The Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 3

Well, things went from bad to worse on The Biggest Loser last night. My commenter Matt, who suggested on my original Biggest Loser post that Neil had really pulled off a double scam, turned out to be right. Neil won the weigh-in last night because he had a 17-pound head start from cheating the week before.

Why is this guy even still on the show?

But it turns out the cheat was even bigger than we knew. Not only did Neil and Ryan cheat by loading water right before the weigh-in, but they pressured Amy from the Red Team into doing it as well, which is why she didn't lose any weight last week even though she was working out with Jillian Michaels. So it was a Blue Team-Red Team conspiracy to try to get rid of members from the Black Team since they couldn't beat them in a fair fight.

I was angry with Kae last week for voting Jez off, and because I thought she was in on the deal. But seeing her reaction to the scam this week made me change my mind. I think she was played, and kept in the dark about the intended cheat. I think Neil and Ryan knew Kae would never go along with it, so they just made a voting pact, which is perfectly acceptable, and Kae went along with the voting pact, not realizing the fix was in. The fact that she was so upset she wanted to leave the show told me a lot. I don't think she would have voted for Jez if she'd known that Neil and Ryan cheated, and I now definitely don't think she was told about their plans. She worked as hard as ever and lost as much weight as she usually does last week. I think she's honorable and was devastated when she heard last week's results came from cheating by her fellow Blue Team members, and that she had gotten caught up in it by casting her vote for someone who really didn't deserve to go home.


So this week, still thanks to Neil's original cheat from last week, another person who shouldn't have gone home this early is gone, David the cowboy. I was happy to see he is continuing to work out, watch his diet and lose weight at home. He's lost 103 pounds so far, but still has a good way to go. He and his wife look so happy in their interview, and their kids were just thrilled that daddy could now run and play with them, and ride horses with them without putting the poor horse in danger of its life.

My question to NBC and The Biggest Loser is this: why is Neil still in the game? Why is cheating tolerated? Do you really have no idea that you are turning your viewers away? Yes, we're talking about the show, but not in a good or supportive way. And talking about the show is way different that watching it. Remember what happened to Bravo when they screwed with the Top Chef show. Viewers were so outraged the whole show almost collapsed.

The other problem this year is the egregious product placement, I could not believe Bob Harper had the gall to stand there and promote an instant oatmeal product to a morbidly obese woman who needs to lose some serious weight. Instant oatmeal is loaded with sugar and chemicals and has little to no fiber and few of the nutritional attributes of real oatmeal...you know, the kind you actually cook, not nuke. But Quaker paid for the mention (read "ad") and so there it was...bogus advice being handed out to gullible contestants and viewers not because it was sound, or based on scientific principle, or even because it would promote good health and weight loss, but because a sponsor had paid for the product placement and therefore could claim whatever they wanted. They could say that oatmeal cures cancer, acne and baldness, and I'm sure they'd have Bob or Kim up there smiling and saying it was so.

Well, that's enough for this week. I sure hope Neil goes home next week. I really really don't like or respect him at all. And as soon as he goes, boot Ryan next, and then Amy. Cheaters shouldn't win.

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser Outrage - Part 2

Wow, I guess I didn't realize there would be so many people who, like me, were outraged by the fact that Neil was allowed to get away with cheating on this week's episode of The Biggest Loser. The Internet has been abuzz with emails flying back and forth, blogsters penning their generally negative opinions of what went on, and search engines working overtime as people who missed the show look for little tidbits of information about what happened.

If you don't already know, here's the scoop. Right before the weigh-in, one of the Blue Team contestants, Neil, drank about 2 gallons of water to artificially pump up his weight by 17 pounds. So instead of losing weight after a week of hard work in the gym and dietary restrictions, he managed to GAIN 17 pounds by cheating with the water trick. That meant his team lost and one member would be voted off by the other three trios. By prior arrangement, Neil got the trios to vote Jez off.

In the real scheme of things, no one was going to beat the Black Team. Jillian Michaels had been kicking their butts in the gym and they were kicking butt at the weigh-ins. They'd only lost one team member and had more people, 5, than either of the other two teams. The Red Team was down to 3 members, and the Blue Team down to 4, so it pretty much looked like the Black Team was going to dominate right into the finals. And that's how it should have been because they did the work and they deserved to be in the finals.

Enter the weasly Blue and Red Teams. They obviously colluded with Neil on his wormy little plan to throw the weigh-in, because they voted Jez out even though he was one of the nicest, hardest working guys there. Weasels never want to compete on a level playing field; the Red and Blue Teams couldn't defeat the Black Team honestly, so they had to resort to cheating.

And Neil's reward for cheating doesn't end there. Just who do you suppose will be The Biggest Loser next week? Matt left a comment on my original post pointing out that Neil will almost certainly win and be immune from elimination because he will lose at least 17 pounds by next week and probably even more if you throw in the 7 or 8 pounds a week he usually loses when he's not busy cheating. It's highly unlikely that anyone who is playing the game fairly will be able to match that.

That's bad enough, but the idea that The Biggest Loser and NBC let Neil and his Blue Team members get way with their underhanded scheme is well nigh unthinkable. NBC almost had a lawsuit on its hands when its subsidiary Bravo TV let a similar situation get way out of hand on Top Chef Season 2. Reportedly, producers gave a video camera to some contestants who had been verbally assaulting another contestant. They were planning a physical attack and Bravo wanted to make sure they caught the smack down on tape.

Bad decision. When viewers saw the episode with the physical attack, they were sickened and outraged and let loose a flood-tide of angry email, snail mail and phone calls. The sheer volume of angry comments posted on the Bravo website almost fried their server and nearly took their website off-line. Bravo folks were unrepentant, and it fell to NBC, the parent company, to reign in its rambunctious offspring.

As a result, this year's Top Chef was a much calmer, more watchable show, still not as good as season one where food was the focus, but vastly better than season two. But just like this season's Biggest Lower, Top Chef Season 3 also suffered from too many stunts, where the cheftestants were asked to do ridiculous things in impossibly short amounts of time with few resources and inadequate budgets. In other words, not like in the real world of restaurants where chefs can plan their menus and budgets and allow adequate time and money to produce food of a consistent quality.

But I digress. Why did NBC, after having to reign in Bravo, fall prey to the same sort of misguided thinking in regard to its own flagship reality show? Somebody screwed up big time. If there is to be a next season of The Biggest Loser, one thing simply MUST happen or I won't ever watch again. There has to be a new rule stating that any contestant who artificially manipulates his or her weight through any means whatsoever is immediately disqualified from the show and sent home in disgrace. That's the only way the show can regain its credibility for me. If the producers and NBC don't take this simple step to ensure the integrity of the program, then in good conscious I can no longer watch.

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser Outrage

Those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning know that one of the original inspirations for my decision to lose weight, get fit and stay that way was NBC's The Biggest Loser. I watch the show every week and usually enjoy it. But what happened tonight was an outrage and I wish every one of you who watches the show would write NBC and complain.

Basically, one of the contestants cheated big time, and they let him get away with it. As a result, one of my favorite contestants was unfairly and unethically eliminated from the game. And I think he was someone who might have had a chance to win the whole thing.

The show had three teams, but the Red Team sort of did itself in last week by eliminating its leader, Phil, who was very strong and helped them win most of the physical challenges. But the team usually did the worst at the weigh-ins, losing the least amount of weight.

The Blue Team was kind of sketchy from the get-go, not really winning any challenges, but doing okay in the weight loss part. But the Black Team, the 6 people who hadn't been picked for the original two teams, who had been abandoned in the desert and secretly trained by kick-ass trainer Jillian Michaels, the Black Team had been dominating everything, winning weigh-ins and challenges. They worked so hard and pulled together as a team so well that they seemed indomitable. There wasn't a whiner among them; everyone on the team was strong and worked hard. As a result, they'd only been to one elimination challenge; together and as individuals, they looked mighty hard to beat. So instead of taking up the gauntlet and redoubling their efforts to beat the Black Team ethically, the Blue Team decided to cheat.

You read that right. They decided to cheat. They stacked the deck, bent the rules, violated the spirit of the competition and all that's moral and right...by cheating to make sure they won and could eliminate a Black Team member. And this was only made possible by a surprise twist The Biggest Loser imposed last night. I doubt seriously the producers of the show ever envisioned a team would stoop so low to take advantage of the new rules. But the Blue Team did, particularly two of its members. But all its members are guilty and have forever lost my respect, because instead of telling the two members who planned to cheat not to do it, they supported them by following through with the second part of the plan and voting as a block even though all the teams had been broken apart by the game twist. Here's what happened.


Tonight, the teams were divided into 4 "trios," consisting of three people each. Jez, one of my favorite contestants, won the right to pick the new trios from the existing, lop-sided teams.

He did a thoughtful job, and tried to balance the trios fairly so that every team would have a chance to win. But what Jez didn't know was that the remaining members of the Blue Team had entered an unholy pact to win at any cost. Instead of the losing team voting off its own member, the three top trios would now vote off a member of the losing team. Because Jez tried to be so fair in balancing the teams, there were two trios that had 2 Blue Team members, giving them a voting majority on those trios. So they decided to cheat by deliberately throwing the weight challenge, agreeing ahead of time that they would vote off a Black Team member once their evil plot succeeded.

Right before the weigh-in, Neil and Ryan drank lots of water to hide their week's weight loss and make themselves themselves heavier. Ryan gained a pound, the first time anyone on this season has gained weight. But Neil drank TWO FULL GALLONS OF WATER JUST BEFORE HE STEPPED ON THE SCALE, AND HE GAINED 17 POUNDS IN ONE DAY!!!

Naturally, his team lost the weigh-in. But by deliberately "losing," he and his nefarious Blue Team members really won, because they got to vote Jez of the kick-ass Black Team out. Never mind that they won the right to vote by cheating; never mind that their cheating basically screws the rest of the game. Nothing will be fair in the game from this point on because of the sleazy, low, cheater-baby mindset of the blue team members. They've been crybabies and lazy from the start, so since they couldn't win legitimately, they decided to win by cheating. And by the way, I DON'T blame their trainer, Bob Harper, because this plan is something they cooked up on their own. Bob's a good guy and when he found out what his former team had done, he was enraged, ashamed and embarrassed.

It makes me furious that The Biggest Loser is letting the Blue Team get away with this. Both Neil and Ryan should be immediately eliminated from the game for cheating, and Jez should be brought back into the game.

Just go to nbc.com, click on "Contact Us" and use the drop-down menu to select "The Biggest Loser." Then let them know you don't appreciate people being allowed to blatantly cheat on their reality shows.

Alright. Even though I know this show was filmed months ago and the letters won't do any good, now I feel better.

Planet Fat Cat