The recipe for The Biggest Loser remains unchanged after six seasons.  Overweight contestants get help from professional trainers and, even if only one wins the top prize for losing the most weight relative to his/her previous weight, everybody still leaves as the winner because their lives have been turned around.  It also helps to see a little competition of sorts between Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, seeing whose approach will produce that season's winner.

It's an enduring recipe. I t won't change, at least for now; the upcoming The Biggest Loser: Couples doesn't promise radical tweaks to the format.  However, the producers have tried their best to include even more members of society, and hopefully inspire them to tackle their weight problems, too, and get healthy in the process.  “I think that's what hopefully the show is about: inspiring different communities,” Mark Koops, the show's producer, told Reality TV World.  “Whether that be people who are, like, ‘Oh, I'm retired.  I can't do it.  It's too late,' or, ‘I'm too young.  I don't need to worry about it now,' or ‘my culture says it's okay.'  I think we're looking to try and inspire every aspect of American society that it's not too late to make a change.”

Indeed, this season's contestants are a diverse bunch.  Two of the contestants are teenagers (Mike Morelli and Daniel Wright) and one of the couples are already in their 60s.  These circumstances proved to be quite a challenge—and a blessing—for the show.  “It just shows you that we are living in an epidemic, and we at [the show] really want to put a light on this situation and try to do our part in helping that community of people,” Harper said.  “There's a young generation out there that really does need our help and I think that the inspiration that we give to adults we really want to focus on kids in that way, or teenagers in that way, in this season.”

As for the older contestants, well, it's a real challenge.  “I have run into some snags are with the contestants who are significantly older, and their body is showing true wear and tear of abuse—you know, 63, 66 years of abuse,” Michaels said.  “That's really when you're in trouble and that's when you've got oxygen masks on the treadmill and limitations with regard to duration of exercising. It's very, very difficult to train those older contestants.”

But it isn't only the older contestants who prove to be such a hard thing to deal with.  Well, in their case, it's just dealing with their deteriorating bodies.  Attitude, of course, is a different thing.  “Let me tell you, I actually just saw this episode and this one girl … tested me more than I've ever been tested on the show,” Harper said.  “[You're] going to see me on this show have a nervous breakdown on this girl.  I watch and it was like, ‘Is that me?  Did I do that?  Was I yelling that much?'  It was definitely a challenge, man, let me tell you … you're going to see me at my wits' end this season.”

The Biggest Loser: Couples returns to NBC on January 6, from 8pm ET, with Alison Sweeney still on board as host.


-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Reality TV World
(Image courtesy of NBC)