Michelle’s all about the brighter futures this week, isn’t she?

Pati, Munnalita and Damien’s challenges are tonight, want to know what happened?

Pati’s up first. Her biggest fear involves water that is churning, very fast and she worries she’ll get sucked down into it. So her challenge is canyoning!
Michelle and Pati are wandering along a bush track and they come to a bridge and Michelle tells Pati that they’re going in there! Pati is horrified, thinking they’d be going to some nice, relatively calm river, with a couple of steep bits. But oh no! It’s almost more whitewater than river gushing down a steep sided canyon. And boy does that water look chilly!
Michelle says Pati was really nervous, which was understandable. Pati describes them as the “churning waters of death”!
Down the first waterfall thing, Pati goes down pretty quickly… Headfirst! She seemed doomed for sure, but she was fine.
Next bit she has to jump down from a ledge into a pool at the bottom. Quite a leap. Will she make it?
Well, duh, of course she does, since she’s narrating it later…
She says the water is very cold, the water out of her fridge isn’t even that cold.
Despite her apparent discomfort, she’s actually handling it a lot better than many of the others so far. Chris started out okay but then, he passed out later. Pati seems in no danger of that so far!
Pati says that fear has dominated how she lives her life, how she relates to people, it’s stopped her from doing so many things. She doesn’t want to conquer fear, she wants to be open to it, she knows it’s going to happen but she’s going to do it anyway.
The end of the canyoning bit is a flying fox above a steep section, from which you get dropped off into the final bit of river. Most of it looked like fun, apart from the bit where Pati bashes up against the canyon wall. Ouch!
“I’m not going to let fear dictate what I can and can’t do, buggerit!”

Shannan says he can see the fear in Damien’s eyes as soon as they get to the bottom of the big cliff again.
Damien thinks Shannan has chosen rock climbing because Damien failed at it previously.
Shannan says that last time Damien tried, he had to stop just 2 metres up a beginner’s climb. This is over 30 metres on a natural rock face. “This was a proper challenge!”
Shannan tells us that when Damien got up to the cliff itself, his look changed from fear to absolute disbelief. Damien also says that he doubted he could actually get up there.
Shannan leads the climbing this time, after he’d seen how much Kimberlie had struggled, he was worried Damien wouldn’t be able to do it at all, especially since he’s carrying 50 or 60 kilos more than her.
He tells us that rock climbing is a puzzle, it’s like life, you get to a point where there’s no handholds, no footholds, and it seems overpowering and overwhelming, but you’ve got to stay there and stay focused, work around and find the key to the puzzle, like life!
Damien keeps says he’s slipping, he’s slipping. He eventually falls back off the cliff and is pulled up a metre below where he was. And he’s looking pretty worried and panicky. Shannan tries to calm him down, tells him to get back in there, even though Damien says he was giving it everything. Shannan tells him to just try and find a new route, they’re not there to give up!
Damien’s hands keep slipping and Shannan keeps telling him to relax, stick with it, calm down. Shannan has an aside here where he’s wondering if Damien will actually be able to make it – he’s about 3/4 of the way at this point… but he slips off again just as we go to ad break, argh!

Damien says the second time he slipped, he was ready to pack it in. But Shannan’s perched up above him, asking him to try and go up another route, maybe there’s a better pass that way? And Damien says nup, his hands are getting torn to shreds. Shannan tells him they’re not going anywhere yet and Damien says no, if I say we’re going then we’re fucking going. And Shannan replies with another nahuh! Damien’s told him before that he couldn’t do things like going up and down the bloody hill 10,000 times and he bloody well did! Shannan tells him they’ve been there before and he wouldn’t let him give up then either. Shannan asks him how many times he’s said he couldn’t do it, and they’ve gotten through it. He can do this, dig deeper!
Damien’s aside here says he honestly didn’t think he could go any further.
And we leave it there to go watch Munnalita, ARGH! NOBODY CARES UNLESS SHE FALLS OFF SOMETHING REALLY HIGH!

Anyway, Michelle picks her up and tells her she’s going bungee jumping. Woo.
“The biggest jump Munnalita has ever done is off a kerb!” – Michelle, who has a chortle.
For some reason they attach the harness before putting her out on the ledge. Dang. Munnalita’s doing okay till they get her out on the edge and that’s when she starts freaking out. She turns around and gives Michelle a kiss goodbye. Michelle heads down the bottom and looks up and says Munnalita looked really small up there.
Munnalita says she wanted to stay up there a while and think about how she started on the show. Crying, getting upset a lot and she wanted to let go of all that.
Michelle says that for Munnalita it’s not just a bungee jump it’s a representation of letting go of all the things that have held her back, all the years of heartache, anger, upset, drama and weight. She’s going to use it as a symbol of letting it all go.
Munnalita takes another look over the edge and sees how far it is and thinks that she actually can’t do it!
“I believe in myself!” – Munnalita. “Go for it, lean forward! Go for it!” – Bungee man!
Michelle gets worried that she might not do it because it means so much to her, and if she doesn’t do it then she’ll be kicking herself.
She starts yelling up motivational stuff. Must be hard with that husky voice of hers!
Annnnnnnnd she’s back to crying about children. Full circle once again!

After another convenient ad break, “I just want to be free!” – Munnalita
The crowd’s cheering her on from the observation deck. Probably hoping she’ll jump not so much to her death, just so she’ll let other people have a turn already!
Michelle begins the countdown again. She bends her knees to jump again and Munnalita decides she needs to do it with her eyes open. She perches there a bit longer… then jumps just as bungee man looks away, haha!
She falls down with minimal screaming and gets dunked in the river at the bottom, then “Woo!” on the way back up. Hooray, it’s over at last, get back to Damien!
“I don’t want to go back to where I was before ever again. Not just because of being overweight but because of how hurtful it is to everything I do, I’m just sick of it!” – Munnalita, breaking down on emerging from the water.

Yay, back to Damien!
But he’s starting to panic. Damien says he put everything into his last effort but Shannan asks him how many times he said that on the hill? “No, get me down!” – Damien
Shannan thinks that maybe this is exactly what has happened in Damien’s life. Each time he loses a little weight and he gets no support and he quits.
Shannan is determined to have Damien stop being a quitter, make him get back on the wall and finish the climb.
Damien finally rubs some more chalk on his hands and leans back into the wall. “Stare it in the eyes, mate, that attitude.” – Shannan
“The fact that you’ve fallen is just a hurdle. The fact that you failed is if you fall and you give up. If you fall and get back on and keep trying then you haven’t failed.” – Damien
“You’re deadset going to do this!” – Shannan
Damien gets within a couple metres of the top and knew it was the hardest part so he doesn’t want to stop, he just wants to finish. He says the Damien that started the journey wouldn’t’ve made it up a metre or two. “It was an amazing sense of accomplishment.” He made it!
“It was one of those moments in life that I know why I’ve done this job. This is what it’s all about!” – Shannan

“I don’t need to be afraid.” – Damien

Next time on The Biggest Loser, “You are playing to stay in the game.”
whoever loses the big running/cycling/boating race is going home, apparently. Which sounds like Damien is doomed then? Grrr. Maybe Chris will pass out again!