After three episodes this has to be the weakest set of candidates I have ever seen on the Apprentice. There's no one who has looked a strong candidate yet. Melody and Jim look passably competent but still exhibit weaknesses. Sue, Glen, Helen and Tom have looked alright some of the time. The rest either look weak(e.g. Leon, Vincent,and arguably Edna) or have barely featured enough to judge them.

This is typified by how bad most of the PMs have been so far. Even the winning PMs have put in unimpressive performances and the losing Pms have been absolutely woeful with Edward and Gavin being the worst.

The lack of some solid PM performances is probably a good reason why so many of the candidates look under utilised yet especially with the girls. Normally a good PM will anchor a well organised victory and allow capable people to demonstrate some of the their skills and that so far has been distinctly lacking

i agree, normally by week 4 I have got a favourite

Same here, I like Vincent because hes great Tv.

I think overall Im liking Melody the most

Jim seems to be the runaway winner at the moment. He oozes confidence and charm. The rest can't touch him.

Whilst her team won and she displayed some good organisational skills, I thought Susan's "negotiating" was piss poor. I favour Melody (despite the voice!) and Ellie amongst the girls.

Really gone off Zoe and Natasha. Really unprofessional.

Vincent is good for a laugh

Jim and Melody are the most capable. Susan is a bit young.

Ellie loooks like she will be a bulldog PM

Felicity - too young

Glen - not bright enough

Leon - Sugar likes him so will go far

So many of the girls are flying under the radar I haven't a clue whether they're good or bad, especially Zoe and Natasha. In fact tonight was the first time Zoe said anything of consequence and I wasn't impressed.

Anyway according to Sugar's parting barb there should be no hiding place from now on and about time too.

Ellie looks like another Stella and has the right CV for the prize?

Agree Jim and Melody.

Susan seems to have impressed Nick - though she's making all sorts of mistakes - although so did Yasmina and Stella.

The only problem with that as a final 4 is that I can't see another female dominated semi final onwards. Tom has the right CV if he has the right idea but how does he get there? Is there a Lee like candidate in there with the right idea anyway?

You missed Edna, but I think she's much worse than Glenn .

Vincent's card is marked after this week. Leon's too after last week?

She has a win as PM, which should carry her forward into the next few weeks (something the likes of Laura didn´t have last series, her and Susan are very similar).

Also, I think Yasmina only made one big mistake on the Sandalwood, while Stella was really lucky in the second half of last series (truffles, anyone?).




Isn´t it final five or have I missed something about the format at the end of this series

But I do agree, that there will be more male candidates left (even a male final?) at the end of the series.

I'd probably have Jim down as the strongest so far but his performances have still not been that good. This week he looked the strongest performer as he negotiated fairly well and was the best part of Sue's team. That's largely because no one else did anything of note but credit where it's due.

However, last week he made a few mistakes as part of Leon's team, such as the description he wrote for the app. Because he is very confident you only pick up on some of his mistakes in the boardroom and he was picked up on some of these by Sugar last week.

It's similar with Melody. Relatively to the rest she has been good but there's still been a fair few mistakes and nothing standout yet. She was underwhelming this week.

As for the girls flying under the radar. I think that an unfair accusation to make on any of the contestants yet as the PMS have not been good enough. Once we get a few weeks of well organised PMS and the candidates are used better as a team then that can be judged.

I don't think a win as PM should carry that much weight with Sue as she was up against someone who was awful and still only just won. The prices her sub team paid and the areas her team did the negotiating showed poor decision-making. She won because of the fines the others accrued more than due to her own organisation and let's face it Gavin's team were awful. I'd give most of the credit of the win on the work of Jim's sub team who got plenty of items and paid good prices. There the only people who come out of this week well.

I agree. Susan's win had very little to do with her (a bit like Edna's). What happened to her "head East" idea? She ended up in Mayfair!

It was Jim who led the winning team to victory.

The only thing you can give Sue is that she did not waste the time Gavin did which was one of the main reasons he accrued the fines. I missed the first 10 minutes so someone else might have been responsible for them starting out quicker.

I give her credit for that

But she deteriorated as the task progressed.

Personally, I am not a fan of Susan but the fact that she is a winning PM coupled with her being on the same team with Jim (unless radical changes happen, team Logic will go on a losing streak) could see her come close to the interview stage (just like Laura last year).

If I remember last year Laura could not control her team and cried. I fail to see how Susan is similar to Laura.

- young
- constantly complaining
- a bit clueless

The only difference would be that Susan has good manager skills and that was something that Laura clearly lacked (though in return, Laura did have some basic selling skills which Susan seems to miss).

Susan's team didn't do as they were told and failed to head east (Smithfield Market, anyone?) If she had insisted on them spending longer on sourcing cheaper wholesalers they could easily have lost - just one more missed item would have lost them the task. Jim's extra £10 off the meat and Susan's concentration on sourcing the stuff quickly won it for them in the end. Those are my two favourites. Melody is on another planet where Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Llama teach on an MBA, Edna was invisible, hoping for Susan to fail and Vincent is a patronising git.

Good manager skills - not anything significant then?

The prices she paid almost undid all the good work they managed by getting nine items. To only win by £8 with Gavin's team as bad as they shows what a weakness the prices her sub team paid actually were. I can see why they showed the 10 quid extra Jim got off the meat now.

I should give her some credit for Nick's comments as well though which I did miss early on. He's right, she had some big egos on her team but you can't ignore she undid alot of the good work with the prices HER sub team paid which were easily the worst negotiations of any of the contestants. In the context of how bad Gavin's team were it's a pretty big factor to take into account.

Susan paid a fortune for the items she purchased and that's because she went to expensive locations. The sub-team, led by Jim, saved her by negotiating some decent deals.

Jim has been pretty good so far.

Melody and Susan are entertaining but not sure how good they are!

The others all seem pretty dire.

Only for Lord Sugar (I think it was him) to say the same thing about the other team. Which is it

I want Tom to win.

Think you're forgetting task 1, Susan was excellent at selling and sold out of fruit, she was the only one to suggest that they should spend more of their investment.

And she was absolutely clued up about how to lead her team and how to organise people, wasn't her fault that Felicity found bad places to buy top hats and tea from.

Didn't hear her complaining any more than any of the other candidates either, seemed very motivating to her team members in the last task.

She's the only one I've seen anything from, no one else has any business acumen like she does.

That £8 was not just down to Jim though, it could have been any one of the the 9 items they bought. Susan's team actually paid less for the top hat than the other team, a bit more for the silk cloth, and who knows how much you're supposed to pay for camomile tea! I think it's amazing that they were able to negotiate down to £400, but stupid Felicity said £410 for some reason.

Regardless, Susan was an excellent team leader, she organised everyone so they all knew exactly what they were doing, and she was very encouraging. Her only downfall was not realising the price of camomile tea, and let's face it, who does!?