

however when it came to record the final product Navid wasn’t quite getting Akshay’s vision of annoying Instagram Reel brand excitement, which I’m sure was mostly because Akshay kept talking to him in the middle of every take and distracting him from the task of picking up a brownies and smooshing it against his closed mouth. But Nick was on hand to literally yeet Navid out of frame and take over like he was Lady Gaga when there’s a role that requires an italian accent

and from then on, Navid was very much not-even-a-numbered-fiddle to the orchestra that is Nick and Akshay’s double act, with his valid concerns about the fact they were just going to have the background of the advert be a black void

although who amongst us doesn’t want to disappear into the abyss to do nothing but eat desserts bigger than our heads?

No, not like that!

The black background wasn’t the issue though, Harpreet was more concerned about the fact Nick was wearing a suit and looking like a, what she deemed, “smart businessman”. Which they own up to as being an oversight, but if Navid had stared it might have looked even weirder because it would’ve looked like the Captain of the HMS Albion was competing on a distinctly porn vibes Bake Off

Harpreet very quickly learnt to not let the boys go unsupervised ever again and did a bit of a team swap with Brittany going to play chaperone to Nick and Akshay’s shenanigans on the set of her advert while Navid played victim to Harpreet going Full Kitchen Mode once again, this time with thankfully less rice involved.

The reason for this was that Harpreet had to create some sort of “Hero Product” to prove that she actually had a USP with her concept being a “cookie shot glass”

which honestly seems more like a liability than anything else, she should have just led with the cookie burritos

the consumer feedback for them was mostly that they were way too big and far too sweet – which I’m sure were actually positives in Harpreet’s eyes seeing as she had, and I cannot emphasise this enough, cookie burritos on her menu.

Brittany had her own ideas for a USP though and scripted an advert that made it look like everyone in Harpreet’s store was mandated to speak only in rhyming couplets

Brittany could write Romeo & Juliet but Shakespeare could never write The Advert For Oh So Yum.

Nick did of course take the lead and had to work very hard to make “lotus sticky pie” sound less like an innuendo than I ever thought he would be able to

there were however other issues, as they did run into the classic Apprentice pitfall with the advert initially being too long at a full 90 seconds – someone please tell Nationwide that that’s too long for an advert. And so the cutting and slicing began and Nick had to watch in horror as his hopes of challenging Will Smith for the Lead Actor Oscar were cast to the cutting room floor

I’m just glad they kept in the shot of Nick sitting in a white jumper that’s quite clearly been hastily thrown over his suit and surrounded by desserts

he’s just living the dream!

Harpreet really loved the advert, which gave her a lot of confidence going into the main pitch, which went by very uneventfully because nobody brings up her sister who I imagine has assumed a new identity in Brazil.

PJ Heavy

Kathryn landed on a brand name much more easily than Harpreet, going for the classic portmanteau approach of Pyjama and Family to form Famama Pyjamily

No, I cannot explain the weird obsession with pickles either, although I like to think that last one is actually Pick le PJs to court that French market.

As for her team designations, she and Steph go off to design their logo and some new prints that Kathryn didn’t copy and paste off of Pinterest. This meant that Amy “Steven Spielberg” Anzel was helming the adverts with Akeem, who would be playing the role of her husband and Harry who… did exactly what he was meant to do and hindered the project at every opportunity he could, mostly because he absolutely didn’t understand how coverage works in film and kept saying cut in the middle of Akeem and Amy filming scenes. And while he wasn’t fumbling his directing duties, he was also being a terrible Props Master and forgot to put the note inside the gift box

and very quickly this whole production has to become a one woman show as Amy took on the role of lead actress, director, props makers, set designer, co-director, gaffer, executive producer, secretary to the executive producer and had she been given half the chance I fully believe she would have played the role of Akeem as well. I’m a little surprised she didn’t play the role of the dog too considering they couldn’t even get them a real dog

She is Amy Anzel, and she will be playing all of the parts.

And she of course took time out from her heavy schedule to murderously glare at Harry whenever he turned around

my favourite part of their dynamic though was the fact while Amy recorded the voiceover for their advert, Harry was lipsycning for his life in the background

it’s very Blair St Clair in Drag Race: All Stars 5 practicing everyone else’s choreography on the side of the stage

Harry and Blair very much have the same energy and I shall not elaborate on that any further.

While Amy veered dangerously towards turning the wholesome advert for pyjamas into Chucky 16: Lights Out! Kathryn and Steph were creating the Pyjamily logo with the help of my favourite of the recurring graphic designers

truly they are a glutton for punishment.

Given that Kathryn was emphasising that her pyjamas were for the whole family, she needed a logo to do so I can see what she was going for, but the consumers were right, it does look like the RSPCA had gone through a rebrand

and while everyone looked at it and saw healthcare or animal charities, Harry was on a very different wavelength

this episode was actually just a stealthy psychiatric evaluation and Harry my friend, you’re failing with flying colours. And if we’re going to treat Kathryn’s logo like a Rorschach Test, I see 2 parents flanking their child who is very proud of themself for correctly spatchcocking a chicken.

The logo wasn’t the only piece of design work Kathryn was doing, because she did promise us an original print…

I cannot tell you how much I love this badly taxidermied leopard. It’s like she’s on DeviantArt in 2009 and she’s just created an MS Paint Sonic The Hedgehog OC of her original non-designed leopard print pyjamas

honestly, google your name followed by “the hedgehog” and you’ll know *exactly* what I’m talking about. Unless your name is actually Sonic, in which case this might not work, but at least you have a cool name?

The fact she did a jungle print becomes a huge point of contention because she, repeatedly, claimed it was “very on trend” at the moment, while the woman from George at ASDA claimed that Jungle Print was actually not particularly fashionable… And Kathryn’s main defense is “Well actually, Dolce and Gabbana just featured jungle print.” which was a very nice way of saying her brand was not going for supermarket brand mediocrity, SO LEAVE HER AND HER NECKLESS LEOPARD CHILDREN ALONE! It’s also not like jungle print ever goes out of fashion, throw a stone anywhere and you’ll hit something covered in palm fronds and/or toucans. I also don’t really trust anyone on this show when they question a candidate with a fashion-related business for not knowing about trends, because they all laughed when Sian said the next big thing in swimwear were sleeves and tassels and then the very next year ASOS was overrun with swimsuits featuring such big sleeves and tassels that they came with drowning risk warnings.

A Final Boardroom Blitz

I think both Kathryn and Harpreet did a very good job of taking on board the criticisms and concerns that were raised about both of their plans during the interviews – and I did notice and LOVE that during their pitches both of them stressed the fact that they had only been given two days to do all of this in so they were aware that their ad campaigns looked less well produced than the TikTok videos that 14 year old kids are churning out.

I think Kathryn’s improvements were better, and more obvious – and I will gladly pay anything she wants me to for a pair of pyjamas covered in those grumpy leopards that look like they were made out of partially chewn Jellybabies. HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT KATHRYN? I will give you my firstborn child.
Harpreet’s quest for a USP was slightly less successful and I highly doubt those cookie shot glasses are going to be hitting the shelves any time soon, but the branding package around Oh So Yum was significantly better than Kathryn’s, which just missed the mark a little bit.

Both of them are quite niche businesses, however Kathryn’s is much more niche and comes with the downside that you have to call it a “Pyjama Business” which does sound like industry slang for a mafia front, and ultimately doesn’t have the greatest potential for repeat buyers, regardless of whether Kathryn remains on-trend or not. Harpreet’s dessert business however is much more likely to keep steady cash flow and does come with the greater opportunity for expansion – perhaps Kathryn should have stressed the possibility to go into bed linen, start some sort of partnership with We Are Domi

and ultimately the USP of the dog pyjamas has limited reach with only 17% of the British population owning dogs and then a smaller percentage of that being people willing to dress their dogs up, or even owning a dog that Kathryn’s company caters for – I can’t believe you’re gatekeeping canine sleepwear Kathryn, WHAT IF THE GREAT DANES WANT THE BLOCK-HEADED LEOPARD PYJAMAS?

While there are obvious risks in going into the dessert industry, I think every highstreet has seen a dessert parlour open it’s terribly decorated doors and close them within a matter of weeks, Harpreet did very much come across like she knew what she was doing, where she wanted to advance to and how to get there so ultimately Lord Sugar puts his backing behind Harpreet, who does now have to go and yeet her sister into the ocean

the biggest shock of this result is that Lord Sugar didn’t make a terrible pun about how he, Alan SUGAR, was investing in desserts.

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And so, congratulations to Harpreet, our champion of The Apprentice, Series 16!

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