Jay Leno and the Biggest Loser

As you know, I'm a guilty watcher of The Biggest Loser. It is one of those shows that I can watch for a few minutes and then go on to something else. The only interesting part is the weigh in.

Last night had a double elimination. Whoever had the lowest percentage of body weight loss was automatically eliminated. After that person, the two with the lowest percentage of body weight loss were up for elimination, and the remaining contestants voted for whomever they thought should leave.

It was no surprise that Daniel was immediately eliminated. He has struggled the entire season to lose any amount of weight, and is the only contestant who actually gained weight one week. Bye bye Daniel.

The other two at the bottom were Shay and Amanda. Only pure bad luck landed Shay at the bottom - the woman lost 17 pounds that week, and became the first woman to lose 100 pounds by this week of the show. But because everyone else lost huge numbers too, Shay ended up as one of the bottom two.

Amanda's presence at the bottom was not much of a surprise. She has lost little weight week after week, something I can't understand.

Between the two, Amanda should have been sent home. Shay has more than taken advantage of the opportunity, while Amanda appears to be spinning her wheels. But the other contestants, observing that Shay has started to lose lots of weight, realized that she is a threat to their ability to win the title of Biggest Loser. So they voted her off. I hate the game aspect.

The other annoying part came at the end, though I didn't realize how annoyed I was until this morning. At the very end of the episode, we are treated to the reunion of the cast off contestants with their families. Then, we get an update, in which the contestants show how they are trying to continue to lose weight and the changes that have been made in their lives. We saw Daniel and Shay reunite with their families, but we only got an update on Daniel. I thought, maybe Shay refused?

This morning, however, I read that Shay actually showed up on The Jay Leno Show. Oh, so NBC was trying to entice me to watch Leno, were they? Well, guess what, it ain't going to work. I'll just have to live without seeing her until the final episode.

If you're curious, Shay apparently lost another 50 pounds. She's still over 300 pounds.

Crying Games on The Biggest Loser

Okay, so I must confess that The Biggest Loser is a guilty pleasure of mine. It is so compelling - these grossly obese (a medical term, by the way, I'm not being mean) have agreed to literally give their lives to a camp, where they learn to eat right and exercise like crazy. It is not unusual for contestants to lose pounds in the double digits in a week. Each week, one or two contestants who haven't lost as high a percentage of their body weight as their cohorts is sent home, usually by popular vote.

I honestly believe that a lot of the body weight lost is due to the shedding of tears. Maybe there's always tons of tears in reality shows - I don't watch enough to be able to say. But they sure flow on The Biggest Loser. They cry when the work out, they cry when talking about their weight, they cry when they don't lose as much weight as they had hoped to, they cry when they lose more weight than they had thought they would. And the number of tears that flow in the final fifteen minutes when people vote someone out is phenomenal. I should have invested in tissue.