Tonight's episode of The Apprentice was absolutely, completely, totally and utterly ridiculous, nonsensical and horrifying. And by God, did we love it.
The candidates were meant to be advertising a new brand of jeans in tonight's show, but we couldn't help but feel that they were simultaneously advertising the British post-Brexit business world. And if that's the case, frankly, we're doomed.
Where to begin? With the women, we suppose, led by last week's main attraction, live wire Jessica Cunningham (she got the job when Rebecca Jeffery, the far more qualified candidate, got overwhelmed and baffled by maths and was tricked out of the position - a metaphor in itself, we're sure).
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Jessica is like someone out of a low-rent, low-brow comedy, complete with slapstick and goofy facial expressions. But it's entertaining, because of the cognitive dissonance of realising she's actually a real person.
Of course, we don't want to feel too much sympathy for our Apprentice candidates - the hate watch is real with this show - but even so, our heart went out to her a little bit when she got overwhelmed and began to cry in the middle of the task. Mind you, it was because she'd forgotten to bring the jeans she was photographing to the photography studio, so our understanding was perhaps tempered by the absurdity of the situation (helped, of course, by Karren Brady's unparalleled skill at being deadpan).
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That was only the start of Jessica's problems, as she breezed through the task clashing with her team-mates, filming an ad campaign in a toilet and ultimately stumbling her way to the Boardroom to discover that it had all gone horribly wrong.
Still, at least she wasn't alone in that, as Mukai Noiri didn't have the easiest time leading the boys' team either. He settled on the alpha male approach, which seemed to involve ignoring everyone who had even a hint of a suggestion. Sometimes, this turned out to be a good thing (his veto of the brand name 'Emojeans', for instance); sometimes, it involved hanging up on his sub-team leader in a rather wonderfully passive aggressive manner.
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Whereas last week it was obvious from the get-go that the women were going to lose, this time around the two teams were tied neck and neck in uselessness. The girls forgot their jeans; the boys had Karthik's incessant and often bizarre interruptions to contend with. The girls filmed their advert in a toilet; the boys used the exchange: "Always Japanese." "Definitely, cool."
One of the girls didn't know what a strapline was; the boys didn't finish their interactive billboard (meaning it turned into a bus stop that hooted at you, courtesy of Dillon's bizarre bird noises; even if it had been finished we have no idea how that would have made even a tiny bit of sense).
With Jessica admitting that her task had been a "comedy of errors" and Mukai openly apologising to the panel of 'industry experts' for fluffing his pitch, it was clear that it had all gone tits up.
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And sure enough, Lord Sugar took the opportunity to kick off in the Boardroom; a man always looking for an opportunity to be gruff, he was given a golden ticket with the teams this week. Infuriated at essentially how rubbish everyone was - almost like they'd been cast for a television programme instead of a business opportunity, imagine - he decided that no team would win (although given the quality of some of the treats we've seen in previous weeks, a stint in the Boardroom may have been the more amenable option). "It's my favourite task," he pouted, like a 6-year-old moaning that their birthday's been ruined.
The Bridge Cafe must have nearly run out of polystyrene cups thanks to the influx of tea-sipping candidates all ready to pass the buck. The men put in a decent enough show of squabbling, but it was the women who really excelled, with Jessica moaning of people "yipping in her ear" and Natalie shouting the word "bullshit" with abandon. It was down to Trishna to desperately plead with them all to act like grown-ups, so she's clearly far too sensible for this show and should be sent home immediately.
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Unfortunately, Jessica didn't choose to bring her back into the Boardroom so she's free to pollute the house with her logic and reason for another week. Instead, joining Jessica and Mukai were Alana, Natalie, the very lovely JD and Karthik, who seemed to see this as an opportunity to continue to interrupt people with nonsensical statements about disrupting things, aptly enough. (Karthik, incidentally, was a joy again this week - particularly when he moaned that working with his team was like "pushing custard up a hill").
The Boardroom was a complete shambles, of course (why change the habit of an episode?) with Jessica exuberantly shouting that she wants the prize MORE than any of the other candidates and Alana apparently forgetting how to speak with the pressure of it all. But it was Natalie who got sent packing, having neither Jessica's klutziness nor Karthik's general fire.
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Of course, if this was an actual process, Jessica and Karthik would have been sitting in a taxi home right now having a long hard think about themselves. But this is a television show, so while the decision to keep them around is technically a joke, we really wouldn't have it any other way. And hey, at least Lord Sugar made the effort of pretending to think about firing Karthik. That's good enough for us, for now.
At the beginning of the episode, Sugs had invited the candidates to the Istituto Marangoni to hear the details of their task - where a collection of disturbing mannequins and body parts hung from the ceiling, rotating in a never-ending circle of unthinking human-like figures. We have to say… looking back, this seems like a very potent metaphor indeed for this bunch of budding entrepreneurs.
LORD SUGAR'S BEST BIT: His utter fury at the two teams for being so rubbish (and on his favourite task), of course. "Never mind Mad Men. It's more like Demented Dimwits." (Is that on Netflix?)
BIZARRE BULLSHIT OF THE WEEK: Oliver insisting that they could create jeans packaging which consumers would want to keep. "I mean, I've kept a fragrance box for 15 years which now stores my minidiscs." Bless.