Firstly with Isabelle (I'm making a point of learning and using her name :P) I'm just glad she has believable character! I'll be honest - the smile and pretty hair had me worried and lets be honest, blondes do not have the best PR on this show. So I quickly introduced the static and ignored her best I could. But she's at least proven to be an interesting character and one worth starting a discussion about.
So the newspaper thing, while watching that Pet rightly pointed out that she doesn't know Katja, she's new in town and I couldn't honestly say that if I were in her position and I thought, genuinely believed, that a team-mate was trying to show me up with bad press and let people think I was trying to sleep my way into a job where I had worked hard and (accpepting the skating double soap-reality :P) was bloody talented....(I think I lost my stream there). Point being - in her position I might have asked the same of my employers. Lets not forget this is a Steinkamp team, who no doubt have a reputation in the business, and she has been lured in with promises that this is 'the good Steinkamp team'...if I were here I'd have alarm bells shouting that Katja was 'another Jenny'.
But she has made some apparently genuine attempts to be nice to Katja and in general seems to be fairly nice. We'd need more back story to be sure *smiles sweetly at those who would have to translate it for me* but lets just imagine a generic skating background; she's had to learn to defend herself and is more than accustomed to people who will temper with your skates. She did keep quiet about Katja and that was, frankly, a nice easy way for her to get a leg-up on the competition (OMG smacks brain that wanted to say get her leg over the competition!) but she didn't take it so even if she is snide she's smart with it!
So I can't remember the choreography of the bathroom scene but I do remember enthusiastic!Ben had her pinned up against the sink. Is it too unreasonable to think maybe she needed to push back to take control of the situation and move things out of the bathroom. Come on, if she really wanted to hurt Katja like that she could have done nothing (and that would've been oh so more soapy no?). And I'm willing to give her props for that because it wasn't exactly a situation where she could stop and focus on a better plan to get them both out of there.
And OMG the press conference! Am I the only one who thought she looked absolutely mortified then? If they insisted on having a press conference to deal with the whole apple-tree nonsense they could have just admitted that the two were dating and denied all allegations, a coy admission that they were involved was enough - a declaration of love was over the top and over compensating. And she looked appropriately appauled by the entire thing and could almost hear the "we just met" she was screming in her head.
But then there was Max and her little poolside display. This was actually encouraging because at the time I thought she was just a little too sweet and that maybe Show were trying to push her on us as another special snowflake (or worse, that she was just going to be a nice girl who was there for filler and never really contributed anything to the drama). But this really gave me the vibe that Isabelle knows how to handle sleezy businessmen who will, because she's a pretty girl, look at her, hit on her, assume she's a bimbo and try to use her to their own needs.
Overall I think she's a fairly nice person who has had to learn how to handle herself and can get her claws out when she needs to. All of which will hopefully mean some good plots where we feel divided over her (so far so good?).