I agree... although I HAVE been in situations where I have definitely seen people fired for poor performance, this usually happens fairly quickly when it becomes clear the person is incapable of carrying out their duties. Most often though it is a matter of personalities, prejudices, and politics whereby the people in charge find some sort of "performance issue" to blame the release on.

The situation with Stacy J was pretty weird though. They showed the event that spooked everyone in the first episode. But I am very curious about the dynamic beyond what was edited to fit a one hour show with an attempt to make a "story" for the viewer (which I think "The Apprentice" does a great job at, BTW, but you still have to take things at face value).

Clearly her behaviour frightened everyone, or at least caught them off guard. I think it was due to a bit of stress but it also seemed to me that Stacy was trying to bring up moral... she was trying to move the group into some confidence on the task with the "8-ball" and her other comments when they were all sitting around despondant waiting for the results of the challenge. Personally I didn't find her actions "scary" but then I wasn't there, and maybe it was the quick change in character or something we didn't see that caught everyone off guard.

But what I was REALLY thinking about last night was at this point, three weeks later, (or however much time had passed for them) and Trump polled each team member, how much of their "agreement" was just from them all talking about it for so long, rather than their true impressions of the actual event? I'm not even saying there was conspiracy involved... but with everyone talking about it so much it certainly must have helped others form their opinions thereby explaining their "unity". It was also clear that for whatever reason, Stacy J wasn't fitting in with the group, not a member of the "clique" as she put it, and I think that had a lot to do with everyone taking that stance... the boardroom must be so stressful in general, and this was a very easy "solution" for them this week, to just "tow the company line" and solidify their opinions against Stacy.

I don't know that the issue had anything to do with a clinical condition. They did make some accusations of that in the boardroom, mosly clearly uninformed (saying it was almost like she was schizophrenic when I think they meant some form of dissociative or personality disorder) but one of the woman just quietly said that mental illness was something she had experience with and left it at that. However I don't think Trump fired her under the assumption that she might have a mental illness, but rather that no matter what the cause, she displayed some flaky behavior (as presented by the team) that made him not trust her to run one of his companies. Not to mention that she wasn't getting along with the rest of the team, which is a problem for someone trying to run a company.

Personally I don't think, based on what I saw, that there was any sort of clinical thing at work with Stacy and I do think it was very unfair of people to bring that up without knowing what they were talking about. Of course we are more sensitive than most about people throwing those terms around loosly.