"Will this series be sort of rigged like last year's?"

(a rhetorical question)

Sugar had decided to choose Tom Pellereau early on. I'm sure he was selected for the show because his occupation was 'inventor'. In terms of his ability on the show, he was poor. On the losing side so many times, back in the boardroom so many times, not good as project manager, lacking business oomph. None of this mattered to Sugar. He chose one of the worst candidates that's ever appeared based on his overall performance on the show:

Errr. Tom wasn't in the boardroom in the last 3 until it was almost unavoidable for him NOT to be brought back,

And he was one of the hardest and most productive workers in whichever team he was in - which is why the losing PMs didn't blame him for the loss and take him back....In fact he was a highly visible member of the team in every episode - the complete oppostir of Helen who managed to be a shadow in the background on every task except when she was PM.

He was unlucky to have been on the losing team so many times, she was lucky to have been on the winning team even more times..... they are classic examples of the fact that losing teams have good team players in them as well as the winning one - and some of the margins of Victory were pretty narrow!

Helen wasn't solely responsible for her team winning each week - and likewise, Tom wasn't the architect of the losing teams downfall... in fact - had he been listened to more by his team mates - his teams may have actually won more than once!

I would go so far as to hazard a guess that if Helen had actually been on a losing team and brought back into the boardroom, she might well have been fired as one of those "fly under the radar" types that LS hates!

I think Helen came over pretty well though. She had much better people skills than most.

But I can see what the OP means. Helen was a first rate employee and Sugar wasn't looking for an employee. Tom was a bit of a ditz but offered Sugar something to invest in.

It might make this less likely though that this year they have had time (and presumably advice) in preparing their business plans, so suicidal disasters like Susan's sales projections and poor Helen's awful concierge concept will be less likely to happen.

I think the edit certainly exploited the negative attributes in most of the candidates last series, possibly to explain why someone who lost so much was the winner.

Someone as seemingly perfect as Helen must have got right on the editors tits, but they came up with the ingenius idea to ignore her instead.

Meglos - you're right about the edit. Theres two ways people are invisible - either they actually do very little (quite rare) or they do every thing required of them in a calm and professional manner and so make dull TV - hence get little air time.
For me the biggest mark against Tom was him running scared of being project manager. He didn't step up until he was the last in his team to have done it, and then he only did it the once even though he had as many opportunities to do so as anyone. If you're looking for someone to set up a business I'd've thought being willing to take responsibility and to lead were pretty fundamental attributes...

When Tom was PM he didn't even step up, Sugar appointed him PM at the start of the task. He never stepped up once.

Probably has been already.Tom was the worst PM of last series and probably the worst candidate ,and probably one of the worst ever, and he had the record to prove it. Better people went because of his mistakes - notably Zoe. His CV indicated what he had on offer well before they got to business plans, and its difficult to think that he would been kept if what he was known to offer wasn't wanted. By the final, he and Susan are the only ones left with viable ideas, and he gets the prize regardless of his own and other's show performances.

This year the plans are already known, so Lord Sugar can pick what he wants, what areas he prefers and adjust who goes with that in mind unless something catastrophically obviously goes wrong for people he is more interested in. He can select what types of plan he wants and match their scale and risk to his interest .

There's also another distortion in that he's picking someone he personally will have to work with. He's already got rid of two females who he found difficult to live with - although their brash/driven male equivalents have a record of doing well on previous series. Thats just another factor coming in on top of what actually happens in the tasks. It makes all his decisions questionable. For example would Bilyana or Maria have gone on what they did in the tasks if he was just eliminating people on the basis of who did what badly , or if they had had a plan he wanted, or if he could face having meetings with them?

It's a reality TV show. It's always rigged. They always are.

Let's face it, now the prize has changed it will never be about the tasks.

He will have one or two candidates that he's interested in and will keep them no matter what happens during the tasks.

If he didn't want Katie, he could've got rid of her by saying she was flying under the radar and he doesn't like that.
If he didn't want Gabrielle, he could've said you were the PM and you made the wrong decisions.
If he didn't want Jenna, he could've said you can't mess up the sums in a pitch.

Etcetc.

No matter who is in the "bottom three", he can twist it any way he wants and get rid of the person he's not particularly interested in.

I always get the feeling after a couple of weeks he's already narrowed it down to four or five and just waits to tick off the rest by firing them as soon as he's got the opportunity.

Last season was quite comical and predictable as you knew who he wanted almost straight away.

Hopefully most, if not all, will have good, workable business plans this time so it will be based more on their performance but I don't think they will.

Last year's winner must be one of the least business oriented and least capable business people ever. How he got it is I suppose a reflection of Sugar's particular preferences and prejudices. It had little to do with ability. I think for one thing, he wanted a male. None of the women stood a chance. No surprise there when you look at Sugar over the whole range of Apprentice series, though he did get around to a token woman after a few years of dismissing them, no matter how capable, in favour of mediocrities or sometimes dodgy male candidates.

I think the thing is that now that the format has changed, Lord S wants somebody who can invent things which he can then possibly produce.

Tom had an invention already. He had claims of interest. Its now been turned into something on sale. Its the same invention. It was something maufactured which Lord Sugar said he favoured as he knew about making and selling products. It was small and cheap , which fitted the amount he wanted to spend on his winning idea.

Since the show, he's also picked up on Susan's idea - which looked more costly, and, he was told, had suspect figures on the show . He looks to have made a substantial investment there and, presumably, had a closer look at the idea and figures first.That may suggest he won't go for anything less tangible , costlier, unknown, or in an area he is less comfortable with, before he has had a much closer look. If he couldn't investigate their ideas fully last series, or still doesn't want to do it for 16 ideas this series, he's going to end up going for whats more obviously viable. He can then do a Susan and have a closer look at anything else on offer in slower time after the show?

But he can't "get rid" at all if the person is not PM nor brought back to the boardroom. So Tom was safe for most of the series.

The tasks are an elimination process, so they are a necessary part. The change in prize hasn't changed that. Also they are the means we are entertained. Without them the show would have nothing to offer the viewer. When the prize was a job, the winner was decided by a final task, but the result was always based on judgement, not numbers, so Sugar always had the choice. Now the tasks produce four finalists who are judged on their performance in the interviews and their business plans. Sugar still gets a free choice. Nothing much has changed except he can now choose from four rather than two.

It's a bit daft to look at last year in hindsight and say the winner was chosen before it all started. I'd say Sugar was more attracted to Susan's business than Tom's inventions. On the cosmetics task he said it was an industry he wanted to get into because of its profit margins. However when it came to it her business plan, as presented, just didn't add up. Yes he knew Tom had inventions to offer, but he knew the other candidates also had business of their own, or good business CVs. If he was always going to invest in Tom's nail file then he could have done so separately, as he did with Susan's cosmetics.

I said it after last year's final, but with the change of prize, there really is no longer any correlation between performance and prize anymore. Providing they don't absolutely cock everything up on a consistent basis, the winner is probably long since decided, with one or two reasonable back-ups in case of the winner messing up.

While this was probably always the case, I think the change of prize makes it more obvious. The majority of the cast are merely there for entertainment value, and will eventually get fired for whatever reason. Some of the fodder will inevitably perform well in the tasks, and will make it to the end, but have no chance of winning anyway. (Helen for example was a standout last year, but was never going to win no matter what she did, because when it came to the final, it became apparent she never had any idea of what her business could be.)

It's a shame really, because even though in the past winners were probably earmarked from the off, it was always nice to get to a final and see someone appear to have earned it through strong performance. (Like with Stella). This current format just creates such an underwhelming ending, because it's far more clear that the winner doesn't need to appear to have done anything more than not make a tragic mess of things.

When they switched the prize, I had assumed they would have fiddled the tasks into being more around creating and developing their buisness ideas, but I guess that never happened.

Yes it will be rigged in favour of a preferred product. The prize has made it more of a long winded Dragon's Den IMO. The Dragons make it clear they won't invest if they don't like the investee, even if they like the idea, and I think that is the only part that may influence Lord S during the show.

I already have a feeling that for some reason Gabrielle is going to be favoured, despite being a wet blanket, Katie will be a 'dark horse' and we will all gasp with amazement that she narrowly missed being fired in week two and Duane will win because, well he's just so damned nice, oh and yes he's also an inventor.

There is every chance that he will do a Susan this year, after all why would he turn down a good business proposition but also could he pick two winners for a change?

He will only have one or two people he's interested in investing in. Three contestants enter the boardroom, it's quite easy to not fire the person/people he wants by firing the other contestant(s) in the boardroom instead - which he did with Tom when he did end up in the boardroom.

I'm not arguing that Sugar always had the choice, I know that. Had he hired Tom last year over Helen though (had the prize not changed), I guarantee 99.9% of the audience would find the show laughable. Helen let herself down with her business idea, so most people can forgive Sugar for not hiring her but there's just no way he would've got away with hiring Tom had the prize stayed the same.

Basically, the difference is that Sugar KNOWS their business ideas and knows exactly who he wants to invest in. With the old prize, it actually did come down to who performed best on the tasks - now it doesn't which defeats the entire format.

There's absolutely no way that Sugar looks at all 16 plans and thinks "well, I love Maria's plan the best..." then in week two fire her because... she fell asleep.

He will continue to fire the candidates who have weak business plans no matter how well they perform on the tasks. Like I said in my previous post, there will ALWAYS be a reason to fire one of the three candidates in the boardroom so Sugar can never lose because the viewers will understand why he fired X, even if they do think Y or Z deserved to be fired more on a particular task.