A cruel and unusual punishment.

This recap is a prototype.

After a round of rehydration therapy following their desert adventures in Dubai, the candidates were finally ready to get back into action with Sohail answering this week’s early morning phone call

the instructions being to meet Lord Sugar at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which apparently Rochelle associates with hen parties and boozy brunches

Paul the Apostle, the lush of Christendom.
Victoria looked particularly excited about potentially creating a new and innovative brand of Communion Wine for the modern day parishioner

little did she know, the reason for meeting there was the tenuous link of St. Paul’s being a feat of design… and there are choristers and choristers need lunchboxes. With accompanying apps, apparently? The Apprentice trying to tackle modern technology when it’s owned by a man that I am 90% sure still uses dial up at home is quite something. Said app had to encourage healthy eating and that was all the guidance they were given.

A Caterpillar of Salt

In terms of choosing their project manager,this group had no problem because Dani and her Colgate Chanel suit were not going to be mere subordinates and had laid claim to the role before she even knew what the challenge was

and she was going to be ruling this team with an iron fist – immediately laying down the law that they were going to be theming the whole thing around a Caterpillar called Munch, who loves Lunch – and I fully believe one of the prototype names might have been “Buttery G”

Victoria tried her best to interject that the whole thing sounded a little bit junior however Dani shot her down before she could get more than 4 syllables out of her mouth and so it was final: The Very Heart Healthy Caterpillar it was, the threat of penalty of death for going against this being an unspoken reality

but Victoria could at least try to inject some hip, youthful energy into Munch The Caterpillar as she was on the App Team along with Megan and Simba

and it didn’t stop at a hat because Simba was very concerned about this caterpillar’s modesty

along with decking him out in some sick 90s threads, they seemed to decide that the name Munch was uncool and renamed him Larry (I’m choosing to believe it’s because this was filmed during August when Ice Spice just dropped the single Munch (Feelin’ U) which is about oral sex, and so Munch became Larry because they could also use the phrase “Happy as Larry” because Larry is definitely happy and doesn’t look like one of the Bloods being cornered by a Crip

You shouldn’t have stolen the Rolex, Larry.
Having previously been burned by uncanny handlessness in the cinematic masterpiece that was Femi and Faye’s Noodly Bitch Fight

Victoria had made absolutely sure that this caterpillar had hands AND feet

GODDAMIT.

While those three traumatised a graphic designer through the medium of cartoonish entomology, Dani and Mark were designing a lunchbox which was flying in the face of ergonomic sandwich design and being shaped like a leaf (or a Sonic the Hedgehog wig apparently)

again, Dani was a freight train of opinions and ideas which I can’t really blame her for considering that Mark seemed to want to embrace stark minimalism as though kids love nothing more than the blight on interior design

every LA-based Instagram influencer’s house looks like a luxury insane asylum.

Dani however hadn’t been told about Munch being sent into the witness protection program and was now Larry The Cat(erpillar) so her box was branded as Munch-a-Lunch

which isn’t the end of the world, but it might be stealing Silky Nutmeg Ganache’s intellectual property

although Larry could never whip an entire glass of milk out from between his cleavage

do we think we’re going to get a drag story hour challenge next year and how much of a disaster do we think 6 besuited men with the same facial hair can make that? I beg of thee, do not do it.

As for the all important App, given that the90s nostalgia was coming back into fashion, Megan decided it should be some sort of Tamagotchi-esque system where you have to take care of Larry until he metamorphosed into a butterfly

it’s not rude but “Unlocking your butterfly” does sound like something a sex therapist would say.
As for the game play, it was mostly just furious button mashing which Simba did a valiant job of making look more intricate and complicated than it actually was

Your child can’t open the sweet wrappers if they have incredibly painful repetitive strain injury

but the app wasn’t done with just a bit of button clicking, no, Larry needed a voice, step forward Simba and his rapping, which I will admit did have a certain PokeRap charm to it, less charming was the fact Larry seemed to have no control over his limbs and was wildly gesticulating around like Marge Simpson krumping

the best part of the whole animation recording though was Simba having the best time doing his little song and dance while the animator sat in the background with his head in his hand, having fully given up on his career and contemplating taking a vow of silence amongst the Benedictine monks

Babe, it could have been worse, you could have had a 3-headed hydra screaming in your ears about licensable seascapes

The Kill Bill siren intensifies.

During their pitches, the main feedback from the potential buyers and stockists was that the whole thing felt a little juvenile – they liked it, but it wasn’t cool enough for a 6 to 8 year old, which Simba seemed genuinely hurt by

so it’s probably a good thing he wasn’t in for the market research in which a 7 year old girl roasted the ever loving shit out of the whole thing with a line delivery that screenshots cannot do justice

and Britain’s Next Top Insult Comic wasn’t the only one, this child was all too keen to make them fully aware of how awful it was

there’s no coming back from being called “cringe” by a 7 year old and Mark knew it

at that point you just have to accept that your life is over, the hourglass has run out, the reaper is coming, your soul shall be weighed. RIP.

Putting The Irate Into Pirate

Nobody on this team had a cute suit, so unfortunately Marnie and Sohail had to vie for Project Manager; Sohail leveraging his martial arts: FOR KIDS! this time without Avi trying to undercut him with claims about having once spoken to a child and so was elected because all Marnie could claim was a passion for design and dressing up in one of St. Paul’s chorister’s gown

someone clearly hadn’t joined the dots from St. Paul’s to children’s lunchboxes.
Marnie still pretty much led the design conception though, putting forward her sketch of a treasure chest shaped lunchbox (she has beautiful handwriting)

which Sohail had apparently also drawn and definitely not rapidly doodled as Marnie spoke about her ideas

as for the team dividing, Marnie really wanted to design the box, Sohail however knew that the app was clearly going to be what led to someone’s firing (lol, how’d that turn out, babe) and so he wanted to design the box and claim it for himself so Marnie was sent out on the App Team with Avi and Rochelle whilst also not being given the privilege of being Sub-team Leader which went to Rochelle

Marnie would be damned if she wasn’t going to be the leader somehow.

This did mean that Sohail and Bradley were left to contend with trying to design a box-shaped box

they did at least try out a woodgrain effect on the box

but they decided that it (and every other bit of ornamentation and functionality apparently) was a little bit too busy and so we did end up with just a plain brown box that had no hinges so it did always look a bit broken

but don’t worry, Sohail and Bradley, having clearly learned nothing from the Caf-E Racer Incident, decided to just outright tell the first round of potential buyers that this box was a prototype and promised that they would make it better if they invested money in it

they promptly dropped all mention of the word “prototype” for their second pitch, because as it turns out you can’t just pitch an entirely different product halfway through your pitch.

The App Team decided that the best mascot for the treasure chest lunchbox would be a pirate and Marnie was going to make damn sure he had all of his limbs, EARS BE DAMNED!

before promptly tearing off half of them in what I imagine was a vicious shark attack

given that Marnie and Rochelle’s roles in all of this was to just constantly argue with one another, Avi was forced into the role of voicing the pirate for which he was clearly doing the Sea Captain from The Simpsons’s voice but he couldn’t keep it going for longer than 5 words so awkwardly paused A LOT which made it sound like this pirate was trying to con you into doing some sort of criminal activity while also looking like he needed the loo

as for the app’s gameplay, they decided that they were going to do a quiz, which had a large focus on calories

I was just mostly thankful that Karren thought this was a really bad idea

but the content of the quiz aside, so much time had been wasted bickering over the wording of the questions and how many limbs a pirate deserves that they completely forgot to add music (we were spared Avi having to rap, let’s be honest) but most importantly they forgot to add a “You won!” page so when you finished the disordered eating pop quiz, you didn’t even get a reward

it’s just like a real eating disorder!

As for the market feedback, the kids weren’t as ruthless as they were with MC Larry, and one girl actually liked the game – I imagine it was because she got all of the questions correct which would have also been my logic at 6 years old. Avi, was extremely keen to make having impressed one child sound as impressive as possible though

ELEVEN WHOLE PERCENT! However, Sohail would not be giving the chance for Avi to potentially ride into the pitch with a ship’s figurehead jammed betwixt his thighs, as Sohail decided to finally give Marnie a chance to lead something, leaving Avi to fume from the balcony like a gargoyle as she forgot to say “11%” instead of “just one child”

I’m losing to a bird!

The Boardroom Blitz

The result of this challenge was a complete wash out with Sohail’s Treasure Chest of Infinite Unrealised Possibilities yielding a total of absolutely no sales whatsoever and Larry managing to grab a total order of 1500 units with his off-puttingly humanoid hands, meaning Team Dani got to go and have “a science themed afternoon tea” which basically meant there was a lot of dry ice

as for Sohail, he whittled the boardroom down to himself, Marnie and Bradley which I think was a strategic error – he should have let Bradley slide by and brought in Rochelle because I think she and Marnie would have had it out for one another and drawn the heat off of himself – especially because you know Rochelle was fuming because Marnie kept calling her “Michelle” prior to Sohail making the decision

the ultimate disrespect.
In the end, both Bradley and Marnie turned on Sohail, highlighting the fact he’d completely messed up the dividing up of the teams and so he was fired

I genuinely thought he seemed like one of the more employable candidates of the bunch and I can’t quite believe that Lord Sugar is willing to die on the hill that is prolonging Bradley’s miserable performance on this show.

and so, 9 candidates remain, meaning they’ve only just eliminated half of the cast counting the two that eliminated themselves… good god.

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