Biggest Loser: Long and Winding Road

Oh, my…can you see the light at the end of the tunnel and know that the end is near and it’s not a SUBWAY with EXTRA lighting on it heading our way?  After 12 grueling weeks of watching other people work their asses off to lose weight, I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.  I can’t imagine how I would feel if I actually did, you know, anything the contestants themselves had to do.  And tonight is no exception.  As tradition with Biggest Loser, the final four compete in a 26.2 mile marathon.  I don’t drive that far without getting tired.  But, we’re getting waaaay ahead of ourselves and that just won’t do.

So, let’s start where we always do—at the end of last week.  Alison congratulates them on making the final four and tells them they are going home.  She tells Frado since he won the last weigh in with the highest percentage of weight they’re sending Curtis Stone home with him to help teach him and his family to cook healthy, delicious meals.  Nice…Everyone also gets special DVD’s Alison is handing out to take with them.

Enjoy “Mad Max Beyond Thunderbone”

The four give a big ol’ group hug and they’re off.  Anyone else nervous/excited as hell about Ada’s homecoming more than any of the others?  Then they show us all of the players heading home and they start jumping back and forth from one player to another.  We’ll try and make some sense of it all.  Wheezy is heading to Lawrence, MA; Ada to Gilroy, CA, Frado to Staten Island and Patrick to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where they apparently don’t have cars or limousines.

Huck kinda-Thin

Which is a much safer boat ride than one of his previous rides.

Picture courtesy of the Mississippi Coast Guard,  just before the rescue

Frado shows up at his house and his job as a futures commodity trader must have treated him well, because Frado looks pretty well off.  He greets everyone in his back yard by the pool and I am now forever grateful none of the flashback shots (you know the ones—where the players are in black and weight and eating huge amounts of awesome junk food?) included Frado by the pool in a Speedo.  In his absence, his wife joined the local tribe.

I am now “Cooks With EVOO”

Frado tells his group he is off his meds and luckily, not in a bi-polar way and his next priority is to be the Biggest Loser.

Ada is in some restaurant and both parents, along with her friends are there to greet her.  But more on that later.  Patrick sees his wife (wearing a full shirt!) and his adorable kids and the rest of his family and friends.  Wheezy is being greeted by her Mom who is acting like she didn’t just see her last week.

*sob* It’s been *sob* seven *sob* days

Back to Ada.  Her Mom is crying and saying things like, “It’s almost like I have a new daughter.”  Her Dad looks strict, but is acting reservedly happy.  Wheezy is busy telling her Mom she’s lost 52lbs and that there was a lot of pain inside her.  What?  Didn’t Dr. Jill get to the root of Wheezy’s pain, whatever it is?  We’ll never know what said pain is as she doesn’t elaborate.  Patrick is telling everyone he’s lost 121lbs and his Mom pipes up to say there is nothing better than seeing your child in the arms of health.

What—his arms aren’t good enough?

Back to Frado and his mansion.  He is really cute with his wife and kids and looks so much better with his goatee.  He whips out his DVD and there is Jillian herself.  I didn’t know she did porn.  KIDDING!  There is a lot about his journey, etc. and then there’s this bit where fat Frado is talking to healthy Frado and giving him advice.  “Don’t come back to this.”  “You’re healthy now.”  “You can do this”.

“You’ll go blind if you keep doing that”.

Wheezy’s video shows a fat version that quite honestly, doesn’t look that different than how she looks now.  Still 52lbs is a lot of weight to lose—she just has more to go than everyone else.  Her video featured the one time she lost more than one pound and the bunch of times she passed out.  Unfortunately, the video did not feature the shopping trip to Victoria’s Secret for that awesome push up bra.

Dang girl, reign those boys in

And now it is on to Ada.  She tells her parents when she was 2 or 3, her brother drowned in a kiddie pool and she always felt they held her responsible.  Her Mom is crying and her Dad remains stoic.  Her Mom seems sweet enough, but she had to know how her a-hole husband was treating their daughter while she was growing up so I cut her absolutely no slack.  Her Dad lives up to his reputation by saying providing for her is enough.  Basically, he doesn’t need to show any other kind of love/affection.  You know what else you don’t need to do, jerkwad?  Make your little girl feel guilty about a tragedy that had nothing to do with her.  Her whole life.  They watch the video and hug it out, but Ada needs to get the hell out of there.  Sidenote:  Doesn’t Ada as a little girl look exactly like Juanita on Desperate Housewives?

Cutie

Go f**k yourself

Ah, family!  Let’s move back to Patrick’s where we don’t want to stab people in their eye sockets.  Patrick reminds us he met his wife and then got comfortable.  He then lost his job and now his wife can’t afford sleeves.  Tank tops as a rule are fine, but every time this chick is on TV, she’s sporting one—and not very well, I might add.  Here is a theory on the tank tops.  She was at a bar on $1.00 pitcher/karaoke night and some drunk dude in a black Skynard T-shirt and green teeth told her she had awesome guns.  And she’s been shunning sleeves ever since…

Alison comes on the video to announce they are doing a marathon.  She tells them less than 1% of the population have ever done it (I LOVE being in the majority!) and only 12 BL contestants have done it.  The contestants start their marathon training, with Ada immediately telling us she wants to beat former BL contestant Tara’s time of 4 hours, 56 minutes.  Wheezy thinks the marathon will be a) fun b) a nice challenge or c) overwhelming.  Shockingly, Wheezy thinks the marathon will be overwhelming and she is scared of it.  It would be a daunting task if you hadn’t, you know, been working out for 8 hours a day for the last 11 weeks.  I’m so done with her.

Patrick sends his wife off to work and tells us he lost his job in food sales.

Methinks he lost a lot of “samples”

He plays the Wii Biggest Loser game with his kids.  Riveting.  Ada is at home and she feels like she’s cheating.  She’s munching on a bunch of things and I’m screaming at her, “Don’t mess it up now!”.  And now let’s check in with Frado.  He’s taken his gift of personal chef Curtis Stone and forced him to cater a party for five different charities, including the “Fat Harry Potter” charity.

And the Goblet of Ice Cream

Poor Curtis.  He probably thought he’d be cooking up some chicken breasts for 5 or 6 people.  Little did he know he’d be forced into being an indentured servant until he’s allowed to go home.

I packed extra hair gel for this?

Frado’s charity dinner raised over $25,000 so good for him.  And now we do even more bouncing back and forth between home visits and to make it less confusing, I’m going to summarize each one instead.  Cool?  Bob and Jillian are visiting each of the players at home and we first meet up with Wheezy who has moved in with her boyfriend.  Jillian immediately assesses Wheezy isn’t doing so well at home and starts raiding her fridge and finding all kinds of bad stuff.  Wheezy insists all the junk food (burritos and good stuff) is her boyfriend’s.  She tells Jillian she’s lost 6lbs and Jill just doesn’t believe it.  Amen, girl.  Wheezy also fesses up to not working out a whole lot when she got home which further pisses me off.  Her alliance got her here and people like Jesse, Aaron and yes, even Brendan would have been working their butts off.  She has a semi-hot dude living with her whiny ass who is probably sick of missionary, so work on it, for Pete’s sake.  Jillian drags her to the gym where Wheezy starts crying on the treadmill again, like Baby on Dancing with the Stars.

It hurrrrtssss

She tells Jillian she’s scared and it is too much pressure and she can’t inspire other people if she can’t even inspire herself.  She says it feels like she’s starting all over again from week one and guess what?  So do we.  Enough of her.

With Patrick’s family, Bob is trying not to be molested by Patrick’s Mom who is all touchy-feely with him and telling Patrick some of the previous winners didn’t have jobs and made the competition their job.  Which makes Patrick’s full time working wife really happy.

Why don’t I make twisting your nipples until they fall off my job, freakboy?

The men make it out of the house alive and into the gym where Bob starts spitting in his face, “You’re doing this for your family!!!”.  He’s all up in Patrick’s grill and making the other members of the gym wonder when they are ever going to get security in this place,

Why is that little dude screaming so much?

And now Bob is working out with Frado who also says he is struggling but still kicking it like only Frado can.  Bob also has an issue with sweater hanger marks on his shoulders and an abundance of bangles on his wrist.

It’s a cruel, cruel Autumn…

We now join Jillian sneaking up behind Ada as she’s running and damn near running her off the road.  Jillian and Ada have a nice little chat where Ada tells her she talked with her parents and she is happy now.  Jillian doesn’t believe her.  She says she wants to see her happier, not complacent.  Complacent is not happy.  Complacency sucks the life force from all living things and surrenders you to doom and heartbreak.  Okay, she didn’t say all that, but geez.  Ada is happy to get the hell out of that conversation and to the gym.  Ada is on the treadmill, working on the time she needs to beat Tara’s marathon record and Jillian keeps yelling at her.  “Can you focus?  Can you do this?  Can you beat it?”  I was so waiting for Ada to respond, “Can you shut up???”.  She does well on her time and Jillian asks her, “I had to come all the way out here to do this!  Oh…and have you heard anything from Curtis Stone?  He’s been missing for a month.”

Right before the marathon, we get an awesome Wheezy moment where she tells us she’s come so far and lost so much weight.

Not a “before” picture…LOL

And so the marathon begins.  Each person who crosses the finish line will get to donate $10,000 to their favorite charities.  Naturally, Ada starts out strong and Patrick and Frado decide to hang together.  Hold on to your chair, but Wheezy is struggling.  Ada tells us she was worried about hills and heat and they both came at once, but she has a goal.  At mile 3, Wheezy is joined by Jillian who starts yelling at her to FINISH IT.  Frado is struggling also and Patrick just won’t leave him behind.  At mile 14, Bob joins Ada who informs him she has to go to the bathroom.  Bob tells her a lot of serious runners just go right there, in their pants while their running.  Which is a) true, b) gross and c) a perfect cover for why I don’t do marathons.  Ada decides to use a Johnny on the Spot instead of soiling herself and is in there for six minutes.  Seriously?  It’s a portable toilet.  What the hell did she do in there, shave her legs?  On the flip side, I’m going to take Bob’s advice and not interrupt my rigorous 15 minute “jogging” on the treadmill for any stupid bathroom break.  I don’t care who sees it—I’m going to go for it.  Watching it again, I realize she had to do more than just pee.  Poor kid.

Um, Ada?  Need a magazine or something?

Back to Wheezy who has said she’s never run more than 8 miles.  Gee, I guess she didn’t know a 26.2 marathon was 26.2 STRAIGHT miles.  At mile marker 16, Frado sees his daughter, Danielle, who had promised to run the last ten miles with him.

Daddy, do I smell urine?

At different mile markers, various family members come out and I was surprised there were no previous season winners or anything like that.  I thought for sure with all the Tara-talk, she would have popped out to run with Ada, but who knows?  Maybe she ballooned out again and didn’t want to be there.  Ada crosses the finish line, beating Tara by 12 minutes (would have been 18, but…) and her Mom is there.  I guess her Dad was too busy cutting up her baby pictures to join.  The all cross the finish line, with in an hour of Ada except for Wheezy who is a couple of hours behind, but she did do it, so good for her.

Well done.  Now get off my TV.

At the final weigh in, Alison reveals she has a part time job at the local library

After all, there is no yelting in a library and full access to all Jackie Collins books.  rawrrrrr

Here’s the deal:  the two people above the yellow line are in the finale.  The two people who fall below that line have to beg America to vote for them.  Wheezy is up first.  Jillian clearly doesn’t expect a lot from her.  And she is right.  In the six weeks Wheezy was home she lost 15lbs.  Frado is up next and he lost 27lbs in the six weeks he was home—and he really looks like it.

Curtis who?

Being Frado, he tells the group he’s happy but he’ll celebrate when he’s in the top two.  Ada is up next and surprisingly, turns in her worst weight loss of the entire season—12lbs over the 6 weeks.  She says she really struggled with the first half and had a lot issues to deal with at home.

Issues, dickwads…potato, potahto

Ada is now below the yellow line and Patrick will either push Wheezy below with her or kill it on the scale and be in the finale with Frado.  And he lost 35lbs in 6 weeks, so piece of low-fat cake—he’s in with Frado.  Patrick tells the group when he got home, his wife had already lost 50lbs and changed over their whole kitchen to a healthier lifestyle, so he didn’t have to go home to bad things.  Talking to you—burrito girl.  So, Wheezy and Ada plead their case to America on why they should be in the finale.  Ada begs very sincerely and Wheezy has a weird little smirk on her face and doesn’t come off nearly as serious.  If Wheezy gets voted in over Ada, I will throw empty beer cans at my TV and yell like a Banshee.  And then I’ll watch the Dexter finale and remember that life is good…

Until the finale!