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

They say that all good things come to those that wait so presumably that means that a bloke who locks himself in his house, never goes out and sits around doing nothing but waiting will eventually win the lotto, receive a proposal of marriage from seven of the eight most recent Playboy bunnies and be awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his services to this country. But that’s only if he doesn’t starve to death first, which he obviously will. And that goes to prove the fallacy of believing in catchphrases, sayings and selected quotes from the bible and/or your religious text of choice. Most of it is bullshit. You want something, go and get it.

Last week, Luke wanted alcohol so he went and got it. This week, the red and black teams wanted Hamish gone and lo and behold were able to eliminate him, with a little help from Selena. They started by making him do without Shannan for the rest of the week, a ‘reward’ the black team picked up for winning the “pointless filling of the basket or rocks to get you ready for your rock star like careers after Biggest Loser” challenge. This was in spite of the fact that Hamish had helped the black team win, and in spite of the fact that Graham was of the opinion that Hamish would struggle without his trainer. Nothing like playing the game with honour hey guys?

Next, at weigh-in, Lydia, when asked by Shannan, denied point blank there was alliance, saying that instead there was a “a close association, formed to advance common interests or causes”. Then, when Hamish and the black team fell below the yellow line, Graham nominated himself to go up. This was despite the fact that the black team had consistently put up the person in their team who had lost the least percentage of weight. However, Graham knew that if they put up Alex, and it was a tied vote in elimination, Hamish would stay and Alex would go, whereas if Graham went to elimination and it was a tie, Hamish would go.

However, the trump card for the black and red team came at elimination and from a surprising source. While it was obvious that Margie and Lydia would always vote for Hamish, Lisa was the weak link in the red team and her maternal instincts may have overridden any team bonds. Hamish is, after all, barely a man, and is more like a boy inside a half man/half woman’s body. So all white needed to do, to save Hamish for Michelle, was vote for Graham and let Lisa’s conscience take over.

Alas for the burgeoning romance between Hamish and Michelle, it wasn’t to be. When Selena’s turn came to vote, she uttered the never before heard on Biggest Loser phrase “I’m voting with my head not my heart”, before explaining the reasons for her vote. Surprisingly the reasons she chose one over the other was that she thought one needed to be there more than the other, which, technically, is a vote from the heart according to the Biggest Loser Voting Manual (4th edition). She also chose to keep the one in there with the capacity to lose more weight, and therefore pose a greater threat, which is also an indication she was not voting with her head. So in conclusions, Selena is either a liar or an idiot. If anyone’s running a book, my money’s on ‘idiot’.

Selena’s low number of brain cells proved no consolation for Michelle, who was losing her soul mate, her best friend, and her guarantee of a story in New Idea. Tears ensued and the star crossed lovers hugged awkwardly. Hamish expressed his belief that, outside the house, he and Michelle would “flourish as people”, confusing humans for flowers.

With Hamish gone, Shannan had no one left to train so he decided to leave also. He returned to his two loves: helping people lose weight and gain fitness for a not insubstantial fee, and collecting discarded tissues from various exotic locations around the world. He only needs one tissue from the arctic to complete the set. However, it is an area known for high handkerchief use, so he has his work cut out for him.

Back at camp, the red, white and black teams were combined and thoroughly mixed, before centrifugal force was used to separate them into two: old dogs and young pups. Margie, though quite clearly an old dog, was placed with the young pups to even up the teams and provide a bit of moral fibre for Michelle, Kasey and Selena to feast upon. The first training session for the young pups provided an example of Margie’s benefit to the group. She pushed Selena so hard to the point that Selena finally broke and ran from the training area in tears as well as in pants. Tiff gave chase, explaining that Margie was doing it out of love. Not the love between two adults, or the love between a parent and child, and not even the love between an owner and their pet, but more like the love between a tree and a particularly lazy and selfish blade of grass.

Once Selena and Margie had patched up their relationship, the contestants were assembled before Hayley for this week’s edition of the contest. The first round involved a battle of wits, or rather a battle of halfwits, as Kasey and Lisa had to place a number of food items in order of calorie content. Surprisingly a Koala was the lowest calorie food, so from now on most diets will include a recommendation that the dieter feast on native marsupials. Unsurprisingly, Lisa won.

Round two involved doing 100 sit ups in as quick a time as possible. Lydia went first for the old dogs and managed her 100 sit ups in 2 minutes and 43 seconds. Michelle went next for the young pups, and, as inspiration, placed a photo of Hamish’s head on Margie’s face, so that every time she did a sit up she would think she was seeing Hamish, as Hamish and Margie’s body shapes are very similar. However, the tactic backfired when Michelle tried to grope Margie’s boobs and discovered there were only two, thus shattering the illusion. So once again, the old dogs were victorious.

With the old dogs winning the contest, they were given the right to go on the ‘walk’, with Simon elected to be the representative. He chose a ‘surprise’ and was disappointed to find it wasn’t a young Thai woman there to give him a ‘massage’. Instead the old dogs needed to choose someone from their team to learn ‘the secret’. Lydia was given the honour and she met up with Hayley who revealed to her what ‘the secret’ was. Canny viewers may have suspected that ‘the secret’ was that Hayley is a man, but instead the bunker in all its sneaky secret hidden camera work was revealed. Lydia was told she’d have unfettered access to the bunker, and the only proviso was that she could not mention the existence of the bunker to anyone, lest she face dire consequences.

As Lydia thought of ways that the secret could be used to her advantage, the teams were asked to cook a three course meal each for their trainers, with the condition that it had to be less than 1000 calories in total, and had to taste good. I’m pretty sure there are laws of physics that make that impossible, but they gave it a red hot go. Lydia decided she would lead the old dogs, cryptically telling the others that she “knows all their secrets so you better do what I say”. Michelle said she had experience feeling like working in hospitality so she should lead the young pups. But not withstanding her years of experience feeling liking wanting to do something, Michelle couldn’t lead her team to victory and the old dogs prevailed.

To salve the wounds of defeat, Michelle received a letter from Hamish. Hamish declared his love for Michelle in the letter, in block capitals, and called her his “starshine”, which may have been a crack about her weight or intelligence level considering how dense and heavy stars are. He continued by saying that “butterflies that fill my stomach suddenly burst into an overwhelming sensation of what I believe to be love.” Yet the sensation that Hamish described as butterflies bursting was in fact butterflies vomiting as they heard what he had wrote to Michelle.

The contestants then moved on to this week’s temptation. Instead of the now expected food based temptation, this week it was based on erotica, with the contestants having to charm unsuspecting German tourists and who had been told they were going to a David Hasselhoff concert. Michelle tried the tactic of common interest with some of the guests, while Kasey decided to talk tattoos, the body art not the Herve Vilachez character from Fantasy Island. Selena played it shy, while Simon and Lisa put aside their relationship for the good of the team. Graham struggled early, deciding to use sweat as a form of communication, but when that didn’t work, suggested to a young lady that her “clothes look nice on her”, but unfortunately added “and so would I” before anyone could stop him. This fatal error by Graham proved fatal and handed the young pups the win, with Michelle being considered the most charming of all and gaining immunity.

With young pups winning dinner out, Michelle is given a pleasant surprise when none other than the Hamburgler himself, Hamish, was waiting for her at the restaurant. After a brief kiss and cuddle, Michelle explained to Hamish how hard it had been without him at the camp. Hamish confessed that it had also been hard for him: hard when he wakes up in the morning, hard when he goes to work, and particularly hard when he goes to bed. “In fact”, he said, “it’s hard right now”.

The week finished with the old dogs and the young pups facing each other in an inter-generational, cross-beam, pool-thingy, thingy, with the teams having to grab items from their era and bring them across a balance beam stretched over a pool full of water, sharks and piranha, minus the sharks and the piranha of course. The young pups seemed to have it in the bag but Margie, who as we discovered before, is ostensibly an old dog, sabotaged her adopted team and the old dogs were able to score another win. The prize for winning was the right to select someone from the other team to immediately be weighed rather than a couple of days at the normal weigh-in, thus depriving that one person of the benefit of last chance training.

When we left them, the old dogs had yet to choose a young pup for immediate weighing. Whoever they choose, one thing is for sure: all Margie’s backstabbing and cheating is sure to come back to haunt her, like so many chickens who have gone on a reality TV show to lose weight, meet other single chickens, build a better life, and have now come home to roost.