The one thing she does well is pitch
She showed bad judgement last week during the madame tusaud task, buying a pocket watch for a ridiculous sum, driving 2 hours out to croydon when time was of the essence
She tends to try and take credit for anything and everything provided it is a contributing factor to a win

I do not think the final is as cut and dried as lots of people are thinking, James is very determined and has been a good PM
He is a strong candidate to win the show, he has the strong character to get his team doing what he wants.
I did not like the guy at first but over the last few weeks I have been impressed with him.
I also think that Monday had it not been for Zara`s good performance with the pitch, she would have been fired.
That last order they had which surpassed the other teams saved her bacon
Good final two but I think James edges it

I agree she has her flaws; she did, as you say, screw up over the watch and the trip to Croydon was a mistake (though Lizzie allowed her to do it).

However, I think she's done more than just pitch. She was team leader in the advert task and she did what Harry M failed to do; she listened to her team when they brought her valid arguments for changing the whole strategy.

I wouldn't too readily accuse her either of taking credit for other people's ideas. Her idea of asking the library to check a dictionary was really hers, although it did take inspiration from an unsuccessful idea of Harry M's.

The library idea was solely Harry M, she was willing to take full credit until it was pointed out by NIck I think that it was harry who said about checking with the library
Harry M had his flaws for sure, but he was so unlucky this week to be on losing side, and Lord Sugar liked his Smoochies popcorn idea too
I bet he is sat at home cursing the other Harry now

I kind of see Zara as a work in progress. There's an awful lot of things that need ironing out, but I think with the right guidance she could be very successful.

I guess it depend on what Sugar is looking for. Zara isn't the finished article at the moment, but I get the impression that she's destined for bigger things.

I don't really mind her being in the finals. I'd have liked her to have earned her place though, and not just out of a fluke of a mass-firing twist.

She now has to win, just because the two/three people who are better than her happened to be on the other team. Compared to the team she was on *obviously* she's the best.

In another post, I suggested that Zara or James was at very least the second choice for the win.

There's no way that one of the teams would have been loaded with the top three choices for the win, leaving the board with their fourth, fifth and sixth choice for winner at the end of the week.

The teams were probably arranged so either way the result went, someone who the board rated can still be the winner.

I'd imagine the "chosen two " were HarryH and Zara, but the next tier was Lizzie and HarryM.

Harry M's idea was phoning a big library and asking them to search their catalogues for a book about dashikis. When that didn't work Zara asked them if they would look it up in a dictionary. That wasn't solely Harry's idea it was Zara's initiative inspired by Harry's idea.

You can guarantee dictionaries willl be off limits with the internet next time they run this task.

Harry also had a brilliant idea to look for a very small ready made suit in Jermyn Street and Savile Row.

Sugar liked his Smoochies, but it was a very narrow idea about couples sharing, an idea which bombed in the biscuit task earlier this year. How would that sell to other popcorn eaters, especially children?

Harry M had some good qualities, but branding wasn't one of them. His attempts at branding deoderant when PM for that task were awful. Zara is a good all rounder.

She was the best one there IMO and by far the most employable...

Cons: She obviously has no taste buds

Pros: She's obviously a HELL of a saleswoman to be able to sell crap and make people buy it. In large volume.

Supposes there were three people better than her. James and Harry M almost certainly were not - both made major errors, had silly ideas and both were terrible players in a team. They had moments of insight - but then so did everyone else in the semi final. Harry H never won as PM and lacked some of the single mindedness that James and Harry M had too much of. Harry M had never won a single task and would have been a bizarre winner for that reason. Haya had the best paper record but some of her successes were lucky and she had some weak tasks. Zara made small errors too often, but she almost always got the big picture right and did well at most things. If there was competition for her there it was probably Lizzie who was methodical as a PM, also got the point quickly, also presented well and had the same record, and made some of the same small mistakes. Its more a question of who ought to be in the final with Zara.

the board would've had a top 2 and they would have been put on different teams so that at least one of them was in the final and I imagine the same was the case with the two they thought had the least potential which probably meant Lord Sugar's decision between the 3 in the winning team wasn't too difficult.

I imagine Zara and Harry H were the favourites and James and Lizzie were close behind, although I do think that the last challenge will be taken into consideration so James is definitely still in with a chance of winning.

- She casted a black mother with a white child
- She thought that negotiating was an option on the flower task
- She failed to negotiate on buying the stuff to sell at the 50+ fair
- She was very poor at selling (in general)
- She made a very mediocre advert

Conclusion: She is good at presenting

If she was the best candidate this series, then I become very fearful of young British businesspeople.

Zara, Harry H and Lizzie have been clearly the best and it is just a pity it wasn't a triple header - now that would have been worth watching. Think Suggs was angling for a Harry H/Lizzie final (now that would have been a coin toss) but hey.. you get what you get. Silly last task.

On the plus side...Return of the Mac..Big Mo is back in the House

Indeed and asking if there was a book about it/them with the name in the title wasn't a good idea at all - the odds on there being such a book were tiny. Zara went to the real issue and asked someone to look in the right place- a dictionary - and she managed to get someone to do it, even though its no one's job.

Could be, but in usual Apprentice lore Harry H has been pretty invisible to Lord Sugar. He didn't win as PM and he didn't get brought back to argue his case in the boardroom after losing in week one. Lord Sugar has had repeated meetings with James, Zara and Harry M and with them and Lizzie too he's made a choice to save all of them when they might have been the one to go. He's tackled them all in the boardroom and found qualities he says he likes in James and Harry M. With Zara he's done both his trick of finding some slight artificial issue to sound negative on which he seems to do with front runners and he's said negative things and seen how she defends herself. He's either dreamt up some issue with her, or she was following a lot of previous finalists down that obstacle course. He's also eliminated the good but safe people again this series (Hayley, Hannah) and prefered the stronger personalities over them when deciding who went. It wouldn't be unusual in past experience if he was more interested in Harry M for the final.

And what's wrong with that?

You mean cast and not to put too fine a point on it they picked the right child from the choices we saw.

That aside all these things were a team effort and frankly some of the others were more of a hindrance than a help.

From about week 2 I've always thought Zara is by far the best. Can you really not see that. Out of all that lot she'd be the first person I'd employ.

She's better than James anyway. James is a horrible team player and he doesn't listen to other people's opinions. He does tasks based on what he wants and not what the public wants. He has so much to learn.

Apparently every single one of the junior apprentice candidates this series wanted JAmes to win!

I'm glad Zara won, maybe now she can buy herself a new dress

Well thankfully it's not a popularity contest then. Zara was by far the better candidate out of the final two.

Quite....

Yes, being popular among your peers is the primary qualifier for being a business success. Noted.

Only... its not.

I wouldn't employ either of these kids to run a business of mine. However, between the two, I'd sooner EMPLOY Zara, and make sure she was slotted into a sales job. James? Maybe I'd employ him carrying out the rubbish or something. He wasn't very good, and certainly constantly gave the impression that he couldn't be trusted (that if you showed him your back, he'd stick a knife in it).