The Biggest Loser Season 8 Episode 9

Not letting a second opportunity pass, the house voted to get rid of Tracey in The Biggest Loser Season 8 Episode 8.

Two people will be going home this week. Harsh for this late in the game. There will be a yellow line. There will also be a red line. The person with the lowest percentage of weight loss will fall below the red line and will be eliminated. No vote, no strategy. Then, the two people below the yellow line will face off in a vote.

The winner of the pop challenge will win a 1 pound advantage. Each person has a board with 50 tennis balls attached. First person to put all those balls in the bucket wins. Amanda and Liz will sit out. Everyone else can hop to it (it’s punny). Allen’s in the lead, with Rebecca, Daniel, and Rudy behind him. Allen is the first to the halfway mark. Allen retains his lead throughout and wins the challenge.

There are two sides: older people and younger people. The red line would make it 4-3 in favor of whichever side is not below that line.

Jillian’s concerned that Shay needs to be here but is worried she won’t do well. She needs to work harder and stay above that yellow line then. We’re in week 9. Time for sympathy is over.

Jillian eventually throws Danny out of the gym. He’s overtrained and struggling throughout the workout. Then she has to scream at Shay, tired of the drama.

Allen suspects Liz would be kept around no matter what because she’s not a threat. The others, however, expect the younger group to vote the same way they’ve been voting along: save their friends, regardless of logic.

With Rebecca, Jillian wants her to get out of her world of black and white, where she either knows she can win and does it… or she just quits. Because that’s just what she does. She realizes that she can play the blame game, but it’s ultimately just her stopping herself.

Bob vetoes Jillian’s decision. He doesn’t want Danny benched for the rest of the day.

The contestants get to go to the greatest show on Earth. What are they doing at a circus for a challenge? To succeed as performers, they have to jump through a lot of hoops. Their job is to jump through their opponents’ hoops. For each time someone goes through someone else’s hoop, that other person gets a point. When someone hits 100, they’re out. Allen is afraid. He remembers the baseball challenge not too fondly. The prize is immunity. Rudy and Shay agree to work together. Liz is the early target of choice. A strange choice to take out first, but Amanda, Rebecca, Shay, and Daniel obviously don’t want her to have immunity. The older people finally come up with a strategy to target someone, their choice being Amanda. Liz is the first person eliminated. The next target is Allen. Amanda is the next person eliminated, and her replacement target is Daniel. Daniel is the next one eliminated, and Rebecca is the next target. Allen is eliminated. Rebecca is out next. Rudy has decided to bail on his deal with Shay, who worked against him the entire challenge. Much whining ensues. Shay is the next person eliminated. The challenge outcome is a foregone conclusion. Since Danny had been the target and nobody targeted Rudy, Rudy’s won the challenge before it’s over.

The younger people have come up with a strategy to sneak gym equipment into their room, in an effort to trick the others into thinking they’re slacking off.

Keeping with the circus theme, Bob has a trapeze workout prepared for them. When they’re done with that, Jillian’s waiting for them in the gym, and she plans to give them a second last chance.

Rudy: 324 pounds (-8, 2.41%, immune)

Shay: 376 pounds (-17, 4.33%)

With this weight loss and finally a number showing some real effort, Shay has lost 100 pounds the fastest for any woman in The Biggest Loser history, 9 weeks as compared to the previous record of 12 weeks.

Amanda: 202 pounds (-5, 2.42%)

Rebecca: 209 pounds (-9, 4.57%)

Danny: 316 pounds (-17, 5.11%)

Danny has also joined the 100 pound club.

Allen: 243 pounds (-10, -1, 4.35%)

Liz: 206 pounds (-12, 5.50%)

Daniel: 256 pounds (-5, 1.92%)

Daniel has fallen below the red line, and he will leave the ranch immediately.

The challenges this week proved to be huge. Rudy was saved by his immunity, and Allen was saved by his 1 pound advantage. Amanda and Shay have fallen below the yellow line, and either scenario will result in the decimation of the younger clique. These two are pretty evenly matched as far as their weight loss thus far, and in both cases they are not particularly big threats. Could certainly go either way. This begs the question: is it really possible to lose 17 pounds and still be voted off? Shay again plays the card that she deserves to be there the most. When does that card expire exactly?

Votes
Rebecca: Shay
Allen: Shay
Danny: Amanda
Liz: Amanda
Rudy: Shay

With 3 votes, Shay is not the biggest loser. However, she leaves on a positive note, with her largest weight loss of the season and signs that she may have the tools to succeed when she gets home.

Daniel is down from his two season ago starting weight of 454 pounds to 239 pounds today. He meets up with his partner from last year, David, who tells him that weight loss is not a priority. Not right now anyway. If not now, when? Over 400 pounds at his age, his life could well be half over.

Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another live recap of The Biggest Loser 8 Episode 10, which airs Tuesday at 8:30/7:30c on NBC.