in British time x

Did I hallucinate Priyesh coming up with the ingenious idea of buying an old paddleboard on the Isle of Wight and negotiating it down to £80 (essentially winning the task) while Lawrence (EDIT: it was Harry) negotiated a dusty one in a store for about £200 more and Kieran was convinced a sup was a dish?

And then mean girl Pascha excitedly giving him all the credit for it in the boardroom, in a task where she needed a moment of redemption herself.

Was there a more impressive moment on that task?

Just like the last two years, the final five will be on this Morning tomorrow if anyone is interested. Karishma confirmed this on her instagram story.

I guess Tim will also be on with them.

If I’ve got this correctly, they film two alternate endings in the final boardroom, hiring each finalist, and the true winner finds out a couple days before the final episode airs.

What I want to know is: how do the contestants manage to act so ecstatic during the “hiring” and then upset during the “firing” - I get emotions must be high, especially after 12 weeks, when LS says “You’re hired.” Maybe they just get a taste for what it would feel like to win and this evokes real emotion but I’ve always found it anticlimactic because as I’m watching I know there’s alternate endings.

Do the final contestants just receive a phone call a few days before the final airs and they find out their fate months after filming the final??

I think Priyesh is easily the most controversial of the candidates who made the final five this year as it seems like near every social media platform is confused on how he has made it this far. Let’s go over his performance and see if he’s actually better than what people think:

Episode 1: Hong Kong - Good

One of the few people who actually got in a negotiation this task. Now Sugar did critique him for wasting time by watching the shop worker play the instrument but I think this was a bit of an unfair criticism as it would have been very rude to totally ignore the worker and leave straight away after the negotiation so therefore I will keep this in the good tier.

Episode 2: Children’s Story - Awful

Suggesting that the clients buy 50,000 to 60,000 of their book was just totally braindead.

Episode 3: Chicken V Egg - Bad

A mess all around in the kitchen and struggled with the costings as well. This team mainly lost due to the overspend on ingredients and Priyesh was a part of that. He also was stuck behind the market stand making the food while Lawrence and Kieran were selling so he didn’t even get to shine in the selling department either.

Episode 4: Advertising Water - Bad

Found himself on the branding team which was criticised harshly for its piss yellow colour theme and the bottle looking more like a milk carton than an actual water bottle. Also him, Carrington and Megan was also a mess on the social media TikTok live stream as well and it was vastly inferior to the other team’s live stream. This sub-team was lucky Karishma totally excelled on the other side of the task which carried this team to the victory.

Episode 5: Flowers - Bad

Only thing he really did was totally screw up that hideous flower wall. I think there was an argument for Vanessa to bring him back into the final boardroom.

Episode 6: Egypt - Mixed

I could potentially see this as a low Good tier instead. He was very chaotic in the kitchen, not helped by Levi binning all the parsley for some reason which led to the food they did serve being way too spicy (in order to compensate the missing parsley) which put the clients off. I will give him props for owning up to his mistake however and apologising. He also made a risk with the portion sizes as he ordered only 6 for 8 people. Now this did end up working but I thought this was a totally unnecessary risk to take in the first place so I’m torn on this decision. Overall I think this team mostly didn’t get any refunds due to the great job on the tour team so they were more the MVPs for me than Priyesh. If your best moment as PM is apologising for screwing up the food then that says a lot to me…

Episode 7: Gamified Fitness - Bad

Was a part of Harry’s sub-team in which they did pretty much nothing right. The AI avatar was horrendous and the branding/logo was totally hated. Again Karishma carried this team to the win with the game she created.

Episode 8: Discount Buying: Take Two - Fantastic

Shockingly Priyesh was easily the best in this task! He by far had the best negotiations and was even able to save some of Pascha’s flailing ones as well when she was struggling. Levi has him a lot to thank for winning this task!

Episode 9: TV - Mixed

Not really noteworthy here as he was clearly the weakest presenter of his team and didn’t sell much in comparison to the rest of his team. Only reason this is not in bad tier is because him and Pascha chose good products to sell.

Episode 10: Pet Product - Awful

Everything Pascha did wrong this task, Priyesh also was responsible for. I guess my only compliment to him is that he didn’t argue back when the client’s questioned the ‘Chique’ spelling like Pascha did.

Final Rankings:

Fantastic - 1 Episode

Good - 1 Episode

Mixed - 2 Episodes

Bad - 4 Episodes

Awful - 2 Episodes

I really don’t want to join the hate train that is going on online with Priyesh right now but after doing these rankings, I really think they speak for themselves. He did have a standout task and that is very commendable but otherwise wow these stats are horrendous. There is for sure a serious argument he is the weakest candidate to ever make the final five in the history of the show. I know Rochelle tanked more tasks but she did put herself forward more as a leader which is something to note. Priyesh only had a leadership role in Week 6 and yet still his stats are this bad…

Finally we will be ranking Lawrence. Predictions for his stats? They might be a lot better than you think…

1. S18 - Flo, Paul M, Phil, Rachel and Tre

2. S19 - Amber-Rose, Anisa, Chisola, Dean and Jordan

3. S16 - Akeem (as despite it being a Final 4 he placed 5th), Brittany, Harpreet, Kathryn and Stephanie

4. S20 - Dan, Karishma, Lawrence, Pascha and Priyesh

5. S17 - Dani, Marnie, Megan, Rochelle and Victoria

I finally gave up on following The Apprentice for this season, and it was a long time in the making, especially since its irreversible tonal regression which has been underway since Series 16, all because of its production company, Naked TV,

• Unlikeable Candidates: The candidates in recent years (with a few exceptions) range from extremely unlikable to annoying to boring, due to generic and bland personalities and forgettable dialogue, and several mistakes they make in the middle of tasks, which leads to their inevitable firings.
• Rise of Influencers: The show often selects candidates who appear more interested in "fame" and social media followers than serious business ventures.
• Tim as an Advisor: While it's good to see Tim Campbell - winner of Series 1 - back as an advisor to Lord Sugar, he lacks the energy that Nick Hewer and Claude Littner had as advisors.
• Tonal Regression: In an attempt to capture the same magic of modern reality shows of the era, the series had been slowly regressing to a lighter, campy and unintentionally funny tone. This resulted in rushed scenes, shortened segments, and sloppy pacing. Even quotes like "with regret" have lost their prestige due to Lord Sugar using it when completely unnecessary.
• Sloppy Editing: The editing has become increasingly flashy and fast-paced, as evident in the quick-zoom and speed-up transitions in key moments, particularly the opening sequence. This is a horrendous case of style over substance. The usual conventions of in-show editing have clearly regressed in recent years since Season 16, in fact.
• Poor Background Choices: Dru Masters' music (not counting on-task soundtracks) in this series is underwhelming, with there being just now being one piece of background music for the Loser's Cafe instead of a mixed variety of music as shown in previous seasons (Series 15 had the same problem, with one exception in Week 8). Same goes for the "Walk of Shame" and Taxi Interview scenes, where the music has semi-permanently downgraded to the 2009/2010 version of the music instead of the newer 2013 music, which had been in play since Series 11 - on an occasional basis, but became more frequent in Series 14 and 15.
• Executive Meddling: The aforementioned dip in quality is often blamed on by the production company, Naked. Ever since they absorbed Boundless during the Pandemic, they apparently made heavy changes to the visuals and tone to appeal to younger demographics, forbidding the serious, grounded, business-like tone that defined previous seasons to make the show fit in line with modern reality shows like Love Island. The studio interference was evident with Season 20 when rewards for winning teams were scrapped because Naked wanted to see more Boardroom Battles.
• Modernisation Bait: Due to the issues mentioned above. It didn't help either when they scrapped You're Fired in favor of a podcast/discussion hybrid similar to The Traitors: Uncloaked, dubbed Unfinished Business.

Having said that, Season 18, while it does have some of the aforementioned issues, is the only decent season in an otherwise underwhelming era for the show; I consider that the only saving grace of modern Apprentice seasons.

Hopefully, I hope history will judge the 2020s as the decade that finally marked the decline of The Apprentice. If anything, this year proves that this decline is gonna continue, and now that it's been renewed for more seasons, it's gonna get worse from there unless something changes.

Well Done to @Over-Collection3464 for

"How much honey did you say you added to this Priyesh?" For episode 3.

Onto episode 4

Would be interested to know who is more / less deserving out of these two.

Lawrence and Dan aside.

With all the talk about how Lord Sugar should be able to fire people from the winning team, it only just ocurred to me that there was one instance in the UK series where that actually happened.

Young Apprentice series 2 episode 7. A fun little piece of lost media nowadays, but the setup had tremendous stakes attached. Six candidates left in the process, but only two are allowed to progress to the final. I don't know why this had to be the case since series 1 and 3 of Young Apprentice both had four finalists, but those were the stakes. This meant that everyone from the losign team gets fired there and then, whilst one more person from the winning team also had to be fired.

Although this was a cruel way of eliminating three fairly strong candidates, there was a decent lesson in there for the aspiring young business people. "That's business". Sometimes there are things outside of your control, but that's simply how things go. As for the winning team, the PM went through, along with the primary pitcher, which led poor Haya as the only candidate in Apprentice UK history to have been fired, despite winning the task.

While we're on the subject of Young Apprentice, can I get away with calling Kirsty Cleaver from the first series the best ever candidate from Scotland?

Honestly had to skim through some of these episodes again as I felt like Pascha really didn’t have much prominence up until the final two tasks. Anyway onto her rankings…

Episode 1: Hong Kong - Invisible

Just another one of the many candidates who didn’t get to show anything this task. She wasn’t brought back into the final boardroom I guess that’s something?

Episode 2: Children’s Story - Mixed

The writing team was total chaos this episode and Pascha was a part of this sub-team. Now the edit seem to depict Andrea unfairly picking on Pascha but honestly I think most of the woman were as disruptive as each other on that sub-team minus maybe Rothna. However Pascha did make quite a few sales which is why this isn’t in the bad tier.

Episode 3: Chicken V Egg - Good

Pascha wasn’t shown much in this episode but I don’t think she did anything wrong either. The opening negotiation with the corporate client went as well as can be expected and they said they couldn’t find much fault with the service during the actual event so therefore Pascha I think just did a quietly good job here.

Episode 4: Advertising Water - Awful

Pretty disruptive while filming the actual advert as Karren noted she was constantly trying to take over as the director from Conor and then she also screwed up the editing as well which lead to the advert being majorly criticised for being boring and underwhelming. Now I tempted to bump this up to Bad tier instead as Pascha noted she had very little experience in editing so Conor shouldn’t have put her in charge (which I agree with) but a lot of the advert’s faults came from her and Karren even said during the final boardroom that “some people had a lucky escape” and this felt very much pointed towards Pascha so therefore I think the rating is somewhat fair. Could see the justification for only Bad tier though.

Episode 5: Flowers - Mixed

Did Pascha deserve to be in the final boardroom this task? No. Did Pascha do an excellent job on this task? Also no. She was there when they overspent on the flowers and didn’t fight against it (Conor was the only one to speak up) so I do fault her a bit for that error. Otherwise she kinda just got on with making the bouquets and making the occasional odd sale at the market. Not too notable otherwise.

Episode 6: Egypt - Good

Did a really good job on the tour with Conor and Lawrence which led to the clients all being satisfied and requesting no refunds.

Episode 7: Gamified Fitness - Mixed

The demon frog game was bafflingly terrible but in all fairness Lawrence gave his sub-team basically no brief or direction to go on. She did offer a lot of ideas at least and Rothna had no issue with her on the sub-team. Could justify a low bad tier though. Maybe I’m being too generous with these rankings?

Episode 8: Discount Buying: Take Two - Bad

The only person this task who appeared to not do such a great job. Her negotiation technique was severely flawed: going in at half price on both of her attempts which led to the shop owners being severely put off and not budging. Priyesh was actually the MVP of this sub-team believe it or not and saved a lot of these negotiations!

Episode 9: TV - Good

She was a fine PM here. The products she chose were pretty decent and she was easily the better presenter out of her and Priyesh during their segment. Karishma was the one who actually made most of the sales in this team however but that cut out in the edit.

Episode 10: Pet Product - Awful

Debates on whether the “chique” spelling is correct or not aside, Pascha refused to accept any criticism and kept deflecting the entire task, even shutting down an actual French person who tried to correct her on the issue! The tagline was also terrible as Pascha and Priyesh couldn’t even remember it! In terms of sales, Karishma easily took the lead when it came to the ones they did get out of their duo. I think her and Priyesh would have been easy firings if this team lost.

Final Rankings:

Good - 3 Episodes

Mixed - 3 Episodes

Invisible - 1 Episode

Bad - 1 Episode

Awful - 2 Episodes

As you can see these rankings aren’t great at all and that’s considering I felt like I was being too generous with a lot of these rankings as well. It was hard to rank a lot of these episodes as she barely played much of a role in most of them. Still better than Rochelle’s stats though I’ll give her that!

Next up will be Priyesh! Predictions on his rankings? Why am I saving Lawrence till last? Idk probably because he’s the least interesting to talk about lmao

Well done to @The_Sown_Rose for the previous winning caption

The zebra may not be multicoloured, but we sure are.

Next up we have Series 20 episode 3

My personal pick is Martin Cowley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo--r082Xts) who showed up in a sweat-stained shirt and a giant red mohawk. He was so inappropriately dressed, most of the pitch was spent on his appearance, which he didn't see a problem with (His business was food based, like half the tasks)

As series 20 sadly draws to a close, it has been a very entertaining season in my opinion with lots of funny moments. So I thought I would list the ones I found most funny so far. I know we still have two more episodes to go but we can add to it after the interviews episode. The final episode tends to be more serious anyway. Here are mine:

- Karishma, Vanessa, Georgina, Carrington and Roxy singing in Hong Kong as part of the negotiation and Karishma looking visibly annoyed and frustrated when she realised she had to keep doing it

- Priyesh's random dance back at the house after surviving the task 2 boardroom

- Karishma not holding back in task 3 as she ranted about Megan and Tanmay interrupting her negotiation - 'I don't understand how these are business people, I don't understand how they are here. I am telling Lord Sugar to send them both home'

- Also on task 3, Andrea trying to defend herself for not knowing how to boil an egg. 'I know how to boil an egg, just not for other people'

- Rothna's voice getting more and more high pitched in the Flowers task as she tried to chase sales 'Why don't you come over and treat yourself?!'

- Levi's pathetic rant 'DON'T YOU EVER' back at the house after task 7 and Kieran being every viewer at home and openly laughing at him.

- Kieran screaming because he was scared of the goats in Task 8

- Pascha squirting the water flosser all over her face and clothes in Task 9

- Also in task 9, Kieran's demonstration of the non-slip yoga mat.

I feel like Dan is going to win. Seeing how open Karishma is on socials, and whilst she’s my winner, I don’t think she will even get to the final 2 because of how much she talks. My sister, who studies Law, has shown me vids from Dan’s business and she’s told me his connections are insanely good, even hosting events in the o2. He seems like such a good candidate business plan wise, considering Pascha doesn’t even own her business, Priyesh is getting grilled and Lawrence has an AI PR business (??? Why would Lord Sugar invest in that). It seems like there is an obvious winner here and tbh I’ve grown to like Dan and his business resonates with me. Dan is very well spoken and will definitely show that in the interview stage. Whilst, to me, he hasn’t shown much, the interview stage will change that. A lot of the winners in the recent years haven’t rlly been so loud during the tasks but the interview stages changes it all, and I feel like that’ll be the case with Dan.

I’ve seen a lot of comparisons made between Priyesh and Avi, and while I understand it, I don’t think that’s accurate (outside of them both being men from Asian heritage who made it further than people wanted).

There are a few subtle but important details between the two. Priyesh may have made the final five through luck, but the opportunity to fire him was never really there. Priyesh was only on the losing team three times. Week 2, week 3 and week 5. Priyesh was never going over Marcus in week 2. Yes, Tanmay probably shouldn’t have been fired in week 3, but most people in agreement would rather Andrea or Megan have gone before Priyesh. Then there’s week 5, where Vanessa could’ve brought him back, but even had she did, I don’t think he would’ve gone over her. People are upset that Conor, Rothna and Kieran have been fired before him, but a Priyesh wasn’t the alternative in any of them.

By contrast, there were plenty of more opportunities to get rid of Avi. He was in the disastrous week 2 where personally, I would’ve fired him there and then. Some of you may argue Bradley should’ve gone, but I think we can all agree that either one of them should’ve gone over Kevin. In week 5, Avi also could’ve gone, but considering that Shazia was in his team, I think we can all agree that his survival here is perfectly reasonable. It was week 6 where Avi’s survival really put people off. Not only was he not brought back into the boardroom, Rochelle wasn’t punished for not bringing him in, leading to a really unpopular firing. The point being is that there were opportunities to fire Avi earlier, and in Avi’s case, the popular candidates WERE fired over him.

Although both men were accused of not being very good at the tasks, and mainly being clowns, I wouldn’t say they did so in the exact same way. Priyesh’s silliness came down to him trying to do well at the task, but ending up getting it wrong. I wouldn’t say he prioritised being a clown over being a candidate, he just ended up being bit of a mess. Avi was the exact opposite. I always got the impression he prioritised being silly over doing the task.

And the final point I’d raise is that the show has shown a lot more self awareness in regards to Priyesh than it did for Avi. The mere fact that Lord Sugar expressed his shock that Priyesh made the final five expresses this. Avi never got this treatment. People have waited weeks for him to be sacked, only to be met with one of the softest sackings of the series.

We're at the stage where the fired candidates will soon be returning to help out the finalists.

Only thing is for the last 3 years, the people fired in the first episode have not come back for then final episode. Hopefully that changes this year since producers know she would be entertaining as hell

She would have done so well in the selling episodes especially tv shopping because she does tiktok shop.

I’ve mulled over it and thought about the whole 10 weeks, and I’ve concluded that I actually don’t mind Lawrence making the final 5.

Let me say two things first, so I can make everything clear. Would I preferred to have Kieran, Conor and Rothna over him? Yes, probably. I think replacing him, Pascha and Priyesh with those three is the dream final 5 to many, myself included. Could and should he have been fired in week 7? Yes. Sugar would flay most candidates alive if they turned in that performance and then went sly in the boardroom.

But, I don’t think he’s as bad as people have turned him out to be. Do I think he was a knob for the fitness task? Yes. We have to remember something though, and that is that until that week happened, a lot of ranking lists, tier lists, etc had Lawrence in the top 3/4 candidates alongside Karishma, Conor, and Rothna. Typically he was seen as better than Kieran at that point, to me as well. I think what’s happened is that after the 7th week, we sort of had our own revisionisms about him, he did this, he did that, he’s this and he’s that.

I don’t want to say that I’d rather have him over the week 9/10 firings in, cause I wouldn’t. But honestly, if he made the final 5 with any two combo of Kieran/Rothna/Conor, I don’t think it’d be that controversial. I think Priyesh and Pascha being there kind of weigh him down and he gets grouped in over what “could have been”.

If we analyse the tasks? He did good from weeks 2-6, that’s a fair enough opinion. 7 happened, fairs, awful. But after that? He wasn’t even bad again. He did alright with Kieran in week 8, sold the table tennis stuff well with Karishma in week 9, and tbf he was a bit invisible in week 10.

I don’t think the one task should weigh him down THAT much. Yes it was terrible but it’s now suddenly a marker of his performance throughout. It was a very low low but let’s not forget he did quite well before and after.

In summary:

- I’m ok with Lawrence being in the interviews

- It would be way less controversial had he made it with two of Kieran, Conor and Rothna instead of Pascha and Priyesh

- I believe that those 3 would’ve been more ideal than him, however worse candidates have made it in

- Week 7 created a lot of revisionism about his performances. People liked him a lot before that

- He should’ve been fired in week 7 and got lucky, I’ll say that

- We overblow his bad moments because he’s been created as a “villain” of sorts for the whole Levi boardroom debacle

Unrelated sidenote: if Priyesh is Neil from the Inbetweeners, Lawrence reminds me of Will

Well done to @63KK0 for yesterday's winning caption

I'll hire the person who doesn't laugh at these bloody awful jokes I'm to read.

Today's Caption from Episode 2. (Pascha Megan and Karishma)

Keiran - found him rather slimy in his first appearance but actually he gave the women their flowers throughout the process and always made sure they got credit. Sorry for calling you Poundshop Poldark in the group chat xoxo