Just got around to watching this weeks show and I think I realised something...

It seems like there's one episode, in every series, where there's no quantifiable measure of victory and, in those shows, AS always seems to get an opportunity to get rid of somebody who isn't exactly shining even though they might not have done anything especially wrong.

Not really sure what to make of this week's show.
On the one hand, the winning team probably did come up with the better name for their drink and the bottle design was slightly better.
On the other hand, the drink was, apparently, awful, the advert they came up with was terrible and their performance was a bit of a shambles.
The other team had a drink which tasted better and the advert was, at least, half-decent and it was only the label design that let them down.

All in all, I'm not sure there was a particularly clear winner and it just seemed like AS just kind of overlooked all the bad things that the winners did, criticised the bad things the losers did and, in the end, used it all as an excuse to get rid of Lauren.

Don't get me wrong. Lauren probably did do stuff that justified the decision but it just seems like he would have been as justified in awarding the win to the other team and then being critical of the failures of some other candidate.

Just not really keen on episodes where the decisions are all based on subjective opinions.

I think it was just James and Solomon who didn't like the taste of the drink. When they took it out for market research it, if anything, got a more positive reaction than AquaThingy.

I do agree that a lot of these "Lordalan's Decision" tasks occasionally come across as just an excuse to manufacture a loss and a firing for a suitable person (Everydog vs Cat Size springs to mind), but this came across as the biggest pasting on a branding/marketing task since Margate to me. Everything about Big Dawg's campaign was leagues better, apart from the advert (and even then, in a different narrative, Bianca's absolute determination to have the brand logo visible at all time would have been mentioned as a positive).

And, of course, the task in the final is always one that is judged subjectively and can be cut either way in the edit. We never have a final where the result is based on orders or sales.

They pretty much did in YA2 though, not in the final but in the semis. I thought that was unfair.

Yes, they did. And yes, it was unfair!

For me, that is the only downer on that series. There were a lot of complaints about that, probably why the format was changed the following year.

Having said that, I think that the outcome would have been very similar had the four people to fire been chosen by Lord Sugar independently. Harry H may have got into the final over James.

To be honest, anyone can be fired at any time - it's all subjective and Alan can twist and manipulate it in any way he likes.

If someone he's interested in makes mistakes, he can make any excuse he likes for them to remain in the competition. Give them "one last chance", fire someone else because they don't have any "fire" or "potential", fire someone else for a mistake they made on the task instead, etcetcetc.

It's just as manipulated as any other reality TV show, unfortunately.

I don't think that this is necessarily unfortunate, because the show has never really made a secret of this fact. It's an interview at the end of the day, and he can choose whomever he likes. How many times will an interviewer or investor come across someone who may not have any concrete flaws, but for some reason just isn't the person that they want? I don't think it's especially dishonest, Lord Sugar is perfectly clear when people are being fired for specific reasons and when it's just that he doesn't think he'll gel with that person.

So, in that case, what's the point of the show, then? If Alan is just going to fire anyone he wishes at any time because he has someone else in mind and/or he doesn't particularly like/have faith in that person, what is the point? Why are we watching them perform tasks that essentially mean absolutely sod all to anyone?

The tasks aren't entirely pointless, they give him some insight into the personalities of the candidates and their skills, but they aren't the only important thing. In fact, I'm not sure they are the most important thing. I think that the boardroom performance is more important than the tasks, as that is where he personally will see you.

But it all does come down to subjective opinion, especially in the finals where it is likely that (with a few exceptions) both the finalists will be capable and qualified to win, so it really will come down to who he has a 'feeling' about. There have of course been times that he has been wrong, and he has openly admitted that, Stella being the most obvious example.

Ultimately it's Sugar's judgement of the combination of person and business opportunity. I say business 'opportunity' rather than 'plan' because of Tom Pellereau. Helen Skelton was, by most people's assessment, the best overall performer in series seven but had a terrible business plan. Tom showed flashes of good business insight throughout but was a mediocre performer and a poor PM with a questionable business plan, but he won because he had existing products that had good potential to revitalise.

TA may be a competition and a reality show (with all the connontations that entails), but at the end of it Sugar makes a business decision based on what he believes to be the most investable project. I tend to think of TA as an extended business simulation and, as you say, an elongated interview process.

I knew she was the Blue Peter "action girl", but I didn't realise she'd taken it up a notch.

Oh yeah, it's Milligan, isn't it? Oops.

Because it's good television. It's fun watching big-mouth's getting tripped up and cut down to size. Some of the tasks are fascinating because they involve real business decisions (pricing, sourcing of products, design) and require real business skills (teamwork, delegation, negotiation, enthusiasm, imagination and leadership). I've worked in business over 40 years (and have recently retired) and am always impressed by the toughness of the challenges. Of course it's all rigged for the candidate LS has chosen well before the final show but it doesn't really spoil it for me.

And it's brilliantly edited and photographed.

Interestingly, the person who has been chosen before the final show has apparently never won. They didn't go into specifics, but in the 10 Years Of The Apprentice show Lord Sugar was talking to Nick and Karren, and said that he is often asked if they know from early on who is going to win. And the answer is, 'Yes, every single year, but as the process goes on it always changes to someone else.'

LS always says he makes the final decision and as his relationship with Nick and Margaret was that of employer/employee, he would have found it easy to keep his own counsel right to the end. Presumably same with Karen. So Nick might think he knows but it's only his opinion.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that it was Nick who said that and not Sugar himself, but if I remember correctly Sugar agreed with him.

I genuinely do not think that the winner has been chosen from the start. There are certainly people who have more chance from the start, but the whole point of the process is for Lord Sugar to get to know the candidates better. That is what the boardroom discussions are for, and there have been times when he has doubted people who have proven themselves later. Leah, for example. There was a time last year (I think it was the ready meal task) when I think Lord Sugar was going to fire her, and she found her voice and gave a really impassioned defence of herself, and she ended up winning. Unless Lord Sugar has secretly spent a lot of time with the winner in advance (and if he had, I think that would come out) there is surely no way he can know any of the candidates well enough to have chosen the winner from the start.

I quite agree that nobody can be chosen from the start. Given the stress of the process you could never predict how someone will react. But when there are about half a dozen candidates left LS must know the ones he likes and the ones he certainly isn't going to pick no matter how well they do in the remaining tasks.

I suspect Sugar picks three or four candidates he'd be happy to go into business with and then the production team fill out the remaining slots to make good TV. If one of these extra candidates performs well and gets Sugar's attention then it's a bonus, but he already has a handful of potential winners right from the start.

Would agree with that for the most part, but I do think that series 3 and series 7 were never going to have a different outcome (even if Katie wouldn't have walked).

I strongly suspect it's the other way round. In selecting the candidates, the producers ensure there are a number of candidates who could be viable business partners with business plans that pass muster (at least at first glance), and then fill the remaining slots with reality show archetypes.

I doubt Sugar would waste the time getting involved at that stage, but once the final 20 (or 16 or whatever) have been selected, then he has a look at the business plans. Whether he's 'briefed' in advance by the production team as to who's in which bucket is another question. It's possible but I suspect not - a quick scan of the business plans should be enough for him to form a view of who he might want to favour and who is dispensable.

(None of the above is known fact, BTW (or, at least, not known by me) - just educated speculation based on having carefully watched several reality shows over the years.)

Agreed. I think an initial scan of the business plans will be enough to get a sense of who the likely strong and weak candidates are, but given that Sugar also has the benefit of learning more about the candidates during the tasks, why wouldn't he use this insight to help him make a final decision?

The real world equivalent of deciding the winner at the outset would be a recruiter giving candidates a battery of verbal and numerical tests, then interviewing them, then making a decision based solely on the test scores and ignoring the interviews altogether. It would make no sense at all.

I think I heard somewhere that Lord Sugar does have a hand in choosing the candidates for the show. I believe that the production team narrows it down to around thirty odd, and then from the CVs Lord Sugar chooses the best 16, or in this case 20. I'm 100% sure how it works so it may not be exactly as I've described, but I remember reading something like that. I also believe that that wasn't the case when it started - in Series 1 the producers chose all the candidates, but Lord Sugar insisted in getting involved around Series 3 or 4 time because he didn't trust the producers to find the right people (I think he was a bit disappointed with the Series 2 selection.)

I dimly remember following Series 2 he said that he was going to intervene in the casting to make sure fewer famewhores ended up on the show (I think mostly because he was still very bitter over Michelle, who did not part on good terms). What did he end up with? Katie Hopkins and Tre Azam.

Thanks George - I wasn't aware of that.

I can understand Sugar's mistrust of the producers choosing the right people. After all, they're TV producers and not professional businesspeople or recruiters - they'll know how to pick people who make good telly but not necessarily good business partners.

I would imagine that any involvement by Sugar in this preliminary stage is pretty minimal - I can't imagine it's something he'd spend more than a day or even half a day doing - so still pretty cursory when it comes to really digging into people's backgrounds. Maybe he doesn't even do it himself but gets some of his own people involved instead?