After a fairly middle of the road episode last week, this episode returned with gusto! These kinds of episodes are usually very entertaining (think Caravan task in series 9 and Wedding task in series 4) but.. WOW!

James' power trip and unravelling, Roisin's steely determination, Felipe's floundering, Mark's machiavellianism... the others had a quiet episode but I feel Bianca and Solomon were quietly brilliant as well. Daniel's tantrums were hilarious, the unprofessionalism of the whole thing was classic Apprentice.

anyone else with me on this?

I think the last two episodes were a bit boring, but tonight's was very entertaining! Nice to see the end of James, and Roisin blossoming.

I love this episode as well. I always like Roisin. She is definitely the best candidate this year. Felipe was such a wimp. I can't believe that Felipe is still in the process.

Good episode, thank goodness James was fired.

I liked this episode a lot. All the flaws we have seen in James in previous weeks came home to roost here, and we got some good insight as to who the pretenders and who the contenders are.

It actually seemed *too* good to be completely organic - I thought way the whole James and the Giant Hot Tub narrative played out was just a little bit neat.

But most of us don't take the show completely at face value anyway, so a bit of scripting can be forgiven if it produces episodes as strong as this.

But are you saying that watching people within the same team bickering with each other is entertaining to watch?

Doesn't bode well, for actual team-work though

That boxing was a good idea though, as i had a sense that some tensions got relieved

Who care's about team work If they're too egotistical and immature to work cohesively together, that's their own problem. More entertainment for us.

Yeah, this one has been entertaining from start to finish imo. It's the most i've enjoyed the series in years. I think Sugar has made an excellent move in reinventing the show, by completely embracing it as a parody of what it once was.

Ditto. James was comedy gold, but then quite affecting in the boardroom. I went from thinking ' what an idiot' to ' awww'. I thought the Apprentice was finished as a format but this has been my fave series since 2007.

Same here on both points. I was almost starting to root for James again after his little speech. His confession was also one of the funniest boardroom moments I've ever seen.

This series has had so many standout moments (and candidates) - I remember the first five seasons quite well but some of the last few have blurred together for me. This season will definitely stand out.

I went "Oh god James stop talking you're going to send yourself home", to "Oh god James stop talking you're going to save yourself and you need to go".

I do think his wrote his own resignation with his mouth when he said he'd bring Roisin back in.

This was by far the best Apprentice episode for a long time, Very entertaining and well put together. Really enjoyed it last night.

I think if you asked him Felipe would say he can't quite believe Felipe is still in the process.

Agreed this is turning in to a stand out series. Really that's down to 3 candidates though- James, Mark and Daniel.

I really enjoyed this one as well. I prefer to see people doing well than messing up, and other than James and a bit of Daniel, everyone seemed to work really hard and do some good selling. And the right person was fired.

That's a good point. We're now at that stage in the narrative where it's important for us to show the good qualities of the prospective finalists, rather than just the bad qualities of the Firee of the Week.

And whereas candidates can get away with being shown to make mistakes in the early tasks, being cast in a negative light now is a likely sign of an impending departure. So: Daniel and Sanjay next?

This was a great episode, I think every candidate was able to shine in their own way, whether good or bad.

I've found this series to be pretty poor though, at least for the first few episodes. So while I don't know if it will reach 'classic' status in my mind, it's now probably not going to be my worst series. Depends what happens from now until the end though. I feel like I've had enough of the bad candidates, how about we focus on the contenders.

Agree. Funniest boardroom scene I can remember especially when everyone, including Lord Sugar, couldnt stop laughing at James excuse for losing the Hot Tubs deal.