So I know I haven’t been covering Biggest Loser this year because last year was so god-awful: 22 episodes, 2 hours long with only about 40 minutes of actual stuff happening, non-elimination weeks, terrible challenges, unlikeable contestant. It truly was the season from hell. I actually slightly regretted dumping it though because the really improved this season and I enjoyed watching.

Anyway, I always like my buddy Andy’s analysis of the finale, so I wanted to post it here. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Ok – The finale is tomorrow so I figured this write-up is better late than never. The biggest loser finale is finally a fight between the big men of the group!

I also find interesting is how the breakdown of the season went. This year Biggest Loser was broken into three different groups – the kids, the working age and the retirees. Ok, maybe that is overstating it but they did break the contestants into three groups all by age at the beginning and the show goes into the finale with two of the three represented. You would think that the young group would be the group with two BUT the middle group had two. This might be a testament to Bob knowing how to get people to lose weight faster than the other trainers as the other two trainers were new this season. On to the contestants…

John: Age – 40. Height – 6′ 4″. Starting weight – 445 lbs. Everyone I know who talks to me about the show wants anyone BUT John to win the show. John does come off poorly on tv but in general, I think he has the most work emotionally to do than anyone else. With that being said, I think this game is his to lose. He is already at 263 lbs. If he gets down to 220, he will be at a more than 50% weight loss. I am guessing he ends at 218 which is only 45 more pounds AND gives him a 51.01% weight loss. Wow.

Antone: Age – 44. Height – 6’5″. Starting weight – 447 lbs. Look, he is an ex-NFL player (lot of muscle) and he is an inch taller than John. Also, he is at 293 right now. For him to get close to John, he would need to lose another 65 lbs in the next 3 months before the finale. It can be done but with John being at the same starting weight, a tad shorter, and having a BIG lead already, I just do not see it happening.

Ramone: Age – 27. Height – 5’11″. Starting weight – 355 lbs. Here is your dark horse. At 5’11″ and being 27 years old, he could get down to 180. Now, he is at 239 lbs right now so that means losing 59 more lbs in the next 3 months or however long the break is before the finale. That is a tall order but he is 27 years old. That helps.

I just do not see John losing. At the end of the last show, John was at a 40% weight loss already! Antone was at 34.5% loss and Ramone was at a 32.7% loss. That is a lot of ground to make up by the finale but crazier things have happened.

I guess we will find out tomorrow.

Unsurprisingly, Ali is talking at 5,000 words per minute in front of the live crowd. Additionally, Nervous Nelly Ali proceeds to mess up Brett’s name and calls him Butt. Good work, Ali. She is apparently channeling her soap acting skills and gets all melodramatic on us. Honestly, I think I’m having a panic attack just listening to her nervously stammer though her lines. The wife just said we were watching Ali’s two hour stroke. This is never going to get old.

We are also treated to footage of contestants that we haven’t seen in nearly half a year. Holy crap this was a long season. Have I mentioned this before?

To start things off, they pop Jay and Irene out for the results of America voting. I’m not sure either of them are going to be under 50%. It was their game to lose and I think both of them are going to manage to lose it.

Also, it just dawned on me that it is Jillian’s last night on the Biggest Loser. That makes me sad. There is not going to be anyone who will adequately replace her. No one else could rip off a contestant’s arm and beat them with it like Jillian.

First ones out are Ana, Marci, and Courtney. They are a bunch of meh across the board. Ana is the at-home prize leader after this round.

Next out is Don, Dan, Q, and Larialmy (pronounced lair-mee, in case you forgot). Don and Dan have totally turned it around since their early exit. Looks like they have a shot at the at-home prize. I’m not sure Q and Larialmy even visited the gym after they left the ranch. Big time failure. Dan grabs the lead.

This round we get Moses, Kaylee, Ken, and Austin. Moses looks good, Kaylee looks like a watermelon in her funky green dress, Ken looks about 10 years younger, and Austin’s jeans are disturbingly tight. Austin yoinks the at-home lead away from Dan.

Sara, Deni, Arthur, and Jessi are up next. I couldn’t even recognize Sara when she came out and Deni got rid of her awful box-dyed mop. Arthur is still sporting the gunt, but it is definitely shrinking. Jessi is still a nutjob – screaming and smiling – and he looks like Wayne Brady. Hopefully he doesn’t have to choke a bitch. Deni ends up swiping the lead.

Chokin' bitches since 2004

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As per usual, my buddy Andy has posted his Biggest Loser Math post for this season and I agree for the most part.

I will point out that while I found Hannah and Olivia to be annoying at the beginning, I don’t mind them nearly as much now. Jay is just meh. I like Irene and would probably be happiest if she won. Overall, I’m sad that Justin isn’t around anymore and I’m pumped to see him at the finale.

That being said, here is the post:

Next week is the finale and per usual, I wanted to take a look at who can win. This is a little bitter sweet to me because I DO NOT like the sisters at all. I never did. When they celebrated when Austin didn’t have a good weigh-in, that cemented it for me. I really hope they go down in the finals. UGH! Let’s mathematically see if it is possible!

Irene – Age 26 – Height 5’4″ – The biggest loser on campus is in my mind, the front runner to win it all. I hope she gets voted back on and wins it. She started off at 255 lbs. She is already at 144. If it is an all girl final, 50% loss should be enough to win it. So 127.5 lbs or only another 17 lbs for her could give her title of biggest loser.

Jay – Age 53 – Height 5’11″ – I also think Jay has a really good shot at winning it all if he makes it into the finals. My biggest question mark is his age. He weighted 400 lbs at the beginning. At 5’11″, he could get easily down to 185 with his height and frame. When he left the ranch he was 242 lbs. Can we lose another 60 lbs before the finale? I am not so sure.

Olivia – Age 35 – Height 5’9″ – Ugh, the sisters…So, she started the season at 261 lbs. She left campus at 149. At 5’9″, how much more is she going to lose? really???? I think 50% loss is the target here. I am going to be shocked if she gets down to 135.

Hanna – Age 32 – Height 5’8″ – She was my least favorite but I will give the sisters credit, they made it to the end. She started at 248 lbs. She is now at 146 lbs. Again, with her height, I have a hard time seeing her end up at 124. She will probably be in the high 130s at the finale.

If Jay makes the finale, it is in his hands if he wins it or not. I think the sisters actually have a better chance against Jay than Irene.

If Irene gets into the finale, I think she wins it. Now excuse me while I go vote for Irene.

So what do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Thank the good lord in heaven that we aren’t talking about the contestants clothes. This week a perennial favorite returns while another favorite is unceremoniously dumped. But we’ll get to that soon.

Did anyone watching the flashbacks at the beginning catch what sounded like Ali saying, “Olivia, your sharting weight is…” Gross.

Well we are down to the final four: Jay, Irene, Olivia, and Hannah. And we are also 20 F-ing weeks into this ridiculously long season. Once again I’ll ask the producers of the Biggest Loser to cut the episodes to either 1 hour or the season length to 14 weeks max. Preferably both.

For the first challenge, the contestants have to make turkey burgers for some kids. Who ever makes the most popular version wins $5,000 plus some time at the Fitness Ridge Ranch with the person of their choice. Olivia makes a green slime burger with green Greek yogurt. Not popular. Irene makes a turkey bacon turkey burger which doesn’t get much action either. The kids love Hannah’s honey mustard burger (surprisingly) and Jay’s volcano burger with cheese and ketchup boiling over (not surprising). Jay pulls off the win and I am now starving. Somebody make me a turkey burger, stat! Read the rest of this entry »

We are down to the top 5 and unfortunately we are back to 2 hour episodes. Biggest Loser – you are killing me with these god awful 2 hours crapfests. The two best episodes this season were the last two weeks with the 1 hour episodes.

Ali: “You might be the fittest contestants we’ve ever had on campus.” No shit, they’ve been on campus for 19 weeks which is longer than any other season. I just looked up Biggest Loser season 6 to find out what Vicky’s name was and noticed it was 11 weeks long. There is just so much bloat on this show. Maybe they need send the show to the Biggest Loser Ranch to lose an hour.

For the first challenge, the contestants have to go through “school” to test the skills they’ve acquired. Bob plays a first time spin biker and the contestants have to instruct him on how to use the bike, Brett is quizzing them on food and exercise, Cara is boxing them, and Jillian is role-playing the contestants from when they first came to ranch. The final challenge is that contestants play the Biggest Loser Xbox video game as themselves. Olivia continues her winning ways and wins the challenge and $10,000.

For the most part the challenge was pretty boring but it did provide us this gem:

WTF?

For the second challenge, the winner will get a pound advantage at the weigh in. The task is to stack up 100 sandbags on a set of 4 ledges that are 6 feet high. Austin wins, barely edging Olivia out.

Somewhere in all of this, about 1 hour of the contestants in the gym occurred. Boring bunch of filler if you ask me. Which you didn’t.

At the weigh in, Ali offers Austin and Olivia a $10,000/1lb trade: Austin can trade his 1lb advantage for $10,000 and Olivia can trade her $10,000 for a 1lb advantage. Both of them keep what they originally won.

Hannah starts off losing 4lbs. That is huge. She is just short of 100lbs. Irene follows that up with 5lbs. Jay kills it with 9lbs. Olivia loses 5 lbs as well and is $10,000 richer. Austin should have taken the $10,000 because he was a couple of pounds short of the amount he needed to stay above the yellow line.

At home, Austin finally has the confidence to start performing the songs he had written before the ranch. He ends up at his former elementary school singing a song about weight loss. Holy crap, what a douche chill moment. The temperature in our house felt like the middle of winter, even though we had a muggy 80 degree day here in Indiana.

A couple of non-episode items of Biggest Loser interest:

• I watched my wife participate in a huge mini-marathon here in Indy last weekend. While I was watching the crowd of 30-some thousand roll by, I saw Allen from Biggest Loser season 8, as he is from the Indianapolis area.
• I read a comic called Basic Instructions. It had a nice little jab on BL for its product placement, something which I’ve been enraged about for the longest time. To check out the full-sized comic or to read other stuff from Scott, click here or on the comic below.

As we knew coming into this week, it’s makeover week and Tim Gunn shows up. Olivia says that Tim is in her top 5 people to meet. I’m baffled by this. How is Tim Gunn in anyone’s top 5 people to meet? Also, I would just like to point out that our house shares a wall with a guy who could be Tim Gunn’s identical twin brother. So anyway, Tim announces that he is going to be their fairy godfather. Yup, sounds about right. In any case, they are off to makeovers first with some other surprises to come later.

Oh boy, we are over to Ken Paves’s place. This guy is annoying. Fortunately, we going get about 1 minute of him. Thank you hour-long episode!

First up is Hannah. Barf. Her hair is atrocious – both the color and bangs. That mint colored dress – all I can do is shake my head. We’ll give her the “WTF, Hannah?” award. Although Bob was a close runner-up.

Old Man Harper

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As a concession for putting us through a 50 week season, we get a one hour episode of Biggest Loser. And honestly, Biggest Loser should be one hour every week. The weigh in is about 45 minutes of every episode. Maybe throw in a 2 hour episode for the first week and the last week or two, but seriously, nothing amazing is really happening weeks 10-16.

Unfortunately, the short episode cuts into one of my favorite weeks: It’s favorites week. To start off, the contestants get to work out with Sam Poueu (from Sam and Koli Bear fame) and Ali Vincent, the first female BL winner. Sam is looking good and is a trainer. Ali is a bit bigger than when she won the show, but that is a good thing since she was looking gaunt back then.

For the challenge, they are going back to the car race. The contestants will have a car strapped to them and run it down the straight-away. They also busted out Tara, who is going to competing with them. No word on Sione showing up and taking second place. I think this will come down to Tara and Rulon Mouge. I think Rulon can pull this off.

Tara comes from behind to make it a photo finish. They had to review many angles and the winner was: Tara! In true Tara fashion she was behind the entire race until the very end. Rulon totally pulled a Sione. Tara has been training for an Iron Man Triathlon, so she wasn’t in bad shape anyway. In any case, she takes home $5,000 for her foundation and her face on a Wheaties box.

Is there anything worse than that stupid capoiera crap. Crapoiera is more like it. Is it dancing? Is it martial arts? No, it’s just lame. I would put it in the same boat as air guitar. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick note before we get started: I’m going to be out of town next week so I won’t be able to watch or recap Biggest Loser. That being said, if anyone wants to tap out a few notes on next week’s episode, feel free to let me know in the comments and we’ll arrange something. Otherwise, look for me in two.

Last week, we lost the last Red team member and Brett exited stage left as well, but who gives a shit about that. As Ali said, they are going to literally jump into their new lives. I have no idea how you literally jump into anything as abstract as life, but apparently if you are in New Zealand, you can do so.

They are heading up a 1,000+ foot tower but not in the elevator. They have to hoof it up 1,027 stairs. To get down, they can take the stairs or they can free fall the thousand feet to the ground while hanging from a cable. Rulon Mouge and Moses are still too big to jump. Ken will be going but before he decides to go, he looks like death warmed over just thinking about it.

I was 99% sure he would puke.

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These girlie powwows might be the worst aspect of Biggest Loser. I understand that they feel a strong comradery since all their periods sync up, but seriously, calm down. You knew someone would have to go home. I’m especially annoyed with Courtney playing the victim since she has been so positive up till now.

The challenge this week is to take a flag and plant it as close to 1 mile from the start line as possible by guessing. There were many strategies used: count paces, take three foot steps, count feet. Most of the teams way over estimate. Black wins only because they walked to slow and were forced to put their flag down when the time was up. Congrats to Black on being slow and tedious. The prize: They get a night out in Hollywood. The losers get to clean the entire ranch from top to bottom. All the sweat, vomit, and toilets. Delicious! And from the looks of things, the cleaning staff must have been out of town the last week or so.

Back at the gym, the Black team is minus Jillian and Rulon Mouge. Jillian is talking to him about his compulsive eating. He is looking for a reward for all his hard work. The reward he wants is 900 calories worth of tortilla chips. Gotta love the diametrically opposed goals of getting health vs stuffing your face. In the end, he realizes that a reward should be something special, like a hamburger. It shouldn’t be 5 hamburgers. Welcome to America, folks.

Anyone want to put guesses on what they are blurring out on Bob’s shirt? I’m going with Che Guevara or Chairman Mao. Or maybe a penis. You never know with Bob. Read the rest of this entry »

To allow me to eat my dinner, Biggest Loser gives us some filler where the contestants get to watch themselves on the day they found out they were going to be on Biggest Loser. In the old footage, it looks like they have fat suits on and Olivia’s bangs are horrendous. Rulon Mouge says that they’ve all gotten a new “leash” on life. Um, what? Either he has a lisp or he is terrible at cliches.

Anyway, Ali wants to see how the 12th team would react had they made it on the ranch, so they cut to the White team who have been doing their thing at home. If they can beat Kaylee’s total weight loss, they get to stay on campus. Let’s just say it isn’t even close. Personally, I think them being teased with a spot on campus and humiliated on national television is kind of shitty. However, reading between the lines of what Ali says, they don’t “get a spot on campus,” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be working with trainers elsewhere or something. Hopefully they pop up later.

At the pop challenge, two teammates have to carry a board with a ball balanced on it. They have to get the ball into a basket by walking 20 feet across a grassy knoll. Who the hell comes up with this shit? The losing team loses their campus privileges and has to workout off-site. The wife is hoping they get trained by the White team which would definitely be a punishment. Green team wins, Black comes in second, and Blue team is third. Green gets a 1 minute advantage at an unknown challenge later and Red is going to be off campus.

Before Red heads out, they have a $1,000 budget and a menu of stuff. They spend $300 each on food and a gym membership. The remaining $400 goes toward talking to their family, massages, and a meal out. They passed on having Brett come by for $200 and Courtney seems pretty upset about it and Jen is all in with it. Brett’s pretty pissed about it as well. Maybe because he is wearing a rubber coat.

They are staying at a place called Ojai. The camera did catch them in this compromising position during their stay:

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