Bankstone News is really struggling with Season 2 of Broker Apprentice, the reality-based comedy drama show from Insurance Age. Things seems to be shaping up nicely in Eps 1 and 2, only to go badly off the rails in Ep 3, which consisted (see most recent edition of BN) of the six contenders, split in to teams of three, shambling around Insurance Age’s offices looking for insurance hazards.
Sadly S2 E4 sees no improvement. Instead what we get is people sitting around in various office meeting rooms chuntering, baffling, blathering and bullshitting. The six are assigned a task (coming up with a product or a proposition that will attract new digital business to the broker channel) which few, if any, of them appear to have even partially understood.
One team are so hopelessly confused they eventually stop bandying aggressively competitive nonsensicalities and tramp off to ask Insurance Age’s Manu K “what was it exactly we were supposed to be doing?” The other team never quite reach this point, but end up, after an extended exchange of hollow-sounding business-speak platitudes, in danger as Manu describes it of “finding a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
The entire episode consists of people talking in the vaguest possible of terms about something they may or not be talking about (before an audience of brokers at an e-broking event) in the next episode.
Yes, some mildly entertaining banalities are uttered (Max talking about making everybody’s day that bit easier for example).
Yes, the simmering hatred and ill-suppressed eye-rolling rage exhibited at times by Natalie and Veronika is moderately diverting.
But there’s really far too little happening here to stretch out over 12 minutes and 32 seconds.
Save yourself unnecessary suffering/tedium and just watch the bit from 02.35 to 03.40 in which we see Natalie, Veronika and Will tying themselves in increasingly hostile knots as they struggle with their total incomprehension of the task assigned.
Unedifying would probably be the word.
How Zurich’s Pee-Wee Herman lookalike Gareth Honks can keep a straight face as he declares he has been “really impressed” by both teams is utterly beyond Bankstone News.
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