If it were up to Jillian Michaels -- best known as the drill sergeant trainer on "The Biggest Loser" -- the show wouldn't revolve around weight-loss competitions. She'd put an end to those diabolical temptations. And no one would be sent home for falling below the dreaded yellow line.
But then, of course, there wouldn't be a show.
The NBC reality series revolves around these cornerstones as it takes a handful of morbidly obese Americans and gives their fattening and lethargic lifestyles a radical makeover. There are off-the-wall competitions, enticements to eat fattening food and back-stabbing as contestants are asked to adhere to strict diets and submit to sadistic workouts doled out by Michaels and co-trainer Bob Harper. Each week, it culminates in the moment when contestants strip down to the bare essentials and weigh themselves, often to jaw-dropping results. (The two who lose the least amount of weight by percentage, not pounds -- as cordoned off by that yellow line -- face the chopping block.)
The final four contestants compete for $250,000, while eliminated contestants who continue to exercise and diet on their own have a shot at a separate pot of cash.
Season 5 of "The Biggest Loser" gets underway today, when many Americans resolve to slim their waistlines, and will join a glut of other reality shows being trotted out during the writers strike.
For the first time, the series has enlisted couples, among them a mother and a daughter, two fellow fat camp counselors who are overweight themselves, two former football teammates who together weigh nearly 800 pounds and a divorced man and his ex-wife. They'll compete together in the early rounds, so if one fails to lose weight, it will jeopardize the other's fate.
Or, as the show puts it, these folks helped each other get fat, now they need to help each other lose weight.
As shooting of the new season got underway, there were other changes too, including less emphasis on competition and more on training together as one large group and focusing on the often dysfunctional relationships that landed contestants on the show.
"It was like that for a few minutes," Michaels joked. "Until it became 'too Kumbaya.' . . . It doesn't make very good TV."
And that's just the reality of reality TV.
During a break from shooting Season 5, Michaels and Harper -- who are portrayed as rivals on the show but are actually friends -- talked about their gratitude for a show that has given them fame and fortune, and the steep emotional penalty it extracts in return.
