The Biggest Loser: no huge surprises…well, maybe two
Last night’s finale of “The Biggest Loser” on NBC featured the big showdown between Danny and Rudy, and the result of that was not exactly earth-shattering. But there were a couple of other shocking revelations during the show, which we will get to shortly.
First, they brought out Amanda and Liz, to see who America voted into the final 3. Each of them looked quite the same as when they broke camp after running the marathon four months ago….but I digress. The person in the finale was Amanda, and we had to hear her thank America once again for voting for her. Woo freaking hoo. Liz, meanwhile, looked kind of pissed, but let’s face it….neither of them was going to beat Rudy or Danny. And how about Liz being a grandmother of nine at the age of 49? Now that’s impressive!
Then they began to bring out the eliminated contestants in the battle for the at-home prize of $100K. The first group was Antoine, Alexandra, Sean and Julio. Antoine and Alexandra have been dating since being eliminated, and Mrs. Mike tells me she has this funny feeling he’s going to propose to her tonight. Yeah right, I say.
Anyway, Antoine gets on the scale and has lost 152 pounds, or 41.42%. He looks awesome. Alexandra lost 91 pounds, or 29.45%, so for the moment Antoine holds the lead over his girlfriend. Sean is next, and he went from 444 to 289, a loss of 155 pounds, or 34%. Awesome, but not quite enough for the lead. Then Julio, who looks like a completely different person, went from 407 to 227, a loss of 180 pounds or 44.23%. Damn..nice work dude! So Julio, for now, had the lead.
The next group was Coach Mo, Dina, Abby, and Tracey. Coach Mo looks great…he lost 92 pounds, or 25.92%. Dina also looks great, but compared to Julio, both of them have not budged the scale enough. Dina lost 79 pounds, or 31.23%. Abby was up, and we all know the back story on her…..she lost her husband and two kids in a horrible car crash and was getting her life back together. Abby lost 100 freaking pounds, from 247 to 147, and looks amazing. But the 40.49% was not enough for the lead. Still, she was very proud of the 100 pounds and so was host Alison Sweeney. Then came Tracey….who looked, um, scrawny? Is there a nice way to say anorexic? I mean, her face was kind of caved in and I think we could see her ribs. That’s just not right. Anyway, Tracey went from 250 to 132, a 118 pound loss, or 47.2% to give her the lead. Sorry, Julio.
The next group was Shay, Daniel, Rebecca and Allen. We all know Shay’s back story too….heaviest contestant ever. Shay started at 476 pounds. Up on the scale she went, and Shay was down to a svelte 304, having lost an astounding 172 pounds. Still, this was only 36.13%, so not enough for the $100K. Daniel was next, and we know his story too….the heaviest contestant before Shay came along and second-chance entrant. Daniel began this season at 312 and was down to 201, a loss of 111 pounds or 35.58%, and he looks awesome.
Dr. Huizenga was on hand and talked about how Shay had gained 13 years of life back and Daniel 23 years. That is truly amazing and inspiring.
Next up was Rebecca, and here was the other shocker of the night….consider that she was really starting to look great, but last night she had cut her hair even shorter and dyed it platinum blonde…and came out in a short dress that made her look like a hooker. And she, like Tracey, looked scary thin….not as bad as Tracey, but still, not quite right. Anyway, Rebecca was down to 140 pounds, and lost 139 total, or 49.82% to give her the lead. Allen was next, and he also looked awesome. Allen lost 116 pounds, or 35.69%.
So now it was only Liz that Rebecca had to beat.
Liz came back out and had gone from 267 to 176, a 91 pound weight loss but not nearly enough to win the at home prize of $100K. It was Rebecca. I guess I’m happy she won over Tracey, but Rebecca definitely took the competition a bit too far.
Then trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels came out and brought Shay to the center of the stage, with a proposition for her. With sponsor Subway footing the bill, they challenged Shay to keep losing weight with a $1000-for-every-pound incentive, with Shay returning for the Season 9 finale in May. Wow, that’s a lot of cash…so if she loses 100 more pounds, that’s $100,000. Holy crap. Shay, of course, accepted, and so did her husband, who wanted to rush the stage to show his thanks.
Oh wait, there was one more surprise….Antoine proposed to Alexandra. Mrs. Mike is psychic! So Mrs. Mike, will the Giants beat the Eagles this Sunday? Alexandra, of course, accepted. Good for them.
Then they brought out Erin, the person Amanda beat out to get onto the show in the first place…and Erin had lost 70 pounds….awesome. And did you notice they didn’t do this America voting thing again? But they did give us a glimpse of Season 9, which kicks off January 5. It will be “Biggest Loser: Couples,” which, if you’e watched this program for any length of time, you know that that basically means squat, because they always break the teams up anyway and rearrange them five or six times.
Okay, finally….Amanda came back out….and then, Rudy. Damn, that guy lost a ton of weight…maybe literally! Anyway, Rudy looked great as we all knew he would. Then Danny….holy crap, he also looked great. No surprises there…we all knew it would be a two man race.
Drum roll please….Amanda lost 87 pounds, down from 250 to 163, or 34.80%. Nicely done, but we knew it wouldn’t be enough. Rudy was next, and he went from 442 down to 208, a loss of 234 pounds. Holy crap. That was 52.94%, even more weight loss than Rebecca, which in a weird way legitimized the way this all turned out. But Danny still had to weigh in. I went back and started doing the math….last week after the marathon episode, Danny had lost 201 pounds already, and that was, in real time, 4 months ago. Alison said that Danny needed to lose 227 pounds to win. 26 pounds in 4 months, for Danny? Piece of cake. And sure enough, he went from 430 to 191, a loss of 239 pounds or 55.58%.
Danny is your Biggest Loser.
But Rudy, who put in an unbelieveable effort, came in second and seemed happy for Danny but still kind of pissed. I can’t blame him…Danny appeared to have a leg up on Rudy all season long, and in the end Rudy won zero cash. But he sure did lose lot of weight and got his life back. That’s what this show is all about, after all.
So that’s it, folks…..it’s been a pleasure blogging “The Biggest Loser” for you this season and we’ll be back in a few weeks with Season 9.
But before that, I’m curious to know what you all think of the finale last night…especially Tracey and Rebecca. Thanks for reading!
Posted in: Reality TV, TV, The Biggest Loser
Tags: Abby, Alison Sweeney, Allen, Amanda, Antoine, Biggest Loser, Bob Harper, Coach Mo, Daniel, Danny, Dina, Erin, Jillian Michaels, Julio, Liz, NBC, Rebecca, Rudy, Sean, Shay, Subway, The Biggest Loser, The Biggest Loser 2009, The Biggest Loser 2009 blog, The Biggest Loser 2009 recap, The Biggest Loser blog, The Biggest Loser recap, The Biggest Loser Season 8, The Biggest Loser Season 8 blog, The Biggest Loser Season 8 recap, Tracey, weight loss, weight loss competition
I was kind of surprised and repulsed when I saw Tracey because, as you said, she did look a tad anorexic. What I kept focusing on was her hair because she looked like she had some hair loss, which you’ll notice on women who don’t eat right. It was also frustrating to see that she held the lead at one point. She came into the farm playing the game from day one and, obviously, carried that competition home with her. Ugly on the inside and ugly on the outside.
Rebecca wore a gawdawful dress. These women have lost an incredible amount of weight but please, stop with the sleeveless clothes. You still have big arms and it’s not attractive to see all that extra skin flopping around. I know they feel like a whole new person and are now “hot” looking, but again, someone should have suggested a different outfit for her. Rebecca has a very distinctive face and she looks incredible. That was taken away by the horrible choice of hair color. She looks much better with darker hair and it will show off her bone structure so much better.
Not to take away from your psychic wife, because you had to know that Antoine would propose, but I was kind of hoping that Daniel and Rebecca would have gone public as well. And I’m glad to see that Shay was given a golden opportunity to become the next Subway spokesperson. I was kind of getting tired of Jared. I hope she succeeds and makes at least a hundred thou. She has a beautiful face and you could see that she’s undergone a lot of mental healing as well.
I was happy for Danny and his win. I liked Rudy as well, but something about Danny’s spirit and vunerabilty really made me connect with him.
All in all, a great season and I’m looking forward to the next season and your reviews.
Great insight, CD. I too was hoping there would be more about the Daniel-Rebecca romance. And I loved Danny’s spirit too.
Loved the finale! Thanks Mike for the great recap. I was getting phone calls during the show from my some die hard followers as the show unfolded. It was great. I was shocked at Tracy, she looked ghostly. Rebecca, I thought looked good but was a bit unsure of herself and how she was suppose to respond to the whole thing happening to her… Amanda too seemed so uncomfortable on TV. I am so glad that Danny won, he seems just so nice. I has so excited to see the reults of the others that were at home… Sean and Antoine and Shay. So glad for them all.
Right on about Tracey and Rebecca. Tracey picked up an eating disorder and Rebecca looks as if she picked up a crack habit while hooking on the side.
You would think some of the people that work for NBC would have done something about Tracey’s hair. I was waiting for clumps to start falling out. I think Rebecca wouldn’t have looked as bad if she had kept her hair color the same and worn an outfit not fancied by the ladies of the night.
Great reading your blog Mike…can’t believe another season is over!
I know I’m late with my views…I just got a chance to watch it yesterday after having DVR’d it when it first aired. I was SOOOOO happy Tracy didn’t win the 100 thousand dollars! I was afraid at first when she beat out Julio (who in fact looked like a totally different person). I did not like her from day one and liked her even less when she came parading out on stage in that purple night gown. Awful. She is not a cute woman, by any means, fat or thin. Rebecca was surprisingly…interesting. I liked her dress actually but I think it would have worked better had she worn some tights under it so that we wouldn’t see her jiggling legs. I agree with CD on her choice of hair color. The blonde aged her. All in all I enjoyed the show and was quite pleased that Danny won. He is another one who looks like a completely different person.
“Up on the scale she went, and Shay was down to a svelte 304″ <- Lmao.
Oh, I am so glad Danny won.
I was also rooting for Rebecca all along. It’s a good thing she got voted off the island when she did, otherwise she might have been one of the final three and not gotten to compete for the “at home” prize.” I was pretty sad about her hair, too. I loved me some feisty brunette ass kicking Rebecca, and thought that perhaps things had gone a bit too far at that final weigh in. I hope things come back into a bit more balance now that life is back to normal.
But as far as Tracy and the eating disorder… yeah, no kidding! How the heck else did she lose all that weight when she was not working out at all????
Of course there is stuff that happens off camera that we are spared for the sake of the show’s mystique, but I would assume these three major rules:
Drugs banned (steroids and speed)
Purging banned (laxatives and… you know)
Weighing themselves between weigh-ins banned.
I think it would be really hard for me to resist at least TRYING to construct some kind of primitive scale. What would it take? A few gallon jugs of water (8.35 pounds per gallon) and a little MacGyver know how…
Hmmm… was it all fair?
You’d think the show’s staff would be on the lookout for drugs, puke, and rudimentary weighing devices, but somehow it looks like Tracy pulled perhaps two of these presumably banned stunts. I would bet my life savings that she employed an eating disorder from the very beginning. Her hair loss looked pretty bad from the very beginning of the weight loss. Her weight lost was inordinate. They have GOT to do pre show interviews and I bet Tracy swore up and down she did not have nor had ever had an eating disorder. The network execs have GOT to insist on at least THAT much. But I would bet cash she lied and has had many successive bouts of eating disorders, and I bet it was old hat losing a ton of weight on que for the show.
Anyway, I wish ALLL the contestants the best of luck. Thanks for providing all the inspiration, food for thought, laughs, and supercheap therapy.
Hugs always.
They are anorexic- not even the blond wig fools anyone- one loses hair when anorexic