Before the challenge the contestants are told to pack their bags and Munnalita says they’re not sure if that means this is the last chance to be in the final or not.
The challenge for today is on Palm Beach. Marty says they crested a small sand dune to see a bunch of red and blue flags set up on the beach and a treadmill, Chris says he was looking around at all sorts of things like the lighthouse and sand dunes and trying to work out what they were going to have to do.

What are they going to have to do this time? Read on to find out…

Ajay greets them on the beach and announced that it’s the final challenge. To win you’re going to have to dig deep, dig hard and dig faster than they’ve ever had to dig before. They might have to shift up to 9 tonnes of sand!
250m down the beach are sets of flagged off areas, each area is labelled with their name and they’ll be digging for their very own treasure chest in an area approximately 24 metres square.
The first contestant to find their treasure chest wins a special prize – the aforementioned treadmill, from Workout World, worth $3,000!
Munnalita really wants to win the treadmill because it’d mean she’d have it at home and she thinks it might make the difference between her and the other contestants winning.

Ahh, but in the chest is something that will help them win the game and could help them keep the weight off for the rest of their life.

Marty says he sees all the other contestants as a threat in this challenge, Chris says he’s always looking to be competitive, Pati reiterates that whatever’s in the chest will let her maintain her healthy lifestyle for the rest of her life.

Shannan and Michelle have turned up to encourage them all.
To help them all, there’s a shovel buried somewhere in their pit, just an inch or two under the surface. They all find the shovel fairly easily, though Chris was perhaps the luckiest.

Chris’ initial strategy is to dig a channel down the length of the rectangular area he was assigned, thinking that if it’s a big chest, he’s likely to spot it that way. Shannan agrees with that idea.

Michelle has an aside here to say that the strategies of everyone were really interesting. She thinks it’s a mini personality test – Marty went in like a bulldozer, digging up everything. Munnalita went for potholes, torpedoing everything in sight. Pati was digging a series of trenches all over her area.

Chris, however, is doing something rather silly – he’s digging his trenches but not clear the sand he’s digging out of the area, he’s simply piling it up beside his trench, still inside the area. Shannan tries to point out to him that he might be making more work for himself later, but Chris is adamant he knows what he’s doing!

Pati says they’ve been going for an hour and there’s not a lot of sand left in anyone’s area… Munnalita has a series of 1 foot holes, hardly a huge volume of sand!

Pati thinks that the prize in her chest will have something to do with her family, because it’s supposed to mean something to them personally. Or something.

Chris is starting to get frustrated at not being able to find anything, despite seeming to have shifted the most sand of any of the 4. Shannan tells him tenacity doesn’t involve giving up halfway through, Chris says he’s buggered and just wants to finish and let one of the girls or Marty have the treadmill, Shannan says that when he lets his guard down like this he’s at his best, not pretending to be someone else. Chris says he never really thought he had a temper problem but it came out today and Shannan points out to him that maybe this is part of why he’s gotten to be overweight in the first place?
Shannan asks him to have a look over at Marty’s hole – Marty has been systematically clearing out a huge wide rectangle inside his area… Then Shannan tells him to look at Chris’ own area… Which is a mess as the “trenches” have merged and it’s really just a bunch of disturbed sand. Shannan tells him he keeps going at it at a million miles an hour without an structure or plan and he’ll quit if it gets too hard.

Munnalita is amazed she’s gone at it for so long and not found anything… Then at last she finally hits something in one of her silly little holes. She has to try and dig the hole wider before she can get it out.
And then shortly afterwards Pati hits something. And then Chris does too and Shannan is cheering while Chris desperately tells him to shut up or the others will go nuts digging too!

Marty asks Munnalita if she’s found her chest and Munnalita says yes but she can’t get it out. Pati’s digging madly and having trouble, she tries levering it out with the shovel but that’s not working. Eventually she gets down in there and tugs at it and finally manages to yank it out and haul it up above her head for the win!

Pati sits down and opens up the chest in front of everyone else. They’re all wondering what it might be, another prize, or a gym membership or something.
But it’s actually a “journey back in time”, Marty says. Pati’s chest contains her application form and all kinds of pictures from home (of her) and so on. And she even has a card with a sweet message from her Mum, which she says is great.
Pati says the reason she put on weight in the first place was her parent’s marriage breakdown… but it doesn’t mean she has to still stay fat now and she knows that now. She says that it’s not anyone’s fault when you’re an adult, it’s your own responsibility.

The rest of the contestants then get to go dig up their chests too to have a look. Chris says that he started to see the point of the chest now, and it’s much better than a car or some other prize.
Shannan has a look through Chris’ stuff with him and sees an early shot where Chris had started to stack on the kilos. Shannan tells him that to make sure you never go back you’ve got to know the cause, it’s the same as when you’re addicted, you’ve got to know why. Chris realises at last that he’s been punishing himself for making a mistake in the past and he’s got to stop doing that.

The first thing Munnalita sees when she opens the chest is a pink fuzzy pig that her grandmother bought for her. She actually bought Munnalita a pink and a blue one, just in case it was a boy or girl. Her Gran knew that it was taking a long time for Munnalita to fall pregnant and she wanted to make sure that her great-grandkids would have something if she wasn’t around anymore by the time Munnalita conceived.

Marty’s got a bunch of letters from his family. He also got a necklace with two dophlins on it, because he used to be a dophlin trainer a long time ago and he’d got a necklace at the time, but he’d lost the necklace some time after leaving the dophlin training job. He says it showed how much they care about him to have thought of something like that.

Michelle says that they can all see now how they got to be overweight and how they can now take control and make a brighter future for themselves.

After the challenge was over the trainers have a surprise for the fatties – they go for a walk and there’s two yachts out on the harbour for them all to stay in overnight. The girls head off on one yacht and the boys head off to the other after dropping the girls off.

The girls head off to the front of the boat to take in the views at first. They talk about everything they’ve been through together and how grateful the two Fatties are to Michelle for the end result. And they give each other a pat on the back as well.
Michelle says that there’s a really good chance the biggest loser this year will be a female and she’d be really happy for it to be either of the girls.

Chris is really looking forward to spending the night with Shannan and Marty. O RLY?
The boys head up the front of the boat for a look at the view as well. Shannan says the boys realised how their old life had been and were now ready to look ahead and make a new life for themself.
Marty says it’s easy to make excuses, blaming yourself is the hardest thing to do but you can’t fix something if you don’t know why it’s broken.
Chris says he realised today that he still has a temper issue. He’s seen how far he’s come but he also knows how far he has to go.

Shannan says here that in two or three days they’re all going to be out of the house. Marty says the next time they go back to the house it’s only going to be for a final workout and the weigh-in and elimination.

Next time on The Biggest Loser is the most important training session of all, prior to the last weigh-in ever in the house. Two will fall below the yellow line. And one of them will be going home!
One hour episode tomorrow night – Weigh-in, presumably – then another one hour episode on Friday – Elimination presumably. And then a half hour episode on Sunday? Starting at 6.30 instead of the regular time… Due to Big Brother starting. Sigh.
No word yet on when the finale will be, but the show isn’t on for the first three days of next week, just Sunday. Check your local guides, I suppose?