The Biggest Loser 2, Episode 3: Shake It

Welcome to week three of The Biggest Loser 2, the series that pits two teams of overweight contestants in a competitive struggle to lose weight and, in the process, regain control of their lives. Challenges and temptations bar their way to a nice prize.

Last week, all competitors successfully battled the first temptation, and then Dr. Jeff had trouble with a balance beam. Neither team could come close to matching their awesome weight losses of the first week, however, the men more than doubled the weight loss of the women. Loner attorney Kathryn was eliminated.

The questions of the week are: can the Blue Team overcome the tension caused by a tiff between obsessive coach Jillian and disruptive Nick?

As a reference, these are the contestants in this year’s show:

THE WOMEN (Blue Team, coach Bob):

• Andrea, the soccer mom
• bJen, the med student
• Ryan, the preacher’s daughter
• Shannon, the diva
• Suzanne, the bride to be
• Suzy, the single girl

THE MEN (Red Team, coach Jillian):

• Jeff, the doctor
• Mark, the cop
• Matt, the ex-athlete leader
• Nick, the disruptive comedian
• Pete, the devoted husband
• Seth, the new dad

Eliminated, in order:

1. Reuben, the single guy
2. Kathryn, the attorney

As the show opens, we learn the contestants have lost 342 pounds so far. Way to go, gang!

We begin with Suzy in the kitchen. She can’t find any food – it’s gone! Instead, there are little signs that say, “Your food is gone. If you want to eat – order in or dine out.” Panicked, she runs off to tell Mark. Others inspect the empty shelves to see if Suzy was hallucinating or not. Not.

What they do have is take-out menus. Suzy says, “I don’t like this!” and says she isn’t ready “to eat in the real world yet.” Conversely, Mark is looking forward to learning how to order this kind of food he’s so often confronted with. I like his attitude better.

The Red Team is working out, awaiting Jillian. Nick pointedly calls their tiff “a misunderstanding.” Jillian ignores Nick, but Matt talks. He tells Jillian that the five of them (i.e. all but Nick) need her, and when she walked out on them yesterday, “You ripped our guts apart.” Jillian takes it to heart, apologizes for blowing up and promises she’ll be there for them, “as much as you want me.”

Trainer Bob has arrived for the day, and tells us that in “Food Gone Week,” the only food in the house is “the Temptation Food, which is clearly not an option.” Bob reviews the menus with his ladies. His approach is, he gives them a set number of calories and they can spend them as they chose, as long as they stay within the limit.

Jillian is going into specifics with the guys. She tells them to get all-white-meat chicken, and to go extra light on the BBQ sauce, because it’s loaded with sugar and calories.

As Suzanne is ordering, Bob leans over and advises, “No butter or oil on the omelet.” She’s tells us she’s learned, “No extras, no beans, no sour cream… the list goes on and on!”

It’s Temptation time, and no one has eaten. Suzanne doesn’t like that. Each player is standing in a booth with a table covered with shot glasses full of special shakes. Pete likes shakes!

Also present is celebrity chef and nutritionist Jackie Keller, who has cooked for such notables as Owen Wilson and Charlize Theron. Well, one for two ain’t bad. She’s going to do Carolyn’s job on this challenge. No word on where Ms. Rhea is… hopefully, it doesn’t involve Mr. Wilson.

The event works like this: they have five minutes to drink as many shake-shots as they can. They are about 40 calories apiece, made from reduced-fat milk. The winner, along with a friend of their choosing, will have Jackie cook them nutritious meals all week. My first thought is, can I pick Pamela Anderson? Perhaps thinking along similar lines, Mark picks out ten glasses without chocolate in them.

Pete reminds us, they can’t see what the other players are doing. But they sure can hear the clinking of glasses! Suzy, who is sure she can’t get by on her iffy take-out ordering skills all week, starts chugging shakes at a pace any sorority pledge gal would be proud of.

But not everyone is drinking. Matt thinks that his team will not drink and besides, he wishes to avoid the politics of having to choose one team member over the others.

Since she started drinking the shots anyway, Suzy decides she needs to go hard and win. Otherwise, she’s taken on a couple of hundred calories from a source she’s not enamored with… for no good reason.

Time’s up – and we learn most players drank nothing. In fact – no one drank except for Suzy, who quaffed… wait for it… 48!! That’s like a shot every six seconds. No wonder Suzy is billed as “the single girl,” who could afford to take her pubbing?

So Suzy wins, but freaks out that she took on so many calories didn’t need. Like, 1,880 more than she needed to win! She thought this was a good prize to win and is feeling sheepish that no one else even tried for it. In an aside, Suzanne is rather upset that Suzy didn’t resist and that “gorging herself “has gone against everything we’ve learned from day one.”

That comment might have carried more weight if they hadn’t cut to a clip of Suzanne devouring an entire animal in the 30-minute binge that opened up this year’s contest. But hey, that’s the “old Suzanne” and she’s moving past that point now.

Suzy chooses Ryan to share her prize. Just what the ladies needed, more division within the team.

Back at the house, Suzy is still upset and is crying to Bob. Mark wonders, “I’m not sure how many calories crying burns.” Bob calls her outside where she sobs, “Now I just feel like an idiot.” She wanted encouragement from Bob, but got “tough love” instead.

For the ladies’ first meal, Bob goes out with them to make menu suggestions. Naturally enough, they go to the old dieters standby, The Cheesecake Factory. No, I am not making that up – of all the options in a hundred-mile radius, apparently the only coupons for seven people that anyone had were not at The Lettuce Farm, but here. For some reason Suzy is there, and gets talked into her salmon being grilled. I think she would have preferred “sautéed in virgin olive oil, shallots and honey mustard,” but, whatever. Shannon makes the Bob-approved choice of pork.

On the men’s side, Matt has dessert and actually gets to eat a bite before Jillian sees it and takes it away and pours salt all over it. So much for dessert!

This week’s challenge is an exciting one, and we’ve seen hints of it in the previews, it involves trains. Host Carolyn Rhea tells them, “Today, you’re going to train on a train.”

Each team will have one person on each car of the train. There are 36 balls (they look like gym soccer balls) at one end of the train, and all must be passed, player-to-player, to the other end of the train. As the train moves, each player will get the ball at one end of their car, traverse the car and hand it off at the far end. The prize is phone calls home, so the players are really motivated.