‘Biggest Loser’: Joelle sees the light, David gives up the fight

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The banished teammates are back. We’ll have to wait until next week to see how much weight they lost -- although only a few looked like they had lost visible amounts, particularly when compared with the contestants who stayed on the ranch and are already transforming before our eyes.

But before we get to that:

• Blaine made no excuses: ‘It’s a game, and we’re playing it,’ he said of the decision to sucker punch the blue team and send Damien home. The blue team vowed to get revenge: ‘Now, you’re playing with fire,’ Filipe said.

• Sione banished excuses, too: The episode began with a montage of the at-home contestants and how they’ve been faring, including Aubrey, trying to work in working out while she’s being run ragged by her kids, and Sione, who has been hitting the gym diligently. He said he always used to complain that he ‘never had time’ to get to the gym: ‘How was I able to get in three, four hours of TV in? ... There’s time. You just gotta make it.’ David, meanwhile, had been smoking and eating fried chicken -- and joking about it.

• Kristin had an amazing breakthrough -- leaping onto an elevated platform at Bob’s command, despite her fears that she couldn’t. (Four weeks ago, she weighed in at over 350 lbs. and could barely handle walking on the treadmill.)

• Joelle earned plenty of praise this week from Bob: ‘Joelle! Excellent! ... Perfect job’ ‘It was a whole new Joelle this week,’ he later added.

•Super Bowl-bound quarterback Kurt Warner led the teams through a football challenge -- won by Helen, who surprised even herself. Her prize? Immunity, which means that Helen became the first contestant to bring her teammate (her daughter, Shanon) back to the ranch.

• Dan got a Jillian-style beatdown and his own personal victory: The biggest contestant ever in the history of the game, starting at 454 lbs., he ran a full five minutes on the treadmill. ‘I never thought it was possible,’ he said, ‘to not be fat.’

But it was all just leading up to the weigh-in, which, as Tara said, is the Super Bowl of weigh-ins: Only those who survived it could bring their partners back on the ranch. (Actually, partners were brought back for the weigh-ins to see firsthand what was happening.)

But once again, it was a night ending in heartbreak: Falling below the yellow line were perhaps the two teams that needed the ranch most because of their obesity and flagging fitness levels: Father and son Ron and Mike, and best friends David and Dan.

David may have ended up tipping the scales against his team. He kept going on and on (inexplicably) about how he felt that he didn’t need the ranch, and that he could lose the weight at home. (Would that be the smoking-and-fried-chicken diet?) ‘My commitment is here, but my heart is not,’ David explained, adding that being on the ranch made him feel trapped.

Filipe, who is maturing into a team leader and a likely front-runner in this race, cast the deciding vote and sent the best friends home.

The postscript was hopeful, though: Dan has already lost 101 lbs. and wants to break the weight-loss record for the game, and was able to eliminate the need for his diabetes medication. David, meanwhile, has stopped smoking and lost nearly 50 lbs.

So who do you think is gonna win this thing?

-- Rene Lynch

(Photo of Joelle courtesy NBC)