Since Parrish has propped the door open with The Donald’s Helmet, I decided to step inside the boardroom and confess my own reality show guilty pleasure: While this is arguably not as horrifying as Celebrity Apprentice, every week I tune in to bask in the ample folds (eeewww) of The Biggest Loser.
Tara & Laura, former models
This season’s title is Biggest Loser: Couples. The contestants compete in pairs, and they range anywhere from an older married couple, to a mother and daughter, to best friends. It’s a mad fight to the finish not only to lose the most weight, but as with most reality shows, to avoid getting voted off the ranch, and therefore continue to lose the most weight possible. Every week there are fitness challenges, punishing workouts, and of course, the end-of-show weigh-in, which, by the way, takes up half the episode. This season’s contestants are the heaviest they’ve ever had on the show – Daniel, the heaviest male contestant, weighed in at over 450 lbs in the first episode. (Sadly, he’s been voted off).
Daniel
The cast of characters is amusing, sometimes annoying, and at moments unbelievable.
Allison, the emcee, doles out challenges and switches things up, and every episode presents a new surprise to the contestants – often in the form of changing around the teams. For example, in the second week, half of the contestants were sent home for a month while the other half got to remain on the ranch. Each couple had to decide which one of them was going to go home, and the remaining half of the couple was responsible for not getting voted off so that they could bring his or her partner back. Talk about Sophie’s choice! This is where you see who is really dedicated and who is just a lazy-ass slacker. For added entertainment, our lovely hostess smugly asks how each contestant feels if and when he or she bombs at the weigh-in.
Allison
But the real taskmasters are Bob and Jillian, the personal trainers and team captains. The contestants are divided into groups, each assigned to either Bob or Jillian. Each week we see the trainers put the contestants through their paces. Jillian is known as the hard-ass. She will ride the contestants until they are crying, falling over, and screaming in agony, sometimes even to the point of injury. Bob, on the other hand, is a little more compassionate, but he demands 110% and can push the players to the edge. He’s also a bitchy little southern belle, which offers really high entertainment value.
Ouchy Spice
Bitchy Spice
The strategy with staying on the ranch involves choosing between the people who are kicking the most ass – losing the most weight, staying focused and committed – and those who are slacking or just don’t have the wherewithal to stick it out. Keeping the stronger person might be good for your team but bad for your own chances of staying; alternately, it’s just as taxing to have to carry the weight of the unmotivated teammate. Of course the show has its emotional challenges as well. Alliances and friendships are formed; everyone there wants to win, but they also want to see their teammates succeed. Who would want to send anyone back to an unhealthy, and in many cases, life-threatening lifestyle? I’ll admit that I’ve gotten sucked into the emotional manipulation many times, crying my eyes out when my favorite contestant gets voted off to oblivion.
Here’s why a supposedly cultured person such as I would waste my time with this dreck: It’s really amazing to watch these people transform themselves from unbelievably obese to incredibly fit and strong. People who could barely walk up a hill in the first episode are by the later episodes running miles, lifting huge freeweights, and performing athletic feats that you and I could only dream of doing. The “last chance workouts” are the most amazing example of what a real workout should look like – I mean, these people are pouring sweat, completely winded, and you can feel the fatigue in their muscles. But still they press on in an effort to burn as much fat as possible before they step on the scale.
And the weight loss doesn’t occur in tiny increments – these people are losing 5, 10, sometimes even 15 pounds per week! This kind of weight loss and fitness doesn’t occur this quickly in the real world – which is what motivates the contestants to practically kill themselves to stay on the ranch. Many of them would likely die if they continued on with their old habits, so they truly are fighting for their lives.
Blaine before
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This could be the only reality show that gives back: There is a Biggest Loser Club that offers a chance for anybody not fortunate enough to be on the show to play along at home. Participants are given workout and diet tips, recipes, and most of all encouragement to get in shape – they’re even encouraged to send in their “before” and “after” shots and anecdotes. Now how can that be a bad thing?
Any time I feel lazy and am whining about exercising, I just think of the Biggest Loser contestants who have lost several times my full body weight by sheer hard work. Who’s the biggest loser now?
Jen,
Who doesn’t watch TBL?! It can get tiresome to see all the maneuvering and game-playing, but the basic concept of self=transformation is the Platonic ideal of reality shows.
My gym has a Biggest Loser tie-in. I’m not about to go for the public weigh-ins & whatnot, but secretly, I’m playing.
Oh, and Jillian can cuss me out anytime.
Who doesn’t watch TBL?
(raises hand)
I watched “The Apprentice” some though. My reality shows of choice are “Proj Runway” and “Top Chef” and Ellen likes one which might be called “Top Design”(not sure), so I watch that some too.
#1: Yeah, I almost named Jillian’s picture “hotty spice”.
#2: I got into Project Runway the same time that I got into TBL ( I was cat sitting for a friend who has cable). But after Christian’s season it was just all downhill from there.
But after Christian’s season it was just all downhill from there.
Yeah, agreed that neither PR nor TC has had a very good season in the past couple years. I keep hoping though.
OMG i just looked at all these photographs. i’m a little too sick to read anything more . . .
really, i love blaine’s frickin” oversized CALF BAND-AID!
It was the potato that put me off.
And if you watch the show, you get to see (the men) with their shirts off. That’s quite a challenge unto itself.
Speaking of seeing topless overweight people, did you guys viddy the First Annual Nude Sledging Championships, from Braunlage, Germany?
(Also naked-people.de is a great site, I’d be shocked if I have not already mentioned it here.)
One of my favorite reality shows is “Made” on MTV. Each episode is about an awkward adolescent with a goal that’s attainable for other people but not for them — to make the soccer team, be elected prom queen, find a date for the dance. (The gulf between the cool, athletic, with-it kids and the losers is vast.) The kid is assigned a coach who draws on a number of other experts to help them in the process of redefining themselves, body and soul. What’s great about the show is that the kids don’t always make their goals. And the goals themselves often come into question: Why is it important to be elected prom queen when you’ve already made friends with half the school and have several cute boys competing for your attention? The show usually contains a subtext of critiquing the received hierarchy of desires.
“The Biggest Loser” totally fails for me on this count. Blaine looks like a big guy in his “before” picture, and he looks “better” in his “after” picture. But I suspect he doesn’t have the genes or the life history of Ouchy or Bitchy and is never going to look like them. Yet the show is full of warnings about “Blaine could DIE if he doesn’t lose 100 pounds.” There are some people on the show whose combined diet and exercise habits could pose health problems, no doubt, but there are also some people who are simply unsightly — not prom queen material. But we’re never prompted to ask why they should want to be.
Dave,
I haven’t ever gotten the impression that The Biggest Loser is trying to make people into prom queens – most of the contestants are truly morbidly obese, and this is a last-ditch effort to change lifelong or acquired habits and health issues. I’ve never heard any of the contestants say that they expect to be beautiful, but I have heard many of them talk about wanting to be able to do things that most average people are able to do. For example, one of the contestants has been overweight all his life, and as a result he has bad knees, which exacerbates the weight problem. His goal seems to be to lose enough weight that he can function more nornally.
Tara, Laura, and Blaine in the photos above don’t look morbidly obese.
I didn’t mean to harsh on your enjoyment of a basic pop culture pleasure, J-Man. I’ve enjoyed The Biggest Loser. I think something in the comments, not the post, set me off — ah, I think it was Lane’s “OMG i just looked at all these photographs. i’m a little too sick to read anything more . . .” Is looking at fat people really that disgusting? I dunno, Allison the host squicks me out more than the contestants, and I really suspect Ouchy and Bitchy are genetic freaks, like most people who go on television and/or maintain that level of fitness past their 20s.
Yay Biggest Loser!
Agreed, Dave–Allison is a space alien.
It’s true that these pictures don’t quite show the weight issues that the contestants have. Perhaps the term “morbidly obese” is an exaggeration, but in the very beginning of the season they talk about the health issues that they’ve had in relation to excess weight. I would not watch this show if it in any way made fun of overweight people. I don’t even get the feeling that they try to make the contestants seem “disgusting”; they seem pretty normal to me. But again, my main fascination with the show is just how much they’re able to transform themselves from fat and weak into incredibly strong – and sometimes still big, which seems perfectly acceptable.