biggest loser ranch

(S09E12) Is there any point in saying it was a crazy week in the house anymore? The producers seem determined to make every week more intense and stressful than the week before, and that's exactly what happened.

Right off the bat, Alison Sweeney announced that contestants would have a chance throughout the week to earn immunity. They stuck a button in the middle of the gym. The first person to hit the button opened the scale. If they lost at least 2% of their total body weight, immunity was theirs. If they didn't, they were out of the hunt for that week.

Right away, the queen of gameplay, Melissa, was gunning for that button. With no allies in the house, she would need it to save her bacon should she fall below the yellow line. And then there was the challenge.

If you haven't watched last night's Biggest Loser yet, stop reading right now. Ok? Ok.

I've never been a fan of Tracey's. I thought she was mean and stabbed plenty of backs on her journey through the emotional minefields of The Biggest Loser. And when it came down to whether Tracey or someone else would go home in last night's episode, I was rooting for Tracey.

"Send her home!" I yelled at the TV. "Make her pay for her crimes!" I was practically lighting my torches, hypothetically speaking.

(S08E04) Last week's episode of The Biggest Loser was about choices. Tracey made the choice to become the most hated woman in the house. This week, the theme was again choices. More specifically, how do you choose what to eat when you have to eat out? To drive home the point, Alison locked up the kitchen and forced the contestants to eat out for every meal this week.

To make matters even worse, Tracey hasn't been able to work out at all, and as the promos showed, her frustrations with her health continued into this week. However, despite restricted exercise, Tracey dropped eleven pounds last week. Could she do it again?

Could they all hang in there to make it another week on the Ranch? See, that was funny because of this week's challenge. Everybody had to hang on an incline above a pool as long as they could. Scary thought for 437-pound Shay. But surprises awaited.

This week on The Biggest Loser, Alison switched things up turning this from a "couples" game into a "team" game. In an effort to balance the playing field again, the ten remaining contestants were being split into two teams, determined by the flip of a coin. What this meant was that the chance existed that one team may be split up. There were two contestants, Dane and Helen, who'd already lost their partners, so teams could have stayed intact but it was unlikely.

Ultimately, of all the teams there was one that absolutely needed to stay together. I've been a big fan of the Brown Team for a few weeks now. We've gotten to watch some pretty touching moments between Ron and son Mike, and Mike has proven himself to be a genuinely decent kid. However, Ron has really been struggling to hold his own. Their trainer Bob even told Mike point blank that he was going to need to carry his father through the weigh-ins. If ever there was a team that needed one another, it was the Brown Team.