I'm really disappointed that Maria got fired. I think Lord Sugar made the completely wrong decision. For a 20 year old woman, she seemed feisty, passionate and confident.

Jane was complete pants at being project manager. The product was rubbish... she failed to listen to the market research and realise the tap idea was the better idea and instead went ahead with the product that was less popular! The pitch was really poorly organised. Surely as project manager, Jane should have successfully oversaw that the right product was picked and the pitches went smoothly, giving each member of her team a meaningful role in the task?

Jenna took charge of the costs, despite it not being one of her strengths. She completely cocked that up and she owns her own business! She doesn't seem to have a mind of her own, just agreeing with Jane about everything in the boardroom, saying Maria should be fired etc. It seemed like the both of them were just ganging up on Maria to save both their skins.

I think Maria had more potential than the other two.

I agree....can't stand both Jenna & Jane. In fact, this year the girls are weak compared to girls from last year.

I agree. She didn't really do anything wrong apart from taking that nap?

Jane is poison and will be a nightmare to work with. Jenna is just useless. Maybe he was making up for not firing Katie in episode 1 by firing someone a bit UTR.

Jane kept saying that making the product was too difficult. Was that right? Did she actually ask the designer? I feel like I missed something

Just watching Maria on YF and she seems really, really young, well acting not looking.

I agree, though I don't think she deserved to get fired. Why was she chosen for the show really? 20 is too young.

Watching her on that show made me wonder why on earth she was picked in the first place. She was like a giggling simpleton. Cringeworthy to watch.

There wasn't an obvious reason to fire Maria, but there wasn't a clear reason to keep her either.

I'm sure she's good fun to hang out with, but way too immature for The Apprentice (and falling asleep on only the second task was unforgivable!).

So I though the right person was given the boot, but would have happily seen Jenna fired as well.

Seriously, you think falling asleep was unforgiveable? I thought it was a non-issue, and was surprised that Jane thought it worth raising. The whole late bedding and early morning rising culture on the show is so well-known now, and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. Tre Azam and Susan Ma, both strong performers, have fallen aleep in the car in the past.


I think Jenna should have been the one to go. The crap product was Laura's idea, but she wasn't brought in and in any case deserves credit for having come up with some kind of idea, and she didn't push it when the focus group didn't like it. Jane was the one who forced it through, but she did seem to have a valid explanation why the tap cosy, which the focus group did like, wasn't possible to go with. This leaves us with the bad costings as the most culpable flaw, and that was Gabrielle and Jenna. With Gabrielle not in the firing line (IMO she should have been there instead of Maria), that leaves Jenna.

Very true. I think it had more to do with Nick Hewar reporting to Lord Sugar that Maria was too shouty and noisy.

I think that summed up why the girls group seems so awful at the moment. You could practically see thought bubbles over the heads of the other two saying, "Ammunition!" What kind of person, if they find that someone has zoned out for two minutes, doesn't courteously update them on what they may have missed? Several of the women seem so desperate to score points against each other that it becomes more of a focus than the actual competition.

Having said that, she didn't handle it brilliantly either. She should just have shrugged and said, "sorry, I dozed off for a moment. Can you repeat the last bit?" Babbling away that you were just thinking did not come over well.

This is what struck me too. I'm surprised they put her through really as she does seem just a bit too young and a little over-whelmed.

I also had a slight impression that the whole panel were trying to be gentle with her on YF too?

But hopefully, she will do well with her restaurants anyway.

I completely agree although considering it is a competition, it's not surprising they used it as ammunition either. If I was a candidate, I would use it.

Having said that, I would have been more for getting rid of Jenna for volunteering to do the finances when she had no idea of what she was doing. That's just so stupid.

But Maria coming across as being so young and not defending herself well enough, I think, was enough to see her off.

I don't work with people who fall asleep next to me while we're working. It appears to be a common event where you work. I would have thought many people would find that rather frustrating !

I think that anyone with a modicum of sense understands how the programme works and steers well clear of the public opprobrium and humiliation they'll get from appearing on this programme. It is now left to those who crave their 15 minutes of fame but consider themselves too intelligent to appear on Big Brother. Stronger business women are less likely to subject themselves to this public scrutiny and resulting criticisms be it their looks, fashions,voice or ideas; they have more respect for themselves.

I'm actually surprised Sugar didn't get rid of all 3 of them. None of them seem to be very good candidates IMO.

Jane is an annoying bossy boots who thinks she knows best about everything and never listens to anyone else. Awful woman, I wouldn't want to work with her. Jenna seems rather dull, I find it hard to believe she actually runs her own business. Maria probably has potential but seemed very immature. The reason she went was because she failed to defend herself properly in the board room. If she had taken aim at Jane properly we could have seen the back of her. Shame.

Agree. But back to Maria. I think in the early rounds Lord S is actually eliminating anyone he doesn't like and wouldn't want to work with. Bilyanna drove him to distraction last week and you could see him looking at Maria with distaste last week. She was a loud-mouthed know-it-all who clearly didn't think she had anything to learn about anything and had zero people skills. And that voice and all the face pulling. No way. He thought I'm not having that around, she's going. And he was right. Just disappointed that he didn't make Jenna - she of the zero charm and nasal fog horn voice - go with her.

How about when you are being driven home after work? After a 5:30am start? It seemed like a good nap-time to me. OK, the other two were chatting to each other, but that doesn't amount to working. Perhaps they should have napped too, so as to be a bit fresher for the meetings with the rest of the team when they arrived back at the house.

He fired her because she's 20. imo.

I could just about understand last week, but this week the firing came out of nowhere.
In the past Lord Sugar has stated that there's little point firing someone who wasn't a part of the task turning into a complete failure. Surely this week with the girls falls into that category. Maria may not have done much, but the list of failures from Jane and Jenna was just mahoosive.


The phrase 'the spoken word is my tool' has been used on the Apprentice in the past, but if there was ever a candidate where that certainly wasn't the case then it's Maria. She manages to talk so much and yet says very little.
It was quite disappointing in the boardroom when she was accused of something, she could have coherently put Jane in her place and made her look foolish to Lord Sugar. Instead she treated it like a row with her mates, featuring lots of 'oh my god's

and loud, and irritating, and charmless. Oh, and has nothing of value to add

But Lord Sugar keeps males like that in , and may fit the description himself. He's being his usual self and removing people he doesn't want to work with by his own criteria.He seemed stuck for any decent arguments - querying if a gadget with toy like features is a gadget, and going on about the silly finacial figures even if they didn't prevent a sale.

On the merits of the task, Jane proved a serial failure. Wrong product choice, the naive ideas about sales behind the silly financial figures, weak presentation, ignored market research - all amounts to nothing much done right.

He also seemed genuinely upset by who was there, and how badly they had done. That wasn't about Maria, as she hadn't done much wrong. It may imply he was interested in Jane or Jenna's business plans, and wanted them to do well. If we assume Maria would have wanted to do something in the restaurant business, we might really wonder if he was really interested in that area .

Its a shame because Maria running a restaurant at 19 might have a good story, and she alone of those three seemed able to tell a dud idea when she saw it.

I think generally these early product-design tasks are used as a way to root out people who are uncreative and don't/can't contribute ideas (and maybe *cynical* who don't produce "good tv"). It's why quiet background people like Alex, Joy, Ifti and Majid are fired on them over people who make massive mistakes like Ben Clarke or Laura Moore or Jim. The only exception I can think of is Lindsey from Series One, and possibly Rory (although that was in a double firing where "the quiet one" was still taken out first).

The difference here is that Maria has been ear-marked as a "big character" by people watching because she dresses funny and has a regional accent.

He's always looking for a suitable "victim" in the boardroom. Someone that he can get away with pinning something on e.g. too quiet, didn't do much, hasn't got a lot to say, doesn't defend herself aggressively in the boardroom, or is someone who has been put down by Nick as a loud young woman or something snide like that. Jane defended herself well with argument and reason so it wasn't as easy to pin the losing label on her. I suppose Jenna was more vocal too.

So agree. The only 'big' thing about Maria's character was her ego

anyone who thinks she didnt deserve the digit needs to watch the series again

eg "I blame Jane. But she was a really good PM" - sugar was rather surprised she could not see the contradiction.

boardroom skills are a fair and crucial part of the test

also if we are being honest about it it's not purely age either. some of the young apprentice candidates would have done much better.