So, I know I have already explained this to quite a few people, but I’ll just say it again here so everyone knows what happened.
Apparently some time on Sunday night, something went boom in the server room of my webhost. I believe it was a hard disk failure. As you might imagine, a lot of things break when you lose a hard disk!
Then due to a series of stuff ups, it took a lot longer to get my site operational again than it really should have.
The only excuse I can offer is… I’m not made of money and can’t afford a more reliable host. Sorry.
Hopefully this won’t happen again, but if you want to know what’s up with my site not working in the future? Yeah, it’s probably just my host being unreliable. Fremantle/Ch10 haven’t put a hit out on me or anything, it’s just the vagaries of that wonderful invention, TEH INTERWEBS!
So once again tonight we were treated to an “Instant Elimination” of a contestant through what amounted to a roll of the dice. Kirsten was selected to make this decision through luck of the draw, then she had to select which three would be able to be eliminated and finally had to choose among them which made the most sense to send home.
This, to me, is not what The Biggest Loser is supposed to be about. This sort of thing belongs on shows like Big Brother, where the whole thing is just a game and nobody’s future is riding on the success or failure of their time in the house.
The show is supposed to be about a bunch of regular folks trying to get their lives and their bodies back into shape and come out the other end a healthier, happier person. To unceremoniously dump someone for the sake of adding drama to the show is unnecessary. The show already has enough inbuilt drama with injuries, health scares, challenges, temptations and the regular eliminations.
And more importantly, I thought the public had spoken on the matter of “Instant Eliminations” last season - we don’t like them.
Just to lay this one to bed, I’m posting a couple more images to go along with the earlier one confirming 30 Fatties. You can find them after the break.
Following on from the interview with Sam in the SMH yesterday, two other papers have interviews with their local participants. The Sunshine Coast Daily has John Morrall while the Central Western Daily has Michael Sandford.
Both articles are worth a read for different reasons. John’s reveals a little more about why he applied to be on the show, and like so many others before him it’s due to a recent health scare:
John, who has had heart problems and recently had a bit of a heart scare, said he was motivated by his wife and family to shed the kilos and improve his health.
“The fear on her face is a picture I will carry with me for the rest of my life,” he said.
The article goes on to say that his daughter is expecting a baby soon and he’d like to get his life in order. He was also recently spotted in Maroochydore looking “decidedly slimmer and tanned”. So it sounds like, inside the house or not, John’s on the right track.
The piece on Michael is interesting for another reason. I’m sure we’re all well aware that the show is edited down for time considerations, so while we only saw maybe a half hour in total of the contestants being put through their paces in last night’s show, they were actually exercising for two or more hours.
Many have been assuming that because we didn’t see anybody quit during this session that nobody did give up. Not so, says Michael:
“No matter what [the trainers] threw at me I did it. A lot of things I did would, and did, make a lot of people quit but I never did. I never quit once.”
So it seems like, at least according to him, some folks did give up at some points during the selection process. I expect the producers had good reason not to show this, perhaps saving the “breakdown” for one of the Commando’s sessions, to reinforce his toughness?
At any rate, it’s interesting to sort of peek behind the curtain like this from time to time.
The rest of the story is just about Michael wanting to get his confidence back and perhaps get back into his local first grade footy team, so he can play with his brothers again. With Shannan’s background in footy training, you have to figure that’s a match made in heaven!
There’s a short interview with Sam in today’s Sydney Morning Herald where he talks a little about how he got to be so big and what has spurred him to get on the show this season.
Sam is 19 and weighs 154 kilograms, a problem he puts down to two things: fast food and the university lifestyle.
I assume “university lifestyle” is university speak for “beer”. Maybe one of my university friends could confirm that for me?
The problem with him claiming that as his problem is that at 19 he’s probably only been in university 2 years at most. So either he has really piled it on while at uni, or he was actually a porker during high school as well. It’s doubtful his university lifestyle has been helpful in this regard, but I think he’s avoiding a bit of responsibility there.
Also, confirming an earlier rumour I posted, Sam does in fact do a sport related course at university:
I do a sports management course, which is pretty ironic. I was the only guy my size and I could hear people say it. I hope that after I lose weight and go back to uni I will have a better time.
This makes it much more obvious why he might have been having a hard time at uni. Even if he’s not planning on being an actual athlete, it’s hard to take someone seriously in such a field when they’re obviously so inept at the field itself.
I guess this makes Sam another contestant likely to finish the show and go into the training business themself. Let’s just hope he gets his own weight under control before trying to charge others, unlike some ex-contestants!
Just a short note tonight to let people know I’ve done some updates to the Recap FAQ and the Fatties FAQ because they were both a tad outdated with references to season 2 stuff and whatnot.
I think most everything is ready for tomorrow night now, other than all the missing contestant profiles. When will Channel 10 update them? Who knows! :-)
Bored waiting for the show? Here’s some things to do:
Create your own minicity! Post your minicity URL in the comments to let other people visit. Each new person to visit your city adds to your population.
Not that the old one was a muddy sock with frogs in it, but there’s a lot of interesting things going on this year.
Things I have found so far:
A photo gallery. Some early shots of the trainers kicking some fat booty. If they keep the gallery updated, that’d be just super. So often the official sites update for a week or two and then whoever is in charge just can’t be bothered anymore. I feel your pain, faceless official site webmasters!
There’s also a new video gallery. Nothing very exciting there yet, just the various promo ads you might have already seen somewhere… ;-)
Again, will be interesting if they can keep adding videos to it. This is one area where the official site did alright last year, with regular contestant video diaries and trainer tips appearing fairly regularly for much of the season.
The contestants page is up, but there’s nothing except names and tiny mugshots at present. In what appears to have been a blunder the contestants full names, not just their first names or nicknames, were listed originally. And the image files are still named as such. And the eventual profile pages here on The Recap will have their full names. You can see some of them already, as the existing pages have been updated. And the new pages have been created but they’re quite boring so I haven’t linked them yet.
There’s a couple of other bits and bobs on the site I’ll let you discover for yourself (like a brand new forum, which so far has a distinct lack of moderators who’re cracked in the head) and share in the comments section if you want.
Hopefully the proper profiles will go up on Sunday night once the show has aired. Until then, REMAIN EXCITED. Or sort of ignore it all until things really start, that’s entirely up to you. :-)
Well, there’s still no new official site, though we’ve been promised it will be up tomorrow morning, but thanks to an intrepid soul on the TWoP forums, here’s a couple of highlights from an interview The Age had with Michelle Bridges, trainer of The Biggest Loser’s Red Team.
“They were big shoes to fill, stepping into someone else’s role, and we got five people who lost more weight than the winner of the first series when we had six weeks to go.”
I think what she’s trying to say there is that when herself and Shannan took over in Season 2, when they were still six weeks out from the final weigh-in, they had contestants with a better overall percentage loss than Adro, the winner of the first season, had at the finale.
I could go back and check this, but, well, who cares? They done good!
“One of the biggest lessons I learnt last year was that people - even obese people - can do way more than they think they can. I think everybody underestimates how strong they are. When your back’s against the wall, many people think they’d crumble, whereas in most instances, people come out fighting.”
Yes, in most instances - some quit and go home to continue being big fat crybabies. Or get voted out early and go home to continue being a big fat crybaby. Or…
“I know how hard it is for them. I know how hard it is for me to get myself up and out there and train every day. I’m a girl. I know the pressures of being a female. I know what it’s like to put on even a couple of kilograms and your clothing feels a bit tight and how disappointing that can be, let alone another 20 or 30 kilograms.”
Michelle’s life - SO HARD.
She is right though. Okay, so she hasn’t had to lose massive amounts of weight, but you don’t get muscles like that naturally, it requires a lot of work and constant “maintenance” to keep looking sharp. You don’t really need to do that much to stay in decent shape.
The fatties have a heck of a lot more motivation - they’ll probably die of something related to being fat if they don’t do something about it. You’d think that would make it a bit easier to stay motivated, not harder!
If you would like to read the rest of the really fairly interesting article, you can find it over here on The Age’s website.
As pointed out by Tronno in the comments section for the newest Loser ad, there are in fact a whopping thirty contestants on screen in the latest ad. There’s a picture after the break in this post so you can even go and count for yourself!
This virtually guarantees there will be three teams, one each for Shannan, Michelle and Commando Steve to train. This also makes it very likely that there’ll be a “Jillian on a motorcycle” moment, though it will more likely be “Steve in a Hummer” instead. Ten for each is quite a few but it’s a darn sight better than fiften a piece for Shannan and Michelle.
Thirty is a lot of contestants. A lot. I think it may even be bordering on just too many. How are we going to keep track of them all, even with all the extra hours per week the Australian version of the show runs?
Ought to be interesting. For the picture, read on…
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