The Apprentice: Bread...

So another week another early morning phone call from Lord Sugar's office. Alex Tiggywinkle was first to the phone (Baggs was slightly slower to emerge from his hibernation) and summarily informed the others to get up to be ferried to the usual posh-ish location and informed that they would have to bake and sell bread/cakes/pastries... a bakery task, essentially. A bakery task.

A lot of cooking tasks this series, perhaps prepping all the candidates for the inevitable positions as pub chefs, baristas and bar staff. Lester and Melissa/Jenny Eclair/Lady Gaga showed huge interesting in the PM role and inexplicably the coiffured Melissa won out. Over on the other side, comedy surgeon/businessman Shibby (think Beaker meets Spence from Holby City) put himself up on the chopping block. They showed another classic Shibby VT at this point. I swear they give him a script and record it several times, going "can you be... even more twattish" after every take.

Melissa was looking increasingly like she'd lied about being a catering manager as she failed to pick out which bakery goods people liked. She continually crumbled under the pressure and eventually decided on 'mixed fruit jam croissants', under pressure from Full Metal Jacket who was blowing his top (not a surprise for anyone who read that news story I posted up last month). It was to the boardrooms, then, to pitch their baked goods. Cue the team sitting in silence unable to work out basic calculations.

When Shibby's team turned up to the same pitch, they were all business. Firing out cheap prices for massive orders and then high fiving each other outside the boardroom. All well and good until the three tasked with working in the bakery practically all had coronaries. "We're not making croissants!" "We are now!" Sandeesh was a leading dissenting voice, 'stirring' as the kids would no doubt say... the bastards. In the car, Paloma, so keen to press the hotel for another 500 bread roll orders and the croissants, was now bemoaning the situation... and blaming the bakery team for not telling them what they could make.

Over in the other team's bakery Full Metal Jacket was joking about their pitching team's ability (or rather lack thereof). He may have his real-world indiscretions, but I like Full Metal Jacket. He seems like a real person rather than the brash, arrogant automatons that flood every series. But then this was a week full of revelations, as the erinaceous Alex became a character full of pathos and I found myself rooting for him as he leapt to the rescue with some uncooked dough weights.

In Shibby's bakery, the revolution was in full swing, as the entire team ignored the hotel order. This threw a spanner in the works at Beaker's next pitch where had a bit of a teenage strop about a large order, muttering "you know, we're not supermen" into his ledger. Paloma reprimanded him, to which Beaker replied with the fairly valid point that they can't agree to orders they can't fulfill.

In Melissa's bakery, Full Metal Jacket was running the show to plaudits from Nick (something that very rarely happens) and to teary thanks from the team leader herself. Shibby, wearing a bright, stripy jumper delivered the news that they hadn't been able to fulfill the hotel order. As a surgeon one would hope that he was able to deliver bad news. Simply put, he wasn't. If he explained to me that my kidney transplant had not been a complete success in the same way that he told the hotel chef that he only had 16 bread rolls, it would have been Beaker who was in need of an organ donor.

Baggs was being mouthy again this week, in charge of Melissa's market stall. Melissa herself had an argument with Alex (who appeared slightly less sympathetic when he started bringing up his 11 A* GCSEs) before being reigned in by the ever effecient Stella. Eventually they managed to sell all their produce (albeit on the cheap), something that their opponents were seemingly incapable of.

In the boardroom it was of course revealed that Shibby's team had lost, leaving a dejected looking team including Surrey Investment Banker Bates. Bates has that imperious yet glassy-eyed and absent look about him, constantly swaying his head from side to side as if it was disconnected from his body. I'm not sure he even said a word in the boardroom before Shibby elected to bring back Paloma and Sandeesh.

"I think we were on different wavelengths" said Shibby. "We clearly were. I'm a businesswoman and you're a joke." Retorted Paloma, one of the first classic boardroom fight soundbites of the series. Shibby had a Downfall moment and over the course of the episode increasingly became a joke character, snorting with inappropriate laughter and generally losing the plot. However Sandeesh had effectively sabotaged the task from the inside and had just remained quiet. So, given Joy's firing last week, surely she would have to go. Sandeesh however flashed her enormous eyes at Lord Sugar and he gave her another chance. Shibby was predictably fired.

The Quiet One
Liz Locke. She's that one who hasn't really done anything yet. In fact you probably won't even recognise her from that name. That's why she's going to win.