Am I the only one who felt last night's task was judged on the wrong criteria?

Sir Alan should have based his decision on product selection as opposed to sales.

After all, I doubt Alex or Helene could have shifted the wedding cakes any better than Sara did.

But oh no, Sir Alan had to listen to sneaky Alex who insisted that sales figures form the barometer for measuring performance.

Wrong!

Helene should have been given the boot. She was adament that nobody would purchase high priced dresses and she lost the lingerie deal because of her choice. As such, the team were lumbered with flogging wedding cake and had to sell twice as many dresses to keep up with the opposition. Ultimately she was responsible for the team's downfall.

Simple as.

Helene is a boot

Think Michael should have been fired myself. Yeucch he is odious.

Yes he has - I am even starting to wonder if I will bother with the next series

I'm watching series 1 at the moment since I missed it first time round, and I watched Miriam's firing on the TV task just before last nights episode started, so I tend to think that SAS never really had much a a touch to lose.

One thing that has struck me though, is how well Tim would have done this time round. The only criteria SAS seems to use to judge a contestant is how well they stick up for themselves in the BR, nothing else is very important. Yet Tim was actually quite bad at this. I think if Tim was in this years series he would probably be fired for failing to fight his corner.

He is highly obnoxious, but to be fair it was Helene who cost the team the task on this occassion.

I'm inclined to agree with you that task performance is not nearly as crucial as boardroom tactics and personality type in Sir Alan's eyes.

I just don't think that the two pairs were being judged on a level playing field.

Selling wedding dresses was a far easier task than selling wedding cake.

Agree completely. Michael and Sara tried their best (even though I despise Michael) but they were essentially flogging a dead horse and that was down to Helene. She chose the medium dresses which meant she didn't get the accessories and so had to go with the cakes.

Consistency isn't one of his strong points. I think he's only got 2 weeks right so far: the 2 Jennys last week and the week Ian was fired.

Helene should have gone this week, (not Sara) - for faulty team logistics and wrong product selection. There's no way Michael should've been fired either...he wasn't the PM and wasn't responsible for those errors. He also seemed to be the only one who could see the holes in her decisions. OK he could've voiced them more forcefully, but then he knows how vociferous she can be.

I've been convinced for a long time that ratings are Siralan's main criteria for firing/ keeping certain candidates.

Completely and utterly agree. Helene made the major mistakes in product selection and other strategies.

Sarah and Michael's task was impossible, Alex would have had big problems in the cake selling role.

Once the product selection had been made, nothing anybody did from that point onwards mattered, hard sell soft sell, publicity stunts, nothing. It is just possible that some outrageous campaign of tens of salesman and a sex show might just have drawn in some customers and made a difference, but nothing vaguely realistic was going to do it.

The task wasn't really well designed to test various problem solving skills, Sara and Michael were forced into desperate measures by a desperately difficult challenge. The only thing that could be measured was sales technique deployed for impossible products.

I so agree with this post !!! If they had chosen the correct dresses and sold more of them then they wouldn't have been relying on the sales of cakes to boost their profit!!! -- but 'know it all Helene' had the final say -- so SHE should have gone !!!

Helene wasn't alone in misjudging whether they should bring cheap or expensive dresses; Nick said that Lucinda's team had made the wrong call and that they should have opted for the cheap ones.

yes, I notice how he kept quiet bout that in the boardroom...

He's not losing his touch; only his mind.

lol I was just very surprised that he didn't acknowledge that it wasn't selling technique that was the issue here, it was the product being sold.

Michael should have gone this week.

OK for what it's worth - just my own take on all this - I agree with most of what's been said about the firings but it's a TV show - SAS is all about money and the show's just boosting his bank balance - if he really wanted an apprentice he wouldn't have any difficulty in finding one - fgs how many contacts does the man have - just my opinion but the name of the game here is ratings; the BR is the most popular part of the show.

I agree. In the end, it matters only slightly whether the apprentice SAS picks is actually up to the job. The benefits of the TV series outweigh the burden of possibly being lumbered with a deadbeat. SAS could pay his apprentice a six figure salary to keep his lavatories well stocked with soft loo roll and it would still be worth his while to keep doing the series...

The problem is that the way things are going the first two thirds of the show are increasingly pointless, which doesn't make for interesting watching. Who would watch the first half of a football match if only goals scored from the second half counted?

I think it was a combination of both to be honest - It was a hard task but both Michael and Sara had very poor techniques in trying to sell.

Mind you, at least they were trying, unlike Helene!

Even if Sugar is making decisions of who to fire based on his intuition and personal preference, seeing business decisions played out and the candidates overcoming various business hurdles is still interesting and, best of all, imagining oneself in the position of the candidates is utterly compelling.

Hi - well the first two thirds are worth watching for the sheer ineptitude of the candidates - remember the laundry - deserves a place in history and last week's kosher chicken takes a bit of beating too, the TL was so keen to get out there she didn't think it worthwhile to actually read the brief, (white mosque when specifically stated green).
I know millions really follow it but it's just a bit of TV to me

I think I'm right that the producer had to agree to have his/her products sold by one of the teams. In other words both teams couldn't sell the same product by the same maker.

I gained the impression that Helene's team got stuck with the cakes...

Either team could have won really... Siralan can't see the wood for the trees where Michael is concerned.