The Biggest Loser Australia – Mon-Fri 7pm, Ch10
http://thebiggestloser.com.au/

They say love conquers all, but although love played a big part in ending hostilities in the Pacific in 1945, it was really the H-bomb that was the defining factor. Still, love is pretty powerful. And it’s going to need to be if Hamish wants to have any chance of coming back to camp Biggest Loser and being reunited with Michelle.

As week 11 kicked into gear, Shannan had his charges in the gym, readying them for the ultimate assault on Biggest Loser. He told them that the gym isn’t for training, which caused them all to breathe a sigh of relief, but to turn them into warriors, which caused them all to shit themselves. Of course, turning them into warriors is all fine and dandy, but when the ‘war’ is ‘over’, Shannan will be faced with the same problems that the military industrial complex the world over faces when hostilities cease: what to do with all those highly trained killers in your midst? Can’t just return them to society, they’d wreak havoc! But what Shannan does with his band of mercenaries is his problem. Still, the thought of a bloodthirsty Hamish roaming the streets with nothing but time and a nondescript van on his hands chills me to the core.

Meanwhile in the ‘Dojang’, Tiffiny was being tossed around by an elderly gentleman like a discarded tissue. It turned out the gentleman was her father and was thus entitled to assault his own child under the legal principle of ‘lawful correction’. ‘Old man Hall’, an Olympic coach, had the remaining contestants breaking boards made out of a delicate substance found in the finest china and Ryan’s backbone.

With all the violence over, it was time for this week’s weigh-in. Save for Margie, the numbers were terrible. Graham, Alex and Kasey all made meagre losses, but the big shock was that Michelle and Lydia both gained weight and would both be up for elimination. In the elimination room, Graham expressed the difficulty faced by all the remaining contestants when he claimed he was “friends with both of the ladies up the end of the table”. I’m sure Graham meant it in a nice way, but it came out in a creepy way, saying it like he had thought about the two “ladies” at the end of the table quite a bit and in a variety of different situations.

Predictably, Kasey voted for Lydia and Margie voted for Michelle, proving the old adage that old adages die hard, or something. However, it would be the old black team members, Graham and Alex who would end up having the most influence. Graham continued to talk about “the ladies” but in the end decided to keep a lady closer to his age and so voted for Michelle. That left Alex, who, in deciding that he liked or loathed them equally, voted for Lydia on purely strategic grounds. Because Lydia had lost the lowest percentage of weight, she was eliminated. However, her elimination was only temporary as Shannan dragged her over to be with all the other eliminated contestants. After elimination Graham let his true feelings for Lydia be known. He said that “she’s everything I look for in a woman: female, nearby and able to do heavy lifting”.

“The results for today’s weigh-in were a complete slap in the face for the trainers” said Commando, making it the best weigh-in ever. He asked the contestants about those that had been eliminated and Margie thought that “they’d give their left arm to be here”. Clearly Margie puts a higher price on her right arm. Graham noted that his main ambition was now to be Australia’s premier contortionist when he said that it would be “bum down, arse up” for the next week. Then Hayley lead the contestants into the bowels of the camp to reveal to them the bunker, and the existence of the secret cameras. While they sat there, wondering whether those quiet moments alone with their racy thoughts had been caught on camera, apparitions in white hoodies began to appear on screen. Had a nuclear war broken out worldwide resulting in the mutation of thousands of survivors who were now so sensitive to sunlight they had to cover their heads? Was security so lax at the camp that a group of teenagers could just stroll in, graffiti the walls, eat all the food, and look at porn on all the camp’s computers? In fact, it was just the eliminated contestants, back in the camp and cleverly disguised in sneakers, running shorts, rotund bodies, and white hoodies.

When the two groups finally met it was all steely stares and sneers, neither side giving an inch, until the ice was broken when Lisa screamed “FREEDOM” and bared her buttocks Braveheart style. After that it was all smiles, hugs, and awkward conversations about the weather, as well as a little bit of kissing between Hamish and Michelle, as they continued their journey of love and discovery, as in trying to discover who is the more feminine. Hamish cleverly hid a gift for Michelle in his armpit, a butterfly pendant to “symbolise” her “transformation into a leaf eating insect that was suffocated inside a boy’s armpit”.

Once the dust had settled, all the contestants, final five and eliminated together, were taken to the weigh-in room. The final five were told that they would have immunity for the week, with the eliminated contestants told there would be five weigh-in passes up for grabs. First they weighed-in, to remind us how much they had lost. Kasey thought that every time Bek got up on the scales it was like “watching Miss USA”, but in fact she meant it was like watching Miss Ukraine. When the weigh-in was announced, Selena made a shock announcement, saying that she did NOT want to play for a spot in the competition. This statement relied on the premise that she ever WAS playing for a spot in the competition, when clearly she was only there as eye candy, and she was only ever eye candy in the sense that candy rots your teeth, and eye candy etcetera. Selena’s jaw dropping statement left jaws firmly in place and nowhere near the floor. The result was that Selena had to leave. Again. Never to return. Again.

With Selena gone the eliminated contestants faced off in a contest with two weigh-in passes up for grabs. All eight lined up holding a yellow weight over a yellow tape, with the first four to break the tape eliminated. To ease the pain, the tape was made out of old Rick Astely cassettes, and so breaking it was no loss to anybody. Shane broke first, with Ryan losing it second. Brenda was third, and then, his arms tired by too much hugging of Michelle, Hamish relented. Simon, Lisa, Lydia and Bek then raced ten non-existent kilometres on exercise bikes. Lisa and Simon led all the way, with Lisa always just ahead of Simon, until the very end, where Simon just came in front of Lisa, leaving Lisa second and unfulfilled. But as a consolation prize she and Simon both won weigh-in passes.

Back at training, Shannan stressed the importance of giving it their all. Hamish wasn’t all that keen to give it his all as he had fallen foul to the dreaded man flu. Shannan suggested he should give it his all as whenever he or the other trainers have a cold they give it their all. Hamish walked off crying, squeaking that he didn’t “wanna be here”, disgusted with himself that he’d let a cold stop him from giving it his all. Imagine how difficult he is going to find it next week when the producers give him explosive diarrhoea! Shannan convinced Hamish to give it his all, and so Hamish went on to give it his all, which in comparison to others isn’t really that much.

The eliminated contestants then met up with Hayley for another shot at a weigh-in pass. This time was a run on a treadmill, but not just any run on a treadmill. Each contestant started at 4 km/hr and was given statements for which a true or false answer was needed. For each wrong answer the treadmills were increased by 1 km/hr, until the contestant stopped, or died. Ryan was first to concede defeat when his treadmill reached an incredible 7 km/hr after a mind boggling 3 minutes. Brenda hit the dizzying heights of 9 km/hr when she incorrectly suggested that a tomato was a weapon of mass destruction instead of a fruit, but when Hayley asked, “True or false: Hamish is about to fly off the back of the treadmill”, Hamish didn’t even have time to answer before he flew off the back of the treadmill. Brenda and Bek soon fell by the wayside, and when Shane and Lydia were asked whether fried rice had 14 times more fat than steamed rice, Shane couldn’t bring himself to give the appropriate response, which was “Well it depends how much oil was used to fry the rice you freakin moron”, and bowed out rather than answer, giving Lydia the third weigh-in pass.

The final two weigh-in passes were up for grabs in a one kilometre swim, run, paddle, mastermind, iron man/woman challenge. Ryan was an early casualty when he strained a heart muscles walking up to the start line, while Shane put himself under immense pressure when he confessed to being afraid of waves, as well as other hand gestures. Brenda shot to an early lead by answering the three questions correctly and was soon the proud recipient of a weigh-in pass. With Bek and Shane battling it out for second, Ryan finished tying his shoe laces and was ready to start and give it his all.

But where was Hamish while all this was going on? Would he steal second from Bek or Shane, storm back into contention by shedding a mammoth amount at weigh-in, plant a passionate kiss on Michelle’s lips and take the title as Australia’s Biggest Loser of 2012? Or would he, to use Shannan’s words, end up in “sooky la la land”?