Interesting preview of this week's episode in one of the broadsheets:

" A chaotic episode sees, for the second time in the series, Lord Sugar taking unprecdented action in the boardroom".

This, coupled with RT's "LS announces a shock result" makes me wonder if Joseph will be fired next ..

The RT review is also (finally) up:

Last week, a boardroom twist that broke the mould. This week, more tales of the unexpected, as Lord Sugar sighs, “Well, that’s never happened before…” After a decade, The Apprentice can still deliver surprises and, from a simple-seeming task (create a healthy snack and pitch it to retailers), wring every fluid ounce of emotional juice.

Look out for a hilarious pitch that Claude calls gibberish and the words “passionate” and “iconic” scattered like out-of-date seasoning. Sugar’s One-liner of the Week: “What is an ‘iconic vegetable’? Elvis Parsley?”

This is a bit confusing, as the first bit in the RT review seems to indicate the Charleine crying situation, which is different from the taking action bit (in the above post).

Unless he means that neither of them have won (the Charleine crying bit is already mentioned elsewhere in the review) any sales and that both teams come back into the boardroom (hence the unprecedented action?).

The Claude bit in the review is from the preview clip released by the BBC.

Yep I've always felt the "shock result" was down to the task result not the firing.

Maybe the result is that neither team gets any orders? The preview for Why I Fired Them has this bit:

Yeah, that must be it, I had a feeling it'd be something like that when I saw it first.

Don't both pitch to just three retailers? last year I think one of the teams (Mark's team) only got orders from one. Quite plausible both could get 0/3 if the pitches and products are poor.

The "shock result" could be both teams get no orders and there's no winning team and then the "unprecedented move" could be LS brings all 6 back to the BR, or he picks 3 himself to return based on task performance

Dunno where the Charleine crying comes into it, maybe the latter scenario happens and LS sends her through and it's happy/relieved emotion so to speak? just because no team secures a sale is hardly enough to have you feeling that upset, the tasks mean fk all in the overall scheme of things with the current format

It'll be interesting to see what happens!

Hi everyone; not sure if this is related but Charleine's confirmed on Twitter that she never worked with Brett in the series - it could be hints for the final is what I'm guessing (e.g - if either got there, they didn't pick the other, or they were each picked for different teams. Or they were on the same team but were on different subteams. Unsure.)

Personally I think Charlene may get fired as the guess in your fired is Ruth Jones.
But this is just a prediction

And she did an advert for Tesco, and who used to work there

Charleine is the only safe candidate at the moment, she is even plugging the final five show for tomorrow, lol

If neither team win then we could see any number of candidates come back in the final boardroom (all six, three handpicked or even four candidates, with each PM having to chose a candidate from their own team).

Based purely on instincts, and twitter observations (over the weeks and more recently), my guess for the fired candidate would be either Joseph or Vana (bookies know nothing).

Vana is easily my favourite candidate this series, even including week 3 (which was hard to see in terms of aftermath), but I am a half glass empty kind of guy. Since the new format only one of my favourites has reached the interview stage (before that, 4 out of 6).

Anyway, I wouldn't be bothered if we lost any of the guys tomorrow evening.

Personally I think they are all awful left bar Richard, Vana is just the least terrible out of the other 5. Richard is the only deserving winner this year,

Joseph will probably win, Sugar seems to be sucking his cock this year

The bookies get it right, or very close to it, most years. Joseph has been comfortable odds on since the beginning so he's surely in the final 2 tbh.

I'd be fully amazed if he went tonight. LS has been licking his ass throughout as Gwaed refers to. probably had a good look at his plan early doors too

It would amaze me less if one of Vana or Richard went tonight, though by their edit it's difficult to imagine them not at interviews.

I hope it's not Gary in a way, he's just way too much the obvious choice!

as for overall winner, I honestly couldn't care less, I find very few of the remaining candidates that easy to warm to. I'd go as far as saying Charleine is my favourite!

As usual, a few teasers for tonight - no major spoilers:

1. One candidate asks another one to confirm the spelling of 'life'.

2. Another struggles with the spelling of ‘rejuvenate’.

3. And a third candidate initially produces a label that reads ‘califlour cheese’.

4. One candidate gets mixed up between ‘contraception’ and ‘fertility’.

5. Top Brett-isms this week include: ‘make sure everything’s done to the button’, ‘vegan-proof’, ‘run that gravy train’ and ‘the calibration of ratios to the amounts of what we could actually incorporate’. O-kaay.

6. Black felt-tip pen features prominently.

7. ‘There was things that they wasn’t that keen on. The name. Or the packaging. And also the product itself.’ So, everything, then.

8. One candidate goes to extraordinary lengths to misrepresent their consumer testing findings.

Brett or Charlene written all over this I feel

They also happen to be both PMs, so that makes them even more likely!

The only other possibility I can see is Richard. Joseph and Vana won't want to do anything that could jeopardise their position, while Gary is way too corporate to against any sort of grain

The spellings could be anyone. The "life" one will clearly be in a joking way

Heh. Actually, the request to spell 'life' is made in all seriousness ...

It's something i could see Richard doing

Richard's heavily dyslexic isn't he?

Charleine is a terrible speller going by her Twitter account.

Lol digital spy just posted who got fired in an article

If I had to speculate based on where the fingers were pointing I'd say Charleine and Joseph were the f2.

They don't usually stay in the same seats throughout the boardroom.

Why do I get the distinct impression Charleine is going to win? I don't even like her!

Well in the end it was the 0-0 sales, and both teams 'lost'. There was no way Gary could be fired (quite amazingly- can we say was he even the best this week?) based on this week, so it was always going to be Brett. He really looked out of his depth in this task

So Gary is the "surprise" final 5 contestant so to speak. He's a grower!



Yeah I'm with Tyjet I wouldn't read into that at all. After firing 1/2 he'll send the last 3/4 out to deliberate more and they'll come back into new seat

Richard looks to get pasted in interviews, but it could be misdirection.

LS definitely likes Charleine. It'll all come down to plans though

Cannot wait!

Hmm, after that:

* From the snippet on YF, looks like the wine business is Vana's business plan after all (she mentioned play on words - 'Vino by Vana') and considering she wasn't given more of a hard time over the excess oil this week, I'd say she probably is one of the final 2

* Joseph's numbers not stacking up - not a good sign (Roisin last year was another one wasn't she?)

* Richard having a nightmare, I see this is where the building clip was from (the intro clip with him on his own outside, I did say this may well be from the interviews and looks like somehow I was right). LAS was gunning for him this week compared to Vana.

* The snippet we saw of Gary's wasn't that bad, he must have a half-decent plan if he's survived this long after being in the final BR 3 weeks in a row. Either he's the other half of the final 2, or he'll be the 'with regret' 3rd place.

* Charleine - I thought she'd be picked up on the crying more, and again like Gary, the clip shown for her wasn't too bad. I felt she should have been given much more of a hard time from what we saw of the task, and also that she made the wrong choice in saving Joseph.

* Outcome for me: Charleine vs Vana final 2. Gary 3rd, Richard 4th, Joseph 5th.


^^ I say that, and then so far, the final 5 show is bigging Joseph up like no tomorrow

I like Gary but if he makes it to the final 2 I'm going to stop coming here for a week, the absolute sh**show on here that would follow from Gary making the final would be way too much

So after the final 5 ep, maybe swap Gary and Joseph over, otherwise probably about the same. Gary's back story wasn't really touched on compared to the others, whereas Joseph was basically all praise from everyone, and same with Charleine. Vana and Richard had a bit more doubt focused on them.

There's no hope Joseph will come 5th. In fact after that edit it's a case of him and who else for final 2 imo ! could it have been any more favourable?

Even before the "final 5" LS has licked his arse all series, no way he's going to be first gone

I can't see richard making final 2 based on all I've seen tonight. Gary - despite really improving in recent weeks - will surely come 5th.

Charleine really got a good edit all round tonight. I'm with the bookies though, looks like a Joseph/Vana final from here, I do hope Charleine sneaks in though