BL9- week 8- "Bring Your Loser to Work" Week

I was conflicted on what to call this episode- the aforementioned title OR "O'Neal Rex" OR "Sunshine Complex". This episode was chocked full of the father/daughter relationship of O'Neal and Sunshine, the yellow team that came back with a vengeance after being sent home the first month of the competition.

O'Neal loves his daughter. A LOT. We start the episode with O'Neal nervously sitting at a table, waiting for the losing blue team to return from the elimination room. He knows that someone is going home and he is taking their place- but will it be Sunshine that is going home? Will he have to live in a world WITHOUT SUNSHINE!?!

"I'm about to explode like a volcano," he steams. One after the other the blue team trickles back into the room, and last but not least, Sunshine appears on the horizon. O'Neal slams the table with the palm of his hand and begins to weep. Sunshine, looking a little uncomfortable in front of her teammates, tells O'Neal, "Just calm down. Did you really think I was going home?" O'Neal must have thought that since Miggy was gone that they would naturally vote the other girl off the team. But not every girl is built like Sunshine.

Sunshine gives O'Neal his new blue team shirt, and he exclaims, "WOW! This blue shirt feels fabulous!", and then O'Neal starts to drop some mad wisdom on his new team. They call him Coach or Uncle, but I will call him THE GENERAL. He imparts these gems: "A man that lives in the past doesn't live at all," "We need to come together like a fist. . ." and "BEAT THE BLACK TEAM!" He is in control, and he loves it.

The next day the teams meet Ali on an airport runway for their weekly challenge. She reminds them that for the past 60 days that they have been on the ranch their only job has been to workout, eat right, and get fit. There have been no distractions, until this week. It is work week on The Biggest Loser!

This is a first for the show and I think a really important step. I hear so many people say that of course they could lose weight if they were on the ranch, but their real lives are far too complicated to allow that to happen. Other shows like Diet Tribe and even Celebrity Fit Club let the contestants lead their normal every day lives while learning the tools they need to lose weight. The success rate on BL would be higher if these techniques were incorporated, in my opinion. Not every contestant can be a stay-at-home mother or a personal trainer once the cameras stop rolling.

Ali explains that each contestant will work an 8 hour shift with a bus commute every day. They will have to pack their meals, and the gym will only be available for short periods before and after work. So 24 Hour Gym won't be 24 hours? They will be working for Feeding America, a food bank program. It will be a "long haul", so with no further ado, the challenge!

The teams will be hauling 33,000 pound semis down the tarmac. "I've always wanted to pull a semi!" Daris offers brightly. Five people will pull, and one person will run alongside the truck collecting puzzle pieces that will be assembled once the truck has reached it's final destination. The prize? Groceries for one year!

The deck has been stacked in the blue teams favor. Four big guys and Sunshine versus four little women and Sam. When Ali starts the race, the blue team's semi moves easily, and the black team can't get their semi to budge. Once it starts rolling, the black team catches up a bit when O'Neal is responsible for picking up the puzzle pieces for the blue team: his bum knee slows him down, and black team's Sherry easily closes the gap between the two teams.

The blue team screams and grunts to the finish line, and manages to put all their puzzle pieces together first. Blue team wins! "OHMYGODWEDIDIT!" screams Mike. "We wanted to mentally defeat the black team, "states Koli. Sam retorts, "The real show is the weigh in." It's now officially ON.

Back at the ranch, blue and black reveal to Bob and Jillian how the week is going to play out. Before heading to the gym, Bob pulls O'Neal and Sunshine aside to plug the Biggest Loser protein powder. Jillian tells her team to find "the eye of the tiger" while Bob's team needs to "bust their ass". After the workout, Sam gives his team a speech about sports, and the women look a little glazed over. Something tells me they weren't athletes in their previous lives.

The cameras track the teams day after day as they wake up, work out, ride the bus, clock into work, eat lunch (even in the work day still time for that Subway plug, courtesy of Sam and Stephanie, the new "it" couple), ride the bus, work out, and go to bed. Some interesting moments came out of the week: We see Sherry and Cheryl and their kookie Lucy and Ethel friendship, Mike claiming during inventory that "I don't consider myself the most smartest person," and we are introduced to Steve, an overweight Food Bank inventory clerk and possible BL10 contestant? He comes in to meet the Losers on a lunch break and asks them for words of hope and advice. All of them see themselves in him, and offer words of encouragement and hugs.

After a week full of montages and corny music, it is time for the last chance workout and the weigh in. Before the weigh in, though, we have more Sunshine and O'Neal time. We are shown old family photos of a thinner O'Neal, a man who was a football player and military man, a man who didn't allow his boys to eat junk food, but allowed his only daughter to eat it. And he would eat it too. And together they gained weight, bonding over food. This week is the first week O'Neal doesn't have immunity. Will he be able to come through? Or will the black team and their new slogan, "Little Axe, Big Tree!" prevail?

At the weigh in, the blue team weighs in first:

O'Neal: From 316 lbs to 311 lbs- 5 lbs lost

Sunshine: From 232 lbs to 225 lbs- 7 lbs lost

Mike: From 417 lbs to 408 lbs- 9 lbs lost

Koli: From 316 lbs to 306 lbs- 10 lbs lost

Daris: From 267 lbs to 258 lbs- 9 lbs lost

Lance: From 300 lbs to 290 lbs- 10 lbs lost

Total weight lost: 50 lbs- 2.71%

The black team will have to lose more than 38 pounds to beat them.

Andrea: From 250 lbs to 243 lbs- 7 lbs lost

Ashley: From 301 lbs to 293 lbs- 8 lbs lost

Cheryl: From 187 lbs to 182 lbs- 5 lbs lost

Sherry: From 171 lbs to 166 lbs- 5 lbs lost

Stephanie: From 213 lbs to 210 lbs- 3 lbs lost

Sam: From 290 lbs to 286 lbs- 4 lbs lost

Total weight loss: 32 lbs- 2.27%

The black team couldn't pull out the numbers they needed, and they head to the elimination room. Cheryl and Sam are the lowest numbers, and they say goodbye to their old partners on the blue team. In the elimination room, Cheryl is chosen to leave and she heads back to Oklahoma.

At her reveal, Cheryl looks great! She is cute and fit and kicking ass, going from 227 lbs to 164 lbs.

The next episode promises to be explosive! Nobody puts Jillian in a corner- NOBODY. . .