This exactly. Alan Sugar is a disgrace, farcical episode.

Agreed. While nothing special, Felipe was a better performer than Daniel throughout this process. He's criticized for PM last week, albeit making the right decisions to send Mark + Katie to sell the hot tubs. But fired this week, but Daniel stays because he 'shows improvement' even though he has been poor throughout.

If they were both fired for this week, and for overall track record throughout the process, fair enough, but Daniel staying is simply BS.

Your figures aren't quite right ...
1. Price of Skeleton which is around £200 - £310, which was the guide price (not the £260 RRP in the shop we saw Solomon/Bianca in)
2. Fine for not getting Skeleton about £50 - No separate fine was levied, just the £310.
3. Fine for not getting the length of the rope correct (which I did think was unfair) £50 - £52, which I'm assuming includes a guide price of £2.
4. Actual price of the Paper Skeleton was like £13 which is essentially wasted - £14.

I've broken down the numbers in my episode review.

You cannot really read the brief for the diamond but there was plenty written down on the sheet & would have surely stated it had to be a minimum of a certain carat I would have thought.

Ok then why didn't half the team just sit at the house with some paper, scissors and a glue stick and make half the items

Why not go all the way and have Lord Sugar give out Monopoly money to the winner instead of a real investment.....

Fair enough. But if you asked someone for a metre of rope, and they came back with 1.7m, would you refuse to pay because they didn't take some scissors to it first?

Either they go by the literal descriptions they've been given, or they go by what would be acceptable in the "real world". Sugar applied the former to the rope, and the latter to the skeleton.

In Business you use common sense! People are just siding with Felipe cos he was a nice guy.

You ask for an anatomically correct skeleton and flop out a flat paper kit it's not right! It's like if he'd asked for a house and they just bought some bricks and said that'll do.

I have to say Sugar does not come out of this very well imo, whether you agree with Felipe going or not.

1. Because they're supposed to buy the items

2. Monopoly money is not real money



The team bought exactly what was specified and were penalised for it. Farce.

I see were your coming from but have to disagree because the whole point of the task was to buy each article as CHEAP as possible, there is nothing in the brief about quality whatsoever, just get it at the lowest price possible

Since when was this an engineering show?

People seem to forget that this was a negotiation task as well, what Felipe and Daniel did was cut a corner, not negotiate. How does Lord Sugar know what their negotiation skills are like if they don't actually try to negotiate on actual valuable items?

Plus we have absolutely no idea what the 'skeleton' would be like since it was quite clearly still in the packaging. How do we even know that it would have all the nooks and crannies that bones have? We don't.

Everyone is arguing that it is 'technically' an anatomical Skeleton, I can just as easily argue that 'technically' it was a few pieces of paper in plastic packing. What they presented to him was not a Skeleton.

Of course they would have bought the stationary

No one's disputing the objective of the task. The point is whether, if you had asked someone to go out and buy a skeleton, you would be happy when they came back with a paper kit. I know I wouldn't. I'm with auron87. Felipe rolled the dice knowing it was a risky strategy - it blew up in his face. I think Sugar would have looked sillier if he had accepted the paper skeleton. The semantics of what the instructions did or didn't say should have given way to common sense.

I agree, that was nonsense. What does he do at Christmas if he asks for a new silk tie, go mad if his wife buys him two ?
The simple reply would have been to say that we brought back a rope longer than was needed because any person requiring the rope would have been able to cut it exactly to the length required. We all know people can make mistakes in measuring things, so better safe than sorry.

To be fair, SA is looking for a business partner. I think short of a contestant bending over in the boardroom, dropping his pants, and spreading them (it doesn't go down too well in job interviews), then whoever has the business plan that has passed due diligence and checks all the boxes will be the one who wins. I was actually asked why Daniel was still in the house by my housemate and I had to explain that the Apprentice wasn't for a job any more.

I can't really blame him to be honest. If I was stumping up £250K then I wouldn't want to invest it in something destined to fail. There are a lot of ideas that sound absolutely brilliant on paper, but the moment you start to look at them closer you see they're not actually feasible or possible either technically or as a business. If Felipe's idea involved disabled children then there's the possibility that it would be either a not-for-profit organisation or something that could also be misconstrued as a charity. There's also the possibility that what was required in terms of other expenses was prohibitive. What may work out of the box for an able bodied child may be potentially dangerous for a child with disabilities as well. If you require equipment or a product to be tested exhaustively for use with a disabled child then you end up with a large bill at the end of it. There could also be the possibility of negative coverage for various reasons.

I can't believe people are getting upset about this. The show is basically one long Dragon's Den pitch, combined with elements of BB. Even SA says it at the beginning of every show. I think why people are getting upset is because of what it used to be. He has a load of ideas for start ups and he picks the one he likes the most. How he manages to justify them actually staying in the process is a different matter all together.

Because you cannot make a Kosher chicken out of paper or a Belfast Sink out of paper or a carat cut diamond out of paper etc etc etc

I did say that I thought the rope thing was unfair in my post but I still absolutely agree with him about the Skeleton.

But then why isn't the rope acceptable? If it's just a matter of taking some scissors to it, the customer could quite easily do that.

The description said 'full size skeleton'

Lord Sugar used an analogy, which i agree with

It's your birthday, and the guests show up with some flour & eggs, and then say "go make the cake yourself"

They called it 'thinking outside of the box'

Sadly, i think it's a case, of 'brain outside of the box' on this occasion

Well, if he'd allowed the rope, that'd be fine. The problem (for me at least) is that he was applying different sets of rules for different items. I think both ways of looking at the skeleton are valid, but whichever way you go, you have to apply that consistently, and Sugar didn't do that.

Ah, I presumed you were referring to the cute blond using sex appeal to get the diamond at a ridiculously low price and basically making the difference between winning and losing.

I actually hate this episode....as much as I like Felipe being fired, I just think this is the worst episode of this series.

Fair point but I guess the show sets the parameters and the conceit that the tasks are vital, then Sugar plays fast and loose with them. Even if the skeleton was a piss take, was it worth such a whopping fine?

I'm rather cross I wasted an hour watching when there's so little point in trying to understand what point was LAS trying to make this week.

Agree.

I Felipe had actually made the paper Skeleton then I would disagree but to leave it in a box was just unfair on the other team IMO and against the spirit of the task.