Reminds me of the end of the movie Big.

I didn't notice much comment from Karen or Nick to the camera during the task tonight about what they thought of how the candidates were performing.

Well that was just stupid...but because their concept was way better than the other team's it didn't hinder them at all, but it probably created tension on future tasks,

To be fair Lord S did warn Sean before he chose - he said be careful because I will be asking for your reasons. Seemed to me that if Sean had brought Patrick back he might well have gone.

PMSL.

Still think if Sean brought back Patrick Sean would have got fired.

Lord Sugar seemed unsure about Patrick and I think he wanted to see what he was like back in the boardroom see if their was more about him.

However Sean was 100% the worst player this week.

and decide it makes sense to travel down to Guildford in rush hour to collect it!

Really lololing at the thread especially baby Sean leaving with his hair held high, while they collect the cot from the house!

Two weeks in a row chippy old Labour peer Sugar sends the posh boy home and in each case it was identifiably the wrong person.

Patrick should have gone last week. This week he showed himself useless once again. Last week the 3 boys at the car boot sale beat the 3 girls at the car boot sale hands down - so none of those 3 could be blamed for losing the task because they won their part of it. It was the boys in Westfield who underperformed and the fact that they left the mall early that lost them the task. This was entirely Patrick's fault, yet because he is fay, visually more memorable and 'better TV' he stayed. Sugar misidentified where the money was lost.

This week, Maria proved herself to be aggressive, idiotically full of her own myopic opinions, and totally impossible for ANYONE to work with. She is a nightmare in a team. She bossed everyone around and not just the team leader. Ok, he was weak, but Maria allowed no one else even 5% of an opinion on anything. She took a hissy fit because she was not picked as leader, she came up with a ludicrously stupid strategy which was shown to be just that in the first nanosecond of research, and yet both times she shouted every single person down on the grounds that she was female and they were not. It was obvious they should do a students' or kids' cookbook as that's all they know about.

Sugar always fires posh boys at the first opportunity because he has class issues. Neither of these 2 looked good in the edits they were given but in each case in any normal workplace they would not have been identified as the most blameworthy person in the team. The two who survived the chop - Patrick and Maria are better, funnier TV but neither have any potential to real employers at the moment because their rank stupidity and character defects are overwhelmingly obvious.

I write as an employer btw

I think you're right but why was this the case Patrick at least asked to do the pitch though he was woefully bad at it but David was told to do the cooking and I don't see what else either of them did. Strictly it was Sean's fault for allowing Patrick to pitch particularly after he'd praised the previous pitchers of the task so much.

While I liked Sean and think it's a pity he's gone he really was a wet blanket when it came to making decisions. It seems your best bet with him was to be the last one to have spoken to him

[quote=LW09;62209941]Not only does he have bad hair but his suit is 10 sizes too big. QUOTE]

...And as PM he was a bad decision maker!!! Should have gone really but Miss bigmouth is still hanging around....she/Patrick were the ones who 'got away' this week!!!!

The first two week's tasks were on Patrick and Sean's home specialisms. Sean was useless at producing a book, but Patrick was equally useless at both the specific and general skills last week in the fashion task . Sean though did some good things last week, while Patrick was weak this week too . if LS had added that up, Patrick scores even less than Sean , and, I agree, he would probably have gone.

Not this time its not - though its what he has done sometimes in the past and even then he's let posh boys win when he has a need for them. Max avoided being PM in his area of expertise, He then opted out of selling and spent the day doing nothing much. Thats two killer failings in the Sugar calculus .Patrick created big doubts about his designing skill and his ability to make business choices - but he did show some drive. Drive beats being useless, so he got another chance.This week Patrick used up his ninth life by showing in yet another way that he was incapable, and, worse, pushing for a role he couldn't fulfill.

Sean mucked up all round. He chose his presenters on giving people a chance rather than merit, and he was the one who actually made the wrong decisions on concept. If he couldn't see what was wrong with Maria's logic (and its not as clear cut as Lord Sugar made out) she was hardly more to blame than he was. He then dug himself a bigger hole by bringing back two stronger candidates, and buried himself by by bringing David back for no reason at all and Maria for being too persuasive and getting him to agree with her - which just underlined his own faiure deciding. He also missed all the signals on Patrick coming from Lord Sugar which was offered up as his way out. The best candidates all need to be able to read Lord Sugar and that may be important to win and work with him to - Sean just couldn't.

Maria at least had some logic - although it didn't fit that market,or those buyers, and as she said there was no other concept like the other teams student market on the table and at least she was thinking about marketing - which was more than her team mates were. She may have been right that the other idea, of cookbook 1001 for everyone , wouldn't have sold either. She's TV gold, but she's also the forceful more driven type of candidate he likes, and likes to smooth out a bit - like Ruth, Claire or Debra. He's obvioisly got his eye on her to move her to the boys team and she did quite well in weekl one.She's may be his project - until he decides she's too difficult to work with.

I largely agree. Patrick was the one responsible for the failure last week, there's no doubt about that, but Sugar regards making mistakes more leniently than he does people who don't contribute.

Maria's idea was wrong this week, but Sean is every bit as culpable for going with it. He'd heard the market research just like she had, and he decided Maria's (largely non-existent) logic made more sense. And he made the mistake of picking Patrick to do a pitch when Maria was already doing this very well.

One mistake is forgiveable - three on one task is not. Sean should have stuck to his guns and listened to the focus group findings, he should not have allowed Patrick to pitch and he should have brought Patrick back into the boardroom. Pat's a dead man walking, but in my opinion it's Sean's fault that (a) he didn't stand up and be a strong leader and (b) he failed to bring back an obviously weak teammate with him - especially after his poor performance the previous week.

I understand where you're coming from. Given the choice, I'd have happily fired Maria (although I accept that she makes good TV), who I would never have anywhere near any team I ran. I would also have fired Patrick for being basically useless, and also Alice for being the ringleader of the buck-passing, finger-pointing Three A's (with Ashleigh and Amy), who proved herself to be a fairly nasty piece of work.

Having said that, Sean didn't help himself. You can forgive one mistake, but I counted three fairly major ones: being railroaded by Maria into making a poor targeting decision (although equally I don't believe it was quite as appalling as it was made out to be and I think they might still have won the task in other circumstances), allowing Patrick to pitch (oh dear) and then not putting Patrick in the firing line (two bad weeks in a row, after all). On that basis, I have no problem with Sugar firing him of the three who were in the final boardroom.

As for the anti-posh bias? I'm with you on that one.

Other random thoughts in my weekly recap:

http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/...-for-disaster/

I think Sean had to go,,,,as soon as he was in the Boardroom Sir Alan realised he was employing an 8 year old boy with the strangest hairstyle ever

To be fair to them all though, seeing as they are 16/17 year olds i think they do really well, and lets face it on the adult version ive seen worse mistakes (like trying to sell English cheese in France)...so i'm impressed with how well some of them are doing

Yes Sean's biggest mistake was not bringing Patrick to the board room.

He might have survived the other 2 mistakes if he had done that.

He was a little boy in the end.

2 weeks down and 2 horrible decisions by Sugar.

Patrick should have gone last week, as he was soley responsible for the failure of the task based on his monumental misjudgements.

Maria should have been sacked this week, because she was annoyed that she couldn't be pm, so made herself pm by other means. Her idea was beyond stupid and you could see it failing a mile off, she screwed her face up and shouted everyone down until she got her own way. Even in the board room, she attacked David and wouldn't allow him to speak, she thought siding with Sean would save her, it was only when David said Sean should be fired that she shut her big gob.

I don't think that's fair... while Sean may have made some bad mistakes, he struck me as having a lot of potential, and he's done well for himself in his publishing work. He was also one of the most articulate people there, almost as articulate as Zara from last year, just not quite as strong on the tasks. How is the fact that he looks younger than he is relevant to Sugar's decision? Ridiculous comment.

Actually I thought he was quite articulate in the boardroom and throughout the task, but basically let down by some bad decision-making. One mistake in a task is not the end of the world, but repeated missteps is a bad sign.

If he had brought Patrick back in, he would probably have survived. That was the worst decision of all, for sure.

As has been mentioned above by others, the decision on concept and targeting was not as obviously awful as Sugar made out - 'professional women' is no more niche than 'students' - but the cardinal sin was to ignore the focus group feedback.

If Platinum had lost, you can be sure that Sugar would have hammered them for not actually conducting any focus groups when the task process had it all laid out for them. As it was, I think it was a good idea with excellent creative design but some sloppy execution (in terms of recipe instructions and spelling). And Navdeep's pitches must have been excellent to secure three orders out of three.

I think Sugar was right to give Maria a chance to learn from her mistakes. Let's see if she does. David and Patrick are dead men walking.

I agree with your assessment of Patrick, but why David? He has not done a huge amount to shine (although he was the one to challenge the value of Patrick doing his wetsuit kimono last week), but he hasn't really done much wrong either. A quiet week this week, nothing conclusive - and the fact the producers found so little negative to show about him to help explain why Sean brought him back into the boardroom is quite telling, I think.

I don't see him as either a winner or loser yet, just 'unproven'. He's the single biggest question mark for me at the moment - I've formed reasonably strong opinions on each of the others already, but not him.

In the first week David came across as very arrogant as well as being a tutor who cannot spell. This week he got the big thumbs down from Ms Brady. Of course,he could be getting the negative edit to go on a 'journey' of triumph, but it's more likely he'll be out in the next couple of weeks.

We'll see how things progress - all part of the fun. My personal view is that I tend to look as candidates as a series of ticks (for good things) and crosses (for bad things). For me, David's tally is virtually empty on each side - remember, the most critical thing Karren could say was that he didn't do very much and had eprhaps lost a bit of confidence, which is hardly damning - whereas for Patrick, Alice and (to a lesser extent) Amy, I'm seeing no ticks and lots of crosses. I'll be amazed if at least 2 of those 3 aren't gone before David, but we'll see how it all pans out.

Outrageous that Sean went and not Maria. Her mistake wasn't so bad, a student cookbook is niche too, but her manner through out the task (and in the boardroom) was just appalling. She won't change.

But if LS had let go of a 'fiery, strong' girl like Maria with Karen hovering over him, I would have been shocked!