Archive for April, 2008

Tonight on The Biggest Loser is the last “The Walk” ever!

We hope. Common sense dictates that it won’t be back next year, but common sense is in short supply when it comes to the direction of The Biggest Loser.

In any event, Alison is the “lucky” contestant chosen to take The Walk today and it is once again going to involve money. Will she walk away with a suitcase full of it? Will she give a suitcase full to someone else and kick them out? Will a 5 minute decision be dragged out over the course of an hour?

Read on to find out…
Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight on The Biggest Loser it’s time for the last Temptation ever!

Who will succumb for the last time ever?
How many times will the word ever be used in the last Wednesday episode ever?

Read on to find out…
Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight on The Biggest Loser… wait, what episode is this?

SIXTY-NINE, DUDE! Awww yeah.

Ahem. Tonight on The Biggest Loser is Train the Trainers day and Dream Outfits day all rolled into one.
Can the contestants make Shannan or Michelle puke?

Read on to find out…
Read the rest of this entry »

With the season wrapping up I thought it was about time I actually wrote up the explanation for why it’s okay to be mean to the contestants on the show. I actually meant to write this a couple of weeks back but now the Finale has stealthily crept up on me and I’m almost out of time!

If you’ve been around some of the forums, the official one in particular, you are probably aware of the “Friends and Family of…” phenomenon. This is where the Friends and Family of a contestant will log onto a forum and strongly and/or viciously defend their friend from the various attacks forumgoers make.

This was best exemplified this season by the Friends and Family of Sheridan, known on the forums as “FAFOS” due to the alarming rate at which they sprang up.

Friends and Family will usually defend their loved one by telling us all that their beloved Fatty is not actually that mean, stupid, lazy or whatever they’ve been accused of. In real life, they’re actually kind, clever and just generally lovely. The forumgoers are told that they don’t know the real Fatty!

And they’re absolutely right. We don’t know the real person.

But they’ve also inadvertently given us a green light to continue being mean, precisely because we don’t know the real people.

What we see each night on television is just what the producers of the show want us to see. If they want us to think Alison is always the nicest, most caring, most considerate and generally lovely girl on set, then all the footage that supports that gets aired, while all the footage that might show her as a horrible, mean spirited and evil woman is conveniently left out.

So we’re not seeing the real Alison. What we are seeing is more like a caricature. We are seeing Biggest Loser Contestant Alison, a character in this reality soapie. If we were to say that Alison is horrible for not warmly welcoming Bryce and Michelle back, then it is Biggest Loser Contestant Alison we are criticising, not Real Life Alison.

A great example of this phenomenon from last season was Courtney. During the first half to two thirds of the season, Courtney was horrible. He was brattish, insolent, lazy, conniving and probably a lot of other very unkind words. But at some point during the show, either his personality turned the corner or the producers started giving him a kinder edit.

Which Courtney is the real one? Is it the horrible troll we saw for the first half of the season? Or the lovely, funny lad we saw in the last half?

If he’s actually the lovely, funny lad we saw in the last half of the season, does that make terrible people of those who criticised him during the first half?

I say no. We were reacting to what we saw of Courtney at the time.

That is the distinction, for me. Yes, I am mean to some of these people. I expect some of them do take it personally, though I expect my insults are at the low end of the spectrum, going by what I read on other sites! But if I could tell them just one thing, it would be that I am criticising the person I saw portrayed on my TV screen and that I am actually aware that that is not the sum total of their being.

Does that reasoning make sense to anyone but me? I certainly hope it does. :-)

It is believed that the finale of the show will air next Thursday night, 1st of May. The TV Guide doesn’t go quite that far into the future yet, but as there are no episodes next week after Sunday night, it seems likely to be the case!

I’ll put the rest of the schedule after the break, because there may be a few spoilers.

Read the rest of this entry »