Many of you have probably already seen the ads on Channel 10 for this, but for those who have not it has been announced that The Biggest Loser 2009 will be a “Couples” version of the show.
So that they don’t have a procession of annoying husband and wife teams of fatties, they’ve opened it up to a fairly loose interpretation of the word. Brother and sister teams are okay (though I’d imagine they’d frown on brother-sister husband and wife teams) as well Mums and sons, even work mate teams are permitted… As are grandparent/grandchild teams.
I’m a little horrified at the thought of the last one, I don’t mind telling you.
I believe if you go to the official site you can also see the ad with Shannan and Michelle touting the new season applications, but you should really try to catch it on TV for yourself so that you too can experience the hilarity of Shannan mouthing Michelle’s lines.
He still has a ways to go when it comes to presenting for the televisions.
Ajay is apparently overseas at the moment, so she didn’t front up to court today. The judge was unimpressed with her non-appearance and said she had better be in court for when the case resumes on July 8.
The charges apparently relate to a time between 2001 and 2005 when Ajay was receiving a single parent payment when she wasn’t eligible to be receiving any such payment.
Some news sites are reporting that she knew she shouldn’t've been receiving the payments, others are simply leaving it at not being entitled to the payments.
Tune in again on July 8, I suppose? Unless Ajay does a runner!
Majesco Entertainment have partnered with The Biggest Loser’s Jillian Michaels and are set to release a cheap cash-in sure to be excellent “exer-gaming” title for the Nintendo Wii.
For those who have somehow missed the hype, the Nintendo Wii recently got its first “exer-gaming” title in Wii Fit, which despite the higher than usual pricetag has been selling out pretty much everywhere the game has been released.
Wii Fit came bundled with an interesting peripheral, the “Balance Board”. Essentially a high tech set of scales, the Balance Board is capable of measuring shifts in weight with an amazing degree of accuracy. This allows the board to become, in essence, a new kind of controller. Players are able to shift their balance left and right, forwards and backwards to complete various challenges within the game.
And, of course, it can also tell you how much you weigh. If you’re not afraid to find out.
There’s exercises, too, including all the usual squats and lunges and push ups you’d be familiar with. Jillian’s cohort Bob Harper would probably love it - the game also features a fairly decent variety of yoga poses, too.
What sorts of exercises will Jillian’s game have?
They’re not saying, yet. Only that the title is aimed at the casual market, women in particular. So I guess you should expect tips on applying makeup and buttercups will spring up all over the screen every 5 minutes?
What does Jillian think of the latest thing she’s putting her name to?
“I truly think this type of product will be instrumental in revolutionizing the fitness industry and will help combat the childhood obesity epidemic in this country,” Michaels said.
Wow, that’s quite some praise. Quite some very generalised praise that could apply to virtually any fitness product. Hmm.
The game is apparently scheduled for a “Holiday release” which I assume means the Christmas holidays? Americans are a little silly in that regard. What’s wrong with the standard Summer, Winter, Spring or Fall/Autumn? No, it has to be “holiday”…
There’s not much more to the Hollywood Reporter article, but you can still click here if you’d like to read the rest of it.
But the real question is - would you buy it? Forget for a moment whether or not you actually have a Nintendo Wii, plus the required Balance Board. If you had them, would you really buy a fitness game endorsed by Jilliam Michaels?
Various mainstream media sources are reporting today that Ajay Rochester, host of The Biggest Loser, will be facing fraud charges in Sydney next Tuesday.
These charges are not related to The Biggest Loser or her involvement with Channel 10 as they relate to matters which predate her hosting the show.
In all, Ajay is facing a whopping 23 charges, 9 of which relate to “receiving a financial advantage from a Commonwealth entity.”
That entity? Centrelink.
They probably had it coming.
Details are pretty scarce but it seems likely that Ajay probably received some dole money she shouldn’t've, or failed to report some earnings she should have, or any of a number of other petty excuses Centrelink can ruin your life over, even if you did not intentionally do anything wrong.
There may be more details available next week so we can decide who receives the pitchforks and torches treatment.
Well, the final three has been decided. Sam, Kirsten and Alison will face off at the finale.
But who will win? Vote now!
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Want my take on it?
Sam: The youngest of the three, Sam is also the only male of the remaining contestants. While neither factor guarantees a win, the two combined ought to provide a significant advantage to Sam. Excellent support from his family and friends will also contribute to Sam’s chances.
Working against Sam will be the temptation of returning to his “uni lifestyle”, which is what he credits with getting him in such a state to begin with.
Sam also has a question mark over his nutrition. Some contestants have said that Sam is not eating enough, plus Alison and Kirsten have been helping him with his meal preparation, assistance he will no longer receive at home.
My Prediction: First by a narrow margin. Sam won’t want to be the guy that lets a woman win. Coupled with his youth and being the only male left, he will be going home with the title.
Kirsten: In between Sam and Alison in age, Kirsten has earned her reputation as “The Enforcer.” Both Australian and American trainers have been impressed with Kirsten’s work ethic during training. Coupled with weightloss in line with the men in the competition, Kirsten has been considered a major threat for many weeks. With little at home to distract her, Kirsten will have little in the way of getting in the training she needs.
But she’s still female, and females always find it tougher to lose the weight than males. Enforcer or not, Kirsten has a very hard road ahead of her.
My prediction: Second, just behind Sam but ahead of Alison by a comfortable margin. Kirsten’s guts and determination will ensure it is a very close race, but ultimately it is unlikely to be enough.
Alison: The eldest of the group, Alison is the real dark horse in this race. In recent weeks her determination has grown as she has come to realise she might actually be a chance at winning. That determination will stand her in good stead at home. Also, having been looking after Sam’s nutrition, she clearly has her head screwed on right in that regard.
Unfortunately as the eldest in the group she will find it a little tougher, particularly tougher than ex-sportswoman Kirsten. A mother of three, she will also find there’s a lot of distractions in the real world as she returns to her regular life. She could choose to neglect her family obligations in favour of winning, but she is extremely unlikely to do so.
My prediction: Third, a couple of percent behind Kirsten. But be prepared for a surprise as stranger things have happened!
Who do I want to win? Alison. I still like Sam and would love to see him win, but a victory by Alison would be a great come-from-behind story, on top of being the first female Australian Biggest Loser. As a mother of three, she could also use the money more than either Sam or Kirsten.
Who do you think will win, and why? And who do you want to win?
With the season wrapping up I thought it was about time I actually wrote up the explanation for why it’s okay to be mean to the contestants on the show. I actually meant to write this a couple of weeks back but now the Finale has stealthily crept up on me and I’m almost out of time!
If you’ve been around some of the forums, the official one in particular, you are probably aware of the “Friends and Family of…” phenomenon. This is where the Friends and Family of a contestant will log onto a forum and strongly and/or viciously defend their friend from the various attacks forumgoers make.
This was best exemplified this season by the Friends and Family of Sheridan, known on the forums as “FAFOS” due to the alarming rate at which they sprang up.
Friends and Family will usually defend their loved one by telling us all that their beloved Fatty is not actually that mean, stupid, lazy or whatever they’ve been accused of. In real life, they’re actually kind, clever and just generally lovely. The forumgoers are told that they don’t know the real Fatty!
And they’re absolutely right. We don’t know the real person.
But they’ve also inadvertently given us a green light to continue being mean, precisely because we don’t know the real people.
What we see each night on television is just what the producers of the show want us to see. If they want us to think Alison is always the nicest, most caring, most considerate and generally lovely girl on set, then all the footage that supports that gets aired, while all the footage that might show her as a horrible, mean spirited and evil woman is conveniently left out.
So we’re not seeing the real Alison. What we are seeing is more like a caricature. We are seeing Biggest Loser Contestant Alison, a character in this reality soapie. If we were to say that Alison is horrible for not warmly welcoming Bryce and Michelle back, then it is Biggest Loser Contestant Alison we are criticising, not Real Life Alison.
A great example of this phenomenon from last season was Courtney. During the first half to two thirds of the season, Courtney was horrible. He was brattish, insolent, lazy, conniving and probably a lot of other very unkind words. But at some point during the show, either his personality turned the corner or the producers started giving him a kinder edit.
Which Courtney is the real one? Is it the horrible troll we saw for the first half of the season? Or the lovely, funny lad we saw in the last half?
If he’s actually the lovely, funny lad we saw in the last half of the season, does that make terrible people of those who criticised him during the first half?
I say no. We were reacting to what we saw of Courtney at the time.
That is the distinction, for me. Yes, I am mean to some of these people. I expect some of them do take it personally, though I expect my insults are at the low end of the spectrum, going by what I read on other sites! But if I could tell them just one thing, it would be that I am criticising the person I saw portrayed on my TV screen and that I am actually aware that that is not the sum total of their being.
Does that reasoning make sense to anyone but me? I certainly hope it does. :-)
Thanks to everyone who so kindly donated to the new hosting for my site.
I have since shifted from my old webhost over to Dreamhost and while things have still been a little bumpy, they ought to be sorted out by tonight. Fingers crossed!
One up side is that at least Dreamhost tell me when things are broken, something my old host never bothered to do. It’s a lot easier to deal with when you know that they know that things are broken!
Anyway, thankyou one and all.
If you’re in the market for a new webhost, Dreamhost seem pretty good. The servers run surprisingly quickly (when things aren’t broken of course!) and they offer a lot of features you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
As an added bonus, Dreamhost account holders can offer promotional codes, making it even cheaper to get hosted. The regular price is $10.95 a month, $9.95 a month if you pay a year in advance (and cheaper if you pay for more years!) and you can get as much as $50 off your first bill if you use one of my Dreamhost promo codes that are now available via my regular blog.
With the new segment “The Warehouse” proving unpopular with fans and the continued unpopularity of “The Walk” it is clear that the 2009 season of The Biggest Loser Australia will need some new segments with which to replace both sections of the show, if they hope to regain fans who have been switching off in disgust.
And what better person to invent a new segment for the show than someone random idiot on the internet, right?
What this particular idiot has come up with is an idea for a segment imaginatively titled “Cooking with the Fatties”. Obviously Fremantle may want to rename this, perhaps “Porking with the Pudgies” or “Baking with the Blimps” or possibly even something that isn’t offensive at all. You never know what those crazy producers will get up to.
The way “Cooking with the Fatties” would work is that each week the contestants on the show would be tasked with creating a couple of dishes to be prepared “to camera”, with one or more contestants acting in the role of “hosts” of a cooking show.
Ingredients available to the contestants could be selected beforehand, possibly even at “The Warehouse”, however there would be no “bad” option, only a choice between two healthy sets of ingredients. A set list of various herbs and spices would be provided to all contestants, with the selected ingredients comprising of things like steak, chicken breasts, fish, various fruit and vegetables, etc.
Contestants would explain how the food is prepared, from start to finish, along with the reasons for the inclusion of each ingredient in their meals.
During the team stage, this could be set up as a competitive challenge, with the staff nutritionist as the judge. Judging could be based both on the nutritional value of the dish as well as the taste and presentation. Some cross promotion could even come in here, with the host of Ready Steady Cook coming in for the taste and presentation judging, for example. An additional category, perhaps judged by Ajay, could be based on how well each team’s respective “host”/head chef performs their duties.
Rather than rewarding the winning team with game unbalancing rewards, prizes would instead be healthy cookware (supplied by a sponsor), gym equipment (sponsored) or more immediate treats, such as massages or the old “letters from home”.
Once the game moves out of the team stage, the cooking section would also become a solo affair, with each contestant being provided a set of ingredients and having to create one meal out of just those items, plus a set list of “common household ingredients” (ie; flour, butter/substitute, various basic fruit n veg) with the winner being decided based on nutritional content, ingenuity/originality and edibility.
The reasoning behind this segment is twofold:
Firstly, it would allow contestants a chance to express their personalities in a fun and interesting way, instead of only ever seeing them bitching and moaning about the exercise or other elements of the game.
Secondly, it would provide a lot of the information viewers are regularly begging for in regards to the nutritional content of foods and how to prepare healthy food that doesn’t taste like army boots.
Adding this segment to the show, particularly if it were to replace “The Walk”, would get the show closer to the original intent - helping people to lose weight either on the show or at home. There are no capricious elements involved and there can be no question of the result being chosen by the producers - with no game influencing rewards on offer there isn’t any motivation to do so.
What say you, the readers of the Recap? Does this sound like something that would interest you?
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