Maybe but they probably would have only needed to have sold 2 of them and they would have won.

Agreed, I got slightly carried away. She's not always too late. But she often is. (The fitness task is another example. The Margate task is another.) And on the rug, although she was timely she still had no logical argument to back up her intuition. She had some theory that it was an antique that had been well looked-after, when it was clearly new.

Well, Margaret (who initially gave Lorraine the Cassandra tag) more or less admitted on You've Been Fired tonight that she'd got it wrong. She said Lorraine was not only a slow burner, but that she doubted if her flame was lit at all.

... all of which leads me to believe that Lorraine will not make it through the interview stage.

She has some good qualities that can be overlooked, but she is too defensive and is not a good team player, and I think she should go in the next episode.

I'll be very surprised if Lorraine makes it into the final regardless. Only two places - I can't see SAS picking her over other people.

saw that
I think lorraine has been very clever at agreeing at the time
when they are all under pressure and then the game plan is
pointing out (if it goes wrong - what else would have worked) and she starts with - we should have done this or that to cover herself
not a team player at all
poor howard took the fall for her as he was trying to cover her back he should have doubled with kate and let her fail

She's not very alpha wheras the other girls are (very and in one case frighteningly ). They are also more articulate. That leads to all sorts of problems. She looks frustrated at being an also ran but doesn't know how to run. She's frustrated that they ignore her and ends up negative when everyone else is positive on task.

The only way out of that would be to become very useful to everyone but she's not that credible at that as she doesn't do anything as well as most people there. They don't trust her to do anything else so they don't listen to her. On top of that she hasn't got a repetition for being right enough of the time for anyone to think her advice worth seeking. She hasn't got the right environment to do what the smart quieter person can do which is to become indispensible by being reliably right and being ahead of the game and getting the argument over. Whilst its true that she's made some correct calls many have been wrong and on many tasks its been more luck than judgement which option has been the right one anyway. Being certain when the issue wasn't clear anyway has been more of a problem than an advantage.

Essentially she's not forceful enough and doesn't look like a successful leader and she's not smart enough, articulate enough or right often enough to be the team guru. Meanwhile the other apprentices go on having bigger lows and bigger highs around her which just must add to her frustration.

As PM, he would have taken a lot of flak in the Boardroom for that as I am sure AS would first ask why he chose to partner Kate, then turn it against him for poor team management in setting up a team member to fail. I doubt Howard would be quick enough to argue that a strong pair (H&K) would outsell and compensate for Lorraine's failure.

Howard is too similar to Tim IMO to win TA, competent but not sparkling, easy to mould and develop; someone different is needed.

Lorraine has little credibility with the other apprentices, as others have said she is in a no win situation now. Yasmina was particularly unfair to her on the Margate task about her opinion on the adverts after asking for opinions.

Again, we are back to editing and how much do we see or how accurately does it reflect what actually happened or what makes for best viewing with 'goodies' and 'baddies'?

ETA. A product that did not make the show, practice run with Lorraine struggling, Howard talking over a cleaner:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/epis...m_200183.shtml

Was it just me or was the "innovative" dinosaur toy simply a reworking of Furbys which came out a decade ago? They died a death so why would anyone want them now? Howard made a good point that they cost the same as a Wii and several games.

It was implied in the You're Fired program that their choice of products had been more restricted than was made clear to the viewer of the main program and that they wouldn't have been able to replace the craft set with the dinosaur. It seemed Howard's team had been given a choice of "a toy" and "a craft item" - and Suralan certainly made mention of choices within categories that they had been given. Howard's reason for choosing the cat was that the other craft choices were even worse. It looks like they picked the air guitar over the dinosaur, and on the face of it I think it was probably the smart choice. I'm still pretty astounded that Kate didn't sell a shedload of the air guitar really.

Loved Margaret's comment about Lorraine's "slow burning" though - "sometimes I wonder if the gas is even lit at all!" - had me in stiches!