Whilst I don't think anyone should write a candidate off on the basis of a bad week (hell, Susan's had more than one), I do think it's possible to tell, on the basis of past Apprentice series, when a candidate's card has been marked. I think Helen's was marked this week, and I doubt that she'll be able to recover in time for the final.

None of them exactly covered themselves with glory.

The best performances were Tom, Susan and Jim.

But Jim only really did what he'd already done: sold very well 'on the street'.

Tom merely proved that he is capable of selling.

Susan reinforced the idea that she has innate business sense.

Helen and Melody did this weird thing with not seeming to understand retail/wholesale and Tom did not (as far as we saw) do anything to appraise them of their error. It was one of the strangest errors I've ever seen on TA - completely inexplicable.

Which leads me to believe that there must be some underlying explanation of which we are not aware. One person making the mistake I could accept but not three!

Most people I know who watch the show quite like Susan, though one dislikes her a lot.

The evidence does suggest that she is generally popular. She's the most popular candidate in the current DS popularity poll, an item on You're Fired a few weeks back where Dara placed the candidates according to boos or cheers from the audience got mainly cheers for Susan and a search for " susan apprentice" on twitter tonight found mainly positive comments. Not decisive, but means a bit more than what you and your mates think.

The only person I'd rule out altogether as winner is Natasha (Sugar plainly dislikes her and wants to get rid of her, and in all honesty I can't see what she can do that at least one of the others can't do as well or better).

The others all have pluses and minuses. Tom is a weak leader, but is a creative thinker who can actually devise a new product. Helen is an effective operator who can lead and present well, but doesn't seem to have an instinct for business. Susan has an instinctive eye for a good product and has the guts to take a gamble - but such a gamble may not always come off. Jim is a fantastic salesman and negotiator, but is that enough?

She had a bad task, but her performance previously has been very strong. She'd hardly put a foot wrong. Where-as to me Natasha generally looked to be clueless even when winning; Helen has always come across as being on the ball, efficient and productive.

On this task I think she was tired out by all the 6am starts. It was a brand-new type of task, and none of the women really seemed to understand what was required. They just did what had worked before. In Helen's case, that meant getting single big orders, which meant selling to businesses instead of selling to the public, which meant selling to retail. She thought a large enough order would make up for the slim margin. I think that was wrong (the order was worth £90 of profit, and for comparison we see Tom selling £40 of phone chargers at a time, of which I'd guess £30 would be profit), but it wasn't totally stupid. At least she had a plan to make money.


Agreed.


He was also the one who most clearly understood what the task was about. If Natasha had listened to him they'd have avoided the fine. It's not clear whether Tom or Susan understood.


But she also undermined by that spending a day selling cheap duvets door-to-door in an expensive district. She sold well, but it wasn't clear she understood the importance of frequent restocking. And when the team restocked, she speculated on things that hadn't been proven to sell well during the task. She was on the winning team, so we don't know whether Lord Sugar would approve.

As we don't know why he only spent £20 we don't know that he would have spent that much more earlier.

Why he seemed to be the only one who was concerned about a fine is a major mystery.

No one can say any of the others are stupid and yet not one of the others had any concern on that score. I absolutely refuse to believe that if they had all been made aware of a fine for not restocking all five of them would have completely ignored it.


We don't know who told her to do that nor what options they had for locations selling door to door.

It may or may not have been her fault.


That's true, but given the amount he bangs on for 'having a nose for business' I think it's highly unlikely that he would not actively approve.

Loving the way you completely miss Natasha out as totally irrelevant

The others may have been aware but simply not mentioned it. Notice that Melody did have her team restock at about the time Jim wanted to. We'd hardly expect her to say, "We must restock to avoid a fine", even if it was something they were aware of. Susan may have been aware, but Natasha doesn't ask her and anyway she still has her beads. You can't say 5 of them ignore the need to restock when 4 of them do restock. It's really only Natasha herself who is obviously ignorant, and even she caves as soon as Jim mentions it.


In the boardroom she's specifically asked why she went to Kensington. She replies that she thought the products she took could be sold to homes, and then she admits she didn't do a very good job. I don't see any reason to blame anyone else for this. Even if it was someone else's idea, she was totally onboard with it.

I didn't leave her out as irrelevant, I left her out because she didn't do anything that was noticeably very positive or very negative. Of that yielded some new insight compared to previous tasks.

'In the boardroom she's specifically asked why she went to Kensington. She replies that she thought the products she took could be sold to homes, and then she admits she didn't do a very good job. I don't see any reason to blame anyone else for this. Even if it was someone else's idea, she was totally onboard with it'
But this doesnt explain why she thought she could do better going house to house than selling to tourists on a market stall.

I will never understand why TA candidates even thought the door-to-door approach could work. It didn't work in series 1, 2, 5, 6 and this series (Tom and Jim's attempt in Junk task and Susan's attempt in Flip task). Unless they all were truly thick-headed, I'm inclined to believe they were told or encouraged to do it for TV entertainment.

Do you not remember episode 5 in series 3 when Rupert happened across the flat of Debenhams Head of Purchasing and got an order for 250,000 creme duvet packs?

It's not possible for me to recall because I haven't seen series 3. That's a weird fluke. I wonder if BBC still has series 3 on their iplayer? Will have a lookee.

UK series 3? There was no Rupert... and task 5 was the art gallery task...

...I don't think it was an entirely serious post.

I definitely haven't spent the last few minutes looking through Wikipedia to find a task that resembles that...

No, but you would expect Jim to do a lot more than vaguely say he didn't want to be fined and ridiculed and then drop the matter. If there was an extant rule you would expect him to say: "Look, you mad bat, we have to fulfil this requirement and if we don't we're going to lose this much money."


Melody restocked the same number of times as Natashsa yet didn't get fined. If there was a rule then she should have been fined as well.


I disagree that she was 'totally on board with it'. If she had had the option she'd have stopped wasting her time after an hour when it became clear that that route was going nowhere.

There has to be some hidden rule that makes the candidates go off on these wild goose chases selling door to door and to offices, retailers or whatever when that sub team never does as well as the people on the stall/ in the street.

I know I don't like making suppositions but the fact that this always happens, every series makes the inference inescapable.

It's also telling that they seem to be able to give that up and start the more profitable stall/street selling after a certain amount of time because if they weren't it would seem odd that Sugar wouldn't ask them why they kept going with a duff strategy - and he couldn't ask that if they were being forced to.

I thought she did stop when it became clear that it was hopeless.

She certainly stopped but after how long isn't clear.

I believe that they are made to do something other than street/stall selling so that the producers have something else to show other than people being buttonholed in the street/market as otherwise you'd just have a 10-15 minute segment of that which would be very tedious.

This way they have other things to intersperse into that.

Maybe they can return to more productive selling as soon as they have filmed enough to provide the shots required.