For Mary

The other day, a reader named Mary left a message on the 4th Frog Facebook page saying that she missed my weekly reactions to the Biggest Loser episodes. So Mary, this one is for you. (Howie, avert your eyes.)

This was Team Captain week on the Biggest Loser. I was pretty surprised how quickly and easily each team came up with a captain. I thought for sure that Hannah on the black team was going to pitch a hissy fit about not being captain. I'm pretty much over her. More on that later.

So the black team chose Marci as their captain and the red team chose Justin. Both logical choices, I thought.

The team captains had to choose one person to be the chef for the team for the whole week. Marci chose Olivia and Justin chose Ken. They both appeared to be pretty good sports about it. Though, if it were me, I would not have been happy. Of course the team would not have been happy either because I'm a terrible cook.

Being in the kitchen took up a lot of time and both Olivia and Ken had trouble getting in their workouts. I thought Olivia's solution of bringing a spin bike to the kitchen was a great one. Though she did keep talking about how this experience was giving her some insight into being a mom. Honey, if you were a mom in the kitchen all day, your spin bike would be covered with finger paint and you'd get about three pedals in before you had to yell at someone to back away or they were going to get their fingers pinched.

Anyway, the other decision the team captains had to make was which two people they were going to send to work out with the trainers. Marci chose Hannah and Sarah because they both gained a lot of weight after accidents left them with severe injuries. This is where I'm hoping Hannah will cringe to see herself on TV because she was so arrogant. She basically said, "I'm better than Sarah and I don't want her holding me back and I don't want anyone to think I'm as weak as she is."  Oh, she got her psychobabble boohoo moment with Jillian in the gym and ultimately thanked Marci for her wise decision-making. But as I said earlier, I'm so over that girl.

I'm also not particularly enjoying the Bret and Kara, the new trainers. It seems like they are trying to hard. I'm sure it's not easy to walk in Bob and Jillian's Nikes, but they just don't seem very likable to me. What do I know? Maybe they don't want to be likable.

The challenge this week was a muddy obstacle course that looked pretty fun, actually. The black team had one more player than the red team, so Marci had to choose someone to sit out. She chose her own daughter, Courtney, to sit out. Courtney was definitely disappointed, but was not immature about it.

Ultimately, the black team won (splitting a $6,000 prize). Then it was off to the weigh in -- presumably after hitting the showers to wash the mud off.

The red team may have lost the challenge, but they killed on the scale, which meant that someone from the black team would be going home. Marci said all along she would sacrifice herself before she sent any of her girls -- Courtney, Sarah, Olivia, Hannah, Irene, and Jen -- home. But what Marci didn't foresee was that she would be the biggest loser on the team and had won immunity.

(A quick side-note: Marci and Courtney are from Indiana. I don't usually get starstruck, but I would absolutely love to sit down with them for lunch and just soak up the inspiration.)

In the elimination room, Olivia and Jen each received one vote, but Sarah received 4 votes and was sent packing. But woowheee! Does she look good now! She's lost 91 pounds total and looks beautiful.


So there you are, Mary. What did you think of the show?