Biggest Loser

I don't know that I've talked about The Biggest Loser on here yet but I've been hooked for years. The show, which follows overweight contestants from across the United States as they compete to both lose the pounds and win a large stack of cash is one of my favorites. Complete with glaring product placements (the Jello Grandprize!, if you need a quick snack try a 5 calorie stick of Wrigley's gum, etc.), insane coaches (the man-like drill sergeant Jillian and the effeminate emotionally accessible fat woman's best friend Bob), insane challenges and plenty of drama, The Biggest Loser manages to do what the best reality television ought to.

It enlightens the viewing audience and its participants about the nature of humanity. These peoples' stories are so like our own. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer---real life problems every single person who plugs in a television this year will be personally affected by. These are the kinds of things that television was made to escape, the problems that a half-hour sitcom can never erase but that a laugh-track will, for a period of time at least, drown out.

This is where reality television can get tricky. Since so much of the purpose of television, of all entertainment, is to provide a form of escape the premise of real life can never provide the necessary escape. Or can it? I'm sure Fox executives would tell you no. Rather than hold up a mirror to the American public they'd have 50 midgets pulling an airplane or set up married couples to cheat on one another or make women fall in love with a construction worker under the illusion that he is a millionaire. I do not begrudge them this opinion. Certainly, by the presence of the amount of subsidiary VH1 crap I have on my DVR, I think that there is a place for this type of thinking. I do not believe, however, that it is impossible to successfully include a small amount of reality in reality television. In fact, it is the height of the medium.

The Biggest Loser paints pictures of real people. Married couples and parents and children this season. It shows obesity for what it really is. A family problem. A community problem. A disease. And its victims are not lazy. They have jobs and children. They have dreams like we all do; and more likely than not, however much we'd rather not admit it...they look exactly like we do. So as the audience watches the sweat and tears that go into shedding the pounds on the ranch, a new sort of escapism emerges. Instead of escaping to Paris Hilton's LA mansion or an island in the Pacific, we escape to an obtainable, preferable and healthy future. The health tips are anything but seamless, the recipes obviously present as a vehicle for product promotion and the weigh-ins overly dramatic but at the end of the day being healthy seems a little more tangible.