I understand logic fine, thanks. I was only referring to last series as a comparison, not as some kind of mathematical proof.

But I do think considering the fact that "he's firing based on business plans!" was one of the main criticisms last series (when in the end he obviously wasn't because no way would Melody's business plan have been worse than Helen's), it would be stupid for him to START doing it this series. I'm quite confident that when we reach the final, at least one of the plans will be a lot of shit.

I agree with the OP. It may be that not all the business plans that reach the final are good, but I can't help thinking that people might be kept in because they have a good one. Having said that, Tom seems an unlikely way to make squillions. But overall this new format is distracting and I did prefer the old one.

What does that say about the judgement of DS viewers though!? Are you saying Jenna was not a 'failure' this week? It couldn't have been any clearer and she even admitted as much in the boardroom. How could the edit have made any 'clearer' that it was a terrible video? Are you really owning up to the fact that you were 'shocked' that the video was panned by the Wine people? She was the obvious candidate for firing.

But generally speaking, the 'new' format is a more real competition though is not?

The 'old' format did seem to favour the sales rep / bullsh****r / BB type candidate, who could just blag their way through the process, always saving their bacon in the boardroom if they were unlucky enough to be bought back into the boardroom. It was as much about personality as business acumen. And the job at the end of it all was a complete sham which in most cases has ended in tears after a few months.

At least now there is more of an emphasis on somebody potentially setting up a real-life business of their own or building substantially on an existing one, which is surely more real than before, no?

Alan Sugar said right at the start that he's looked through the business plans and they were all there because he interested in their plans, but he wanted all to show him 'what they were made of'. Its always going to be down to his subjective judgement however you want to jig the programme.

For those of you who think that the wrong person keeps getting fired every week and feel that you are being misled 'because of the edit' why not try and see past the edit and look for your own underlying evidence which Sugar is using as the weeks go by? The information and evidence is always there if you are paying attention.

I think dull contestants is what has ruined the show.

There is nobody to love, hate, or even show a glimmer of interest this year. They are all just so "meh".

Whoever picked the candidates this year did a terrible job and should be fired.

Agree with the vast majority of what you say, although I take the above statement by Sugar with a pinch of salt.

My suspicion has always been - in both the new and old format - that the producers select a handful of genuine candidates and then fill out the numbers with 'characters' for entertainment value: the manipulator (Jedi Jim), the quiet one (take your pick from several), the fool (Michael Sophocles), the deluded, the pretty one etc etc.

Looking at last year's four finalists ... Tom's business plan was weak but he was also the ideal candidate for this new format as an inventor/entrepreneur. Jim was charismatic and a pretty decent all-round performer, but his business plan never looked like a decent money-making opportunity. Helen was a great old-style Apprentice with a weak business plan. And Susan was naive and sometimes rude, but had an interesting plan (which Sugar has subsequently invested in, I believe). If these were the four best plans, the quality of the rest of them must have been pretty shoddy. So when Sugar

This is a good point. The edting is always trying to leave us guessing which team are going to win. Jenna's advert was badly acted, tasteless and poorly executed. She deserved to be fired. Stephen can wait until next week.

I think this sums it up in a nutshell.

It's still the same show it always was effectively, it's just it can't recapture the magic of the opening 3 seasons. It also doesn't seem to be able to recruit the same calibre of candidates from the early days too.

Putting it all into general perspective...

My only real gripe with the business plan is that it now seems common practise for the candidates to use it as a bargaining tool in the boardroom.
Jade did it last week, and Ricky did it this week.
("My business plan will earn you millions Lord Sugar", etc).

My problem is this;
As far as the viewer is concerned, it's an unknown quantity.
It might be the cure for the common cold, or it might be a new tin opener for all we know.
During the whole run, we've been used to making judgements (which is admittedly based on the BBC edit) on how the candidates deal with each task, how they work as PMs, how they interact with each other, and how they act in the boardroom. That's all we can base our views on.
To bring another factor or element to each candidates worth, and make it secret to the viewer (but not to AS and the rest of the Apprentice crew), means that we are never sure if or how this might make a difference. Especially as candidates are apparently allowed to make open references to it, in the boardroom ...

I still love the show, because the basic principles are still the same, but for me this is why the use of a business plan doesn't really work...

Just my opinion, but I hope that makes sense..

in this current econmic climate i think it would be good if for the next series they took 12 unemployed people with little or no business experience, with the prize being what the title says an apprenticeship

I don't think that's really anything new, though. Even under the old format you had the likes of Syed and Stuart claiming they'd make Sugar millions upon millions of pounds in their first year alone; all that's really changed is the specific bargaining chip.

In any case, some people seem to be thinking that if Lord Sugar isn't basing his decisions solely on the tasks, he must be basing it solely on the business plans. Last year pretty much disproves that though - if Sugar were basing it entirely on the task results Helen would have won, but if it were based wholly on the business plans, Susan would have been the winner. Since Tom ended up being the actual winner, it seems obvious that both are taken into account, even if not in equal proportion.

Great post. The fact that the viewer has no idea what the candidate is talking about is a real weakness.

I agree with you totally on that last paragraph. I think Tom won as the proportionately best bet..

But as far as the bargaining chip issue goes, when it was based on their performance alone, we as the viewer were in a position to say to ourselves "No, that's cobblers Syed/Stuart! We've seen how you act as a leader or under pressure".
With the business plan being invisible to us, they can still harp on about how much it can benefit AS, but we're no longer able to judge that aspect..
I'm probably being pedantic, but can you see where I'm coming from?

I quite the idea of not knowing what the business plans are, it's adds an element of suspense and /or intrigue.
Did we find out last year what all the business plans were of the sacked people? I am curious and quite like the fact that the candidates are already 'selling' their plans to LAS in the boardroom. I think this business plan prize is still evolving as a concept and will be slightly different again next year as new candidates take it on board.
It's also quite refreshing that the candidates are not all the hard sell types and are more creative.

I'm not saying Jenna was blameless, but the edit made it seem that apart from the advert, Jenna's team did a better job overall. A better pitch, met the brief better, had a better website, had a better logo idea, while the other team was boring, unoriginal, misunderstood the task and their video wasn't great either. Then SURPRISE! Jenna team looses, wow what a surprise, its not like that hasn't happened before!

Once the loosing team was selected, it was going to be between Jenna and Stephen, and Stephen was show being useless in the supermarket, suggesting the french word as the brand and then acting like a total twit in the board room, then SURPRISE! Jenna is fired.

Either the edit is done deliberately to trick the viewer, or LS is making totally random decisions, which would be even worse, so I prefer to blame the edit.

I think most weeks this series the team that had the best edit won. Week 5 and maybe this week are the only exceptions? The firings might have seemed more out of left-field, but the winning team has been fairly easy to spot most times, especially given that the margin of victory hasn't always been great.

The prize really had to change after Series 6. It had become obvious that the old format didn't work. Lordalan looking for the most entrepreneurial, go-getting, upwardly mobile candidate than chaining them to a desk until they could get away, was moronic. The crop of candidates that turned up for Series 6 was by some distance the worst they've ever had (which Lordalan more or less admitted afterwards) and the winner was the biggest bust the show's ever had, in publicity terms. At least Michelle never actually tried to sue.

The idea of investing in a person is much better, and after a year, is turning up a much better calibre of contestant. I do wonder, if people really can't get over the "business plan" thing, whether that part of the prize is really necessary? Last year it was really more a thought experiment/final task than an actual thing Lordalan was ever going to implement. The main point seemed to be to see if the candidates were capable of constructing a coherent idea for a new business, in much the same way that Kristina and Simon were tested on their ability to design a great big giant building that (pssst) was never actually constructed. It'll be interesting to see if any of this year's business plans do actually happen. Given the likely calibre of the finallists, and the fact that last year's winner has been a success to fall back on, it seems more feasible.

As there are countless other threads where you can complain about complaints - or indeed express the view that nothing is going wrong with the apprentice.

If you do understand logic, then there's no evidence of that fact in the argument you made. It's not a question of "mathematical proof" - your argument is illogical.

You claimed that similar accusations about the firings being influenced by candidates business plans, were disproved by the fact that last year's business plans were poor. You then made the argument that this proves business plans have nothing to do with firings this year.

The two scenarios are discrete - one is not connected to the other - and occur a year apart. Your argument is a classic non-sequitur; or in other words, a logical fallacy.

Your premise is not even factual, since your opinion of the business plans is immaterial. It only matters what Sugar thought of them. Unless you can prove that he shared your opinion, you can't argue that business plans had no effect on who was fired or not.


Do you know if he shared your view? Unless you do your theory has nothing to support it. I repeat, the only thing that matters for the debate about pre-judgement of candidates is his opinion of the plans, not ours.


Why would it? After all, the criteria for selecting the winner has sefl-evidently changed at least once already.


Even if you are correct, that doesn't prove your theory. Again, you would have to know if Sugar sees anything in ANY of the plans. The preordainment criticism only needs there to be one candidate favoured by Sugar from the outset to stand up. You would also have to consider what other business plans/candidates the candidate whose business plan you believe to be sh*t, was up against in earlier episodes.

You are completely missing the point. Nobody is suggesting that the video was not a failure and that Jenna did not deserve to get fired once her team had lost. The point is that the edit made it appear as though her team would win and that she wouldn't be in the firing line in the first place.

The video was merely an element in the task - it was not the primary objective. Nowhere in the episode did the edit make it clear that particular importance was to be placed on the video. If that were true, you might have had a point. By contrast, it was impressed upon the candidates - and hence the viewers - from the outset, that the entire point of the task was to produce a promotional campaign and rebranding exercise. Sugar was at pains to make sure the candidates understood that it was not a sales task in any way and that the overall promotional aspect was paramount.

During the episode it was made clear, time and time again, by the reactions of the wine producers and by the commentary of the two aides, that one side had completely missed the point of the exercise, that they were not being managed properly and that their video was also poor - albeit in a different way than Jenna's. Of course Jenna's team made the usual Apprentice rickets; however with the possible exception of the name, these were not portrayed as fundamental.

Despite all this, the team which were portrayed as poorly managed and which completely failed to comply with the brief were declared winners, apparently for the sole reason that they were less useless at a solitary component of the task - i.e the video.

It might have been understandable if Sugar had divulged the opinions of the wine industry executives about the two pitches and it transpired that, despite the impression given by the edit, they preferred that of the winning team - say, if they had told Sugar that, despite the positive parts of the losing team's campaign, the video was a deal-breaker - but this was never revealed. Why not? It happened in earlier series - Sugar would explain that such-and-such babygro executive had pointed out that what seemed like a good idea on the face of it had some hidden booby-trap. This went some way towards justifying any twist, which makes me suspicious as to why on this occasion the conclusions of the wine excutives were never forthcoming in any detail.

It's not that DS FMs are so clueless that they can't predict who is going to win. I knew who was going to win - the trouble is that I knew who was going to win precisely because they were the team that the edit portrayed in the worst light. It's these ham-fisted attempts to create a bait-and-switch twist with increasingly tedious regularity that some of us are annoyed about.



No. The Apprentice has never been "real" - any more than Made In Chelsea is real. It simply uses the impression of reality as a device. The obsession with the "reality" aspect of it - i.e the non-issue of whether the final job was ever genuine or not - is in danger of creating problems where none existed.


I don't see this series as being all that different. In fact one of the criticisms has been that until this week sales and blagging have been at the centre of all the tasks - and even this week the team that produced a sales campaign, in direct contravention of the brief, ended up winning.


I really don't understand why this is such a big issue. To be perfectly honest, I could care less what happens to the winner after the show, providing the show itself is entertaining.

For that to happen, you don't need to believe that the candidates will be beavering away at Sugar HQ for the next two years; you only need to believe that the candidates really want to win, for whatever reason. If the process is not genuine, in the sense that the prize of getting their mug on the telly and creating a media image by playing to the camera is more valuable to them - i.e the Big Brother problem - then that would be an issue. In that scenario the tasks become pointless and the firings lose their sting. Unfortunately this is starting to look like the scenario with the current format, where the proceedings we are shown appear to be only tangentially connected to who ends up winning, which inevitably calls into question the integrity of the process.



Again, why does it matter if what happens after the curtain goes down ends up being "real" or not? I'd be alarmed if people are so naive that they really believe that a light-entertainment programme on television is anything more than tangentially connected to reality. If I want to watch entertainment on my telly that's based on real outcomes, I'll watch Match Of The Day. It's the motivations and behaviour we watch on screen that need to appear to be real and logical and that seems to be doubtful right now.



Well of course - but that subjective judgement has to make sense to the viewer, otherwise you might as well dispense with the tasks altogether.



You can't see past the edit any more than the rest of us can - the edit decides what information you are fed. That is the only thing you can possibly use to reach a conclusion. I disagree that the evidence is always there - misdirection is different than being misleading.

It makes perfect sense - it's a very good point IMO.

In actual fact that might not be a bad idea. It would make the job itself meaningful, which would answer the criticisms raised by those who feel this is important; it would provide genuinely motivated candidates; and it would provide an element of pathos and possibly more connection between the audience and the candidates - you would know how much it would mean.

On the other hand it might ne uncomfortable to watch people's lives effectively in the balance and it would be a fairly radical change. It might be a good idea for a different show.

Here's what they need to do to stop the accusations of Sugar basing his decisions on the business plans: don't show him the bloody business plans!

Trump did this in America as one last desperate roll of the dice to try to get people to watch a non-celebrity edition of the show again. All the candidates were either recently unemployed, had just graduated and were struggling to get on the first rung on a career ladder, or owned businesses that were on the verge of going under.

It didn't really work, I think partially because the over-the-top sentiment of the whole thing didn't really gel with Trump. Maybe it'd work better with Sugar providing a bit of grit. He did say something on the Series 6 final about trying to fill that cast with people along similar lines, but I think that was just an excuse for the fact that most of them sucked.

I don't see the argument for there being better contestants. There are fewer joke candidates but they didn't need more than one Stephen. There's no Tre or Stuart, but again Stephen and Adam cover some of the ground. There are more small shop keepers - but most just didn't have the wider range of skills needed to excel at the tasks, and even if they had potential to be something bigger, Lord Sugar has just got rid of them. There's no super salesmen like Ruth and no really successful ,before and after, candidates like Michelle, Liz, Kate or Helen. Azhar may have been a successful entrepreneur if you believed his claims - but he went too.

He may have solved his problem with last series producing traditional candidates with no plans to offer at the end - or not. We will have to see whats on offer. Its debateable though if the type of candidates who come wanting to expand a shop, or a website, or a market stall, can do that well with selling and presentation tasks that were excelled in by the likes of Liz or Helen or Ruth or even a Katie . There's arguably a mismatch there. The tasks may also not even tell much about who could actually do what they are offering.

The problem with series 6 was he can't any longer offer a worthwhile job - and, after Yasmina and Lee, he had run out of jobs who would fit a good but not exceptional winner - even if he avoided the exceptional candidates. I suspect Liz is delighted she didn't win given her post show career , as may Kate.

The problem with the wins this series, is that too often both teams have made fatal mistakes that would have lost against a competent team. The wins thus become marginal, and questionable, and the winners look unconvincing. He's then made that t worse, by too often firing people on the small picture, and if he can't stand the thought of working with them - rather than punishing the errors that actually reflect on significant management weakness. Its lost some of its internal logic of who stays and who goes. Part of that problem may be task design, part is some odd decisions, part may be him not really being interested in some people for reasons to do with their business plans.

Agreed.

I do think the change in prize has attracted better candidates, who have made for less entertaining TV.


It looked like she changed it at the last minute.


I think more or less the opposite. If a candidate is good, they'll likely be successful in whatever they turn their hand to, and so is a good investment regardless of what their business plan is. That's what happened with Tom. His business plan was the chair, but that's not the idea they eventually went with. Lord Sugar invested in the person rather than the plan.

The theory that Tom was an unworthy winner isn't one I agree with. On most tasks you could see he was having good ideas, was data-driven, and had valuable insights.

Though you could also argue that Sugar had his own business plan, involving something Tom had already created, so he needed him to get at that.

He did have good ideas, but he wasn't that good over the tasks. He was reluctant to be PM, only doing it once when Sugar made him, and as PM allowed a more forceful team member to walk all over him.

Susan also had a business plan that something could have been made out of, and obviously Sugar agreed as he has now invested in her. She'd have made a worthier winner; she had her flaws, but she had a flair for guessing what might sell and was keen to be PM and always very much in charge when she was PM.