Tonight, the winning team of the challenge was allowed a 24-hour getaway of luxury and relaxation. Fine dining, massages and alcohol. On Survivor this reward would invigorate the contestants and help them surge ahead. On a show like The Biggest Loser it takes people who’ve proven they have weaknesses in the real world and dropped them right into it with no supervision.
I would imagine the folks who make up these rewards knew full well what they were doing. Allowing the contestants free will to do what they want for that 24-hour mini-vacation was as much a challenge of its own as a reward. How do you think they did?
Honestly, considering it was the super competitive Black Team that won the reward (of course), I expected a lot more from them. These guys have been running their A-game since the shuffling of teams, and most of them even longer than that. Only Mike seemed to resist most of the temptations, though that may have had more to do with his being underage than anything. He did have the decency to look unhappy about the whole thing during it.
But even that wasn’t the decision-making that baffled me the most. Ever since the mix-up, Filipe has made no bones about the fact that he was unhappy training with Jillian, but he opted to give her a try. However, after she ignored him for an entire day giving one-on-one time with every other member of the Blue Team, he blew up at her when she confronted the team after their 24 hours of debauchery.
Now I agree with him that she needed a tongue-lashing. Her own attitude is deplorable right now. Phoning it in and telling them that she doesn’t care about any of them anymore, that she’s going to just go through the motions and pray for the end of the season. Maybe Jillian needs to find a softer side. It works for Bob.
What I absolutely don’t get is that Filipe and Sione were allowed to just decide arbitrarily to switch things up on their own and train with the Blue Team. What competition reality show allows contestants such freedom of choice. Imagine if people on Survivor could just leave one tribe and go live with the other one when things got rough.
Bob looked pretty confused by the whole thing. I’m guessing this hasn’t happened before (this is the first season I’ve really watched), but Alison should have been right there putting a stop to it. Part of the game is working with the trainer that’s given to you. What’s the point of the game changing dramatic trainer switch if contestants can just switch back?
And then it never even came up at the weigh-in. I don’t know if the boys will try and stay with Bob, or if they’ll address their issues with Jillian. Hell, I don’t know if Jillian will come back to the show after this. But what I don’t know the most is how the hell the Black Team still managed to beat the Blue Team at the weigh-in. Results across the board were an absolute disaster!
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Mar 11, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
Actually, I think there is a precedent for this if I’m recalling correctly. In Season 4, the only season with 3 trainers, Amy left Kim’s team and joined Jillian’s team. I think she thought Kim was picking on her, being mean to her. I was reminded of this when I saw Jillian do the exact same thing to Laura in the last episode. People respond differently to different approaches though. What breaks one person might motivate another. Nonetheless, I thought it was interesting that the third trainer format never returned.
My problem with Filipe was that he could have gotten himself off the treadmill and told Jillian he was ready for his turn. He stayed on there for over two hours and said nothing! It’s like he was purposely trying to create a wedge so he had an excuse to go back to Bob – which should not have been allowed. On top of that, his own behavior during the luxury reward was deplorable, and the end result was his bad weigh-in. Yet, who did he blame for that? His trainer! He never once took responsibility for his actions (or inaction) and he never seemed to bother to tell Bob about his binging during the reward, and I think Bob (and the producers) allowing Filipe and Sione to train with him affected his own team who have managed to make thing work with Bob after the switch. Yes, Jillian did need to be taken down a notch for ignoring Filipe, but at the same time, she probably felt he was a strong competitor who could work on his own for a while and do fine. There were other things he could have been doing in that two-and-a-half hours besides running on the treadmill, and asserting himself to Jillian then and there was one of them. And if Sione knew that his cousin was being ignored, then during his training he should have said something to her as well. I lost a lot of respect for Filipe, Sione and Jillian after that episode. This had been one of the best groups of people they’ve had on the show in quite some time, especially after some of last season’s deplorable contestants, so it’s too bad something like this had to happen. But one of the biggest things the contestants have to learn from this experience is to accept responsibility for your own actions and Filipe did not do that. I really hoped Black would lose so he would go home after that.