The Apprentice - Season 17 - Thread 2 - The Season With A lot of (Lip) Filler!

[RicciardoPerez]

Thread 2 :)

Looking forward to catching up on tonight's ep! What was it again? A children's cartoon?

They appear to deliberately choose people who are totally deluded

Ok so you can buy sweets, stick em in cellophane and tie a bow and flog it over Facebooks in valentines day. How cute

But can you budget, pitch to investors and write a coherent plan?

No but your brows are insta worthy so let's get you on telly, tear you apart and reduce you to tears

It's a tired formula now

It's been piss poor for many years now

It's run it's course. Im fed up of the BBC's lazy approach

Strictly, apprentice, same old
Talent shows trotted out year after year 🙄

And none of them seem to have a particularly innovative idea

Not another baking/confectionery idea

Anyone out there got anything new to offer?

I want to see some intelligence and talent on this show, not people trying to weedle their way into celebrity on pocket money sidelines.

Well said @BogRollBOGOF

@BogRollBOGOF

Totally agree

@PandoraRocks

Oh wow! Those lips are awful arent they. I cant take her seriously. She looks like a clown

Well they're probably given a template to follow which is designed to trip them up and confuse

Hence why one had the confidentiality agreement in there

I’m pretty sure there’s no Waitrose in Dubai but the principle still holds true; if your running a business know your strengths and weaknesses, if you can’t cook you find someone who can or organise something and devote your time to the things your good at.
Maybe that’s what Lord Sugar wants to see someone who can think outside of the box.

That Dubai thing was awful, but it just showed a lack of commonsense. A luxury event, but you're only allowed 2 glasses of water? I can't even begin to understand the green skin cream fiasco.

I feel like what they look like is a distraction. It doesn't matter what they look like if they have good ideas, skills, can work as a team etc ... although I always question why they do practical tasks in suits or stilettos - in previous series they've done gardening and DIY in those types of clothes which is silly and impractical for both male and female candidates. In tasks where they're outside and against the clock, again suitable footwear would seem logical, but I don't feel that having lip filler, hair extensions , or particular type of eye brows (I don't know what they're called because I'm ignorant of that kind of thing!) should count against them. I was really rooting for Dani because I wanted her to prove people wrong, she had lots of ideas and seemed likeable.
But since their business plans seem spectacularly bad it feels like they are just going to be seen as stereotypical style over substance which is disappointing.

Yes they were given templates for the business plan. The lack of time and the lack of access to research online is no excuse though for the errors in basic maths or spelling, and extremely basic costings for stock and necessary staff. You really shouldn't need anyone to look over your presentation in order to get the very basics right.

That's right. Also, you know the deal - wouldn't you formulate a good business plan before you went on?
Two of the women started crying during the interviews, I just think they didn't understand the rigour involved.

Yes they were given templates for the business plan.

If the production team gave them the templates, why was there that hoo ha over the confidentiality agreement?

and the same again about net/gross and profit/turnover is that not taught (anymore) at school?

Exactly, if you plan to run a business, and enter a tv show based on that premise, wouldn't you check basics like profit and turnover?
Victoria's was just embarrassing..

I think the fact that Dani and Victoria both gave up on their business plans as soon as it was over ( even Victoria didn't seem to believe it when she said she had a buyer interested in buying her out) showed that they were there purely for exposure & not for the investment.
Anyone got odds on seeing one of them on IACGMOOH (or something similar) in the near future?

I don’t think they were given a template, she’ll have found one online and not had the common sense to know to remove the confidentiality clause should be removed.

A couple of them looked like they had Covid side hustles, fancied being on tv and made it all up from there. Victoria’s “shoving sweets in a box” effort was ridiculous, she had no idea what was in her business plan much less now to do it.

I’d love to see the programme go back to featuring people who do actually know what it takes to run a business, who are creative and used to hard work. Too many of this years seemed to think they could just keep repeating they’d make it work and all will be fine. There have always been crap business plans but this years didn’t seem to have a competent plan between them.

I thought that was what she said and apologised a couple of times for not having removed the confidentiality clause.

I also thought it's been said on the programme somewhere, or on You're Fired, that they had to write the plan once they were in the house, which would then fit with the lack of someone else to look it over and the lack of access to facts and figures online.

It's certainly very different from the earlier series, as someone else remarked upthread. The plans were much longer and more detailed in the beginning, before the pages of pictures and so on.

I may have got it wrong though, I don't pay anywhere near the attention I used to.

Even if they did have to write it in the house, they could plan it well beforehand. The odd thing maybe not quite right, but honestly, the quality was surprisingly poor.

I took that to mean she had used a template she found online, but perhaps I'm wrong. Seems particularly egregious if they're given a template to use that deliberately excludes key issues or is designed to invite errors.

Didn't someone get shredded a few years ago for having pictures of boats in his?

The whole purpose of the show is to make a laughing stock of the candidates

Have you ever seen a series where Karen /claude/Margaret hasnt grimaced, eye rolled and tutted in every scene

Sugar tries to undermine them for a cheap
Laugh in all the boardroom scenes

Then suddenly in the final, they suddenly seem credible

Last year he invested in two as they were both brilliant apparently

@ReneBumsWombats yes, something like that. Filler and not much else.

I don't know now. I was going on what I thought I heard at the time, or perhaps it was just my spin on it because if they had very limited resources and no one, except their competitors, to help look through the plans, that would be a little bit of an excuse. Quite right though that they know it's coming and could prepare.

I was trying to cut a bit of slack as surely no one who wants to enter business away from the cameras could make such basic errors, not knowing the difference between turnover and gross profit, let alone the net profit (if any) but yes, who can fathom it. I've said it before, but I really think this has to be my last series.

Alan Sugar apparently doesn't think anything needs to change
www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/09/alan-sugar-the-apprentice-candidate-milliionaires
He did used to donate his BBC fee to Great Ormond St Hospital, but I'm not certain if he still does.

If they have decided to moved away from having credible candidates with businesses the main issue for the BBC should be whether the show is entertaining.

I found the tasks repetitive. Not allowing the research and communication etc makes it obvious the teams will fail so just. a question of how. No interesting or querky thinking for products. I think this is a show that might be better on commercial TV if it continues at all. That would allow companies to sponsor an episode- work with designers at Nike to come up with a trainer or plan an event at X race course using the actual rates that are charged for different packages with the catering done by the venue. You can still have the candidates deciding badly who to market their trainer to and doing the design ignoring the experts. However you would see the good ones using the expertise and maybe an interesting product.

I've watched and loved the apprentice since day 1
This year has been tedious
Not an original idea between them
Where are the credible business people or anyone over 25.
I didnt even finish it last week
I think I'm done

Alan Sugar apparently doesn't think anything needs to change

To be honest, as long as the viewing figures are high, he's right.

It would be a shame if they just plod along, let figures slump and then cancel it rather than revamping it before it reaches that stage.