It seemed to me that it was a cashier's cheque or at least something that was already pre-printed, so the $470,000 cheque was used for the guitar in a similiar manner to the girls' $99,000 orders being applied to whatever art work was left over. Why $470,000 and not, let's say, a round number in $500,000? Seems like a predetermined number that was printed onto a cashier's cheque before the donor showed up.

I would have preferred that the donor actually be there in person to pick out a piece of artwork for the donation. To have them simply phone it in seemed to be more of a favouritism based on how many rich people you knew more than on true business skill.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that Marlee showed her skills and ability to rope in enough people to fork over the money to set an Apprentice record, but it showed that she had a lot of good contacts out there rather than on business acumen. Likewise, John Rich benefitted from one generous donor to bring his total to $600+K -- without that one big donor, the team was under $200K for the night.

Regarding Marlee's decision... good that she thought more of the game instead of letting her heart strings be pulled by keeping the men from firing another member. I think she showed game savvy by taking the spotlight off Gary and shifting it over to Dicque because Dicque would show more as a project manager than Gary ever could. Gary's going to be easier to go up against when the teams are mixed up or everybody's put onto one team later on, so why not remove a tougher competitor in Dicque?