The rest of the apprentice, the lazy way

I just can't even express to you how busy I've been, so I have had no time at all to finish my Apprentice commitments, and now I have 16 Project Runway looks and a Hell's Kitchen I still can't believe to do for tomorrow, so I'm gonna blast through this fast.

Jordan is a colossal orifice, who had no right being on the show, and Lord Sugar was totally right to fire him within 30 seconds of the boardroom.
Neil fell flat on his face at the last hurdle, with a terrible business plan and no willingness to change it. The smart way to go would've been to ask Lord Sugar to give him time to think, and given how much Lord Sugar loved him as a candidate he would probably have got it. Everyone pushed him towards it and he was too stubborn. Shame.
Francesca did well considering I'm not sure how many of the tasks she's been on. I think Lord Sugar was right, that her business is a good one, but she's a bit too safe, even a little dull.
So the final task came down to Leah vs Beelzebub, and despite Leah seeming to do horribly in the task, she won it because Lord Sugar liked her business plan. Fair enough, I think she was investable, and it was probably the better choice, although kudos to Luisa, because...
Luisa really grew through the last 4 weeks of the show. I thought she did a really great job in the last task and the interviews, and she didn't do a bad job in the final task. She's come a long way personally, and in The Final Five I kinda saw why she was so cold and hard anyway,because her mother seems like a nightmare. She's just strongly denied rumours she'll be in the next series of Celebrity Big Brother, which I think is a good decision. Good luck to her. She's no longer Beelzebub.
Leah has a future. The idea of a cosmetic surgery clinic with the credibility of a well-known doctor is a good one, and she and Lord Sugar should make a great partnership. Niks was a horrible name for more reasons even than they said, and she was pretty stubborn on it, but she eventually changed it, sort of, and it is now Doctor Leah at Lord Sugar's request. She'll do fine.

An airplane runway? Real fucking original!

It suddenly occurred to me that this is the exact opposite of my Hell's Kitchen posts. There I have seen the show but can't taste the food, so I have to go on Ramsay's word. Here I haven't seen the episode (if it was findable in the UK I'd have done it, damn I miss Megavideo. ETA: I found it this morning. Nothing new to say.) but can see all the final products, so mostly I'll be opining (such a great word)  on those, after a quick word on the show.
Can't lie, Kate was my 3rd choice to come back, but I didn't NOT want her to return, it was just....Ramon and Valerie. Two of the worst "Dude, what happened?" contestants ever, but you people chose Kate, so...advancing! I think the title pretty well covers my feelings on the staging, but to be honest the parachute challenge was a great idea. I am in favour of broad challenges (i.e. "make something!") as the first challenge, because firstly it feels like we're starting on level one and secondly it shows off the designers' aesthetics better than the restrictive challenges. But the designers should be kept on their toes, and any who come into this show without some plans for various unconventional materials outfits are idiots, so they kinda have to go "out there" with the challenges. And the parachute fabric is tricky to use. Despite seeming like a fabric, it's not a dress fabric, as should be clear from some of the results. Huh, that was quite a long "quick word" so moving on, with my personal favourites.

Continuing Un(Mor)daunted

Damned Apprentice. I didn't put up a blog last week because the episode was awful. The entire task was a shambles, both teams were terrible and once again the team that sucked the least was awarded the win. And in the boardroom Lord Sugar fired ENTIRELY the wrong person. I was well and truly over it. And I said as much on Monday on Facebook. But I thought I may as well still watch Wednesday's episode. And it was not only the best episode of the series, it was the best episode in quite a few years. First thing to say, an absolutely brilliant job by Luisa as pm on the girls' team. In fact, a suspiciously good job, because she's shown no prior evidence of being able to work with...well, anyone. She and the other girls (because I can't give her all the credit) played it absolutely perfectly. They chose the right products, displayed them very well on the stall and in the shop and sold well. Cheap womenswear was absolutely the right way to go and, even including the two teams last year when they had the same task, they were the only team to successfully "smell what sells" as the most working class Lord ever kept saying. To tell the truth I think there being six candidates left really made the women up their game, game being the operative word when it comes to Luisa who I think was as conniving as ever this week but in a much subtler way. And so the women got a hugely well-deserved win, the first time this series I've thought either team deserved a win, or even really a single compliment. And so there are 3 women in the top 5. But please, Leah, don't act like that's a huge thing. Good job, Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves and all that, but it's just 3 out of 5. Statistically there have to be at least 3 members of one gender in the top 5. I don't think many women at home are saying "Yaay, 3!" I also blog Hell's Kitchen, and they're at the same stage, with 4 women. That's news. But not big news.
Onto the far less successful mens' team. I knew they'd lost from the minute they chose the products. Myles has an almost snobbish sensibility, and when it came to selling on a market stall he decided to go for products he'd buy. First mistake. I'm gonna give Neil some credit, because his only real role was selling, and he did it very well. But Lord Sugar had a point about how little else Neil had done across the process. Still, it was by far the best performance on the men's team, in the sense that he wasn't a colossal disaster. The other two should both have been fired, preferably from large cannons. Myles made one mistake after another, from product selection, to sales strategy, the name of the shop (Casa Unique is the worst name ever on The Apprentice, including Ricky Martin) and worst of all sending Jordan to restock. I asked last time who Jordan was. Now I know that flying way under the radar was a great move because he has no business skills. But after two weeks of solid awfulness, with a ridiculous business plan and having failed to live up to any of the early promise he showed, it was Myles Mordaunt's turn to be told to piss off. I know Lord Sugar said "You're Fired" as always but in my head he mixes it up a bit. At first I thought Myles was too talented for the show, but now I know he was so full of hot air he could've floated. Behind the abs and the slightly slimy charm is someone we didn't get to see on the show, and I wonder who he really was. Actually, I don't care.So it comes down to 5 next week, three mediocre(Leah, other blonde and Neil), one crazy (Luisa) and one pitiful (whatshisface.) I actually can't predict who's going to the final. If that sounds like a good thing, it's not. In some cases there are more deserving people than there are places in the final. In this case, I'm not sure there are any. The interviews stage on Wednesday looks more brutal than ever, and I couldn't be more excited by that. Well, I probably could if I cared about the candidates.

Back to hell

I called it! Past winners. Admittedly, I chose 5 winners and only one two of them came back, but still. I'm taking that as a point. There's another later. We'll get there.
But first, oh boy had I forgotten how much I HATED series 8 of Hell's Kitchen. If you invite in a bunch of enormous drama queens and confrontational bitches to do the show you know exactly what you're getting. You're getting conflict, conflict and conflict. if there's time, maybe some cooking. And let's not forget, not only was this the series that brought us Raj, but he lasted 4 episodes. 4! Sabrina made it halfway! And it turns out one chef has a moderately good palate, so sure, give them a $250k job. But while you talk about Nona's palate and determination, I'll bring up her "yee-ha" southern style, which is not a bad thing but is far from right for the prize, her bad attitude and the HAIR. No-one with hair like that should  ever run a restaurant. Also, apparently she has a big d**k. Can't say I'm surprised.
Good for Christina, she seems to have flourished just like Chef Ramsay hoped. She was less than fully mature in her series but....kudos.
On to the final five, and Ja'nel...I guess that's what bad weeks look like on her planet. She was letting Susan do more than her fair share of the work, and I think she's done so well thus far that people are deliberately trying to make sure there's trouble...but subtly, because she is Ramsay's favourite. Either that or it's become so obvious no-one can hold a pitchfork to Ja'nel that the producers are desperately trying to edit in any negative.
I kinda see why Cyndi wanted to do meats, to show that she can overcome what is always the stumbling block for the kitchen, but it was still a stumbling block with her. To be able to run the station perfectly is awesome, but you need to know what you can do and do it perfectly. Susan wanted to fall on her face on meat: let her. Especially because being a phenomenal meat cook isn't the be-all and end-all. To my mind, Barbie from last season was the best ever, and she finished 4th. I just realised I advocated gameplay, which I'm meant to hate. Whatever, maybe I'm a little bored with this being a cooking show. Can't say she did a horrible job, just not a great one, and she was probably the weakest cook of the night.
Susan didn't do a bad job at all. She was almost forced into being a floater in the kitchen, and she did it well. There actually weren't any mistakes on that station, apart from the problems with the timing on the capellini. Even then it was well cooked and on time. And like I said, from the limited and heavily-edited version of events I saw, she shouldered a fair bit of Ja'nel's burden on hot apps. One of her better services.
Jon was as solid as ever, and got a few compliments for his fish. It was a quietly very good service, which works for him, and there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't the best performance of the night.
For me, and not for the first time, the star of the kitchen was Mary. I didn't see a single problem with her station (although it was garnish), and she managed to do all the things in one service that really make a great chef in her position. She pushed forward with the communication, led, worked more than one station (helping Jon on fish) and when it came to designing dishes, the entire appetizer and half the entree were her idea. Also, people on Hell's Kitchen usually get good camera time (a good dish, a compliment, winning a challenge) or bad camera time (a bad dish, being yelled at, losing a challenge, arguing with team-mates.) Mary's had both, and now she's getting something unusual: camera time which is neither good nor bad. I mean, they were never gonna edit out the pregnancy storyline, but the last episode had a lot of weirdly unnecessary but, really unusually for HK, sweetly entertaining footage of Mary. Ramsay talking about her voice was the best example and, much as it sounded like an insult, I think it was because he's considering her as a contender. I think everyone should be. The "previously on Hell's Kitchen" opener called her "an underdog on the rise." I genuinely see her as the dark horse, while the other chefs seem to still consider her a donkey. In this episode, at least, she did a really great job.

So the black team lost to......the team wearing black, and I could see why Susan and Cyndi were nominated, because like I said in my last post they are the weakest. The fact Ja'nel wasn't even in the frame for nomination suggests editing hurt her on the "lazy in the kitchen" thang, especially since she seems to be a type-A overachiever based on all the footage I've seen. in which case yeah, Susan and Cyndi were the right nominees, with Cyndi being the clear candidate fo elimination, but after such a good service, if Ramsay wants to keep them all, fine. But that was episode 18, and I think the series is too long now.