Last night’s episode of “The Biggest Loser” showed the workings of karma, but not the way you would think. It started out with Alison Sweeney giving the contestants a pop challenge, in which they had to balance a tray of quarters with one hand, and for each quarter they would get 10 bucks. The person still holding their tray won that amount of quarters times 10. They all showed that it was much harder than it looked, and after a grueling 45 minutes, Michael won the challenge and with 100 quarters won $1000. Total cereal, the sponsor, doubled that money and also gave runner-up Sunshine $650 for having 65 quarters on the tray. Then CNBC’s Suze Orman, a financial whiz, tutored the contestants on how financial health parallels physical health in many ways. She said how she predicted Danny to win last season and that this season she was predicting Sunshine to win. Then Danny made an appearance and worked out with everyone, and he looks great still!

Then after watching Jillian beat the crap out of Vicky in the gym, it was time for the main challenge, and it was pouring rain outside. They had to run up a muddy , rain soaked hill and pluck keys off of a string of balloons, and two of the keys would start two brand new cars. Whoever found those keys took home the cars! Wow. After a lot of mud, sweat and rain, Drea won the first car. Then O’Neal won the second car but of course gave the car to his daughter Sunshine.

After fast-forwarding rapidly through the last chance workout and all the heart-to-heart talks between trainers and contestants, it was time for the weigh in. Sunshine went first and lost 3 pounds, about half of what she expected. Koli lost 6, Daris 7, Michael 9, and Ashley 6. Vicky lost 5 and O’Neal 5. Then Drea lost 3, putting her and Sunshine below the yellow line. But wait, there’s more, and it’s Sam. Sam lost ZERO this week, putting he and Drea below the line, and keeping Suze Orman’s prediction safe for one week.

So it was down to Sam and Drea. Drea has been getting annoying lately, and I’m not sure I can pinpoint why. Meanwhile, I think they all love Sam, so this was a semi-obvious choice.

Sunshine chose Drea and Ashley chose Sam. Then Vicky, Koli and Michael all chose Drea, and that was it. So Drea went home to Michigan and she is now studying to be a personal trainer herself. Good for her! Oh, and about that karma. I was just thinking that either O’Neal or Drea would be going home after winning the car. Just a thought….

So we’re down to 8 contestants and inching closer to the final 4. Who do you like? It’s hard not to like Michael’s chances at this point…he seems to be hitting his stride at the right time. Okay, thanks for reading and see you all next week!

Last night’s episode of “The Biggest Loser” was like a slap in the face to the show’s producers, who clearly wanted Melissa in this thing for the long haul but, well, you’ll have to read on…..

Host Alison Sweeney threw another curve ball at the contestants to start the show, when she told them that one of them could literally earn immunity with the push of a button this week. She gave them each a tag to wear around their neck with the amount of weight they had to lose in order to reach 2% of their body weight. If someone felt they had reached that mark at any point during the week, they could hit a red button that sounded a loud and giant alarm. That player would weigh in and if they reached their 2%, they were immune from elimination. If not, they were out of this particular challenge, and someone else could try and gain immunity.

Of course, this was highly competitive, and they all raced to work out as hard as possible, with Melissa leading the charge and saying how much she wanted to play the game and win the $250K prize, but that she couldn’t believe no one else felt the same way. In fact, she said there was too much love in the house this season.

They brought in Dr. H to make sure these contestants were trying to lose the weight safely.

Then, a couple days in, Vicky was the first to push the button. She had immunity last week because it was her first week on campus, but this time she wanted it to stick around another week. Vicky had to lose 6 pounds, but only lost 3. Out!

Then they had a swim challenge, where there were 1000 one pound hockey pucks at the bottom of the pool, and the contestants all had to swim and then go under water to retrieve the pucks, two at a time. The first to 100 won, and the prize was a 2-week vacation at the Biggest Loser resort. The last place finisher would have a 1 pound penalty at the weigh in. But once someone won, that person could help someone else. So Sunshine ultimately won, and then helped her dad. Everyone else tried to help O’Neal too as well as Michael. Nobody helped Melissa, a telling sign indeed, and she wound up coming in last place. Ha!

Then as most of the contestants went to sleep, Sam and Koli did a late night workout and intended to hit the red button in the morning. But Melissa went to bed around midnight and woke up at 3am to go work out, and she also intended to hit the button. The button sounded around 7am, but it was Sam who got their first. He got on the scale, and he had to lose 6 pounds. Well, Sam did even better, losing a whopping 10 pounds (in like 4 days). That was good for 3.82% and immunity this week, while Melissa was cursing herself for not getting there before Sam did. Again, ha!

Then after we fast-forwarded through all of the last chance workouts and one-to-one mentoring of Bob and Jillian with various contestants, it was time for the weigh in. Note to NBC and this show’s producers: this show is still 60 minutes too long each week. We don’t need a 45-minute weigh in.

Sam was immune so he did not weigh in. Then Koli was up, and he lost only 5 pounds, and Daris lost only 4. Both were in danger. Mike lost 9, Ashley 7 and Sunshine 7, putting Sunshine below 200 pounds for the first time (195). O’Neal lost 8 pounds, giving him 106 pounds of weight loss total. Vicky lost 11 pounds, but then Drea lost only 2. That put Drea below the yellow line and Koli was safe. Next up was Melissa, who needed more than 4 pounds of weight loss to stick around. She lost 3 pounds, and even without the 1 pound penalty, Melissa would have been below the line. Ha!

So Drea and Melissa had to state their cases to the other contestants. Drea couldn’t believe she only lost 2 pounds and pleaded with them all to vote for her to stay. Melissa, who said she was an attorney (can you just picture that?), thought she put forth a good argument, and that was that she felt Drea was more of a threat than she was, and that Melissa would probably be in the bottom 2 each week, and each week they could pluck off a competitor if they kept Melissa in the game.

I turned to Mrs. Mike and said there is no way anyone votes to keep Melissa there. She said, “Stranger things have happened.” And she was right. However, this is a different season, one in which the contestants kind of have a love fest going on for each other. Koli, O’Neal, Daris, Michael and Vicky were the first to vote and ALL FIVE voted for Melissa to be eliminated. They all cited that they didn’t appreciate gameplay and wanted contestants there who would push each other and be there for the right reasons. Ha!

So Melissa, despite the producers trying really hard to keep her around, was going home for the second time. That’s it. Now there are nine contestants left as we inch closer to the final four. Who do you like? I like the competitive fire of Sam and Koli, but I like Ashley or Sunshine to possibly win it all.

Let me know what you think and see you all 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!

Every season on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” seems to out-do the season before. The hit reality show returned for its ninth season last night, and as you might suspect, the contestants were larger than last season. So much so, that trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels agreed that they were intimidated by the fact that they had to whip this bunch into shape, literally.

The theme this season is families, and this time as each pair of contestants were notified that they were selected to be on the show, they also had to have their initial weigh in in public, in front of their families, friends, and entire towns. Yikes.

The biggest pair were twin brothers James and John, weighing in at 485 and 484 total almost half a ton. The biggest individual was Michael, from Chicago, who was selected with his mom, Maria. Michael weighed in at a svelte 526 pounds, the largest contestant on the show to date and naturally a tremendous challenge for himself and the trainers.

After the teams arrived at the Biggest Loser ranch, they were presented with their first challenge by host Alison Sweeney, which was to get on stationery bikes and pedal the equivalent of a marathon, 26.2 miles. Biking that distance might be akin to running or jogging 5 miles or so, something this group has probably not done in years, if ever. Anyway, the first nine teams (out of 11) to finish would get to stay, and the last two teams would be going home…already. The winner of the race would have immunity at this week’s weigh in.

As they were pedaling, I kept thinking that I hoped the two large brothers, and Michael, would not be sent home so soon. Well, the blue team’s Cherita was having bad stomach cramps and needed assistance from Dr. Huizenga, and could not continue. Her daughter finished, but the blue team, well as the yellow team of O’Neal and Sunshine, finished last. The green team of Migdalia and Miggy won the immunity.

So the two teams that lost had to hop back in the limos that brought them to the ranch, but as they began to drive away Bob and Jillian stopped the cars. They wouldn’ be staying, but they would be going home for 30 days, and then the team which lost the highest percentage of weight during that time would get to come back to the ranch.

The first morning on the ranch, Bob and Jillian turned on the fire alarm to wake everyone up and get them into the gym, where they proceeded to push the crap out of the contestants. Jillian managed to take mild-mannered Cheryl from the orange team, and bring out her inner “badass.” After the last chance workout, it was time for the weigh in.

The green team, with immunity, went first and Migdalia lost 16 pounds while Miggy lost 13, giving them 29 pounds of weight loss. Not bad at all. Then the Gray team of Sam and Koli (who, by the way, are of the same descent as Filipe and Sione, and are also cousins!) lost 18 and 29 pounds for a total of 47. Orange was next, and Cheryl lost 14 while her son Daris lost 29 for a total of 43. Daris is a cross betwen Matt Hoover from Season 2 and Justin Guarini.

The brown team of Andrea and Darrell was next and lost 14 and 30 pounds, respectively, for 44 total pounds lost. Then the brown team of James and John, and not surprisingly, they lost the exact same amount, 23 pounds each. But based on their total weight, it was a low percentage. Uh-oh. Next was the red (hillbilly) team of Melissa and Lance, who lost 19 and 21 pounds for 40 total. Mrs. Mike and I have already tabbed Melissa as the most annoying contestant this season.

Then the purple team of Patti and daughter Stephanie, and they lost 23 and 18 pounds for 41 total. Patti’s 23 pounds was the most in a single week by any female on the show, ever. Next was the pink team of Ashley and Sherry, who, with their blonde hair and pink shirts reminded us of Helen and Shannon from a few seasons back. Anyway, they lost 21 and 17 pounds for 38 total. Finally, it was Michael and Maria. Maria went first and lost 13, so Michael was told he had to have lost 25 pounds to stay on the ranch. He crushed it, losing a whopping 34 pounds, and then joking, “Are my abs showing?” Ha! So they were staying, which meant James and John had to face the prospect that one of them would be voted off the ranch.

That sucks, because those two guys both needed to be there. But that’s how they play this game. So how do you vote in this case? Well, James has a bad knee and is limited as to what he can do with workouts. John has a family and a job he would have to return to if he went home, while James was not working and could devote entire days to the gym as well as a pool at his home. After one vote for John, the next five votes went to send James home, and that’s what happened.

They showed James at home and he had lost an astounding 100 pounds in just two months. Good for him! I wonder if John was able to mirror James’ weight loss on the ranch.

So here we go folks, Season 9 is already underway, and it once again promises to be a good one. Thanks for reading and see you all next week!