January 20, 2010 - Biggest Loser

The Biggest Loser, Season 9, Episode 3

Last night I went to see half of a terrible show at the Bell House (why, when you do a cover of a Bob Dylan song, would you sit on a chair and sing while looking at the floor? Why, Charlotte?), so I missed Biggest Loser. But I just downloaded the show illegally so that I don't miss a moment of fleshly weeping.

0:02

The yellow and blue teams are shown at home, working to return to the ranch. The green mile guy is crying.

0:03

The green mile guy is crying.

0:03:30

The green mile guy is crying.

00:04

The host-woman has fifteen pounds of blond hair to lose.

00:05

Sometimes the reaction shots are totally random. Clearly at the beginning of the season they ask these people to react in shock five different ways, then just queue that up as spice on the pumpkin when they need to pad the shot. If I see one more person grabbing the sides of their own chubby face ellipsis well ellipsis sigh I just don't know.

00:07

It seems Bob and Jillian are going to go away for a week (in TV-time, not reality-time), presumably to fulfill their banner ad obligations. In the meantime there's temptation challenge. Or whatever. The rules are more complicated than Archon. Basically: In each team there is to be a student (who weighs in), a master (who serves as a coach), and oh who gives a shit. The person who determines who is master and who is servant is the person who eats the most tiny chocolate candies from two huge candy-filled troughs. Everyone has to eat in rounds, 5 kcal per candy piece. It's a scene set for seduction, or some sort of Daniel Pinkwater dominatrix fantasy; for a moment I imagine everyone, including Blondhost, diving into the candy trough, rubbing M&Ms all over their bodies, all sorts of exciting transgressive chubhoots. But. Three pieces of candy are eaten out of thirty or forty thousand pieces and wa? the contest is over. Three pieces of candy total. Fifteen calories of crazytimes! Instead of seeing fat people chow themselves to death we're watching a piece of pop culture eat itself. Gripping (insert here sarcasm mark™)! Show me someone clubbing the sides of their shocked face with both hands, please.

00:09

The upshot is that the pink team has to choose who will be the student and the master among all the other teams.

00:11

Lots of jowls working now.

00:13

Goodness Migdaila is upset that she was picked as the master. Bob is trying to get her to be angry; trying to get her to let it out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!??!!!!!??!!!, but she, having basic dignity (dignity that is aside from volunteering her obesity and personal anxieties as a spectacle for the American masses), is having none of it.

00:14

Now Bob and Jillian are doing some sort of psychological profile of Migdaila, at which point they've decided they do not want her to "alienate" herself any longer. Has anyone on this show ever read a book? That said, both trainers are wearing very attractive sweatpants. I'd be hard-pressed to choose which ass is snackier. (Frankly Bob's.)

00:15

Now . . . the student has become the master. Surprising music cues; lots of echo, reverb, and synth bass. Jillian has perched, vulturelike, on a treadmill in order to psychologically rape Migdaila. "Who takes care of you?" asks Jillian; "Me," says Migdaila.

00:16

Oh my God they're going to ruin this woman. They won't let her pee. She has to do some sort of leaning squat. This is basically a prison situation. Abu Gravy. Oh the humanity.

00:18

In fact, the appeal of this show can be traced to the Hindenburg disaster: People love to watch blimps explode. Watching Jillian and Bob analyze Migdaila reminds me of teenagers strategizing as to the best way to torture their peers; they tell her how fat she is, and how fat her daughter will become. Migdaila fights back with sullenness while jumping up and down for exercise. "Why did God build that emotion into you?" Jillian asks about crying but Migdaila says that crying makes you weak. Oh my God they are going to force this poor woman to cry.

00:20

Your feelings are meant to be felt! If you don't express your feelings you will be oh God this is an afterschool special. They are not going to be happy until they make this woman admit that she hates herself and watch her cry out loud. This is psychology as practiced by people who read only text messages: "2 LOL first u must COL!" Watching dull people hector other dull people to cry and "be brave" is a special kind of hellish punishment.

00:22

"Why are you not happy? Be brave! Right now!" For all that is holy.

00:23

Side profile of Jillian as she tells this poor woman in her green shirt to "dig in" and begs her to cry. "Talk," says Jillian. "Give it a voice. PLEASE." Interestingly, her concerns for this woman are surprisingly close to the concerns of someone making a good network television show. Finally the woman is crying--but quits the show and stomps away.

00:24

They picked on the fat kid enough that she's entirely upset. She's drifting away in green. Now TV must now resolve the problem it created when it started running so many KFC ads all those years ago.

00:26

The green team is speaking angry Spanish behind closed doors. And Bob, at Jillian's insistence, is running to tell Migdaila in green not to leave the show.

00:27

Bob assures Migdaila that he is going to help her get her head straight. Being an expert on straightness.

00:28

"I'm here to help you," says Bob. Sweep of strings. "Now let's hug it out." Bob's nipples erect as he leans in for the hug, either in reality or my imagination.

00:29

The nice exiled blue-team ladies in Houston, TX, are going to the spin class at a megagym. Everything wrong with America right there.

00:30

The green mile guy is crying.

00:32

The pink team is made up of women who look exactly like troll dolls.

00:33

Let's take this belly to the bank (TTBTTB, or TTBx2): The remaining brown-team twin is shilling Walgreens hardcore. They just said Walgreens about seventeen times in a minute, talking about ways to ice their badly swollen chubknees.

00:34

We are introduced again to Australian celebrity chef who cannot break through in America Curtis Stone, who looks like a seven-year-old who just got out of a go-cart. I defy you to remember this man. He's the Clark Kent to Alton Brown's Superman. But he shows us 8,894 calories worth of food; Michael (not wearing a headband) says he used to eat that at a meal and everyone is all like oh, well there you go. That's why you weight 500-odd lbs. At which pt. we in the audience go, "who the hell are you to judge?" Because cruel judgments are in this context the sole domain of the audience, the only power we exercise.

00:36

Curtis is cooking chicken. TTBx2: he shills Muir Glen (now part of General Mills!) fire-roasted tomatoes, a fairly reasonable product placement esp. as they're no-salt-added. A woman on the black team then tells us how great Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes are, and how they are her new secret weapon. Me too. I'm going to use them as a suppository. This show makes it clear that a major part of losing weight is learning to choke down a great thorny length of corporate prong. It may not taste as good as chocolate cake, but it's good for your future career as a motivational puppet.

00:38

They're learning to eat four-ounce packages of chicken! Good for them. I am also a big fan of four-ounce portions of chicken.

00:39

The Mom is telling Migdaila to chill out and stop being such a bitch, which is I swear to God accompanied by strings and the sort of jungle drums usually reserved for opening credits and helicopter flyovers. There is more crying.

00:40

I deeply miss the commercials when watching a downloaded pirate version of the show; they're a blessed relief from the unremitting--oh Jesus they're caramelizing onions.

00:41

Bottom banner tells us the Jay Leno show is next, as if to prove that we are cursed by God.

00:42

Now it's the challenge: they're playing with long ribbons. One person stretches the ribbon; another person will then have to retrieve the ribbon.

00:44

Lots of heavy breathing as ribbon is woven through a playground.

00:45

It looks like a maypole factory was bombed by terrorists. Especially with people rolling about on the ground, cramming themselves into small crevices. A colorful disaster. This is good TV, though. Shiny, with lots of motion.

00:46

Oh my goodness the students are going to have to undo the slyly entwined ribbons of their teachers who I say who could have seen this coming they are so clever this is such a well-edited program.

00:48

They have blindfolded clumsy obese people and forced them to retrieve ribbons. Is there such a thing as a dignity release form?

00:49

Blindfolded contestant: "When my mom kept saying 'see the ribbon?' that was frustrating, because I could not see the ribbon." That team did not get far.

00:51

The guy in red is a commercial diver and has insisted far too many times--almost as many times as the green mile guy has cried--that he will kick ass. But the gray/Tongan team has kicked the ass of the red team. Go Tonga! Work off that spam? There is tremendous screaming and ohgollies and hands waving. No mention of the company that made the ribbons.

00:54

Jillian is hanging off of something screaming. She is so good at perching and clapping.

01:00

The Tongans are beating up on Mike, telling him he needs to take advantage; needs to start working. Mike is very defensive. This is a tiny speck of genuine drama. You've got the tough-love-football-loving dudes pounding away at the sensitive depressive virginal man-mountain desperately clinging to his pride and mother.

01:08

Oh my God there's a lot of screaming now. Don't lie to me! Bob yells. Everyone is holding their own hair. This is a big thing in this show, showing people putting their hands into their own hair. And clearly there is devilish strategy going on as that one woman has lost but one pound, while her husband the commercial diver lost 12 lbs. Much defensiveness, etc.

01:10

Michael lost 10 lbs off his 471. Not good; he is disappointed. If they send him home this show will lack one comforting goon with whom I, as sad testament to my adolescence, identify.

01:12

I really do miss commercials. They are like balm to soothe the bruises left by the emotional battering ram of the editing. Michael's Mom is crying, begging them to let him stay here. There's a good deal of begging on this show. People are, we know, reduced.

01:13

She says: "They're going to kill my son." Who is this they?

01:18

They are debating whether it should be Michael or Maria to go. Meanwhile, the news reports that trainer Jillian is down with making love to other ladies. This is according to an interview in which she said that she doesn't care who you love as long as you do love. This is not a bad message at all; GLBT people deserve the same love and rights as anyone. But it has been turned, by the media, into "Jillian's-a-rugmuncher." I think Jillian is interesting. She is a brightish person who is desperately trying to create something moral out of a world of turd in which she is deeply embroiled. She has a message regarding help, self-love, and acceptance, but it will be utterly compromised by the demands of the larger system. She knows this but cannot stop things or slow them down, and is convinced that she will triumph. Certainly the people coming up to her on the street saying they love her will not convince her otherwise. She would do well in politics if she had the desire. She's obviously too liberal and sharp to go very far, but imagine: "Jillian Michaels will whip this state into shape!" I mean this. It would work. Wait ten years. Also Maria is going home, leaving her 500+lb son to drift lazily in the pool without his beloved mamma to tuck in his bellyflap at night.

01:21

Maria is to swim. Her family comes to see her paddle about; they have big horsey smiles. She is now, we see, a mere slip of 230 lbs., 10 of them makeup and 20 jewelry. If she wears all that in the pool she will sink. Her husband cheers for her as she descends the pool ladder; he says: "Who need the noodles now, eh?" (I need the noodles.) And she is nowhere near done with this process, she tells us. The opportunity has just begun. Her life has been changed. And one day, she promises in VO, she will swim in the ocean.

01:22

God save us all.