Quite a few people on here seem to think Mona is a dark horse and might stand a good chance of winning...why??

We barely see her each week...she lost the first task, her presenting skills are truly dreadful, she's always winging and pulling faces...and last week, it was about half way through the programme before we even caught a glimpse of her....

am i missing something please?

Always?

You've just said we barely see her each week.


Yes.

You're missing the element of manipulation by the production company.

For some reason they always seem to make some candidates 'non-people'. They don't show them or if they do they show them in a negative way.

I particularly noticed it during the 'soap' task where Mona was in a lot of shots, and always seemed to be working hard but was scarely mentioned and did not figure in YF at all.

Yes always...in the minor moments we see her she is either winging or pulling a face...so yes, always!

Re your other point, Mona has actually managed a task...which she was shown throughout so I don't think she is a non-person! And seemingly working hard on the soap task is fine...but does that make it ok to then do nothing on the next task. The only think she had to do was make the presentation, and she couldn't do that.

Incidentally I've yet to see any of the candidates make a good presentation...without notes, without grimacing or looking totally unbelievable at times, or sounding like they don't know what they are talking about!

To be fair to her, she would have had to put in an Oscar winning performance to present the 'pants' idea convincingly because a) there was no coherent strategy behind the idea b) Kimberley gave her a lot of negative feedback during the run through, but apparently no positive ideas c) Mona offered to step down - so she knew she wasn't going to do it well - in favour of Kimberley, whose area of expertise was meant to be presenting ideas to clients, and Kimberley refused.

I think I could have done a better presentation than Mona did, but I'd have needed to go away and think really hard for a couple of hours, whereas it looked as if Mona was made to do all her thinking in the group who were not giving her any positive input.

I'd have asked Philip to do the presentation, as he was so fired up about the idea. In fact I'd have made that a condition of accepting the idea.

Yes I agree Philip should have given that presentation...just to seal the nail on his coffin if nothing else

But had Mona pulled out...really she was on the verge of being sacked for what else did she do in that task?

Well, in the first place that isn't actually true.

Even if it were, all it means is that the editors edit in a lot of winging or face pulling.

That may or may not represent the actual proportion of time a candidate moans or pulls face..


Why do you think you know what she did on a two day task from about half an hour of TV (the rest being the BR), half of which is showing the other team and half of the remainder the other sub-team?


So, what you are saying here is that she was entirely typical?

Actually, ISTR Helen gave a very good presentation last year and was congratulated on it.

Yes but we can only go on what we see. I know it's heavily edited, but I can only comment on what I see...

Re Helen...yes..but I'm talking aboutt his series...I'd quite like to see Yasmina present as I think she could be good.

This is becoming bizarre.

Have you had access to the unshown footage for the task?

Were you there?

I cannot understand how on earth you think you know what she was doing for the two days.

Do you think she was sitting around filing her nails?

Don't you think someone would have mentioned it if she had been skiving (particularly as one of the key problems with the packaging was that there was not enough time to spend on it.)

You really have to try and look a wee bit deeper than what the production company show you and ask yourself if your initial impression even makes sense.

Yes, but why comment on what you can see when what you can see is insufficient to make any intelligent judgement possible?

Well...the general consensus was that Kim should have brought her, Nooral or Howard in for having done nothing...

And as I said I can only go on what the show shows, which I agree is heavily edited - we can't debate the characters on what they don't show...we'd just be guessing

Well doesn't that make this whole forum void then as none of us can discuss what we can't see?!

Because people are generally very easily manipulated by TV.

I couldn't count the number of times I've seen someone say "x doesn't do anything" when that is palpable nonsense for reasons I've already mentioned.


But that is exactly what you're doing in this thread. You are taking a highly selective set of edits and guessing that they are truly representative of a candidate when this cannot possibly be the case or someone would have mentioned that Mona a) was very negative, b) never did any work. That hasn't happened once and so my money's on biased editing.

Whether or not she's a good candidate is another matter entirely.


Not at all!

There is plenty that we do see that we can analyse and comment upon.

And there's no reason why we cannot speculate on what we haven't seen.

Just so long as we don't extrapolate from what we have seen and make factual statements that we cannot know are true.

(Not that you did that in your OP but I have seen many people say "X doesn't do anything").

That doesn't really mean anything.

If I remember clearly we rarely saw Tim (winner of season 1) each week, but he went on to win the show. Not saying she is like Tim, but not being seen every week should not be used against her.

The people we see each week, who make the loudest noises rarely turn out to be the brightest bulb.

That's true.

So to my original question...why do people think Mona is a good candidate and 'the dark horse of the show'?

God knows tbh. She proved herself utterly incapable in the first week and has done nothing since to change that impression. She can't present, lacks business acumen, and is utterly devoid of charm.

Do people actually think that?!

If anything people have been wondering why she wasn't sent home/taken to the boardroom in the last episode.

And the homophobia thing isn't helping.

IMO you're coming across as very pedantic. Of course people will comment on what they see, shall we try and comment on what we can't see and just try and guess what's happening?

Well, in reality people are going to say that about anyone who is largely edited out and does not appear totally horrendous.

People are saying much the same about Howard.

If Debora had made as much money with her sub team in the first task the girls would have been within a fiver of the boys - the first task is always going to be a poisoned chalice for the TL because it's all new and no one has any idea of the other candidates strengths and weaknesses.

On the presentation I can't believe that any sane person could do a good presentation for that appalling rubbish. Anyone with any self respect would be extremely embarrassed which was exactly the impression I got of Mona.

Other than that there's the unseen footage of the 'homophobia' episode.

So, yes, she is a dark horse and it will be interesting to see if, when she goes (I'm assuming she won't win), Sugar fires her for a logical reason or does one of his famous 'twists and turns' just to get rid of her.

The comment you quoted was very badly worded (I'm fired ). What I was trying to say was that there is no point in making extravagant extrapolations based on seeing very little.

I don't think she has a chance of winning. Her homophobic was not the best thing to say, because Alan won't like that, plus I think the show and Alan would have a very public backlash which would destroy his credibility and lose him a lot of money

Well she showed good signs before. But after her last pitch, and her petty melodramatic bickering with Kim over the script for the pitch, she doesn't seem to show as much promise anymore.

Not me. Howard is mostly in the background, but we see him say stuff occasionally and it usually makes sense. As a result I have quite a high opinion of Howard.

What we've seen of Mona has mostly been poor. Starting with her wanting to be the leader on the cleaning task when she didn't even know what a duster was. She was lucky not to get fired for over-spending. Her negotiating for contracts was embarrassing - basically she called the costumer a liar for claiming he got his cleaning done cheap. She said it wasn't possible to clean well for that amount. Then she somehow wangled a contract at double his usual price, and did a worse job! OK, it's good that she got so much money, but I doubt if that would have happened if the cameras weren't there or if she wasn't so pretty.

Then her analysis of their failure was totally at odds to mine. She had some notion that Debra created divisions in her group, for which we see no evidence. She called Debra a liar without justification. She seems to be living in a fantasy world of her own.

The next time she came to my attention was in the fitness task, when she said that with Nooral in the poster "it wouldn't look good." Then she said he was too short. Then when Yasmina said he was the wrong colour, she said, "Exactly!" as if it had been what she meant all long. I strongly dislike people like that, who can't say what they think. It led to a row over nothing.

And now we have the advert task. She gave a terrible presentation. Truly dire. OK, it was a weak product, but that doesn't excuse the presentation. She also couldn't take constructive criticism from her team leader, and had to resort to complaining about Kimberly's body language. I think that row was typical of how women sometimes do badly on The Apprentice. She's all emotional and reading between the lines and touchy-feely, and business is about hard facts and getting things done.

So, I have plenty to dislike about her. I've not noticed anything impressive. I have noticed lots of times when she seems to have failed to contribute - if she had a good idea during the advert task, for example, surely Kimberly would have used it, and Lorraine would have mentioned it in the boardroom as more ammunition against Kimberly and Philip. She's not been praised by Nick or Margaret that I remember, or by other candidates on You're Fired.

Maybe she'll surprise me by doing something impressive in a later episode. I hope so. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

I agree. There's basically nothing there. She's not very bright, its not clear what she can do, she's disruptive and she's inarticulate. Worse she keeps on putting herself in positions where she has to negotiate or present where its all too obvious she doesn't realise she can't do either. Males have got away with some of those problems (Lee last year) but no one has done well without being good at anything.

I think she can sell - she got consistent sales on the body products tasks, and whilst she went about in an obnoxious way, she did bullshit her way into a cleaning contract in week 1 and produce solid overall sales numbers. In a series with more sales tasks I think she might appear to be a stronger contender. As it is, she's the weakest there apart from Noorul and Lorraine.

I would dispute she constantly puts herself in positions to negotiate or present though. Actually she seems to actively try to avoid them which is probably wise givern her... "skills". She sent Yasmina in to negotiate with the showroom staff in wk 1. She tried her damndest to wriggle out of presenting this week, constantly trying to shuck it off to Kimberly. The only time she's seemed happy presenting was in the fitness task, and even that was more of a physical demo than a verbal one.

Looks like i was right about mona (have been away so just catching up on episodes)...she was fired because she had done not a lot over the course of the show