Helen is the only deserving winner!
SRW
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Susan is a irritating annoying brat who cannot work with anyone so how can she make a good partner? Oh and she is dumb her questions about french people were embarassing.
Jim is all waffle yea he can sell but he doesn't seem much good at anything else other than charming and manipulating others to take the fall for him when things all go wrong.
Tom has proven he is cowardly I don't mind him but he clearly hides behind others and seemingly couldn't make his own decisions - how can a partnership work like that by throwing everything on Sir Alan.
Helen has been consistantly good every week, got the jobs done has contributed immensly and put her mind to every single task. Its just a shame Melody caused her clean record to be smeared but aside from that shes been solid And completly deserves to win she is completly reliable and will work with people without bitching all the time.
Jim is all waffle yea he can sell but he doesn't seem much good at anything else other than charming and manipulating others to take the fall for him when things all go wrong.
Tom has proven he is cowardly I don't mind him but he clearly hides behind others and seemingly couldn't make his own decisions - how can a partnership work like that by throwing everything on Sir Alan.
Helen has been consistantly good every week, got the jobs done has contributed immensly and put her mind to every single task. Its just a shame Melody caused her clean record to be smeared but aside from that shes been solid And completly deserves to win she is completly reliable and will work with people without bitching all the time.
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And the task that she helped lose, she was pinpointed as having the incorrect strategy and couldn't see why.
She was invisible for half the series, with even Nick saying she was a passenger back then and lucky to be on the winning team.
It's pretty even between the four right now I think. Maybe Jim has the most uphill struggle though.
agreed
Agree, in particular the BIB
It's because there are a handful of people (about 6 I'd say) who really like her and they keep on that she's fabulous.
It's getting me down as I keep having to point out that she isn't.
Oh dont get narky, I'm just kidding
Anyway, I do like her & would like her to get at least second
I agree. Melody was a terrible PM but it was Helen who made the most terrible mistake. She was clueless in that task.
It seems to me that all of the last 4 are pretty good in some ways and all have their flaws. Any of them in my view is a potential winner and it wouldn't be an outrage if any of them one.
In my view Helen may have won 10 tasks but she has only again in my view played a major role in 2 of them. Her pitch to La Redoute was very good, but in the same task it was Susan who chose the products ( very well despite KBs snide comments) and also got the deal in the mobile phone shop which was just as impressive. Helen was also impressive in Mypy as was Tom. Other than these 2 tasks I don't think she has done anything particularly brilliant. (and has made a few mistakes - the while selling to retailers debacle springs to mind, aa does the shooting stars pitch where she basically ignored a question about whether they were appropriate to be selling to children on health grounds and said something like people don't care about health when it comes to treats for kids)
tom has a very analytical mind and is clearly very creative. If the other candidates had listened to him on many tasks their teams would have performed better. He is however not very assertive and too anxious to avoid any conflict. He was a rubbish Project Manager.
Susan sells well but occasionally says stupid things. She can clearly organise a team (savoy task) and has far more insight on many tasks than seems to be recognised by other candidates ( most of whom have left). The suggestion that she doesn't get on with people does not seem valid to me ( other than Zoe and Natasha this does not seem to be the case)
jim - good salesman, good negotiator, charming but not as f
good all round as he thinks. Tbh probably the most entertaining candidate but least likely of the last 4 to win
very long winded - but just trying to bring a voice of reason to the frenzied debate. The last 4 are all deserving in their own way and good luck to whoever wins
Helen is the strongest of the bunch with a half decent plan. She's got the show's best record of success with some really big highs. She's very competent , gets things done, organises and runs teams well and can sell, negotiate and make the right calls. She's got good instincts and can think on her feet ,and has proved it in the tasks that were meant to test that. She's made one error in the series and that would be where a Lord Sugar would come in a overview role - otherwise he can leave her to safely get on with it.
Susan has drive and an ideal CV (if the CV holds up..) With a great idea, she might be worth going with on her past record. Her TV record shows she's got good sense, but can also be very silly, and she's sometimes immature and difficult to work wih. She's got two PM wins and some key contributions arguing for her. As they said on the you're fired show, she might be a winner if Lord Sugar is prepared to be much more hands on. if he wants her, he can always claim her plan or drive is stronger than Helen's.
Tom would be a ridiculous winner. He has ideas , but many of them are bad ideas and the evidence is in he often can't tell the difference. He's been hopeless as a PM. He's been indecisive and can't lead. He thinks that himself and has avoided leading. The tasks have revealed he adds things to agreed concepts without approval and, while he is sound on figures, he is accident prone everywhere else.Thats a nightmare waiting to happen for Lord Sugar. While you can justify a Helen and, just about justify a Susan, win on their show record and what we have seen , Tom winning wouldn't make any sense in terms of the show. You can't win without winning, and with a record that says you are a backroom person - not broadly skilled or a leader.
Jim is good at selling. His PM record indicates how good he is at anything else. He's too quick to go with an idea and often misses the detail or the issues. He tends to make it up as he goes along, He's not very credible, drops into hyperbole at the drop of a hat, doesn't admit errors and numbers are not his strong point. Lord Sugar would be worried where his money was going with him and he would need more management than Susan. In show terms, he has a 100% losing PM record and he's been called out by Nick. Karen, Lord Sugar and the less gullible candidates. He's just not a credible winner on what we have seen throughout for the series.
I think at the interview Susan will flop. She will not have a real business plan. Helen will have a real grandiose one. She seems to me to be a gambler going for the high risks. LS will take her for a partner but cut it down to size. The others as you have said dont stand a chance.
We read here about Tom's business plan. What will it be another dyson. I cant see LS going with any such dreams. Jim cant believe he even has one.
But performance and contribution within each task is important as well. There was a point during this series that Helen along with Zoe, and Ellie were viewed as the invisible female candidates.
If it is determined that her contribution within tasks compliments the wins themseleves (which I'm not completely sure is the case with every task that she has been on the winning team) then, yeah, she is the only deserving winner. I think if we were to dissect her performance on every won task then the importance of her particular imput (I would suspect) would vary actually from task to task with others being as/or even more responsible (or pivital) in getting that final win as she was (just maybe).
If she doesn't win then maybe Lord Sug will hire her anyway to work somewhere for him where she has a good role under him and not alongside him.
She appears less in the edit early on partly because she's always on the winning team, which always gets less footage, and partly because of the shear number of other candidates.
Even if we don't see her making major contributions, we also don't see her making mistakes. Her worst moment was in the Flip It task, trying to get big orders from retailers, and even that wasn't too big of a blunder. She at least had a plan that could have brought in money, even if other plans would have made more.
It doesn't compare with, for example, Jim on the magazine task refusing to give discounts to agents whose business model relied on getting those discounts. Or Jim ruining Zoe's magazine cover. Or Tom making rubbish biscuits, or Tom on the Beauty task being sent down to bring customers to the treatment rooms, and instantly failing to do that. Or Susan overestimating sales, or Susan trying to sell duvets door to door, or Susan just generally babbling and winding everyone else up, or, like Tom, failing to push her good ideas.
Lets not underestimate Helen's mistake in the Flip episode. She showed her lack of understanding simple principles of commercial business. Also when in the Fast food episode she was asked about the gross margin they are going to make it was obvious that she learned by hard the words but does not understand the meaning because she confused GM with COS. I think Tom predicted that there will be such questiones asked and explained to her what to say. Credit to her that she did not mess it up too badly:D
IMO the only deserving candidate is Tom. Susan can sell, negotiate at times, she made several good calls, but running a real big business is something else she can not do IMO at least not at the moment. Good luck to her though. She made this series very watchable.
No, I don't think her answer showed any confusion. She said the gross margin on the meal deal was 23%. What was wrong with that? She then said she thought the cost of sales was quite good, but that's a separate point.
How come Helen gets the benefit of being 'tired' but you dont extend the same privilege to the others who made mistakes?
I think it says a lot that on the Flip it task (which so many people use as evidence of her failure) was Helen’s single loss and absolute worst day. She did mess that up, but even then she was she was still the 4th best that day and far better than 2 other people who ended up 5th and 6th.
Of course the biggest factor will be what the final four’s the business plans are. Helen’s excellent record and Tom’s abysmal record won’t matter a jot if Helen’s idea is useless and Tom’s is outstanding.
The tasks are really just to test the candidates and get a feel for how they cope under pressure.
It was no less a mistake for being caused by tiredness, so in that regard she wasn't benefiting. I have cut others slack for being tired. I think it helps explain why Natasha (and earlier, Zoe) couldn't be doing with Susan sometimes, for example. Susan herself was obviously tired when she was falling asleep in the car on the Flip It task. I do think fatigue is part of the reason so many candidates got that task wrong (although the point hasn't really been raised because of so much time being spent debating whether the candidates got it wrong at all, or whether Lord Sugar did).
Granted both were tired, I think Susan's marketing mistake was bigger than Helen's on Flip It.
It doesn't seem fair to invite candidates onto the show if they've essentially been discarded from the outset. It would mean all of Helen's hard work and successes on the tasks will have been in vain.
If Sugar was only looking to invest in an existing business, only candidates who met that criteria should have been allowed to take part in the process.
You could say that for any one of the candidates that we didn't see making a major contribution in a task though no mistakes at the same time either.
I know that more people = less shared air time. However, if she had made notable contributions early on then would she not have got more airtime for those instances? Because people that get edit time in episodes are usually either the villains, the goodies or the jokers. Medicore candidates get small cuts until the numbers get less and there is not other choice but to afford them more attention. Maybe her low edit time was more because she was boring (as opposed to not being notebly good). But again, if she had done something of notice in early tasks, like that pitch to La Redoute in Paris in the later task, then would she not have likely got more frequent airtime than she did.
I don't think her biscuits were that much better either, and the quality looked as bad as the other teams. Wasn't it mentioned that they weren't healthy or something (considerring it was aimed at children)? Their tagline wasn't great either, it was something like, treat time is any time (or something strange like that). In fairness both products were bad but I'm sort of suprised that they won to the extent they did. I'd have to watch the episode again to know for sure, but I never got the impression that they were killing that task with their product.
When the question about the GM was asked Tom's face said he knew the answer and it was discussed between them. Helen's exact words were: "for the meal deal 23% which we thought quite a good COS".
Also why would someone mentioned the COS at all when the conversation is about GM? My suspicion that it is because Helen remembered Tom's explanation and as a smart woman was almost spot on. She has legal background so well done But let's see how she handles interview questions. I am sure they will try to expose all the candidates business knowledge, at least basics.
I personally think Tom is the only credible candidate unless Helen has some `secret weapon` as someone commented on DS. She is a great administrator. Tom could employ one for his new business if necessary. He has the business head and he is completely thrustworthy which is a very important factor.