Month: January 2012

In between the political coverage and following a stupid bet by his team and much whining from Conda, Mike found himself on the losing end of the vote in The Biggest Loser Season 13 Episode 2.

They are greeted by the smell of Chinese food. There are 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the US, more than McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King combined.

This week, each member of the red team will face off against one member of the black team. In that face off, the winner earns a point for their team at the weigh in. The prize at temptation is a 2 pound advantage. If nobody eats or if they eat the same amount, they will automatically be matched up against their loved ones.

After the other team leaves the room, they are given 5 minutes to discuss and eat what they want. In spite of that warning, the red team refuses to eat anything, even a 30 calorie fortune cookie. Unlike the red team, in which only Roy supported the concept of eating something that could be burned off in a minute or two, most of the black team seems to support at least eating the lowest calorie food item. A debate ensues. Cassandra eats one, and she eats a whole other one as well, giving her control for just 60 calories. She can keep the two pounds for herself or split it amongst her team, and she will also choose the matches.

Roy (6.21% lost) vs. Emily (5.30% lost)
Jeremy (5.14% lost) vs. Lauren (5.28% lost)
Joe (6.44% lost) vs. Nancy (4.61% lost)
Chism (5.54% lost) vs. Kim (6.35% lost)
Mark (5.84% lost) vs. Chris (5.83% lost)
Megan (4.25% lost) vs. Buddy (7.69% lost)
Gail (4.35% lost) vs. Kimmy (5.94% lost)
Conda (5.44% lost) vs. Cassandra (7.95% lost)

Joe packs his bags and says he’s quitting. Two whole weeks is apparently enough for him. In the season that’s supposed to be about no excuses, missing your family seems like one of the more convenient ones that could be used. At the end of the day, he should still benefit from his time on the ranch, but he obviously hasn’t learned what he went there to learn. For his team, this is the worst possible week in which he could leave, as they are depending on individual efforts now more than ever.

Gail continues to test Bob’s patience in the gym. Cassandra finds herself struggling as well, but she pushes through it and has a breakthrough.

The trainers pit the competing contestants against each other in various exercises. Emily beats Roy. Cassandra beats Conda, who has an excuse that it must be because Cassandra’s a cheater. Cassandra feels like kicking her ass. Who doesn’t?

The challenge is to get to the prize in the center of some ice, which they must melt with water they pump and then pass along the course by dumping it from each teammate’s bucket into the next. Nancy sits out for the red team. Megan says she lives on a farm doing chores like this. Apparently not. With her unable to get any water to the rest of the team, Bob swaps her out with Chris, and the water finally starts moving. On the other end of the course, Kimmy is afraid of heights, a ladder. Black team is closing the gap, but the red team retains their lead to win the challenge. The prize is a video chat with their families. Mark, Lauren, and Roy opt to give their prizes to their loved ones. Buddy gives his to Mark.

With two weeks down and two to go, Bob surprises the aqua team with a visit and a workout. Unlike Joe, they seem to really want to be on the ranch.

In order to get Conda to shut up, Dolvett arranged a rematch between her and Cassandra. She still isn’t shutting up, but hopefully she will (albeit ever so briefly) when she loses again.

Because Joe quit, his team forfeits his point, one of the ones they were originally most likely to win. Cassandra gives 1 pound to Megan and 1 pound to Gail, both of whom were pretty heavily outmatched based on the performances so far.

Nancy: 205 pounds (-2, 0.97%)
1-0 red team

Megan: 239 pounds (-8, -1, 3.63%)
Buddy: 363 pounds (-9, 2.42%)
1-1 tie

Gail: 302 pounds (-6, -1, 2.27%)
Kimmy: 203 pounds (-3, 1.46%)
2-1 black team

Jeremy: 358 pounds (-11, 2.98%)
Lauren: 230 pounds (-3, 1.29%)
3-1 black team

Emily: 244 pounds (-6, 2.40%)
Roy: 278 pounds (-9, 3.14%)
3-2 black team

Chris: 222 pounds (-4, 1.77%)
Mark: 266 pounds (-8, 2.92%)
3-3 tie

Chism: 332 pounds (-9, 2.64%)
Kim: 230 pounds (-6, 2.54%)
4-3 black team

Cassandra: 212 pounds (-8, 3.64%)
Conda: 275 pounds (-3, 1.08%)
5-3 black team

This puts Cassandra at the top of the leaderboard for the season thus far. Having won 5 out of 7 face offs, the black team wins the weigh in. Conda picks a fight with Dolvett because he doesn’t believe she’s doing her homework, and the scale suggests he’s right. Now she’s pissed off at him, too. Clearly somebody has an attitude problem if she’s going to keep getting into it with everybody. She’ll need to get over herself before she can improve herself. In the meantime, can she be sent home now? Please?

Votes
Nancy: Kim
Kim: Nancy
Lauren: Nancy
Conda: Lauren
Buddy: Lauren
Mark: Lauren
Roy: Nancy
Kimmy: Lauren

With 4 votes, Lauren is not The Biggest Loser. Since she came to the ranch, Lauren has lost 53 pounds, and she ran a half marathon in under 3 hours. Her goal is to his 130 pounds by the finale, which would give her a decent shot at the at home prize, and seems entirely achieveable.

Stay tuned to dinguRUE for another live recap of The Biggest Loser Season 13 Episode 4, which airs Tuesday at 8/7c on NBC.

In The Biggest Loser Season 13 Episode 1, one of the heaviest contestants, Ben, decided he’d had enough and asked to be sent home. At the start of the show, Adrian and Daphne were also eliminated and not allowed in the house for at least a month.

The player with the highest percentage of weight loss of the winning team will be able to give immunity to one person on the losing team, pretty much guaranteeing they will be able to keep the person they came into the house with safe.

Kim & Kimmy and Emily & Joe volunteer to be the leaders. They are given the opportunity to win a 5 pound advantage with their bids. They also have the opportunity to give the other team a 5 pound advantage if they win the bid but fail to achieve the results. Alison reminds them that they lost 3.64% and 3.98% last week. With that in mind, Kim & Kimmy bid 3.8% (94 pounds) with their first bid. Black team does not bid. In seasons past, the average weight loss in week 2 is 2%. Everybody thinks the Kims are crazy, but they’re proud of what they just did.

Dr. H shows up to talk to the brothers, but then we’re interrupted for breaking news, for the 0 people who didn’t see it coming. Mitt Romney won New Hampshire. At least he won early and they didn’t preempt the results, for a speech that was still being written.

When we return, it’s time for a challenge. Every member of the winning team will get The Biggest Loser Meal Plan every day for 6 months. They will work to turn the anchor wheel and pull in the puzzle pieces, then solve the puzzle. Nancy offers to sit out for the red team. Her role is that of an annoying cheerleader. Both teams end up neck and neck at the end, racing to hoist their puzzles. In a photo finish, black team wins the challenge.

Dolvett seems to have learned from the master. Bob is not happy that his routine has been stolen to be used against him.

During the challenge, when they had about half a dozen pieces, Gail opted to take a break and pretend she was working on the puzzle. That didn’t get her very far. Now they head outside, and she decides to take a rest and sit on a tire. This will get her even less far.

Dolvett doesn’t think Mike is 150% dedicated, which would be kind of impossible. Mike’s alone in the house. Even his half brother just hangs out with the black team all the time.

Kim: 236 pounds (-3, 1.26%)
Kimmy: 206 pounds (-4, 1.90%)
Roy: 287 pounds (-5, 1.71%)
Lauren: 233 pounds (-4, 1.69%)
Nancy: 207 pounds (-5, 2.36%)
Conda: 278 pounds (-7, 2.46%)
Mike: 338 pounds (-7, 2.03%)
Mark: 274 pounds (-8, 2.84%)
Buddy: 372 pounds (-9, 2.36%)
Red Total: 2431 pounds (-52, 2.09%)

2% would have been a risky wager, but it would have been a reasonable risk. 3.8% was just dumb. Black team gets a 5 pound advantage as a result.

Gail: 308 pounds (-5, 1.60%)
Megan: 248 pounds (-4, 1.59%)
Cassandra: 220 pounds (-5, 2.22%)
Emily: 250 pounds (-4, 1.57%)
Chris: 226 pounds (-6, 2.59%)
Joe: 334 pounds (-8, 2.34%)
Jeremy: 369 pounds (-7, 1.86%)
Chism: 341 pounds (-8, 2.29%)
Black Total: 2296 pounds (-47, -5, 2.22%)

Thanks to the 5 pound advantage, the black team wins the weigh in. As The Biggest Loser on his team, Mark is safe. With the highest percentage of weight loss on her team, Chris also gives Roy immunity.

Kim lost the least and was part of the gamble that cost them the weigh in, so she would be a logical choice to get rid of. However, Conda hates Mike for no good reason and wants to make this personal. His lack of effort at last chance training is all the ammo the rest of the team needs.

Votes
Kim: Mike
Roy: Mike
Mike: Conda
Conda: Mike
Nancy: Mike
Kimmy: Mike

With 5 votes, Mike is not The Biggest Loser. Hopefully Conda will shut the hell up now. From his starting weight of 358 pounds, Mike is now down to 302 pounds but is still struggling to stop smoking.

Stay tuned to dinguRUE for another live recap of The Biggest Loser Season 13 Episode 3, which airs Tuesday at 8/7c on NBC.

A new year brings us a new season of TV, at least for The Biggest Loser. Bob and Dolvett return to train pairs of family members who will be split up into opposite teams.

The pink team of Emily and Kim are the lone pair of strangers. One thing they have in common is that they are both former athletes.

One of the guys says he has 9 children. He is promptly topped by someone with 13 children. They say they don’t have time to lose weight. Uh huh.

Alison greets them with a challenge. The team that comes in last won’t make it through those gates. One member from each team will run a 40 yard dash, in which the first four teams will automatically advance into the ranch. Blue (brothers Mike Messina & Joe Messina), orange (grandmother and granddaughter Cassandra Sturos & Nancy Rajala), yellow (mother and daughter Gail Lee & Lauren Lee), and brown (brothers Ben Shuh & Allen “Buddy” Shuh) teams place in the top spots. The six people who did not participate in the first round will also compete in a 40 yard dash, complete with a puzzle in the center of the course, which will even up the odds and make it not completely physical. The first four teams will again advance. Grey (Issac “Chism” Cornelison & Mark Cornelison), red (husband and wife Roy Pickler & Christine Pickler), purple (Kim Stone & Megan Stone), and green (brother and sister Conda Britt & Jeremy Britt) are safe.

That brings us to a sudden death battle between pink team (strangers Emily Joy & Kim Neilson) and aqua team (brother and sister Adrian Dortch & Daphne Dortch). Each team has a platform. The last team standing wins. No more of those few seconds or few minutes battles. This is a test of wills that could go on for some time, or so you would think. As soon as they step up, their legs are all shaking. In the end, Daphne steps forward, eliminating the aqua team from the competition, and the pink team, which lost the last round in footrace, continues.

In one month, the aqua team will be allowed to come back into the game if they are able to lose 50 pounds as a team.

They are given two hours to work with both trainers, and after that they can pick who they want.

Bob makes an interesting observation. This season, relative to what we have seen lately, features perhaps the lightest cast. The only person over 400 pounds is Buddy at 403. Still, everybody is morbidly obese.

He gets his first crack at Roy, who looks like Santa, and collapses but recovers to let Bob know he’s on the nice list. Ben has a more serious problem, however, believing he is in Michigan training with somebody he doesn’t know.

Emily used to be an Olympic weightlifter. I’m not sure she’ll ever be thin, but that certainly shows she can be fit and dedicated. Her partner, Kim, was briefly a pro wrestler. During her wrestling days, she weighed 120 pounds and had 10% body fat.

Once they’re done training, the no partner twist is revealed. They can now choose which member of their team will train with Bob and which will train with Dolvett. Some of the teams have very clear opinions of who they want to train with, while some end up playing rock, paper, scissors.

Bob (black team): Jeremy, Emily, Joe, Chris, Cassandra, Buddy, Megan, Chism, Lauren
Dolvett (red team): Conda, Kim S, Mike, Roy, Nancy, Ben, Kim N, Mark, Gail

During last chance training, Dolvett says Bob’s team is over there killing it, while his team is the Bad News Bears.

Gail: 313 pounds (-9, 2.80%)
Chism: 349 pounds (-12, 3.32%)
Megan: 252 pounds (-7, 2.70%)
Chris: 232 pounds (-8, 3.33%)
Jeremy: 376 pounds (-13, 3.34%)
Joe: 342 pounds (-15, 4.20%)
Ben: 381 pounds (-15, 3.79%)
Emily: 254 pounds (-10, 3.79%)
Cassandra: 225 pounds (-14, 5.86%)
Black Total: 2724 pounds (-103, 3.64%)

During this weigh in, Conda reveals she can’t stand Mike because he’s cheering for Jeremy and apparently offends her by calling him Tank. She’s going to be a handful.

Roy: 292 pounds (-14, 4.58%)
Conda: 285 pounds (-9, 3.06%)
Mike: 345 pounds (-13, 3.63%)
Kimmy: 210 pounds (-9, 4.11%)
Lauren: 237 pounds (-9, 3.66%)
Mark: 282 pounds (-9, 3.09%)
Nancy: 212 pounds (-5, 2.30%)
Kim: 239 pounds (-13, 5.16%)
Buddy: 381 pounds (-22, 5.46%)
Red Total: 2483 pounds (-3.98%)

Bob’s team got off to a rough start, and they end up losing the weigh in after Dolvett’s last two team members put up big numbers. Megan says that, in all fairness, the person with the lowest weight loss should go home. That would be her, but she’s not ready. Ben offers to fall on the sword. After just one week, he’s missing his family too much and claims he has learned everything he needs to learn. He’s still the heaviest person on campus with probably the most health problems.

Everybody agrees to honor Ben’s wishes. With 5 votes, he is not The Biggest Loser. From his starting weight of 396 pounds, he is down 50 pounds to 346 pounds.

Stay tuned to dinguRUE for another live recap of The Biggest Loser Season 13 Episode 2, which airs Tuesday at 8/7c on NBC.