The Biggest Loser (season 2)

The Biggest Loser (season 2) is the second season of the NBC competitive reality television series entitled The Biggest Loser. The second season premiered on September 13, 2005, and like season one features overweight contestants who compete by trying to lose the most weight. The show is hosted by comedian Caroline Rhea, with Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels joining as the two personal trainers.

The contestants were divided into two teams: men in red and women in blue, with each team assigned to their own personal trainer of the opposite sex. Each week, the team which had the lowest percentage of total weight-loss was required to vote out one member of their own team. In Season 1, most pounds lost determined who won. Not percentage of total weight- loss.

The show concluded November 29, 2005, when Matt was declared "The Biggest Loser", winning $250,000. Seth was awarded $50,000 for his second place finish, and Suzy was awarded $25,000 for third. Of the non-finalists, Pete had lost the highest percentage of weight and received the $100,000 prize.

Season Highlights

• The contestants were divided into male and female teams with trainers of the opposite sex.
• Season 2 introduced immunity for the contestant who lost the most weight on the losing team.
• Total percentage weight-loss was used to determine the winning team each week (as opposed to number of pounds lost used in Season 1).
• In episode 7, the blue and red teams were disbanded, and four new teams of couples were formed. Three of the teams consisted of one man and one woman, and one team consisted of two men.
• In episode 9, the teams of two were disbanded, and each contestant had to compete as an individual.

Weigh-Ins

Teams

     Member of Bob's team

     Member of Jillian's team

Game

     Last person eliminated before finale

Winners

     $250,000 Winner (among the finalists)

     $100,000 Winner (among the eliminated contestants)

BMI^[1]

     Normal (18.5 - 24.9 BMI)

     Overweight (25 - 29.9 BMI)

     Obese Class I (30 - 34.9 BMI)

     Obese Class II (35 - 39.9 BMI)

     Obese Class III (greater than 40 BMI)

Weight Loss History

Percentage Loss History

Elimination Voting History

      Immunity

  X  Below yellow line, unable to vote

  X  Not in elimination, unable to vote

  ?  Vote not revealed

      Eliminated or not in house

      Valid vote cast

Episode Summaries

EPISODE 1: Fourteen overweight contestants arrive at the ranch. They are weighed, measured, and divided into to 2 teams. The Red Team consists of all men and is trained by Jillian. The Blue Team consists of all women and is trained by Bob. The contestants are shown wanting to fit into their goal outfits and struggle at the first workout. The first challenge is in a nose diving airplane. The goal is to collect as many balls as you can before time runs out, while floating in a zero-gravity atmosphere. The Red Team wins 115-81. As a reward, the men get to add 5 pounds to any member of the Blue Team. This player is ultimately Suzanne. The men weigh-in and lose 157 pounds. It comes down to Suzy, who must lose more than 19 pounds. She loses 20 pounds, and wins the weigh-in for the Blue Team. Season 2 introduces that the player on the losing team with the highest percentage of weight loss will have immunity. Matt is this player for the Red Team. The Red Team criticized Ruben for not working out as hard after losing the weigh-in. Unsurprisingly the Red Team votes off Ruben.

EPISODE 2: The players face their first temptation. Contestants have 15 minutes. If they eat what's inside a food platter they can read the letter from home made for them. Despite Mark trying to get Shannon to participate, everyone resists. The trainers say in the workout before the challenge that the week will focus on balance, speed, and agility. The challenge ultimately is walking across a big beam over water. The Blue Team sits out Kathryn due to an injured foot. The team that got all their members across first will win the letters from home. The girls win, with Dr. Jeff still on the beam. Jeff, despite the challenge being over, finishes his walk across. An emotional Blue Team opens the letters of home. Also, as a reward, the girls get an extra day to work out before the weigh-in. At the weigh-in, most of the men lost about 8 pounds, while the women had lower numbers. After their win, Jillian yells at Nick for cooking a 2000 calorie steak. Andrea has the immunity for highest percentage on the losing team. Everyone except herself voted for Kathryn.

EPISODE 3: The food is gone, and whenever the contestants want to eat, they must order out. Jillian comes into the gym and apologizes for "blowing up" after Matt says that the 5 members (all except Nick) need her more than anything. The trainers then teach the contestants how to order out in the real world. Next there is a temptation. Whoever has the most 40 calorie milkshakes will get free meals for the rest of the week, and get to choose one other person to have the same thing. Suzy is the only one who participates, drinking 48 milkshakes. She chooses Ryan to join her for the healthy free meals. The challenge is to run on a moving train and bring medicine balls throughout the train. The men win and get the phone call home. Pete and Ryan nearly pass out and get taken to the hospital. Later that night, the two return to the ranch. The next morning the Red Team gets their phone calls home. At the weigh-in, Ryan needs to lose 5 pounds to win and pulls through for her team with a 5 pound weight loss. Red Team loses and is sent to the elimination room for the second time. The Red Team vote is a close vote with Nick and Jeff voting for Seth while Pete, Mark, and Seth vote for Nick. Matt casts the deciding vote to send Nick home with a 4-2 vote. After the vote Nick refuses to say goodbye to his team mates with a negative distant attitude and gives them the cold shoulder during his exit causing Matt to feel less guilty about his decision to vote him off. Nick's weight loss since leaving the Biggest Loser is unknown by his choice.

EPISODE 4: This week the teams learn they are headed to the ultimate city of temptation...Las Vegas. Both teams are both excited but nervous due the temptations of gambling and the food. Of course both teams enjoyed fine dining and some gambling, Matt lost out in Black Jack while Suzanne won 1600 on the slots. For this week's temptation the Dealer offers the teams a chance to play for money with cards ranging from $1 to $1000. The catch was if the player chooses to play for the money they must sacrifice training with their trainer until the next Weigh-in. Seth and Mark of the Red team chose to participate with their team mates blessing and Matt taking the reigns to train them. Shannon, Jen, and Suzanne of the Blue team chose to participate as well. Each participant drew a card face down and flipped it over one by one. Seth won $1000, Mark won $2500, Shannon won $1000, Suzanne won $2500, and Jen won $1000. After the 1st round the Dealer made them a second offer. Play a game of high-low and win double your money. Seth, Mark, and Jen chose to walk with their winnings while Shannon and Suzanne chose to take the offer. Note if they lose they still lose their trainer. Shannon and Suzanne both guessed correctly and doubled their winnings (2k for Shannon and 5k for Suzanne). Both teams told their trainers the news and neither Bob nor Jillian were happy at all. On the Blue team a noticeable divide began to form between with the 3 Girls who sat out (Suzy, Andrea, and Ryan) against the 3 girls that participated (Shannon, Jen, and Suzanne). At this week's challenge the teams learned each individual player must move gold bars that are equal to their individual weight from the water to a scale on the other side of the pool. The prize would be a chance to return to the casino once the remodel is fully complete in 2006 and they can bring a loved one. Also the winning team chooses who on the losing team must sit the next weigh-in out with out their weight counting towards their team's total percentage of weight loss. In a close competition the Red team just edges out the Blue team for the prize. During the workouts Matt would be trained by Jillian then use the same methods to train Mark and Seth. With their team mates training with Bob and leaving them behind Jen, Shannon, and Suzanne trained with the guys under Matt's supervision. The rift between the women was growing. The next morning Ryan and Suzanne have an argument over a comment Ryan made about having less team mates to train with her under Bob which greatly annoyed and hurt Suzanne. Shannon took offense Ryan's comments that claimed Bob was happier without Shannon, Jen, and Suzanne to which Bob denied then told Shannon if she wants the drama she can keep it and he does not care. Shannon leaves while Bob stresses over how his Blue team was not a team at all due to the lack of unity and focus. Prior to the weigh in Red team showed great unity while the Blue team clearly had no interest in pretending to be a team. At the Weigh-in the Red team chose Jen to sit out of the teams total weight loss which was wise choice when Jen lost 10 lbs under Matt's training. Suzanne and Shannon each put up 7 lbs while Ryan, Suzy, and Andrea pull less than that each with a total team weight loss of 28 lbs bringing them to -2.68%. The Red team needs to lose 43 lbs to beat the blue team. Red team loses 59 lbs with total percentage of -3.73%. Jen won immunity making her safe this week's from elimination. At the Blue Team's elimination the rifts from earlier in the weak resurfaced as the girls that sat out the Las Vegas temptation (Ryan, Suzy, and Andrea) voted for Shannon while the girls that participated in the temptation (Shannon, Jen, and Suzanne) voted for Ryan resulting in a 3-3 tie. Suzanne had the power to send Shannon home but instead chose to gamble after giving a short statement about some of her team mates (whom voted for Shannon) knowing a trick or two about manipulation and decided to roll the dice forcing a tie by siding with Jen and Shannon. By the rules of the Biggest loser the Red team had the power to send home any member of the Blue team except Jen. Mark of the Red team stated the Red team chose to send home one of the lighter women in the house that works very hard in the Gym but is the center of conflict in the house which both teams have had enough of thus the Red team chose to send Ryan home. Ryan has lost a total of 55 lbs since participating in the biggest loser, she works out 6 times a week while enjoying being active with her children.

EPISODE 5: After Ryan's elimination Andrea and Suzy were visibly upset with the results. Suzanne offered her condolences to them but in reality she was please her plan to take Ryan out worked assuming Ryan to be the glue between Suzy and Andrea. Andrea and Suzy both saw through Suzanne's fake sympathy knowing she's trying to manipulate the situation. At the next temptation both teams are surprised to see their trainers on campus presenting them their temptation for the week. The temptation for the week was a pop quiz after a double cheese burger, onion rings, fries, and a shake were revealed to them. They had to figure out how many calories were on the tray food. They had to come to a united decision as a team and for every calorie they were off with their answer they had to do a stair on the stair master. The prize was a 1 day trip to Universal Studios to enjoy themselves and hit the rides with out waiting in line. The women guess the total calorie count for the food to be 4,249 while the men guessed 2,950. The men won only missing the correct answer by 116 calories while the women were way off by 1415 calories which meant 1415 stairs for the Blue Team and 116 for The Red Team. Had the Blue team went with Shannon's answer of 2800 they would have won the temptation and only had to do 34 stairs. The Red Team enjoyed their day off while the Blue Team climbed 1415 stairs. To help motivate his Blue Team Bob invited Andrea from Season 1 Blue team to help motivate the girls. Andrea gave the Blue Team a pep talk to help raise their spirits and regain focus. This week's challenge required each team to search a warehouse full of fridges. Some had tempting fatty foods while others had the healthy sugar free Jello. First team to find all 5 fridges with Jello wins. The prize was videos from home. The girls finally came together and defeated the guys winning the videos from home. Bob was thrilled to learn his girls worked together as a team and won. Both teams during last chance work out and the weigh-in were confident they were going to win. The men put up impressive numbers giving them 56 lbs with 3.74%. The women needed to lose 40 lbs to win but fall just short with 36 lbs even with strong numbers from Shannon(8 lbs), Suzanne(8 lbs), and Jen(10 lbs). The 36 lbs brings their total to 3.41% making it the closest weigh-in in the last few weeks. Suzanne tried to get the team together to decide the proper way to vote at the next elimination. Go with personalities or focus on who has been pulling the bigger numbers? Andrea quickly calls out Suzanne for her antics in the game and tells her she does not trust her since everything Suzanne had done has only been for her own personal gain. At the vote Suzanne opted to cast her vote for Shannon claiming had it not been for her Shannon would have been sent home and felt Shannon owed her a favor but was not willing to return it. Andrea and Shannon voted to send Suzanne home based on wanting to keep the team strong and peace amongst the girls. Suzy cast the deciding vote to send Suzanne home thus eliminating Suzanne with a 3-1 vote with out revealing Jen's vote. After Suzanne left Carolyn asked what happened, Shannon answered with that she chose to send Suzanne home due to Suzanne being known to fly off the handle and the team felt the needed to bond more and Suzanne was more of a disruption of team unity. Since leaving the Biggest Loser Suzanne has lost 70 lbs and hopes to hit her 100 lb weight loss mark before the Biggest Loser reunion.

After the show

Matt and Suzy later appeared on season three of The Biggest Loser in America, and also flew to Australia, along with Seth, to make an appearance on the first season of the Australian version of the show.

Did They Keep the Weight Off?

Prior to the start of season four, a special episode was shown revisiting past contestants to see if they kept the weight off. Only Pete was weighed, but Matt and Suzy appeared in a video clip. Matt and Suzy are now married and have two children.^[2]

Although, like everyone else featured except Season One's Andrea, most had gained weight since his finale; Pete was the only one to take his shirt off to show that he had kept up his muscular tone. Weighing in at 241 pounds, he had gained 25 pounds since the end of Season Two.^[3]

NBC has announced that there will be another "Did They Keep The Weight Off" special, which will feature more than 40 Contestants from all 7 seasons so far. Those confirmed to appear in the episode include: Finalists Matt and Suzy, and eliminated contestants Jeff and Pete. There may be more, however these have been the only ones to be confirmed to appear.^[4]

References

External links

• NBC: The Biggest Loser
• The Biggest Loser (season 2) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Biggest Loser (season 2) at TV.com