Previously on The Biggest Loser, Sheridan made grabby hands for fork and paid the price in a brutal training session with Michelle, followed by hours upon hours in the gym.
Interestingly, it was not her fellow Red Team members who gave her the most support during a grueling session on the treadmill, it was Alison of the Blue Team who was up until almost 1am training and chatting with her.

Tonight on The Biggest Loser, Blue Team deals with the replacement of Shannan as their trainer with… Debbie.
And the week’s challenge has the fatties row, row, rowing their boat, through a road old sea, merrily merrily merrily merrily isn’t reality tv a scream?

Would you like to know more?

Michelle cuts a solitary figure striding up the drive in the morning to train the Reds. But first she wants to find out who they chose to replace Shannan.
Michelle thinks the choice of Debbie shows the team is now thinking of strategy.
Sheridan explains that picking Sean may have united Blue in their annoyance of him, so they decided to try and create two cracks in the team instead.
“You sold me on that strategy!” – Michelle
“We heard something positive out of Michelle’s mouth this morning, it was amazing! It was a new experience for the whole team.” – Rachel
Michelle tells them all that they need to be sure they don’t become complacent.

Meanwhile Blue has their first training session with Debbie at the helm.
Debbie says it was really hard, she was worried how the rest of the team would react.
Kirsten says Debbie was doing a good job of keeping them all in time, checking heart rates, everything a trainer should be doing.
Sean’s grunting like mad.
John says all of a sudden Sean comes out with this huge outburst. He’s started calling out time. He calls to Debbie again. Then says, “Aww, for f***’s sake! A f***’ing minute’s a minute!”

John notes that Debbie had lost track of the time and he thought it was quite rude.
Debbie tells Sean that he was only 3 seconds over time, he’ll cope.
Sam says that Sean is an attention seeker, if someone takes attention away from him he’ll start screaming things like, “Aww yeah!” He’s the Kool-Aid guy!!!

Michael says the session went well, there was an issue with Sean but the Blue Team is still united because all of them think Sean is annoying!

Red is outside today playing with basketballs on the court.
Michelle says there was friction last week in the team and today they wanted to use a basketball game to bring them together.
“You guys are a united force!” – Michelle, after organising a 3 on 3 match. Hmm.

Cosi says they were having fun, mucking around, carrying on and that’s the first time they’ve done that in a training session.
Nicole says that Garry loved playing basketball, he’s had a bit of an injured knee, so to see him excelling at something was great.
Garry’s loving playing basketball again. “This is my time to shine!”
Sheridan thinks it’s a big change this week, they’re trying to motivate each other and they’re working as a team.
Michelle says they’re out there having fun, working up a sweat and working together as a team. “This is what it’s all about, Red Team!”
Garry says if they come together then the Blue Team should be very worried!

The vans roll up to the White House once more and the teams file out and head off to the challenge. But this time they’re aware it’s a challenge at least, so no claims of it being a total mystery.
Cosi’s nervous about only having two blokes on their team, where Blue have four.
Nicola says they’re excited to prove themselves, since Cosi picked them as the Challenge team, not the weightloss team, so they’re hoping they get to show their true colours for once.

This challenge will be the most punishing and exhausting test they’ve gone through so far. Or so Ajay says!
But the rewards on offer will be worth every second of pain they endure.
Michael thought maybe they’d be taken to dinner… but it’s a weightloss show, so that probably won’t happen, he thinks. Of course, past seasons that is exactly what has happened…

The challenge involves boats! Who’d’ve thunk it?
Cosi’s worried they’re going to have to row them.

Today’s challenge is a surf boat race. A punishing one, Ajay says.
A traditional race is 400m out from the shore, then 400m back in.
But instead they will race twice that. 800m out, 800m back in.
Sean asks why they’d make fat people race twice as far as surf lifesavers, that’s insane!

Ahh, but that’s not it.
Once they get back to shore, they drag the boat 250m up the beach. And then 250m back down!
Sheridan thinks it sounds impossible, she thinks it seems ridiculous and she has no idea how they’re going to physically do it.

The winning team will get to decide which of the Blue Team will have to sit out of the weigh in.
They’ll also get… letters from home.
John starts crying almost immediately. He’s just become a grandfather and he says that his wife would certainly have put in a photo of his grandkid.

And John’s crushed. Because due to his heart condition he’s not allowed to participate in the challenge. John says he would have takent he world on to win that letter.

Cosi says it made it really hard for the people who have kids. He and his partner are trying to have a kid and she might be up the duff and he wouldn’t even know.
Alison says you take everything for granted until you’re away from your family. Standing there on the sand made her more driven to push and go as hard as she can.

Each team will also have some help from an experienced lifesaver.
Cosi says he was standing on the beach in a singlet and then these buff guys come along to show them up some more.
The lifesavers will be their “sweeps”. ie; the dude who sits up the back of the boat and yells at everyone.

Each sweep says they only need 4 people in the boat. Garry and Rachel are staying on the beach for Red, Debbie and Michael will be staying for Blue.

John says Red keep talking about how much fitter they are, but Blue are built to win, so bring the kids on and let the old farts smash them. Easy when you only have to sit on the sidelines, John!
Alison reiterates that it’s twice what the professional men do. “Kill me now!”

Both teams start out fairly well. I was half expecting them to get tossed by the first wave.
Red get hit by a huge wave not far out. Nicole squeals pretty loudly!
Sheridan says it was hard, but it was also really exhilirating, because they were doing something legit.

As they get out of the breakers, they’re still pretty much neck and neck. But Red are slowly starting to open up a lead.
John’s a little disappointed, wants to swim out there and help.
Cosi says the buoy was in sight. Keep doing what they’re doing and they could win this!

Debbie chimes in with something helpful, “Whoever turns first is probably going to get here first.” Duh.

Sean thinks if Red hits the beach ahead of them, they’re had it. Think he’s underestimating how hard hauling those boats along the beach is going to be!

Red looks like they’ll get there pretty easily, but as they’re coasting into the beach the boat turns sideways, which is a bit of a problem. They’re way off course and will have to drag the boat back up to where they should be starting.
Blue, however, is coming in right on target! Debbie says she thinks they can do this!

Nicola “got a crab” with an oar and Sheridan’s holding onto the scruff of her neck, quite scary!

As Blue hits the shore Red is also only just getting up there too.

Both teams begin the arduous process of dragging the boat along the shore. They put little buoys underneath it to make it easier to roll. But as Alison points out they’d just rowed right out to sea and back so their muscles were exhausted!
Garry says Red’s best chance is to get a “magic roll” where it doesn’t stop rolling for a long time.
Sam says it was really tense since they came from behind and now weren’t very far behind.
Cosi says Rachel’s job was fairly simple, run around and pick up the rollers from under the boat and putting them back in front. Nicola ends up having to take over, which disappointed Nicola, who had hoped Rachel would pull her weight, she should have stepped up.

Blue is struggling as well, Sean’s leaning on the boat and it’s already a 200kg boat and he’s not small fella!
Sam thinks Sean is going to give up, he’d stop pushing and make it more difficult for everyone else.
John’s wandering along giving encouragement. Sean has an aside saying he couldn’t go on, how can you go on in that much pain!

Rachel says it’s hard to keep going when you see such a big gap.
Cosi would have rather had JJ on the sand than Rachel.
Sheridan thought about JJ’s elimination a lot that day, she said.

On the second lap, Blue goes past Red. Michael looks into their faces and he can see that they’ve given up. He’s seen it a bunch of times on the footy field.

Cosi says he picked the Red Team to win challenges. They’re young, they’re fit, but they were so far behind that it’s a bit of egg on his face!

Blue end up crossing a long way ahead of Red and lots of hugs all round. They all go and jump in the water to cool off.
Alison says of their victory, “No one expected us to win. We’re all older, we’re all fatter and we’re all slower.” They’ve not even noticed that Red Team is still going, they’re all so happy with their win.

Meanwhile Red is still struggling along trying to finish.
Sheridan says there was people on Red who desperately wanted the letters and not being able to get them must have been devastating.
Garry says they’re younger and fitter and they’re just not taking it as seriously as they should be. He says he doesn’t like to lose and it doesn’t help when his teammates aren’t putting in the effort.

Garry shoves the boat across the line and just falls over.

And next time on The Biggest Loser, Blue gets their letters… and as soon as John gets his letter he breaks down into tears and it looks like the rest of Blue do too!
And during Last Chance training, Blue starts bickering amongst themselves and Debbie ends up getting a hug from what looks to be Michelle?

And the scales deliver an unexpected blow! Lots of people looking pretty upset and/or disbelieving. Intriguing!