'Apprentice' recap: 'Hasta la vista gravy!'

What is it about the advertising tasks on The Apprentice that brings out the worst in candidates? Ever since Raef Bjayou and Michael Sophocles's attempt to better Spielberg with their infamous 'I Love My Tissues' ad campaign in 2008, the contestants appear to be taking it upon themselves to outdo each other with TV catastrophes. Stick a bunch of pen pushers with egos the size of Iceland in front of a camera or behind a radio mic and they just can't help themselves, can they? By day, they are management consultants and mortgage brokers, but by night they are wannabe Quiz Call TV presenters and dodgy stand-up comics.

This year's final adverts took the biscuit, standing out even among some of the dross usually produced on The Apprentice. Christopher Farrell's Octoclean sleaze-athon made Pants Man seem like the work of Saatchi & Saatchi. But when a pile of misogynistic crap involving a woman dressing up like a sea creature isn't the losing advert, you know something has gone badly wrong. Making Barry Scott's Cillit Bang ads seem like award-winning, subtle, cinematic pieces of art, the Germ-O-Nator was the advertising equivalent of having bleach squirted in your eyes. Which, I suppose was quite fitting for a cleaning product task.

The guilty candidates involved in the campaign were Chris 'mumbler' Bates, Alex 'Retail Guru' Epstein, Sandeesh 'don't look directly into the eyes' Samra, Laura 'I'm not a whinger but...' Moore and, not surprisingly, Stuart Baggs - The Brand. The whole concept centred around a bad Baggs gag ("Hasta la vista gravy!"), which had all the sophisticated humour of a whoopee cushion. However, Epstein and his crew appeared to believe that they'd stumbled upon the funniest thing Tommy Cooper. They're probably the sort of people who are still going around shouting "Whassup!" whenever they've had a couple of shandies. They didn't even seem to care when the final design for their product's bottle looked more like Ant Killer than a kitchen cleaner.

Taking the hit for the team and leaving the competition was project manager Alex Epstein. A man, who if he was an apple pie, "the apples would be oranges". No, we still don't get it either. Epstein was a perfectly nice chap and therefore a terrible Apprentice candidate who stood absolutely no chance of winning the thing. Adopting the approach of not blaming his useless teammates and challenging Lord Sugar to a debate over the merits of Germ-O-Nator was truly foolhardy. Watching him march back into the boardroom for the final showdown was like seeing a cute little bunny rabbit preparing for battle with a dinosaur with only a few lettuce leaves to protect itself.

As usual, the star of the episode was Baggs The Brand, who was literally caught with his pants down by Lord Sugar, when he gave the candidates a rude early morning wake-up call at their shared house. Baggs was then forced to stand in some tiny tennis shorts and be barked at by grizzly bear Sugar as he issued the rules for this week's challenge. Standing open-mouthed, half-dressed and half asleep, he looked like the kid who'd forgotten his PE kit and who was about to be the last one picked for football practice. Let's hope Baggsy doesn't leave too soon, because he's the best thing on this year's Apprentice by a longshot.

What did you think to this week's advertising challenge? Did Lord Sugar make the right call? Leave your opinions in the box below!