Most of the candidates there only care about defending their position.

SAS should have sacked both the other people in the board room simply for not supporting their manager. That would have given the rest of them the kick they need but I don't see that changing this series and IMO they have damaged the brand.

Give the manager a chance to succeed in the first place (in this case Simon).

I think next year SAS will certainly want a look in on who is selected.

I agree - There is NO TEAM WORK whatsoever. They are all selfish and want the PM to fail rather then win.

Which is a bizarre strategy, considering if they win, none of them are in the firing line and get a treat. Furthermore, if they give their loyalty to the PM and their team loses, the PM is less likely to pull them into the boardroom.

That seems to be something that is happening with a lot of them. There are a few (like Helene) who seem to respect the idea of 'team' work, but there are others, most notably Claire and Alex, who just seem to be out to undermine whoever is leading to ensure they fail at whatever they're doing.

Also whoever led the winning team was totally lining up Lucinda as the fall guy rather than excelling in the task to win it.

That was Helene. You could almost see the cogs in her brain going "I think we'll win but just in case I need a scape goat, hmmm lucinda has been trouble in the past I'll choose her, make sure she can't do something and I'm safe".

It's really gone from a show where the contenders are "trying to win" to one where they are "trying not to lose". And that has ruined it completely. I am very disappointed as I have loved every other series and was looking forward to this one.

I thought he insisted on that, last year -- and they still weren't all that good.

Dave

I am hoping all this "entertainment" is just for the first few weeks.

Raef, Jenny (not the redhead) and a couple of others have been VERY quiet recently. I'm hoping all this backstabbing will eventually filter out, and we'll see a lot more professionalism in the future episodes from the ones who seem to be working the cogs without causing fuss right now...

I hated how obvious she made herself when doing that.There was no tact in it what so ever, luckily Siralan saw right through what she was trying to do.

Maybe the contestants should try and think about winning through their own skill rather than just try to make make someone else look incompetant as more often than not backfires on them leaving them looking like a fool.

Well we have had four weeks of it and to be honest apart from the laundry task each week the team that "won" was more down to the fact the opposition made more mistakes than they did. Hardly a glowing example of management but then it seems being able to manage comes lower down the selection process than making good entertainment.

To be fair the girls team in series 1 behaved just the same.
Suralun eventually had to point out to them that they spent so much time backstabbing & jockying for position to avoid being sacked that they failed the task. But if they pulled together and passed the task then no one on the team would be sacked!

I think in answer to the title 'The casting people have screwed this up?' in terms of Entertainment value they seem to have got it spot on. But in terms of finding people who are actually employeable probably not.

I find them all unlikeable this year.

But unfourtunatly horrid, rude, obnoxius, arrogant people are more interesting to watch.

I agree. there only seemed to be Simon (God rest his soul!) and Sara who were interested in team work. Maybe Lee too, but we didn't really see much of him.

I too think SAS should have fired Claire and Alex as a bloody good warning to the others to pull their socks up and work together. Now THAT would have made good telly, the looks on their smug faces. (I nearly broke the telly when Claire went back and told them that SAS wanted her to be PM next week - bet she didn't tell them everything he said!)

I loved the fact that Nick and Margaret waded in to gave Alex and Claire and good drubbing. If only SAS had listened to them.

I really liked Alex in week 1 - but now I think he's giving us Northerners a bad name with his total evillness!