'The Biggest Loser': A trip to D.C.
On tonight's Biggest Loser, the remaining contestants head to D.C. for a challenge, a lobbying session, another challenge, and a visit to the White House.
For the first challenge, each person had to get as many people as possible to head down to the Washington Monument to participate in a public workout with Bob and Jillian. Immediately, I'm wondering whether any of you went and what it was like. It looks like it was filmed this summer some time.
Allen managed to wrangle a bunch of firefighters, but in the end Liz gathered more people and won the challenge.
After a quick detour to speak with some congresspeople about childhood obesity and health education, it was time for the main challenge for immunity.
For the first part of the challenge, the teams have to run a mile around Constitution Garden. Liz's advantage is to skip one of the four rounds, but she doesn't get to find out that the other three rounds are first. She decides to participate. The top six finishers, including Liz, have to grab pennies off the Watergate steps and put them in their "bank." The first three people who get pennies to the line in their banks make the third leg. Liz opts to skip this part with her advantage. The last spot comes down to Allen and Rebecca, and it's so close that Allison Sweeney is jumping up and down in excitement. Rebecca takes it, and she's excited, too.
For the third stage, the four remaining contenders have to balance on a narrow ledge while holding a pilates ball over their heads. Daniel is out pretty quickly, and Liz follows fairly quickly, leaving Rebecca and Rudy to compete in the final stage. Rudy struggles for a bit because his feet are so big and the ledge so narrow, but you can't feel that bad for him since his giant hands helped him so much in the second challenge.
For the last stage, they are in front of the White House. Whoever takes 206 steps (representing the total number of contestants who have been on the show) first wins. Rebecca pushes hard and wins immunity, and she's pretty dang psyched.
Allison then tells them they'll all get to go to the White House the next day. They meet with Sam Kass, assistant White House chef. The contestants get to pick some vegetables from the White House garden (which fellow Sun blogger Susan Reimer has written about quite a lot).
Then you know what time it is? Last chance workout, of course! Torture torture, yell yell, grunt grunt, sweat sweat.
Insanely, they actually do the weigh in in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Is it calibrated the same as the scale back at the ranch? Scary. Oh, did I mention that they aren't in teams any more? It's all about individuals now.
Rebecca, with immunity, loses 4 pounds but has no worries about the yellow line. Shay is determined to get under 400; she's at 402. She loses 9 and ends up at 393 and is so excited. Tracey loses 3, and she is not amused. Daniel wants to come back after two bad weigh-ins. He does, losing 11. Allen loses 9, Danny 12, Rudy 9. Liz only loses 3 after hearing she needs to lose 4 to stay above the yellow line. Amanda is the last to weigh in, and with 7 pounds, she's safe. This means Tracey and Liz are in danger.
In their please, Liz is kind of resigned and Tracey kind of apologizes for all her gameplay, so it's unclear what's going to happen. In the end, Tracey gets sent home, which isn't a huge surprise, considering some of the shenanigans of the past few weeks.
In her catchup interview, Tracey looks amazing. She goes back to California to rerun the mile that she collapsed after in episode one, landing in the hospital for days. She does it in 11:22 and in the end footage, it says she's training for a full marathon in December. Nice job!
Comments
I believe they have shown in previous seasons that they actually weigh the contestants in by using a water displacement scale? The scale they get on for the "weigh-in" is just for show.
Not sure about anyone else, but really glad Tracey is gone, couldn't stand her!
Also, do you think talking to the senators really did any good? Health and fitness education in schools has been bad for a long time, and has only gotten worse since I was in school. My wife taught in a school in the suburbs of Salt Lake City a few years ago and their elementary school didn't even have a gym teacher. They had "gym" class once a week and one of the other teachers rotated as the "gym" teacher on those days. What a joke...
SKK: Ahh, that makes more sense. Also makes the gaffe earlier this season when the team's combined weight was on the upper display when they first got on the scale. Whoops! As far as the lobbying, I can't imagine this is going to mean any dramatic changes for the country, but I think some need to happen for sure!
Posted by: Chris in KS | November 4, 2009 9:21 AM
That wasn't lobbying, that was a photo op. If they were truly lobbying they would have each been visiting with their home state legislators and asking them to support a specific bill - like grant money for more PE funding in schools.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they got to do this photo op and that there were 2 senators willing to participate, but I doubt any real legislation came out of it.
Also, I thought it was funny Bob put a tie on to visit the white house but then had his shirt untucked the whole time.
Lastly, couldn't they have at least let them sit at a table somewhere in the White House to eat their salad. It seemed wierd to me that they were all crammed in the kitchen and didn't really meet anyone from the administration except the two Chefs.
Posted by: etucker | November 5, 2009 10:48 AM
If The Biggest Loser was on Fox, they would have never even gotten into the garden, let alone the kitchen...
Posted by: Chris in KS | November 5, 2009 2:12 PM