How on earth did those two make the final four?

Both useless. Alex did nothing since the first week. All he ever did was tell everyone he was 24

As for Helene, there were far more deserving contestants than her. She should have been fired long before she was. She was a useless team leader (in fact one of the worst ever on the show), she didn't do anything of note in any of the tasks, she didn't know what she was talking about in the boardroom etc

Alex was my choice of winner actually.

Wholeheartedly agree OP.

I always felt that Alex and Helene were all talk and no action.

I couldn't trust either of them as far as I could throw them either.

Lucinda, Raef, Lee and Claire would have been my final 4.

I think they were just put in the final as deadwood, and just for the sake of having a 4-candidate final, something that never happened before. When we found out that the teams were going to be Alex & Helene vs Claire & Lee 1 week before the final it was pretty obvious who would win.

Alex was a slimy slithering snake who relied on good boardroom tactics, lying, passing the buck, taking credit for things he didn't do, and making up excuses for his (many) failures to progress rather than talent/skill/competance. He was alright at sales for 1 or 2 of the tasks, but a lot of the other candidates were better than him at sales and at everything else anyway.

Helen rode on everyone's coat tails. She was useless, even moreso than Alex, but she was so insignificant and forgettable that no-one would ever have considered bringing her into the boardroom if they lost the task. She accused others of being useless gobshites, which is ironic when she herself played the role of the "useless gobshite" for the whole series. She seemed to think she was much better than she actually was, and much better than the people around her, which made me dislike her.

Yep, I agree with that final four. I found Alex to be a tremendously limp lettuce and I had to struggle to recall who Helen was when I saw this thread. Instantly forgettable, she was. Both were excellent at whining if I recall.

To be fair to Helene, she was barely ever taken to the boardroom. I think she was in the final 2 weeks, when she was against Lucinda, Alex and Lee, because Lucinda's team won both of those (despite the fact that they argued tremendously both weeks).

I shudder to think what would've happened if she ended up in the boardroom in the episode where she was yelling at Lucinda about the laptop. It couldn't have been as bad as Jenny and Lucinda with the laundary, or even Lucinda and Jennifer with the ice creams, and Margaret, Nick and Lucinda all deducing that Jennifer had a 'bit of a chill' surrounding her, whilst, meanwhile, back at the house, Alex coined the term 'Ice Queen' for her, which was hilarious!

Anyway, enough with the arguing that surrounded Lucinda, I didn't think that the final 4 was the correct final 4. I would've chosen 2 of Raef, Lucinda and Sara instead of Alex and Helene. But, of course, Michael ruined that possibility...

I quite liked Helene. She seemed very competent, though she seemed a bit bossy. I wouldnt like to work with her personally, she struck me as the office cow.

Alex on the other hand was dreadful. I really think he lasted way to long. I liked him at first, but both weeks he was leader he was awful. I had sympathy for him that first week, but as time went on, he became more and more of a weasel.

It was actually very obvious when they announced the four would be in the final that Lee and Claire were gonna be in the top two. I think they only did that 4 person thing for the novelty because Alex and Helene actually had a better task in the final and were still fired.

I still think Claire was robbed mind.

Mine too.

Ignazio, I expected better of you!

I agree with your final 4. Although Raef shot himself in the foot by teaming with Michael (was it?) during the advert task.

Helene was a lazy cow who from what I recall being team leader during the photo task just drank tea and did sod all.

Helene was a horror. She was utterly useless. I don't recall her doing anything apart from stuffing her face, slagging off her colleagues and pulling a face like a wet weekend.

Raef probably was more style over substance but he was a damn site better than some of the others (especially treachorous toad Michael).

I wish the viewers could vote on who we wanted to boot out each week! (I know, I know, that would ruin the concept of the show, but it's infuriating watching the wrong ones get fired!)

Raef was in the mix - Lucinda too till she blotted her copybook.

The decision to make last year's finallists into a Final Four was ridiculous given the relative skill sets of Alex and Helene.

I can see Alex making the final because of the boardrooms he was in - Jenny Celery and Nicolas De Lacy Brown were both more obvious firings, and on the photos task he was the middle choice. If you believe Simon was in the wrong he should have been fired - if he'd been in the right Claire should have gone (for all Alex's shirking and pouting she undermined Simon far more than he did). Once in the final though he should have gone - he was petulant, defensive and childish (I'M 24!) and clearly out of his depth beyond a slight, if overstated, skill for sales.

Helene I think was good at being plausable. For all people talk of her being useless and doing nothing she was regarded generally as a down-to-earth voice of common sense until she tangled with Fan Favourite Lucinda and revealed her true colours/got unfairly tarnished as a bully when Lucinda was being maddening. After that she just seemed bored, depressed and disinterested. I don't think she did nothing - just the bare minimum to get by, and in the end that shouldn't have been enough.

Raef should have won didnt like claire, alex was a total wet blanket and did helene actually do anything?!

I first noticed Helene in week two. At first it was a positive impression. When all the girls were arguing after the laundry task, she was the only one to say the obvious which was that all their arguing was reflective of their behaviour during the task and that they were anything but a team. But then what really got me , was when she immediately (even before the three in the firing line showdown) started blaming Shazia when everybody else was looking at the sheer incompetency of Jenny C. She was immediately planning in her head. Jenny C was her friend but also a very incompetent contestant. Shazia was a more competent contestant and not her friend, so it made sense to gang up on her and eliminate the threat.

Then she just got progressively worse. Her performance in the photo studio task as a team manager was one of the worst I have ever seen. From then on, she blamed everything on Lucinda. She wanted her fired at all costs.

I remember in the wedding task, she was in the boardroom with Sara and Michael. Again, she was a team manager and did an awful job of it. The best was when the other two were talking about working as a team, and Helene turned around and said 'its interesting you say that, we didn't work as a team' and looked at them with a smug grin as if to say 'thats just got one of you fired'. But in reality what she had stupidly done was admit that she was unable to get her team to work together, which is the sign of a terrible team manager. I was amazed that she wasn't pulled up on that.

Even in the final, all she did was moan and make bad decisions and then she pinned it all on Alex when she got fired.

Helene and Alex were both awful. I was amazed that Helene lasted as long as she did, but I had a sneaky feeling that Alex might even win! I was very glad to be wrong though