Nemesis
There are many people who scoff at the BBC's version of The Apprentice because so many of the candidates are clearly nowhere near being sufficiently qualified for a job paying a six figure salary. But NBC's version of The Apprentice did feature many able candidates and the series was dropped by the network as audiences faded away.
By contrast, TalkBack Thames have deliberately found a large number of arrogant, delusional, self-obsessed and incompetent characters and thrown them together to create dysfunctional behaviour. The sixth episode was a dramatic tragedy of which William Shakespeare himself would have been impressed.
Renaissance were given the kiss of death. Michael Sophocles was moved across to Alpha and Kevin Shaw was imposed as project manager.
Then they gave the teams a difficult task by asking them to find a gap in the greetings card business. Kevin's hubris was emphasised as he told the viewers about his ownership of houses and fast cars while he was still in his early twenties and explained what an inspirational leader he would be. “As a leader I inspire devotion,” he intoned.
Kevin's tragedy then unfolded as he made no good decisions at all during the rest of the task. He was railroaded into accepting Jenny Celerier's idea of a save the planet theme - cards ordering people not to waste the world's resources by sending greetings cards for example.
Jenny C said at the start of the show: "I would want to send a card to as many of my friends as possible to say look start doin' something about the huge impact that we're having on the environment - we're destroying the world."
Then Jenny realised how illogical this was and she then explained that she didn't send so many cards now because of their environmental impact. But she chose to blurt that out loud in one of the presentations in front of a buyer.
The only good suggestion for a theme had been made by Sara, who suggested cards for Eid and other religious festivals which were overlooked in the UK market. But Claire immediately talked about the environmental theme and Sara's idea was not so much turned down as just ignored.
Kevin then asked the others who would like to do the presentations. Claire was the obvious choice but he chose himself and then didn't have time to prepare properly. He did have some insight to his fate when he realised he would be useless at the presentation and tried to reassign the task. No takers. His fate was sealed.
It looked as if Kevin couldn't get any worse but then he decided to berate one buyer by telling him: "If you don't put your weight behind it then it's just the same as the US saying we don't care about pollution." Not surprisingly, the buyer chose to order no cards from him.
Michael Sophocles did a reasonable job as team leader of Alpha, selecting singles day as a theme for the cards. He chose Raef as the presenter - and Raef had time to prepare good pitches to the three sets of buyers.
After being told by two buyers that 13th February was not a good date for singles day, Michael decided that the date would be dropped. That was a wise decision. Celebrations Group then ordered more than twice as many cards as both teams managed from the other presentations.
Alpha outsold Renaissance by more than three to one - with the 19,500 cards sold to Celebrations Group and 22,500 altogether. Renaissance only managed 6,000 sales to Tesco.
Kevin then made his final mistakes in the boardroom by bringing back Sara for no reason - and Claire. Helene, who had suggested the theme was left outside. Sir Alan Sugar duly completed Kevin's nemesis and sent him home.
The producers let us know that the remaining ten candidates are still as dysfunctional as before as we witnessed several of them ganging up on and bullying Sara back at the house. Raef was the only one shown telling the others their behaviour was inappropriate.
Kevin was booed by the audience of You're Fired! - the first time that's happened in all three series so far. It will not be the last.
Lessons have not been learned by the remaining candidates. There will be yet more hubris and nemesis in week seven when they are sent into the souks of Marrakech.
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