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The Biggest Loser  

(Note: This is NOT an official NBC website)

O.K., so I'm a fan of the show and all-too-fond of spouting off my opinions and observations about it so I figured maybe I'd throw up a page on it so that other people could be bored with my opinions and observations.

Week 1

So it's a new season of Biggest Loser and it's exciting to see it off and running!  This year they are starting off with 11 couples - different ages and types.  Friends, married folks, sisters, at least two sets of cousins, mother and daughter, father and son...

The show starts off with Bob and Jillian talking to the camera - to us at home.  They do that a lot this week.  They're warning us of American's obesity epidemic and encouraging us all to take our health seriously.  Bob at one point points out that it "does you no good to be eating ice cream while you watch our show".

The contestants arrive at the ranch and are greeted by Allison.  She welcomes them and sets them right to work on their first workouts....alone.  That's right, Bob and Jillian aren't in the gym.  In fact they're watching on a TV monitor as the eleven couples awkwardly try to put themselves through their own first workouts.  As you might expect, they're not very good...if they were good at working out out they wouldn't be morbidly obese.  But some of them are just sort of comical and Bob and Jillian can see that they really have their work cut out for them.

After a while the trainers head into the gym where they are greeted like rock stars.  The contestants swarm around them, hugging and greeting. All except Jerry, the senior fellow on the white team.  Jerry is a bit wobbly and as his wife Estella looks on with great concern one of the medics rushes to Jerry's aid.  Within moments Jerry is down.  On the floor, semi-conscious, the medic tending to him and reminding him to breathe as the other 20 contestants, Bob & Jillian look on with great concern.

An ambulance arrives and Jerry, by now conscious and apparently going to be o.k., is taken to the hospital for tests.

After that it's time to pick teams.  The way it works is that the trainer will pick first, then the team the trainer picked will pick the next team to join, then that team will pick and so on.  The trainers will alternate and Jillian gets to go first.  I don't recall the exact order they were picked, other than Jillian picked Estella and the White team (her husband Jerry is still at the hospital at this point) first and Bob picked Joelle and Carla, the Silver team, first.

First Weigh-In

So they made a big deal about this being the biggest season of Biggest Loser and they weren't kidding.  First of all, there are 22 contestants - more than usual.  11 couples.  Secondly, these are big big people.  I mean, they're always big people of course, that's the point of the show, but even by Biggest Loser standards these are big folks.

I've tried to color-code the following table, but I'm not sure how well it will appear.  The idea was that the colors would match up with their team colors - Blaine and Dane are the black team, for example, Joelle and Carla are the silver team, Dan and Dave are orange and so forth.  The really light colors I gave a black background to for contrast.  Estella and Jerry are the white team, Helen and Shannon are pink, etc.

So...a few things you might notice there...

• Last year Heba was the biggest girl in the house, starting off at 294 pounds.  This year there are FIVE girls who weigh as much or more (o.k. one of them weighs 293, but that's close enough).  The biggest, Carla, weighs 379.  That's 85 pounds MORE than Heba did.  That's like the old Heba with Keira Knightly on her back.  Wow.  She's the biggest woman they've ever had on the show.

• There is not a single guy in the house under 350 pounds.  Three of them are over 400 pounds.  Dan at 454 is the biggest contestant they've ever had.

• Average weight of all contestants: 336.8. 

• There are ten men (and twelve women) in the house.  The men average 392.8 pounds.

• Buddies Dan and Dave (Orange) are the heaviest team at 847 pounds.  I think I heard Allison say that was the heaviest team they've ever had.  Sisters Mandi and Aubrey are the lightest at 512 pounds.

• Mike is 18 years old, the youngest competitor in the house.

First Challenge

For their first challenge of the season the teams are taken to a bridge in Los Angeles.  There is a big pile of sand at one end and beyond that are flags with the colors of the teams.  From a starting line all 11 teams (Jerry has rejoined them) have to run to the other end, over the pile of sand, reach their flag.  When both team members are at the flag they have to run back.  The first five teams to finish the first heat...

...will go again.  The first two teams to finish the second heat will race in a third heat head to head.  The winners get immunity.  Immunity is always big but they don't realize yet just how big it will be tonight.

The first heat finishes with Black, Red, Yellow, Green and Blue in the top 5.

After the second heat it comes down to the Black team and the Yellow team and the Black team wins it by the slimmest of margins...a real photo finish.

Weigh-In

So we now fast-foward to the weigh-in.  The thing with having SO many contestants and spending so much time setting up the teams and the season is that you really don't get to see much of the week's activities.  They have a lot of product placements to squeeze into those two hours (Bob showing Sione and Filipe about using the 24-Hour Fitness Body Bugg device on the Dell computers, etc.) and so before you know it, we're off to the elimination weigh-in.

Before they start, Allison has a shocking announcement.  There will be no elimination vote tonight!  The contestants cheer.  Then the other shoe drops...

Nine of them are going home.  Yes, nine.  The Black team has immunity.  The team that wins the weigh-in with the highest percentage of weight loss is safe.  The rest of them...have to each send one team member home TONIGHT.  Wow.  BUT...then the wind twists again....for those team members who stay at the ranch, if they are STILL at the ranch in 30 days then their team member gets to rejoin them!  4 weeks?  So 5-7 of those nine ousted players are coming back (depending upon if Black team and the winners tonight stick around).  So then it's time to weigh in.

Keep in mind...Week 1 always has jaw-dropping numbers.  Lot of water weight getting lost, of course, and these guys are smart enough to have bulked up some before they came in order to drop big numbers.  And, it's their first week getting professional training and diet.  This will be as good as it gets for single-week numbers.

Here's the table...sorted by highest percentage of weight loss...

As you can see, Ron threw down the biggest single percentage and led his team to a 7.44% percent for the week.  A staggering 54 pounds between them!  That's practically an Olsen twin!  Huge number!  Ron's 32 pounds was the biggest one week drop in Biggest Loser history according to Allison.  Daniel dropped 30 pounds!

The two big shockers of the night though:

• Jerry, despite his collapse and hospital visit, drops 25 pounds in one week.  He's 63 years old!  How old are you?

• Carla, for all her bluster in the interviews about the "Silver Bullets" and them being "Two Hurricanes" drops only 11 pounds.  2.9% of weight loss on the first week is a disappointing number.  In fact she was almost an entire percentage point worse than Estella who was next to last and Carla at 379 has a LOT of weight to lose.  She's 137 pounds HEAVIER than Estella but only dropping 11 pounds in week 1?

• Minor surprise: Tara dropped 7.14% - 21 pounds in week 1.  She's going home this week to let Laura carry their flag at the ranch, which may be a mistake.

All told the contestants dropped a total of 382 pounds in week 1, about 5.15% of their total.  Impressive!

So, Blaine and Dane had immunity, while Ron and Mike won the weigh-in.  The other 9 teams had to each send somebody home.

Strategy - Who Stayed and Who Went

So this surprise tactic, which I initially didn't care for, introduces a new strategy element to the game.  The teams had to pick who would stay.  Logic says you'd want your strongest competitor to stay because everybody who survives the next 30 days gets their team back in the game.  2-4 of these teams are going to be done for good in the next month.  But at the same time....when the teammate comes back they need to be ready to rock and roll...they can't just go home and scarf donuts down for a month.  So you don't want to send home somebody who will fall apart at home; you want the player who NEEDS the ranch the most to be there.  Tough call.

A few surprises here...

• For the green team Laura seemed like the weak link to me.  Tara is apparently counting on Laura being able to stick it out with Jillian long enough for Tara to come back.  And perhaps Tara is more capable of getting it done at home.  Laura will need to rebound from a shaky week 1.
• For the white team Jerry was the obvious choice.  Game play or not he NEEDS the ranch, for his health.  He needs the constant monitoring and he needs the big numbers he should drop in that environment.
• For the orange team Daniel is the obvious choice to stay.  Biggest contestant ever, he has the best chance to drop huge numbers each week and stay above the yellow line.
• For Red, Nicole seems more motivated and Damien has more weight to lose.  She'll do o.k. at home I think and he could drop solid numbers at the ranch.
• For yellow I think they decided that Mandi was a little tougher.  It's a risk and I suspect (but hope I'm wrong) that if Aubrey makes it back that she won't have dropped that much weight at home (compared to the others) but Mandi probably gives them a better chance to survive the next few weeks.
• Kristin was the obvious choice for Purple.  She's the second-biggest girl in the history of the ranch and dropped a solid 19 this week.  Cathy dropped a far smaller number and is older.
• Pink was a surprise - keeping Helen and sending Shanon home.  I hope that works out for them, but Helen will really have to rise to the occasion.  At 245 she's now the smallest contestant still in the house.
• Silver looks like a train wreck I'm sorry to say and the smart money is probably that they don't survive week 2.  Joelle, despite her larger weight loss this week, seems like the less motivated player somehow and despite Carla's good-natured(?) threat that if Joelle doesn't make it the 30 days that she'd have to answer to Carla I think she's really going to have a struggle to stay on-board.  Blaine (who had immunity) is the only person still in the house who dropped a smaller percentage this week than Joelle did.  Joelle may want to try and form some alliances or turn on some serious charm so that she can win an elimination vote if she falls below the yellow line next week.
• Black team had immunity.  I was thinking that as a gameplay tactic it was probably in their best interest to coast a bit this week if they could.  NOT drop too much weight so they can drop bigger numbers NEXT week when they might not have immunity.  Blaine turned in a very modest number, Dane turned in a solid number.  Curious to see how that comes out next week for them.

Random Stuff

• One thing that will be interesting this season is that we'll get to watch the progress of Allison's pregnancy.  We learned in the finale of Season 6 that Host Allison is pregnant and since season 7 was filmed over the last quarter of last year she should be right in the middle of that pregnancy during this season.  In week 1 she's not showing too much, but you can see some of that pregnancy weight on her already - especially (sorry to be indelicate here) in the low-cut top.  She still looks great of course!

• If you thought they might ease up a bit on the product placements you're WAY wrong.  Between Brita and 24-Hour Fitness and who knows what else they were right in our faces with the product placements from the beginning.  This is clearly going to be a Jello show.  I won't be surprised if by the end of it they have Bob's tattoos changed to read "Brita".

• No Vicky's have emerged yet, but the Silver team seems to have the most attitude.  Carla was sort of in Joelle's face after the weigh-in and implied that Joelle didn't hold up her end.  Ironic since Joelle had a much higher percentage of weight-loss than Carla did.

• Ron is the first contestant, that I know of, who has had stomach stapling surgery in the past.  Clearly it didn't last - at 430 he's the second heaviest man and he looks in really bad shape.

• Filipe and Sione are Tongans.  Cool.

• Laura and Tara are supposedly former models and in their old pictures (which were occasionally shown) they do look like they are pretty (if not exactly waifish).  Laura seems like the weak link in that team though; at one point in the workout Jillian tires of Laura's "theatrics" and sits her down for a chat.  Her partner Tara in a one-shot confesses to thinking "Get over it girl, you're not the only fat chick here."  In the bridge race Tara was clearly the faster even though she started out 9 pounds heavier.  At the end of the week Tara had lost 21 pounds to Laura's 13...and now they weigh nearly the same.

• There was a LOT of crying last night.  If it's going to be like this all season expect there to be a lot of Kleenex product placements because these contestants, men and women alike, were weeping like there's no tomorrow.  I understand the emotions, I got choked up a couple of times myself, but wow...I don't recall this much crying on camera since Mark in season 5.

• Predictions: It's pretty early and we don't know the teams that well yet.  Green and Silver look like they won't be around too long.  Black team looks like they'll be pretty strong in the challenges and may win a lot of immunity/advantage.  Brown team seems to have a lot of weight to lose as does Orange team.  Right now I'd say the front runners have to be Ron, Dane and Daniel.  The Blue team may be dark horses in this race.

Best Quote of the Night

"We all know what it's like to be the fat kid picked last in gym class.  Here we're ALL fat kids in a really fat gym class."
    -Daniel-

Articles

• Buddy TV Recap of Week 1

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