I smell foul play on “The Biggest Loser.” Not Vicky and Brady foul play, but some manipulation by certain contestants. More on that later.

The show began last night with Daris being upset about his mom Cheryl being sent home. That lasted about 5 seconds. Then it was on to the initial challenge, and one of the contestants even said “oh crap” when they saw host Alison Sweeney in the room. That was funny. The challenge was a trivia game, with the winning team earning a “spa night” at the Four Seasons Hotel, and the losing team having to clean both the kitchen and the gym. Yikes. After some trash talk from Stephanie of the black team, the blue team won, which was funny, because their team is mostly huge guys, not the types you’d expect to see in a spa.

Jillian propped her team up, saying that they didn’t come to the ranch to go to the Four Seasons, but to “get 200 pounds off the back of your ass.” Nicely said!

Michael had to go home to Chicago to tend to his ailing grandmother, which was a problem considering the main challenge would be a cooking challenge, something Michael was good at. Curtis Stone was the judge of the challenge, and each team had to pick 12 ingredients to make a 3-course meal with. They also only had 30 minutes to do so. The blue team made shrimp ceviche, salmon, and raspberries with chocolate drizzle, while the black team mde spinach/feta salad, pork tenderloin, and pears with feta. The black team won, based on overall taste while keeping calories down. Their prize? A 5 pound advantage at the weigh in, something they desperately needed to avoide losing, again.

After forwarding through most of the product placement, trainers’ tips and last chance workout stuff, I watched Michael return and tell his team that while in Chicago he found the time to work out. Good for him.

The weigh in was next. The black team went first, and Andrea led off with 5 pounds lost. Sam lost 8, much better than the 4 pounds he lost last week. Ashley lost 7, Sherry 3 and Stephanie a paltry 2 pounds. The total for the black team, in addition to their 5 pound advantage, was 30 pounds lost, or 2.5%.

The blue team had to lost more than 45 pounds to win. Lance was first and lost 8 pounds, followed by Daris who lost 10. Koli lost 9, bringing him down to 297, breaking the 300 pound barrier for the first time. Sam ran up and hugged him, even though they are now on opposing teams. O’Neal lost 9, and so did his daughter Sunshine. So they were already at 45 pounds. Michael had to lose just one pound to give his team the win, and that may have been iffy since he missed a few days on the ranch. But no…Michael lost 11 pounds, bringing him down below 400 pounds for the first time at 397. So the blue team won again, losing 56 pounds or 3.11%. Damn!

So once again, the black team had to eliminate one of their own, and it couldn’t be Sam, since he led his team in percentage of weight loss this week. The women on the team all said they didn’t want to go home. Of course they didn’t. But I thought Stephanie, who dodged a bullet last week, should go home based on her lousy weight loss this week.

Ashley voted first and picked Andrea. Andrea picked Sherry. Sam then picked Sherry and Sherry picked Drea. Tied at two votes apiece. What?? No one picked Stephanie. I smell foul play here. I guess the only reason here was that they don’t see Stephanie as a threat, and they could be right. But she deserved to be sent packing here. So Stephanie had the final and deciding vote, and picked Sherry.

Sherry, who began this journey at 218 pounds, has now lost 80 pounds, down to 138 pounds! Good for her, and I have to think she has a clear shot at the $100K at-home prize.

So now that it’s going to be 6-4 in favor of the blue team, I’m sure this where the producers intervene and change the teams up. We’ll see. But meanwhile, the big blue machine keeps rolling along. See you all next week and enjoy your corned beef and green beer today!

Last night on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” they showed O’Neal sweating it out as he was about to join the blue team, but did not know which blue team member was eliminated until they walked through the door one by one, with his daughter Sunshine being the last to enter the room. Of course, it makes you wonder why he didn’t ask one of the other blue teamers who was eliminated rather than to be left hanging like that. Naturally, O’Neal was thrilled that it was Miggy who was sent home and not Sunshine.

Host Allison Sweeney then told the teams that they would be working real jobs this week. They had limited workout time because they would be bused to the Feed America food bank to work, having to pack their lunch and everything, to simulate what it would be like once they get home.

But before this, they had the main challenge of the day, which was to literally pull blue and black colored semi trucks, picking up puzzle pieces along the way to spell out “The Biggest Loser,” and the winning team won a year’s worth of groceries. The blue team, however, has big dudes with one woman (Sunshine), while the black team has one dude (Sam) and five women, some of which are small-ish at this point, at least compared to the guys. Still, the black team made it closer than you would expect, but the blue team ultimately won.

Then they showed the contestants at work, including about 10 or 12 shots of Michael falling asleep on the bus. A dude named Big Steve came into the lunchroom to talk to them, asking for tips on how he could lose weight. Hopefully they have him slated for next season already, because dude needs it. Then Sam pretended to forget his lunch, prompting a product placement visit to a nearby Subway for Sam and Stephanie.

Then after fast-forwarding through the last chance workouts (sorry NBC), it was time to watch the weigh in. It was at this point that Mrs. Mike and I realized who Michael looks like with his bandana and big bushy hair….Richard Simmons. Dude was ready to sweat to the oldies right then and there.

The blue team went first, leading off with O’Neal, who lost 5 pounds. Sunshine lost 7, Michael 9, and Koli 10. Koli has now lost a whopping 97 pounds! Daris lost 9 and Lance 10, giving the blue team a 50 pound weight loss this week, or 2.71%.

The black team needed more than 38 pounds of weight loss to win, and they led off in good shape with Andrea losing 7 pounds and Ashley 8. Cheryl was next and lost 5, and her pal Sherry also lost 5 pounds. Stephanie was next and lost 3, and it was up to Sam to bring it home, and he needed most than 10 pounds. Dude looks pretty thin and muscular, so I don’t think anyone thought he could do it…and he didn’t losing just 4 pounds. That gave the black team 32 pounds of weight loss, or 2.27%.

The black team then deliberated a bit, and Andrea asked them all how far they were from their goal weight. Sam was pretty close, but some of the others were too. They were talking about Sam and Cheryl, but I couldn’t understand why no one mentioned Stephanie, who lost the least amount of weight this past week.

At the voting, Sam voted for Cheryl, and so did Stephanie. Cheryl voted for Stephanie (there ya go!), Sherry voted for Sam….and then, Ashley voted for Cheryl, giving her enough votes to go home. See ya Cheryl!

Overall, Cheryl has gone from 227 pounds to 164 and is doing great at home. And the blue team still looks pretty dominant, but we’ll see how that all plays out. These producers like to change things up, so it’s only a matter of time before they make them go back to two-person teams again.

What do you all think? I think Stephanie dodged a bullet, to be honest. See you next week!

Last night’s episode of “The Biggest Loser” was a cliffhanger, and purposely set up that way because we’ll now have a three week hiatus due to the Winter Olympics. But it also had a few more twists and turns. First of all, at the weigh in, there would be a red line, and the person who fell below that with the lowest percentage of weight loss would be going home. Then, there would be the standard yellow line, which two more contestants would fall under and one of them would be going home.

Also, this week the contestants would be training in Colorado with the Olympic hopefuls. The first Olympic-related thing they did was to carry a torch replica along with para-Olympic contestant Allison Jones. Then they learned how the Olympic athletes ate, with all of their food having a “fuel” purpose. Then Koli from the gray team whined for about five minutes about feeling guilty that John went home last week and not him, that John deserved to be there more. Easy, dude!

Then the contestants got to work out with two Olympic skiiers, Julia Mancuso and Speedy Peterson. After that, speedskater JR Celski showed them how to work out on a slide board, which the speedskaters train on every day. They had a friendly competition to see who reached 500 “slides” first, and those three winners would have an advantage at the main challenge. Sam came in first, followed by Melissa and Sunshine.

Then for the main challenge, biathlete Kelly Underkofler led them in a challenge in which they had to run a lap (outdoors at gorgeous Garden of the Gods park) and then “shoot” at a target that represented another contestant. There were five targets next to each contestant’s name, and when all five were hit, that person was out. The winners of the previous challenge got a head start on shooting at the others’ targets. Everyone was quick to eliminate Lance, followed by Melissa, Miggy and Daris. The winner would be decided between O’Neal and Darrell, who chugged their lap and then had to shoot the other one off….O’Neal won, and what do you know? First prize AGAIN was immunity. Seriously, producers, can you quit giving this out like it’s candy? Mrs. Mike pointed out that this is unfair when there is a red line, and I agree.

Then, after a last chance workout with figure skater Rock Brubaker leading a boot camp, it was time to weigh in. They would be doing so this week as individuals, which meant one thing….an agonizingly long time to weigh them all in. Thank goodness for TiVo.

O’Neal went first and lost 8 pounds, but either way he had immunity. Michael was next, and lost 11 pounds, bringing him down to 432 when he had begun at 526. Stephanie lost 4, Sunshine 6, Koli 9, Andrea 7, Darrell 5 and Sam 12. So as of now, Darrell was in last place. Sherry was next and lost 3 pounds, followed by Ashley with 6. Daris lost 9 and has the highest percentage of weight loss among them all so far. Cheryl lost 3, which put her near the bottom with Darrell. Miggy was next and lost 7 pounds, bringing her down to 199, the first time she’s been below 200 in quite some time….Lance went next and lost 9 pounds. So it was now down to Melissa. Amazingly, Melissa GAINED a pound and automatically fell below the red line. I immediately thought, ” no gameplay this time,” but Mrs. Mike pointed out that her speech about wanting to go home and see her kids was quite well-rehearsed. Hmmmm. Bob and Jillian were mum, but I wonder what they were thinking.

So below the yellow line then was Cheryl and Darrell. But Alison announced that they would not be voted on by the others this week.
Instead, they would have an elimination, head-to-head challenge to determine who stayed. Their challenge was to balance a torch stem on their head while squatting. It looked to be excruciating, but both knew what was at stake. And then….that dreaded “To Be Continued” came across the screen. Which means we won’t know who went home until after the Olympics.

As for Melissa, she started the show at 233 and now weighs 175, down 58 pounds. Good for her, but I still wanna know if she threw this weigh in too.

So that’s it…we’ll see you back here after the Olympics!