Biggest Loser starts Tues

Biggest Loser: Transformed started on Tues at 7.30pm on Ten.
This is the first series in a while without Michelle Bridges and Commando.
Shannan will be joined by a trainer called Libby, who was cast because she has the mandatory high pony tail.


The premiere goes for 90 minutes but the following day’s show is only 75 mins. There’s also a Thurs show, then on Sunday it takes the 7pm timeslot.


AND SO IT BEGINS
We start Survivor style, with people taking a boat journey while the the music crescendos, interspersed with soundbites about their “jurney”.
Finally they arrive at Biggest Loser HQ and it’s a funky warehouse instead of the usual old house. There are mannequins dressed in clothing to representing their goals.

Nikki, 25, has a “dream bikini”. She lives in Queensland but never swims at the beach with her family.
Brett is an ex-pro boxer turned stonemason. You can tell he will lose the weight quickly because he still looks quite muscular and will be used to training.
The contestants are allowed to mingle and chat.
We meet the young flight instructor who was on the ads and Jeanie, who is 60 and an ambo who enjoys endurance horse rising.
The contestants are then surprised with supportive videos from their families – the sort of thing that would normally be saved for midway through the season to get the tears flowing.
And here comes the gorgeous Fiona – ah, remember when she was in the black leggings and blue BL tank top, sweating away with the rest of them … She’s a relatable choice for host but I still kinda miss poor Hayley Lewis and her sincerity.
Fi explains things are a bit different this year: the person who loses the most weight gets $50,000. Hmm – is that less than in previous years. The final six contestants will enter the “transformation week”, where they get to return home for a week. The Australian public will then decide who has transformed the most, and vote for who gets the $100,000 grand prize.

THE TRAINERS


Libby is one of those Energizer bunny types who likes to talk loudly and very quickly. Hopefully she will settle down a bit once she’s shot a few episodes. Shannan reminds us he’s still super passionate after 11 years filming the show. Anna, 40, an apprentice butcher (now, that’s interesting – hope we get to here about that) is beside herself to be in his presence.
There’s a lot of talk about how it’s not just about being skinnyy. but transforming your mind also.
They are split into two teams of eight and, with Mich and her concubine Commando gone, the red is ditched and we have orange. First up is weepy Nikki, who wants the bikini bod. She weighs 78.1kg which would make her one of the lightest contestants in the show’s history. She’s not very tall though, I guess. Instead of the usual humiliating group weigh-in, producers have taken a photo of the contestants in their black skimpies which they can then Photoshop to show them looking skinny. Guess this means she’s not the first boot or they wouldn’t spend so much tie on her. Clapping a photoshopped image of someone who’s been made skinny is a bit freaky, though.
Shannan – who we know is all about boxing – gets the ex-boxer so they can bond in the ring. He’s 116.8, so again much lighter than most of the blokes from previous shows.
Here comes Steph from the ad, the school teacher who doesn’t want to get married until she’s skinny.
Butcher Anna is picked by Libby and tries to hide her crushing disappointment that Shannan is not her trainer, but it’s all just a psych out. It IS Shannan and she’s stoked. But he quickly makes her cry but getting her to talk about being a foster mum and gaining weight after seven failed rounds of IVF. Ok, Anna has to win this, right?
But there are more people yet to be photoshopped and things are lagging a bit here.
One of the guys has an insulin pump for his Type 1 diabetes, but we don’t get to hear anything about him, which is disappointing.
The excavator operator who wants to be a police officer is the heaviest person on the show, at 147kg. Given they’ve had blokes around the 250kg mark before, he’s a lightweight.

TRAINING BEGINS
Blue team heads to a boxing gym. Poor Matty treats the punching bag pretty much as I would – afraid it might bite, he is giving it fairy taps. Come on, Matty – you can do it!
Orange team’s gym is more like a traditional set-up with a few more pretty lights. Libby has toned it down a notch and says her philosophy is about people training so they can live better lives, not living to train. You get the feeling Mich Bridges is the exact opposite.
Poor diabetes pump guy – who actually doesn’t look that heavy but he is a very tall man, so carries it well – is struggling but pulls through in the end. No-one collapses or throws up which is a change from past seasons, although the series is young.

FIRST CHALLENGE
As the sun rises it’s off to the edge of Sydney Harbour for a tandem kayak that’s 3.5km long. Everyone pretends to be pumped but Matt is the voice of everyone watching at home, saying he’s “shitscared” of sharks. Crying bikini girl cries some more because she is also scared of sharks. She is going to lose at least a kilo through dehydration. Steph who can’t buy a wedding dress has a migraine and sits out the challenge, so one of the orange dudes who has kayaking experience goes solo.


Orange team gets off to a good start in the swim leg, but then everyone has to do one of those exhausting sand digs for their other paddles. If this was Survivor they’d be calling in the medevac chopper.
Quite a few contestants have been kayaking before but a couple of them are spectacularly unco (as I would be). One team capsizes into the freezing Harbour. Getting back in the boat is a struggle but they have some surf lifesaver types to lend a hand and Libby to yell encouragement from her dry vantage point on a speedboat.
The water is looking pretty choppy and poor Matty capsizes, then freaks out and gets caught in his own head. Finally he gets back in the boat. I really, really hope Matty is not the first boot, because it’s not looking good at the moment.
Insulin pump guy (whose name is apparently Jake but I’m just going to call him Lost Baldwin brother because he looks a bit like Alec with young Stephen’s hair) is struggling because he hurt his should in the first-leg swim and his partner, Weepy Bikini Girl toughens up to get him back on track.

Lost Baldwin Brother

Lost Baldwin Brother


And then someone spots a shark. Eek! Hopefully Lost Baldwin Borther’s loud moans scared it off.


No one on the crew seems worried, though, because this is Straya. Orange team topples again and then hapless Matty follows suit.
One orange team comes first and the blue team with the 60-year-old woman comes second. Last place Orangers (Sophia and Josh) fall out for a third time. Poor buggers. They’ve dropped out of sight, along with Matty and Brett.
With the beach in sight, Matty capsizes again, despite Shannan spouting inspirational soundbites at them. Why doesn’t Shannan just go with: “There’s a shark behind you!” That would work on me.
This time the safety crew isn’t allowed to help them back in the boat. After multiple capsizes Sophia makes it to land by by paddling with her feet sticking out the side of the boat. So orange team wins. Finally his boxer partner hauls Matty back in the boat and Shannan is so excited he yells “see what youse can do!”.
By winning, orange gets a “power bracelet” which makes a team member immune at the weigh in. So, pretty much the equivalent of a Survivor individual immunity necklace. The teams decides to give it to Weepy Bikini Girl for conquering her fear of sharks.


Seems a hasty decision – they should have given it to the girl with the migraine as she won’t have been able to train.

TOMORROW NIGHT
We get some recipes and learn nutrition stuff. Cool – glad they brought back the recipe bits. Don’t know if I’ll watch every night but that wasn’t too bad.
AND ANOTHER THING
TV blurb for tomorrow says one contestant leaves after only one day, so there must be a medical issue. And, on Facebook one person says they met Shannan, who told them that the voteout format has been ditched, and instead the people with the three smallest weight losses have to do battle in some kind of challenge. I hope this is true.



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57 Comments

  1. Commando and Michelle finally figured out it was more fun working out in the bedroom than the gym. See yaz. Shannon Noll got drunk and chucked out of a strip club here and arrested. The show had to “transform” somehow.

  2. I read that Bob from The Biggest Loser US had a major heart attack in New York not so long ago. Maybe all that strenuous weight lifting is not all that good for you.
    Speedy recovery Bob.

    Will be interesting to watch the revamped show. My brother remarked on the ads when the overweight pilot was on that the small plane will need a bigger engine. I laughed – bad me!

  3. Fans (including me) have been asking for years, for TBL to be more real, more relatable to real life, to show more realistic contestants. Now I’m scared that I might get what I asked for.

    I find myself hoping that there is still a lot of interesting challenges and even (heaven forbid) some personality clashes to keep it worth watching.

  4. Nicky, bikini girl cried in the first two opening minutes. She annoys me already.

    Am liking Jenny , the 60 year old paramedic.
    The fat bride is annoying , she did the fan cry !

  5. Something about this show makes me hungry.
    I have a glass of wine and peanuts at hand. It’s not the best combo but I will persevere.
    It’s my journey.

  6. Recap is up. They dragged out the intro but wasn’t too bad. I like it better when it’s just the weigh ins. They should just make the BL contestants eat MKR food if they want to lose weight.

  7. I enjoyed the show, with a few jarring bits. The first part was too slow, but it was great the way the contestants showed each other their items. We saw some instant personalities coming through with those who will be the most supportive.

    The photoshopping was weird – the bodies looked wrong and the heads on top didn’t match. They spent so long on bikini Nikki, but they skimmed through others to make up for it. She obviously has some serious emotional issues, to be so hung up about what is quite a normal sized body. But I was impressed with her when she had Jake whimpering in the kayak with her, she pulled them through. She will think twice in future about choosing a partner based on their bravado.

    I like the change in prizes. But sad to see that the overemphasis on training seems to be continuing, including pushing people to the point where they will hate training, and noone at home will ever want to copy that.

    I don’t mind Libby – once she quietens a little I think I will like her attitude. Fiona F is still very grating and wooden. When she appeared, all the fun of the contestants mingling was destroyed by her script-reading.

    Overall, a decent start. Let’s see what happens.

    • The over emphasis on training makes it inevitable for some to have injuries, regardless of how inspired with dreams of transformation these Losers are.

      Could be an encore today at !.00… “To Be Advi$ed” ha ha.

  8. Fiona must have been studying old tapes of Ajay speaking to adults in a kindergarten teacher style. If she’s not careful, she’ll “transform” into Ajay.

    Cue the kitsch heavy metal muzak for “hero” $hannan.

    WTF is wrong with being on the couch? Jam it, Libby.

  9. Fiona is not a natural presenter, Hayley Lewis was much better.
    Looks like they will train these contestants til they chuck their guts up.

  10. EP 2: Lost Baldwin Brother Jake wound up in hospital on the first night because his insulin levels were out of whack. But the next day he’s back going full tilt. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to be “proving” himself. Better have that ambulance on standby. I like the Nanna on the blue team beating the pro boxer in the wall squat. It’s good trainer Libby is setting relevant goals for the contestants, like getting the wannabe cop to do the beep test, which would be a part of the police entry process. And tonight we have our first gym-related spew – it’s newish Dad Simon who started putting in weeks get when his son was born prematurely.

  11. Tobie taught them how to use a spiraliser and to make paled cauliflower bread. The teams are told to make a healthy version of fried chicken, chips and coleslaw. I’m guessing airfryer or oven-baked chook, sweet potato baked chips and a vinaigrette or yoghurt slaw

  12. Blue team wins the cooking challenge because orange used a smudge more oil.
    TOMORROW NIGHT: The psych visits and they do a weightlifting endurance challenge.

  13. Too funny Lillypetal – I thought portion control myself. But then I ‘m not overweight and if I gain a few pounds I try to lose them before it spirals out of control.
    Didn’t recognise Toby at all, has he been unwell?

    • It’s the hair. Remember back in the days of perms? When I got my first perm, I was unrecognisable.
      I put on weight when I get out of routine. I lived in FNQ for 2 years, and then 10 kg later ….
      So I am back home and being disciplined. And it’s slow to come off but no matter what anyone says, it is portion control. And perseverance.

  14. Enjoyed your recap. By the end of this season I want to see Lost Baldwin Brother transformed into …… Trump. Bit of hair dye and a squint should do it.

    I also heard that the ratings were disastrous. Possibly others did as I did and migrated to MAFS after IAC finished. I have been flicking between the two since MAFS started getting juicier.

    http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/tv-ratings/channel-10-backs-the-biggest-loser-transformed-despite-dismal-ratings-for-launch-episode/news-story/6d760899a88d29f40641f965f371e5a6

    “CHANNEL 10 says it won’t give up yet on The Biggest Loser: Transformed despite its disastrous launch last night.

    The reboot of Ten’s weight loss format got off to a flabby start with a shocking 450,000 viewers across the five capital cities.

    TBL: Transformed was smashed by Nine’s Married at First Sight (1.148 million viewers) with Seven’s My Kitchen Rules, which saw the elimination of Caitie Barrow and Demi Kotsoris, lifting its game to pull an audience of 1.037 million.”

  15. They should show how
    Lost Baldwin Brother manage his diabetes while exercising. He needs to check his glucose level constantly and to eat after exercising.

    • It doesn’t even sound like real crying. Are there any real tears? Or is this an excuse not to do excercise.

  16. What an intersting view from the others seeing Steph.

    Because they are all overweight they see people differently. Maybe just trying to tell themselves that they are not that overweight because they saw Steph as a slimmer person

  17. Gee, they are so nice to each other. They volunteered themselves up for elimination but the others think he or she should be there.

    • My comment was with some sarcasm. If they want to leave, why dont they vote for themselves. Maybe it is not allowed.

      They voted for Jenny is because they think she will be a liability in challenges.

      They are not all sugar and spices. $$$$ will come into play.

      The winner should be picked from all contestants even if they have been eliminated. If they can have the highest percentage weight loss or biggest transformation, she or he deserves to win

  18. Checked out the Jofre website. No thank you to their fitness website. Proves you don’t need a lot of qualifications to classify yourself as a ‘fitness expert’.
    If you are serious about weight loss, consult your regular family GP who has a full history of your health records, seek the help of a qualified dietician , walk everyday for at least 20 minutes- ta da ,
    weight loss will follow.

    I liked Jenny the paramedic. Sorry to see her eliminated. Can’t really relate to a lot of the other people in the house apart from Jake.
    Steph has body dysmorphia and please stop with the bloody crying!
    It’s weight loss no one died.

    • One of them called Jenny an “aspiration” Then she was booted out. A lot of fake people among this lot. Jenny was patronised for her age. Shannan promised not to bully Matt but the verbal abuse and intimidation has started already. So much for the psychology.

      Dumbarses to vote a Paramedic out.

      This significance and symbolism of some whales arriving during the elimination challenge wasn’t lost on me. A master stroke from the producers.

      I fink I’ll shtruggle wif the Jofre bruvvers website, Lola.

      • If that was a real shark, they will all be picked up from the water. Producers would not be so calm to continue to film.

  19. The guy in the blue team that had Jenny’s name as NANNA . Well that was truely patronising and ageist.
    Hoping they have a secret trainer and place for Jenny. Stupid Channel 10 producers don’t know what they have lost in getting Jenny eliminated. A hard working responsible woman who works as a paramedic and who lost her husband recently.
    Fail Ch 10. Fail !

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