Why does Lord Sugar not ask Katie what she has been doing for the past 3 episodes? is she the chosen one. The way she smirked when the New York trip was announced it was like she thought she had the first ticket. Her embarrassed gulp when she was left out was a sight to behold.

She has been sailing without any masts these past few weeks. No drive, no demonstrable qualities and Lord Sugar wont question her. Bizarre.

Just because she hasn't been shown doesn't mean she hasn't been doing anything, though. I suspect that she's been quietly getting on with things, which makes for uninteresting TV. More important is the fact that no one ever even considers bringing her back into the boardroom when her team loses, which is a better indicator of how her PMs believe she is performing on tasks.

I find her quite sly to be honest; she cant be very sarcastic in quite a mean girls kinda way if you get what I mean.

I dunno, she seems to work hard, did well as a PM. I don't see a problem with her. She worked with the unpopular Daniel well enough yesterday too.

Yeah, that's the way I see it too. There's a huge difference between not *appearing* much in recent episodes and not *doing* much. I'd argue that Katie is in the former camp, while Lauren was in the latter. Inferring how she is regarded by her teammates is a much better indication. Last night, Mark knew the product and branding were important - so he couldn't make the UK sub-team too weak - but he would have had little confidence in Daniel. Leaving Katie behind with him suggested to me that he had confidence in her to offset Daniel.

Yeah, thats exactly what happened, Mark knew he would be leaving Daniel behind, if only not to have him make a fool of himself in the states, but to just be 1000's of miles away from him, and he left with him, the person who would work with him the best, which was Katie. I loved it when Daniel said 'thats absolutely fine with me' when Mark told him he wasn't going to America, Mark probably fully expected a tantrum there. Dan was a decent team player in this task, you could argue that the calming influence of Katie brought out the best in him (which isn't very much admittedly)

The thing with Daniel is he's an arse, but isn't rude, snide or demeaning to others and he does give 100%, sometimes in the wrong direction admittedly.

As I've mentioned on another thread, I agree Dan acted maturely at least until the final boardroom where he got unnecessarily angry. It was noticeable that twice - once to Katie, once in the boardroom - he openly praised Mark's pitch.

I think Daniel realised that being part of a small sub-team would give him the opportunity to make a sizeable contribution, albeit not a great one. Lauren might have benefitted from the same approach. Instead she ended up marginalised.

Lauren, should of pushed for sub team, when rejected from the US team, that was her downfall.

Indeed. Not sure Lauren would have worked as well with Daniel as Katie did, I could see them being at loggerheads. I actually think the logo Daniel thought up was effective, it was only the colouring, and lack of other information on the bottle that did for them. The drink itself looked very basic and boring, and both he and Katie were to blame for that.

Yep, but Mark was never going to bring Katie back in ahead of Daniel (for both personal and objective reasons). I agree Lauren might not have worked as well in the UK sub-team, but I think it would have been the best thing from her personal perspective to push for.

Bringing in Katie would have made Mark safer as Sugar would have been impressed that he didn't bring his 'enemy' in, as it was, he risked being fired. He can count himself lucky. I would have fired him if I was in the chair.

Trouble is I think (and only my opinion) Mark's a bully and now sees that Daniel's not going to sit there and just take it. So his focus moved onto Lauren, next week I think it will be Felipe. Any notice how pally Mark and James seemed to be.

Mark picks his quarry early. He was dripping poison about Lauren before the task even started.

Not a fan.

^^exactly what he did when he had a go at Daniel. He starts with small things, just hoping people hear him, so when he goes for the kill, people already have a negative view of the victim.

She does work hard yeah. And she did well as a PM because she doggedly stuck to the brief (profit margin) like a greyhound on a rabbit, which turned out to be a good thing, but I don't think she's demonstrated anything especially remarkable yet. You could argue she showed daring as a PM by compromising quality for profit (while the more creative Roisin wanted a classy product) but personally, I suspect she's limited in some areas.

Following instructions the way she did as PM makes her good 'second in command' material IMO but it's too narrow to qualify her as an entrepreneur or leader. How would she manage a more complex or creative brief? How well does she respond in a crisis? We don't know. But I'm interested to see her be PM again on a trickier task.

I like her, but yesterday I think she let herself down. The bottle design was horrible, if your going to use a white label, then the rest has got to be classy looking and a very minimal design. If you going for a colour punch type logo then the labels got to be colour too or the thing looks insipid which it did. For someone who I would imagine sees a lot of drinks containers in her job, it was poor.

What I find strange in all these tasks, is no one ever seems to think right what does so and so do, which colours do so and so use. I mean these companies spend millions on marketing, but no one ever seems to use them as a sounding board. We've had a few tasks where people have gone into supermarkets to have a look but its rare and thats usually in place of a focus group.

No point.she won't get it.

Mark wanted Daniel to be responsible for any mistake at the UK end, and out of his own way. He repeatedly gave that team control of their own decisions - and avoided any responsibility himself.

Katie was left to mind Daniel - so Mark couldn't be blamed for poor judgement selecting that team, and setting up Daniel. He couldn't argue that he had left Lauren or Felipe with Daniel without looking stupid himself - given he himself had criticised both of them or lack of ability.Katie is a major player in his competition to win - he wants her out of the lime light too.

Felipe was given the advert to make sure he got the blame for that- if it was the failure.

Lauren was given nothing much to do, and then the core of presentation which was suitably important but not a large enough to look like a major role. That was so that she could be attacked for doing nothing, or blamed if the presentation was the failure.

Mark did very little. He avoided any blame, and had targets lined up for failure at any stage . There's no way he is going to give Lauren a top job - he can't do that, and argue she is useless, without looking stupid himself.

You hit the nail right on the dot!

No one has shown that degree of skill. None of the post 2010 winners has.

Katie is the only one who has won as PM in a field entirely different than her own. She's the only one who got the big business issue right as PM. She got the strategic issue - make it cheaply, sell it at a high price - brilliantly. She's also demonstrated a range of other skills on task - including selling better than the salesmen have. She sold herr ubbish tours at full price wheras Daniel can't sell anything, and James would fail even as a market stall trader by giving stock away. She's also been as astute as Roisin, or Mark, in identifying where tasks have gone wrong, and identifying the fools among the compettion.

She should easily be in the final. Whether she wins will depend on whether he wants to move into her field, and whether Roisin or Solomon come up with an easier, cheaper, more profitable, or more familar, proposal for him. It also requires him to cull Mark, Daniel and James and not continue to see himself in them.

But if no one takes them to look at the competition , They don't get to see the competition.

You are right - in the old US series some of the classic wins start with a trip to the shops/supermarket see how things are done by the professionals . But if the production team don't take you there, you can't do that..

Blue water and yellow pineapple has a logic - in that it follows the ingredients, and can't look too garish, or artificial and sell as healthy. Mark's team had no better ideas, and the only idea they sent back was the same one that Katie/Daniel had fed them. It just looks too dull - reflecting a duller concept. .An exciting advert/ name/promotion/can for a dull concept is a big challenge. Neither of them, though, is offering an advertising agency or claiming to be artists.

Things were only better with the other team because the can and name did stand out more. But even that can had the bone design issue The other team also had their own massive failure at the strategic level - in that there was no concept to go with the name anyway. They ended with a can and name , but no concept, or supporting argument, to base an advert on.

It felt like about two minutes in before he started saying that Lauren had contributed nothing.
Very good post. I hadn't really worked all that out, but it makes for a good list.

I can't believe James will last that much longer. He has already fired one person for being too young and inexperienced, and James is mentally about 6.

Agree with your other points. Regarding the BIB, the design was poor but as you say there was a certain logic to it. In terms of visibility, on a PC screen it didn't actually look that bad. It was only once the bottles were printed up that it became really obvious how poor the stand-out was. There is a reason you don't see yellow-on-light-blue as a combination very often, though - the colour contrast is poor. Equally, there's a reason why you so often see white-against-red or yellow-against-black on logos and signs - it's because they're highly visible combinations.

Is everyone forgetting that Katie was the one that was responsible for the jacket having three different devices including the hideous lights? She wasn't even PM and she bulldozed in and made the decision, the same way she decided the candles would be yellow even though the market research suggested they shouldn't be any colour other than white.

From next week's trailer it looks like Mark and Daniel are teaming up to get rid of Felipe

Yes Mark and James seem very pally, but they aren't on the same team