I can't really say, because I already knew, but was it not so obvious from the start that Lindsay and/or Nurun were going, right from the start down to the editing?

Also, there were no real memorable moments, nor were either of the products very memorable. There were no major triumphs OR mess-ups, it was all just a bit lacklustre, no?

I hope this series isn't going to tail off like Series 8 - next year's preview really isn't exciting me that much either!

Couldn't disagree more, I loved this episode as both teams did well and it was really entertaining for me. Can't wait for next week and a new novel concept.

But I always find the first episode of mixed teams more entertaining as the competition properly begins!

I'll probably have to rewatch it later in the week. Perhaps the spoiler thread is ruining my enjoyment? Actually it can't be that because I knew who was getting fired in the first two episodes and I enjoyed them thoroughly.

So yeah, I'll rewatch and make an official judgement!

And agreee about Task 4, it's good to have a different kind of task every so often.

It reminds me more of the first two series. Yes, there are still iritating/entertaining characters there, but most of them seem like credible candidates. Series 8 had the problem of not having very many credible candidates and the most promising candidates were fired early (by default the woman/women in the interview stage will be better then in series 8.....ok, unless Sarah is still there).

There wasn't much to laugh about, and this series needs it.

I think it's interesting that you think Series 8 didn't have many credible candidates. I think the exact opposite - it had more capable candidates than people come to expect. Now personally I really like that, but it seems that some viewers don't. I think that's where the 'non-entertaining' critique comes from (which I think is rubbish anyway - I rank 'Ugh! It's horrible! This isn't English sparkling wine!' as one of the most hilarious moments from all the series and it cracks me up every time - not the only memorable moment from this series either - but each to their own).

And in answer to the original question, I preferred this one to the first two.

Indeed I thought this episode moved the story on. We now have a better idea who the smarter people, with business smarts too, are. We can also see the specialist "brains" who might do a Tom and get it with a good idea are, We also have some people nicely developing roles from vacuous female, to male boardroom assassin. We even have James on the classic Del Boy/Tre arc - leading to the late denouement after much blood is spilt, or the reform arc that is, or isn't, credible,

Its interesting too that some of the people who look savvy enough are those with backgrounds you would expect him to dismiss on past experience - sports/fitness , or business studies - for example.

I didn't think the way it was put together this week was particularly good. Both teams were doing similar things and had similar products. With so many candidates and it only being the third episode, so I'm still putting names to faces slowly, it was all a bit of a blur. A bit meh.

I'm not sure that having extra candidates and mass firings early on has worked too well. Nor is it having the dramatic effect they must have imagined it would. Less is more.

Well, it depends also on what happens with credible candidates. In the current series the weaker candidates don't survive for very long.

It is still early days, but it seems for instance that series 8 could have used a woman in the series like Katie or Roisin.

Personally, I am all for credible candidates, but series 8 is perhaps not the correct comparison. And entertainment is not always the direct opposite of credible.

Agree. People say that it's about being rubbish, but I think that there is so much to be engaged with in this programme.

Its too early to tell anything much about this series. Series 8 was seriously unimpressive - he ended up with some ok candidates who had ideas that didn't convince him , people who had been pushed with little substantive merit, toxic projects, and only Ricky left to win by default. He dismissed some credible, or potentially interesting, people early - because he couldn't see himself working with them , or had no interest in what they offered. This series looks to have some real high flyers, and more people than usual are doing the commentaries on events that reveal business understanding . He could ruin it though by sacking good people who he's not interested in, and letting story arcs, like James's, destroy other potential. He's doing OK so far, keeping stories going, but only removing the weaker players, but it could all go wrong........

The best episode so far!

Indeed. Lots of stories here. Will James burn, or fly, or be branded a flyer like Neil when he is still smouldering.? Will Ella and Katie keep on looking good, or fall because he wants someone else s business? Who will Mark kill in the boardroom next - will he actually show any skills as PM to match his ability to see faults elsewhere? How substantive is Daniel. What have have Sanjay or Solomon got to offer him? What do the girls we haven't seen much of have to offer if they PM?

I quite liked today's episode, although I would accept that the outcomes were predictable. I'd guessed Katie's team would win after her laser-like focus on the margins, whilst Roisin didn't have as clear a concept of the margins, and importantly, upholding them -- her subteam seemed to have lost the plot in that regard. The firings were fair - although I'd argue too clearly pronounced by Karren a quarter of the ep in after the manufacturing scene - but not unjustly unkind; both women seemed nice but just not suited to this show. Lindsay's performance was empirically really bad -- and Nurun's not much better -- but I still came out liking her because her honesty is so rare on this show.

I quite liked that there was an even shake of positivity and negativity; there's often an over-focus on the absurd and the fails. Katie, Bianca and (to a lesser degree) Roisin came off fairly well. Mark talks well in the boardroom and articulated fairly well (and cuttingly!) Lindsay's uselessness on the task, and Sanjay also... showed he could do what looked like fairly basic maths, I guess, along with getting his side of things done.

On the absurd side, I'm enjoying Steven - whose muscling in on Daniel's deal was funny in and of itself, not to mention his attempt to elevate himself to some deity for making the deal happen. (And, the sad thing is, he might have made the right call!).

Then there's Sarah, who's pretty much been marked as a Jason-esque 'enjoy her while she lasts' out there contestant. It's good to have that light and shade, I think. James will probably fit the mold of an Adam Corbally-esque candidate, which doesn't interest me that much, but is archetypically the bread and butter of Apprentice series.

I'm still not sure about the move to 20 candidates, because we already have problems with candidates getting invisible edits and not really getting fair prominence. Given the constraints, I think this ep did give a good amount of people some coverage, though. I hope we have a narrative shift away from 'Lord Sugar will take no passengers' soon, as those sorts of eliminations, whilst necessary and fine, have been fairly frequent thus far and don't hold much inherent dramatic weight.

As an aside, I felt the way the task success was measured was a bit dubious, also. Sugar had said in the real world the other team had won by more than £14 because they would have kept selling that remaining stock. I get that they had to draw a line, but if the results were reversed and Roisin's team had won by £14, if Sugar's clause was correct, Katie's team would still have done better in the long run. It wouldn't really have been a win in that sense.

I agree with this especially on the girls team where there are three I hadn't a clue of their names. I can't tell apart the two brown haired women with put on posh voices and think the blonde girl with the big glasses has like said two words, although she seems really nice. EDIT - just looked up and they are Pamela, Ella Jade and Jemma.

The last point was a new one for the show - not one Lord Sugar usually raises.He actually questioned the logic of the scoring system that had been set up for once. Its a vaild point too -giving 15 more items away at £1 could have won for Roisin on those rules.

The answer was to count stock at production cost and sales both at the end - which is what they did last year on some tasks? Perhaps they just need to be consistent how they apply the rules. But at least we saw Lord Sugar spotting the issue himself for once.

One of them has an Irish accent

Lordalan was only bringing up the "leftover stock" as a positive because it gave him an excuse to slate a team that had performed more or less as well as the opposition on the task as set. If the 0.9% margin of victory had been reversed I'm sure having leftover stock would have been the worst thing since 100 chickens for 100 pizzas, a sign that the price-point was too high on Tenacity, and James' strategy of slashing prices would have been portrayed as having won the task. Such is The Apprentice.

I thought the episode was fine - these sorts of basic sales tasks are not really my bag. At points I was wondering if they were going for a Guinness World Record for the amount of times someone said "margins" with no real meaning behind it.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed this episode, it had a lot of drama!

Mark didn't kill Lindsay at all - she did that all on her own, all he did was add the knife in the back that toppled her, he just accelerated the inevitable and not by much either, she probably would have quit had he not put the knife in. Really all Mark did was provide the scope for James to potentially get fired as well. From the edit of the past 3 episodes all we've seen is hot air saying that this or that is being done wrong or not in the right way (in all fairness usually with some basis for the complaint) but my issue with him is that we never see him offer up solutions just being negative almost for the sake of being negative.

Mark was stupid for attacking Lindsey because it made him look nasty, particularly as she was teary as well. She was quitting; all he had to do was sit back.

Unfortunately that's not how I think Lord Sugar saw it, I agree entirely that he's a nasty piece of work but what he did was showed himself to be is shrewd and blunt which Lord Sugar likes in a candidate and that's what he saw, but I think Mark's constant negativity will be his down fall.