The Biggest Loser week 7: Tearjerker edition

by Alex Bentley

The eighth season of The Biggest Loser has had several defining elements -- the "second chances" theme, the game-playing of Allen homemaker Tracey, anger at Tracey's game-playing -- but emotional breakdowns have mostly stayed out of the picture. Until now.

But more on that in a second. Liz is still proving to be the most easily provoked contestant, as she said the Black team could "kiss my ass" if they thought that having to vote off Dina last week was hard. Liz thought Dina was the obvious choice to go home, and that the decision would only be tough when they had to vote off someone they really liked. Foreshadowing...?

This week's twist involved the teams facing off in individual match-ups during the weigh-in. They had a challenge that involved touching hanging disks on both sides of a bar that they would have to duck under, with the the first team to get to 500 touches winning the right to choose the match-ups. As with most challenges of this kind, the only drama came with who struggled. Liz pulled the least weight for her team, stopping after only 20 touches or so, but Rebecca finished strong, giving the Blue team the victory.

The match-ups determined by the Blue team were Rebecca vs. Amanda (former Pink teammates), Tracey vs. Abby (all-Texas match-up!), Allen vs. Danny, Rudy vs. Shay, and Liz vs. Daniel. Once the teams got into the gym, however, that's when the tears started flowing, and not surprisingly, all of them came from Jillian's Black team. Amanda was first to go, yelling at Jillian that she'd had enough and needed to take a break.

The main challenge of the week involved New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, his career stats, and throwing baseballs at the other contestants (OK, pictures of the other contestants). It was another so-so activity, with the only noteworthy aspect that the Black team finally came together and won after ganging up on the strongest Blue team member, Allen, and taking him out early. Their reward was a two-pound advantage at the weigh-in (which would later go to Amanda) and lunch with chef Curtis Stone.

Jillian continued her trail of tears with Abby, who told Jillian that being on the show had finally given her something to truly live for after the deaths of her husband and children. Soon thereafter, Amanda apologized to Jillian for walking out, and Shay confided in Jillian about her horrific childhood as the daughter of a heroin addict. There are times when Jillian can come off as too much of an amateur psychologist, but she obviously gets results and damn if it didn't get dusty in the room when she was doing so.

The weigh-in was mostly anticlimactic, with the Blue team dominating. Rebecca (9 pounds) handily beat Amanda (4), despite the two-pound advantage. Tracey (5) beat Abby (3), but still received only light applause from the group. Danny (12) briefly got the Black team back in the game by beating Allen (8), but Liz (7) finished things off by trouncing Daniel, who shockingly only lost 5 pounds. To rub things in, Rudy (14) became the fastest person in Biggest Loser history to lose 100 pounds, beating Shay (9) in the process.

Not wanting the team to have to agonize over the decision, Abby said that she was ready to go home, a choice that everybody but Danny honored. Naturally, more tears were spilled by Abby, Shay, and Amanda, with Shay saying Abby was the mom she always wished she'd had. Abby, who had lost 46 pounds up to that point, was shown to have lost a total of 80 pounds so far and has become a motivational speaker, something that speaks volumes about how far she's come.