Does anybody else think she might have been ill? She looked and acted differently.

(and BTW what's with 'I don't know anything about marketing'? We've all seen a TV ad...)

I agree with the poster quoted, Alana was actually one of the few female candidates who came across as competent this week (at least from those actually shown somewhat prominently).

Was blindsided when she was brought back into the boardroom, especially when Natalie and Jessica both tried to gang up on her, horrendous women

Alana's been one of the most present women (at least on the show), so the comment from Alan that Karen said she was hiding/not doing much completely threw me - and it seemed to have thrown Alana too

Karen made a snide remark about her in week one in the boardroom, too. Commented on her performance, yet I remember thinking, "er, Claud was the one to follow them, not you. How'd you know?" ... Someone's jealous.

I caught on to this too, a strange thing to comment on when she supposedly wasn't there... Hmmm

Surely that's what happens in the boardroom every week. Everyone's saving their arse and playing the boardroom game, it didn't seem out of the ordinary or particularly personal.

OK - my follow-up comment made me look as though I was criticising her, whereas I agree with most of the above...

She does sod all other than stand around carefully watching the rest of her team for failures she can critisise them for in the board room. At least they had a go even if they did fail miserably. Surely just a matter of time until Sugar gives her the boot.

Karen always seems to take against one of the candidates (usually, for all her talk about supporting women in business, one of the female candidates) for no good reason and goes after them at every opportunity.

Well Alana was the most competent of the 3 of them by a good margin and the way they were painting her as this mess who let the side down was just totally off the mark I thought, was much more of an unfair "dog pile" than your usual, because she was actually decent enough for a change.

Karren just loves being snide - a characteristic of which she should be deeply embarrassed and ashamed. She could easily be supportive and criticize in a constructive way, using her 30 years of business experience. Instead she is crass and mocking.

I agree that Karren's behavior is deeply unimpressive in this respect.