Throughout this series Jason has come over as Mr Nice. He may lack that killer instinct but don't worry, folks, he's a swell guy. But if you think about what he did...

He gave up being PM because he couldn't cope and thought "if I quit we may have a better chance of winning." He justified this action by saying it was "gutsy". I don't see it as "gutsy" or noble. Seemed like cowardice or lack of a backbone. It's even more cowardly when he must have been very keen to beat hundreds or thousands (?) of other applicants to get on the show in the first place. He must have thought he had "the right stuff" to do well but as soon as the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan he capitulated in an emasculated metrosexual kind of way.

The guy went on The Apprentice so he must have thought he had the necessary qualities to do well. It's about leadership, making quick decisions and standing by them. He was, quite frankly, pathetic but worse than that, his attempt to sell his actions to abdicate from the role of PM as brave, heroic, for the good of the team blah blah blah was even more pathetic and kind of the worst type of cowardice. Cowardice masquerading as nobility. And for that reason I don't think he's quite as nice as people suggest. His justification why he quit seemed grossly disingenuous. Perhaps the worst example of zero backbone ever seen in the show.

That award goes to Alex Wotherspoon I think.

I do think that his decision to step down was mostly due to intimidation from Luisa, and I think he really is as nice as he comes across.

I agree.

So OP, you equate being a 'coward' with being a nasty person? Strange attitude imo.

He is a nice guy and he presented himself well in the boardroom. He clearly wasn't up to the task of being a PM though.

And yeah, Alex Wotherspoon is the spineless one who backed down from anything that involved responsibility.

i think he just came to the end of his tether by luisa constantly nagging away at him, then she says in the boardroom she wished he had some more backbone and could make firm decisions.

That's women for you, they constantly poke at you and get you to do things you dont want to do, and then stand back and say well i wish you have more conviction.

I genuinely think Jason stepped down for the right reasons (as well as because he basically he choked under the pressure). He figured that things had gone so badly that the team stood a better chance of winning if someone else took over.

Is that cowardice? Maybe. But it also takes a certain type of bravery and self-awareness to admit that you may not be the best person for the job.

Typical for the needs of 'entertainment' that this was only dressed up as weakness. Jason WAS weak, but equally he made a decision no one else would have dared make, knowing full well that if his team lost he was on his way.

I'm not sure you have a full understanding of what 'Metrosexual' means OP.

Jason is anything but, and I think Nick & Karen hit the nail on the head earlier in the series when they referred to him as a 'Young Fogey'.

didnt see it as cowardice at all, luisa was an absolute b**** to him tonight and he was too much of a gentleman to have a go back.

jason for me anyway is genuine good guy

I think he wasn't a coward. He showed more bravery than people who refuse to listen to other people and stick with their flawed plans (an apprentice example is Paul Callaghan in the selling food to the French task). In my opinion he had no choice but to abdicate because of the other team members. In real business life people wouldn't behave like those team members did. As for his inability to meet with deadlines, the deadlines are far shorter than in real life I am guessing, I don't believe 2 days is enough to produce a website and do the advertising.

Jason was never a credible candidate, why did SAS point out he sold a caravan but not that Neil had sold two?

Because he'd told Jason, at the beginning of the episode, that he would be keeping a close eye on him, and he was on warning. He singled Jason out as someone he wanted to be impressed by, and Jason impressed him.

He did a similar thing with Tom Pellereau on a sales task, and he was the definition of a credible candidate, given that he won and all that.

I think Jason actually lost confidence in his ability to lead this task due to Luisa's consistent badgering at him, and also felt he couldn't unite the team. I actually feel some respect for him for stepping down, though it didn't really do any good in the end.

The cynical, perhaps mockingly paranoid, view is that the producers wanted to build Jason up as a loveable person before throwing him to the wolves this week. Which creates the 'outrage' when Luisa did him in. This then has the side-effect of making Luisa a hate figure, which again benefits the drama of the show.

It would have been interesting to see what Sugar would have done if Jason and his team actually won.

To me it was obvious from the moment of abdication that Jason was going home and that there was no way his team would be allowed to win.

and yes, I do think he is a really nice chap and could probably make a career on TV in the same way as Ben Fogle has.

Do you mean when he singled Jason out as someone who needed to sell, or when he singled Jason out as someone who'd sold?

Latter, possible. Former, they're good, but they're not clairvoyant. I think the reams upon reams of footage are their main tool in carving a story story - I'm sure the producers have got more involvement than comes across on screen, but I don't think they have to micromanage, least of all when you're pointing your camera at candidates like Jason and Luisa 24/7.

At the time that they did the edit for last week's programme, they would have had full knowledge of what happened this week. It wasn't just a matter of complimenting Jason on his sales, but all the 'don't look so worried' and the reaction given by Loralun after Jason left. The edit decisions as to whether or not to include this material would have been made long after this week's task. And therefore in full knowledge of what would happen the following week.


I don't think it requires clairvoyance to know what sort of operator Luisa is. Also we know from previous series that the producers make suggestions to the candidates about what they might do. Either are a plausible basis on which Jason would have been 'thrown to the wolves', as I said. So, particularly since we know that the producers make suggestions to candidates, I don't think you can dismiss micromanaging so easily.

The producers would have known what characters the candidates have before they were selected for the show. It's quite possible that Jason was chosen as a sacrificial lamb (emphasising the 'lamb') to be done in by a 'baddie' right from the start. Even if the producers didn't manipulate the situation to get this to happen when it did, I consider it entirely possible that they were expecting this to happen. They may not have been 'micromanaging' the exact time, way that it happened, or who did it. Macro-managing the characters they choose for the candidates would still be enough.

Right! I see. I don't think Lord Sugar brings people back into the boardroom very often - I think that was a one-off, that probably had a little bit of producer input, so I think emphasis on Jason's positives was something that would've happened without any idea of what Luisa would do the following week. Cos they might've got on fine, like in Dubai! Accentuating it in the edit, yes, that's a conscious decision, but I think the "Jason does nothing - Jason sells - Lord Sugar congratulates Jason" would still have appeared last episode in a parallel universe where Jason knocks it out of the water as PM on the advertising task. In fact, it would probably have been a little more meaningful!

Fair to say that it didn't hurt the story, but I reckon - perhaps naively! - that the narratives probably emerged from the material in this case, rather than the other way round. Casting the right mix of candidates, waking them up at 5am every morning, and making them design adverts for dating websites is frequently likely to be enough. q:

Jason should have told Lou to STFU and go along with his idea.

I think it was the right time for him to go as all the others are very fiery.

I was rooting for Jason to take more of a lead and tell Lou exactly where to go. It's a shame he didn't.