“The Biggest Loser” and “The Sing-Off” – The 2 Biggest Winners

As someone who has watched a lot of television, there are certain things which have become clear:

1) reality TV shows are almost never real

2) fictional shows are oftentimes more real than reality shows

3) “Glee” will continue pushing its gay agenda (and also some truly wonderful remakes of classic songs)

 

But this week, the two shows that really stood out were “The Biggest Loser” and “The Sing-Off”.

For those who don’t watch “The Biggest Loser”, you should. The show takes a bunch of morbidly obese people, isolates them on a ranch with professional trainers and workout areas, and each week eliminates a person who has lost less weight than the other competitors. The grand prize is $250,000.

In a previous post, I was a bit critical of this show because of the blanket confidentiality clause it makes all contestants sign. That part of the contract says that contestants are not allowed to discuss anything that happened on the show without the express permission of the producers. However, one contestant decided to violate the clause, and he revealed how certain contestants are given diuretics (pills that make them urinate a lot in a short amount of time) to rapidly lose weight and avoid being eliminated.

Also, the whole drama when each contestant gets weighed is completely a joke. Each contestant steps on a scale and the digital readout is posted on a “scoreboard”. Considering that we have to watch the digital readout vacillate unrealistically from 270 pounds to 350 pounds to 260 pounds and then finally land on 269 pounds is not real. I have a digital scale and there’s no way I could make it go up and down like that.

So, why am I now trumpeting this show? Because this past week, five contestants were competing for the final 4 spots. The final four players go home for a while and then they return to be weighed and hopefully win the $250,000 grand prize. The three players who lost the most weight had to decide who the fourth player was going to be.

Their choices were Sunny (a 40-ish woman who fairly consistently pulled low numbers. This week she lost 1 pound for the entire week) and Antone (a 40-ish guy who fairly consistently lost big amounts of weight during the contest).

For the three players who had to choose, the logical choice was clear: Sunny. The reason is what I call the “Survivor” effect. That show demonstrated that the best way to win was to constantly lie, cheat, steal, and play headgames with everyone else. It has to be one of the greatest examples of Machiavelli’s cunning.

So, I was sure that the top three contestants were going to do the usual weak stuff and choose Sunny. Seriously, if you’re going for $250,000, it’s more logical to pick Sunny, because it kind of automatically means that instead of having a 25% chance of winning, the top three contestants would have a 33.3% chance because Sunny would be a non-factor.

But the biggest surprise of the season – and also one of the greatest moments I have ever seen on a reality game show – is that they chose Antone. They chose the guy who through his actions every week deserved to be in the finals. They chose the guy who is actually one of the odds-on favorites to win. Why? Because they chose to push themselves.

I give tremendous credit to John, the top contestant of the three, because Antone unfairly criticized him last week, and John decided to put that aside and compete with the best. It was John who cast the deciding vote that kept Antone in the competition. Seriously, John is the kind of competitor who makes people proud to be Americans. That’s in contrast to the never-ending group of losers who populate “Survivor”. I say this because on “Survivor”, the goal has almost always been to eliminate the strongest players as quickly as possible.

So, the finale of this season’s “The Biggest Loser” promises to be a doozy, and I’m definitely watching it.

 

The other fantastic show has been “The Sing-Off”. As someone who has been a faithful viewer of similar shows like “America’s Got Talent” and “The Voice”, “The Sing-Off” was refreshing in that each week, the right group was sent home. The only time that didn’t seem to be true was when they kept bringing back “Afro Blue” despite the group’s weak performances. In fairness, I have to say that this week, “Afro Blue” was very good, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they should have been sent home three weeks ago.

“America’s Got Talent” and “The Voice” were frustrating in that the winners were pre-ordained weeks before the finale. The only difference is that for “The Voice”, the right person won, but he didn’t deserve to win based on his final performance.

So, in the end, the competiton boiled down to “The Dartmouth Aires” from Dartmouth College and “Pentatonix”. As much as I’m partial to the Aires, Pentatonix deserved to win, and they did.

Pentatonix is an unbelievable group. It’s rare to see a small group of people (5) fill an auditorium with as much sound as they did. Their bass and percussions guys were completely off the hook. The group’s highlight was the Buggles song “Video Killed the Radio Star”. That was probably the best song in the entire show.

 

Congratulations to both shows. After watching so many fake reality shows, it’s nice to know that there are two reality shows that actually do keep it real.