The show simply does not work any more. Sugar picks his winner from the start after he looks over their business plan. Just like Tom last year, he was useless in the tasks and was constantly in the final three, yet he won because he had the best business plan.

They might as well choose the winner on day one as Sugar is investing in an idea rather than a person.

It needs to go back to the old format or at least something that isn't a pointless drawn out series of tasks.

They could rescue the show by making it less fake, or covering up the fakeness better. The whole atmosphere and interest is edited to death now, to such an extent that no on-screen reaction looks as if it matches up authentically with what someone's just said. But I guess if the viewing figures are still there then they don't really care.

Given that the whole show is simply a PR vehicle for Alan Sugar, I would hope he makes some changes or throws the towel in as it's inscreasingly obvious that he's incapable of saying a single sentence in one take. He ends up being filmed multiple times from various angles, moving both arms about in unison like a Gerry Anderson puppet. He looks ridiculous, sorry Suggsy. The show needs a new "business mogul" who is hungry once more.

1. He was in the boardroom three times. Hardly "always".
2. His business plan (i.e. the chair) sucked and they didn't even go with it.
3. You'd think with the billion threads about this you'd at least make an attempt at being halfway accurate.

But Tom WASN'T (in my opinion) useless in the show. He did well in tasks. In one of the tasks he lost, he was misled by misinformation by his subteam who hadn't even bothered to carry out some basic research of a very big company in France. He can hardly be blamed for making decisions from another country based on trust.

In every task he lost you could find a reason why he shouldn't have gone.

Ha, you actually think Sugar didn't know about the nail file until the final stages?

How Naive :yawn:


But anyway.... Tom was a bumbling fool for most part of the process. He didn't speak up and was just a nodding head. Sugar knew from the get go that he was an inventor and invested in him for that reason alone. Not his sales, team skills or anything else.

At least they had interesting contestants last year, so the wool was some what pulled over our eyes. This series has left us with lots to ponder and it's so obvious that the format is redundant.

I do not think that. What I do think is that Lord Sugar would have known about it if Tom was in series 1, series 2, series 3, series 4, series 5 or series 6 as it was part of his resume. There was nothing unique to the new prize about knowing about the nail file.

I also know that Lord Sugar wouldn't have found out about the nail file by means of looking "over the business plans".

How do you know? Did Tom not disclose about his nail file in his business plan!

Are completely different products normally mentioned in business plans when the prospective investor already has a copy of one's CV?

The prize makes no difference, Tom made the final on merit last year. As for going back to the job prize that's never going to happen, the non-jobs winners got of late, and the public way they left them saw to that.

The show is not as good because they choose some 'characters' like Stephen and Adam rather than bright candidates. Look back over previous series and you will find fewer candidates of that type included.

Did we see the same show? Tom was a nice guy but he was a background character who was on the losing team most weeks, but Sugar knew he wanted to invest in his ideas.

I think the prize makes a huge difference. When the prize was a job, each week was like a different job interview. All facets of their personality and skill set were tested, it made sense.

Now it's drawn out nonsense. On Dragon's Den they invest in an idea or person within an hour, but for some reason we're supposed to believe the very same process takes months on The Apprentice?

The format is dead.

Seems like a bit of a leap in logic (no pun intended) to assume that because you don't personally consider Tom to have been a worthy winner, the only possible explanation is that the show was rigged for him to win from the start. You don't think maybe it was a case of the other finalists either being complete no-hopers (Jim) or hitting the self-destruct button (Helen and Susan)? Sure, winning because the others messed up isn't exactly the most glorious method of victory, but I don't see Tom being any less legitimate a winner than those before him.

But how often was he responsable for losing the task.

In one of the tasks he lost, he was misled by misinformation by his subteam who hadn't even bothered to carry out some basic research of a very big company in France. He can hardly be blamed for making decisions from another country based on trust.

In every task he lost you could find a reason why he shouldn't have gone.

Lord Sugar also does take into account individual performances. For example Harry Maxwell didn't win a single task in Young Apprentice 2011. But Lord Sugar still praised him saying he didn't deserve to not win a single task.

You're talking about one series and one winner and assuming that that kind of result will always happen because of the prize change. Tom stayed in because he was never the worst candidate. In a final four he was the one who was most investible, so he was the winner. The idea that he was selected at the start because of his nailfile is ludicrous. Why wasn't Susan selected at the start, especially as Sugar made no secret of the fact he wanted to get into the cosmetics business. Tom was very astute in the tasks. He just wasn't forceful enough to get his opinions heard and perhaps win the task instead of losing. He was on the losing team week after week, but he was never brought back in until he was the PM. So he was never seen as the reason for the loss.

The Apprentice process is exactly the same. The winner is someone who proves they can do what they said they could do at the outset. It doesn't matter whether the prize is a job or an investment, either way Sugar has to invest in an indivudual.

The prize only makes a difference to the format of the final. The prize can only make a difference to the "process" if you accept the theory that the winner is chosen at the start by Lord Sugar. It will be interesting to see who wins this year and whether that theory can possibly hold up for more than one year.

With Dragons Den what you see is the initial pitch. A lot more has to happen before contracts are finally signed. They just don't show it on TV. The Apprentice is not about pitching the business plans until the final show. Before that it's all about finding the best four candidates to get to the final.

But people who are concentrating on Toms win/loss ratio record in tasks, must be forgetting he was hardly at fault for the losses. When they went to France he was let down by his sub team who didn't research the company as they were supposed to do, nor did they do proper research about the baby seat/backpack idea.

Thats just one task. The reinvestment task Tom clearly stated that the nodding dogs were selling well, but was just ignored.

Infact I could probably go through every task and find something Tom did well, and why he shouldn't have been fired.

The central point of Tom's narrative was that he was right most of the time but could never persuade anybody to go along with him, even when he was Project Manager. It's all very well to be right, but if you're not capable of persuading people to follow you, then your business isn't going to float.

Tom's trump card in the final was only 50% the nail-file itself. The other 50% was his anecdote about going into Wal-Mart, in its own back yard, and charming them into seeing his product as a winner. That showed he could be persuasive when he had an idea he really believed in, and could get people to see his point of view, outside the artificial realm of the competition.

Personally I thought Susan should have won (still do) and think Tom's evangelists over-rate just how often he was right, but they told a very clear story as to why he won over everybody else.