If you were a fan of The Biggest Loser, as we were during the earlier years of the reality competition’s run, you watched and marveled at how the contestants lost so much weight in such a small period of time. But you also knew in the back of your mind that something wasn’t right about the show, whether it was the show’s sad-sacky way of portraying its contestants, to the screaming of trainers Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, to the fundamental idea that such rapid weight loss can’t be a healthy thing. A new docuseries takes on the legacy of the series, both the good and the very, very bad.
Opening Shot: We see Suzanne Mendonca’s audition tape for The Biggest Loser, where she opens her jacket in the middle of a busy street and shows her body in a bikini.
The Gist: Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser is a 3-part docuseries, directed by Skye Borgman, that takes a look at the legacy of The Biggest Loser, the NBC reality competition series that ran from 2004-16 (a season also ran on USA Network in 2020). A number of competitors from the various seasons are interviewed, including Season 8 winner Danny Cahill, Season 1 winner Ryan Benson, Season 8 contestant Tracey Yukich, Season 7 participant Joelle Gwynn and others.
Also interviewed are the show’s executive producers David Broome and JD Roth, trainer Bob Harper, longtime host Alison Sweeney and medical advisor Dr. Robert Huizenga. Curiously, Jillian Michaels, the show’s other prominent trainer besides Harper, didn’t participate. Experts about health and weight loss are also interviewed, including Aubrey Gordon, co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast who has been outspoken about diet culture and fat shaming for years.
The first episode takes a look at the origins of the show, how it exploded in popularity after its first season, with the number of people auditioning going from 500 to thousands of hopefuls, and examines how Roth and Broome approached the show from the aspect of wanting people to feel inspired by the contestants’ extreme weight loss. But as Gordon and others point out, there show wasn’t afraid of not-so-subtly making fun of the obese contestants, and giving them “temptation” challenges that could buy them time at home if they eat forbidden foods seemed like a cruel joke.
We see how Yukich needed medical attention during the Season 8 premiere, when the contestants are told to run for a mile just to qualify to enter the Biggest Loser house for the season. Dr. Huizenga mentions how certain challenges he didn’t endorse were done when he wasn’t on set. And champs like Cahill mention how they overworked themselves then starved themselves in order to win the $250,000 prize for their season.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser has a similar vibe to the docuseries Dark Side Of Reality TV.
Our Take: If you watched The Biggest Loser for any period of time, like we did, not much of Fit For TV will be new to you. The docuseries is a good encapsulation of why the series was so popular, why so many people auditioned for it, and why the contestants would go through the ritual humiliation and extreme exercise and diet routines once on the show. Yes, it was about winning the grand prize. But most of the people who went on the show were desperate to turn their lives around, and some really think being on the show saved them from an early, obesity-related death.
To longtime viewers, the show’s legal problems, which will also be examined in this series, were also an aspect of the show’s history that they followed closely. More than one contestant has accused the show of fostering an environment where the contestants felt they needed to starve themselves, take weight-loss drugs, and overexercise in order to keep up. Just the idea that someone can drop 100 or even 200 pounds in six months is unhealthy to begin with, but the contestants went to such extremes to do so it affected their health — Benson peed blood after he won his season’s finale, for instance.
What we also hope will be examined is just how the body responds to such extreme and rapid weight loss. Cahill has gained all of the weight he lost back, but other participants have seemed to find a happy medium between their biggest size and the emaciated versions of themselves that competed to win the grand prize.
This could be why Gordon is interviewed; she seems to be the only voice of reason speaking against the show, though Dr. Huizenga voices his objections to how some things on the show happened. Sweeney is the same supportive cheerleader she was as host. Harper frustratingly refuses to admit that anything on the show it was amiss. Roth and Broome probably come off the worst, because they talk like the exploitative reality TV producers that they are, and seem to have little to no remorse about how their contestants were portrayed or any of the health problems they suffered from because of the show.
Sex and Skin: None besides scenes of male Biggest Loser contestants taking off their t-shirts for each episode’s weigh-in.
Parting Shot: Yukich, in her interview, is convinced she died the day she had to run that one-mile race during that Season 8 premiere.
Sleeper Star: We liked Cahill when he was losing weight in the show’s 8th season, and we like him now, even as he seems philosophical about his experience with the show.
Most Pilot-y Line: Roth, in one of the most bald-faced exploitative statements of the first episode, says, “We were not looking for people who were overweight and happy. There’s a lot of ’em. That’s fine! We were looking for people who were overweight and unhappy.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. As we mentioned, Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser doesn’t reveal anything new to people who were fans of the reality competition series. But it definitely does a good job of showing exactly why it was popular and why it was a dangerous show for its contestants.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.