Archive for the ‘Discussion’ Category

Just to let everyone know, if you weren’t already aware, The Biggest Loser Australia’s Official Site ought to be updated today with all the new season stuff. Hopefully profiles of all the contestants, maybe easily accessible versions of each of the ads, maybe some other videos, who knows?

There’s no set time for it to go live, but I’d expect it to be some time in the morning rather than the afternoon, assuming nothing breaks.

Once it does, have a poke around and see what you can find! If you find something interesting, drop a comment in the slot below to let everyone know.

The address is www.thebiggestloser.com.au

[Update: It’s been put off until tomorrow. Booo!]

[Update #2: Friday? Maybe?]

Oh god, so many ads! So many versions!

There’s bits of new footage in this one, mixed with some stuff you’ll’ve seen. Plus there’s Bob and Jillian!

Probably the most interesting part in there is… the giant mud pit! I’m sure it’ll be a massive challenge for the fatties but I can’t get over the 5 year old response of, “WEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

There’s probably also a “pigs in mud” joke in there somewhere, but I’m not going near that… :-)

With many thanks to Peter, for letting me know it existed, and sodo, for telling me where to find it, comes this extended sneak peek into Season 3 of The Biggest Loser Australia, from the promotional DVD that came with today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

This clip is a full five minutes long, with much more footage, including more fleshed out (pardon the pun) footage of certain contestants.

Because of the length, I’m going to put my commentary behind the very first cut of the new season. Continue on if you want to see the clip and read my commentary!

Read the rest of this entry »

The eagle eyed might have spotted this already, but I’ve just gone ahead and started a couple of Loser profiles for Season 3. Just the people for whom we’ve seen ads so far, as I don’t know any of the other people’s names just yet!

You can check them out by clicking on them over on the sidebar to the right, or by clicking their names here: Carrianne, Dianne, Nicola, Nicole, Sam, Sean, Steven.

These are very, very rough at this stage, because the information is sourced from the ads. The new official site ought to go up on the 29th of January. That’s this Tuesday.

If the Channel 10 webmonkeys can stick to the schedule, that ought to mean some more contestant profile information will be available then and I’ll do my best to pinch it all and add it to the pages here ASAP. :-)

For those who haven’t been visiting the official forums yet, they’re going away on the 29th as well. If you want to get in early you can sign up via the Australian Idol forums and that registration will carry over to the new Biggest Loser site.

In other Biggest Loser Recap site news, I’ve also shuffled the Season 2 contestants list off onto a seperate page to tidy things up a bit.

The “receive notification of comments via email” functionality has gone away, unfortunately. My webhost is having email issues and it was always a bit clunky anyway.

If you desperately want to know when new comments are made on the site, try the Comments RSS Feed. It ought to work much better!

If you’ve never used RSS before, or are looking for a new RSS reader, I recommend Google Reader. It’s easy to use, it’s web based so it works wherever there’s a series of tubes, and it has some funky advanced features like the ability to share things with friends.

Something most of you probably won’t notice (hopefully) is the improved spam protection. If for some reason your comment is going to be held for potentially being spammy, you’ll get an extra confirmation page where you’ll need to enter two words from a CAPTCHA image. Most of you will probably never see it, it should really only trigger if you use certain words (ie; viagra and the like) or you include too many URLs. Even if you do either of those things, the confirmation box ought to let you post your comment. I hope. Holler if it doesn’t!

Oh and the “Contact Mythor” page is gone, but that’s temporary until I find a system that will work without a working email system. No mean feat. If you need to email me I can be reached by sending an email to recap and then adding the at symbol thingy and then mythor.net after that. I think that’s probably obscure enough to avoid the spambots? :-)

And you’ve probably noticed the new theme? And the big shiny Digg Button on every post? Please Digg me when the season gets going. ;-)

I’ll update the FAQ tomorrow and post a link to it, as well as linking it from the top navigation. And don’t worry, the boring header will be less boring once there’s some contestant pictures to flesh out the blackness. But I won’t be doing the red-out effect from S2, because there’s 28 fatties and it was painful enough with only half that!

If anyone would like to design a background for me, the dimensions are 961×126.

I think that about covers it. If you have any questions, pile on in to the comments section!

In a very length press release found on the ebroadcast site, the weekly schedule for season 3 has been laid out in some detail.

If you’d like to read the whole thing, you can click here, or I can save you the trouble and point you to the only really noteworthy section.

Tuesday: The Warehouse

The Warehouse is one of the new elements to this series. Each week the contestants are faced with two different food choices in two covered crates in an old shipping warehouse. This week’s Biggest Loser is able to have first choice over the two food options. This choice will dictate the majority of what each team will eat for the rest of the week. It is a decision that should not to be taken lightly.

This is more than a little troubling, to be honest. It’s all very well to have them camping out on the lawn for the night, but messing around with their diet – particularly every week – is going to cause serious issues. The fatties have their diets planned out specifically for them and the exercise routines their trainers are putting them through and their specific dietary requirements and so on.

If we’re just talking about a choice between chicken and fish for their weekly meat quota, that’s okay. But if it’s a choice between fresh meat and vegetables and takeaway meals, for example, that’s going to be a problem.

Thursday: The Walk

The Walk is a fantastic twist in the game and the outcome of it can turn the game on its head. The winner of Immunity at the Temptation will be presented with four vessels, each containing a stone with an outcome. Some will be good for them, some could be bad. Examples include; “Eliminate a Red Team member”, “You are up for elimination”, “Add 10kg to the Blue Team”. The contestant then heads back to the group to announce the news. The choice they make could not only affect the fate of the game, but more importantly, the fate of their opposing team. They could have the power to make a drastic change to the outcome of the competition.

The return of The Walk is why I am so pessimistic regarding the Warehouse. The audience was in an uproar over The Walk multiple times last season and it is widely cited as one of the most reviled features of the show… and yet the producers have brought it back? And brought it back apparently without removing the problem people had with it – mostly the instant elimination idea.

I know it’s a TV show and they need to inject some drama, but I think the producers occasionally forget that they’re messing with people’s lives when they do this. The people on the show know they could get turfed at some point, so they do the best they can and hope that’s enough to keep their team safe. But when you introduce completely abitrary and unfair means of elimination to the mix, it sort of invalidates the hard work people put in from week to week.

The only other thing really noteworthy in the press release is the claim that there’ll be 15 contestants. We’ve already seen 28 walking up the road and unless they’re going to have 3 teams of 5 each and do god knows what with the remaining 13, I’d say that’s a mistake.

Still, the weekly schedule makes for a nice introduction to the game for newcomers, so if you’ve never watched the show before, give it a read.