Cyberclogs

The 8th episode of the Apprentice was actually a bit of a letdown in comparison to the excellent previous episodes, which kept building up the momentum of the show. Possibly because now most of the snakes have been ejected from the house (although there's still the odd one in there!) there is less "good TV" drama to watch. Nonetheless it was watchable.

This week's task was to sell wedding dresses to prospective female buyers and the team who made the most profit will win. The teams were both headed by Lucinda and Helenne. Now for the warning: episode SPOILER:

Yes the team that won was in fact headed by Lucinda, funnily enough, this is the second time she has been team leader and also the second time she had gotten credit for it. Lucinda's main strengths actually seem to lie in delegation as she got Claire to go out and supervise the buying of the dresses and which designer of the dresses to go with, and she also mixed in Lee with the selling of the wedding accessories, which worked out successfully too. And yet again despite Helenne's so called efficiency she was anything but efficient as a team leader, she seemed to make the wrong choices in cakes and accessories, the dresses were well sold by Alex (who acquitted himself again this week by making some good sales for Helenne's team). Michael and Sara also were not very good this week either as they both tried to push for the hard sale with their customers, in fact most of the customers felt intimidated and put off by their sales techniques.

In the boardroom though Sir Alan finally had had enough of Sara and her refusal to listen to people in the team and poor communication, and he had her fired. I didn't entirely feel this wasn't justified as Sara didn't perform very well in the task, she did push and try for the hard sale a bit much towards the end. In the long run I don't Sara could have been a serious contender for the show, as she said herself she felt she doesn't get on well within a team, but I found it quite encouraging when she said she would go and work for herself in the future, good for her.

But to honest Michael was far worse, he practically intimidated a woman customer at one point into buying a cake, which just put the customer off even more! The fact Michael wasn't fired by Sir Alan shows he still must have a soft spot for this boy, after he pleaded to stay and to be made project manager again next week. But clearly Sir Alan was getting fed up with Michael's whole admittance to his mistakes and the "I'll never do it again" attitude, and I'm sincerely hoping that his number is up pretty soon, as I really don't want him to win, given the look Nick gave Sir Alan after he let him go, Sir Alan would be mad to let him away with it again! Which brings me to Helenne who I felt didn't justify herself at all well in the boardroom this week and to be honest I felt the failure of the task was based mostly on her poor decision making. She said to camera that she felt she would not like to work with these people in the real world and would have them all fired if they worked for her, to be honest I can't see her doing too well in the real world if she is anything like the way she is in this show!

So my money on those to be in the finale would be either Raef and Claire, although I would much like to see Lucinda in the final aswell as she has really been good since the halfway mark of this show and shown her skills as a team leader. Its hard to tell who will exactly stay in at this stage but it will be fun to find out.