Biggest Loser: What Jillian’s Departure Means

Will “The Biggest Loser” lose some of its cachet without its tough trainer  Jillian Michaels? And will Jillian lose some of her celebrity status without BL?

People magazine reported a couple of weeks ago that Jillian is leaving NBC’s reality weight loss series.  This isn’t the first time Michaels has left the show, and who knows it if will be for good.

New trainers Jessie Pavelka and Jennifer Widerstrom join Dolvett Quince and Bob Harper for Season 16 when it premieres Sept. 11.

In the People article, Michaels said she is grateful for the show and sad to leave. But she didn’t like how she was being portrayed. She felt the focus was on her toughness instead of the bonding and relationships with her clients.

I’ve posted previously about how much I hate Jillian’s meltdowns and bullying tactics

. It’s interesting that Jillian felt she was being portrayed unfairly.  She couldn’t be shown screaming and yelling at people if she didn’t do them. I guess in years past, the show would balance out her rants with some caring, inspiring moment between her and her team.

It’s interesting because over the years we’ve heard players such as Vickie and Conda complain that they were unfairly portrayed, too.  How can that be, we wonder, because as viewers, we think the camera never lies. But an acquaintance of mine had an editing job with a reality TV series (not the BL). This person told me that you CAN manipulate footage — inserting eye-rolls, frowns, smiles, etc. at just the right spot to give an impression that may or may not be truthful of what actually happened.  Still, I don’t think you can just edit in a lot of screaming and ranting, unless it actually happened somewhere along the line.

Last season, Jillian was accused of cheating by allowing her team to take caffeine pills, although Michaels still contends that it was better to take them than drink umpteen cups of coffee.  (Why is caffeine necessary anyway? My guess is because it’s a diuretic, you can shed a lot of water just before weigh-in.) But it seemed that the situation was a little trumped-up by producers in order to give the celebrity competitor, Ruben, one last chance to stay on the show. Jillian seemed stone-faced during the whole thing, as if there were a lot of behind-the-scenes factors that she was unable to talk about publicly.

And then there was controversy at the finale, when an super-thin Rachel Frederickson won. Initially, I was stunned when she came out on stage to be weighed. But then, she is a competitor, and $200,000 was at stake. She knew she would have to dip down a little weight-wise in order to win. But then, I started thinking about it — was it any different than Matthew McConaughey’s extreme weight loss that helped him win an Academy Award? Playing the role of an AIDS victim, the film clips showed him looking a lot more emaciated than Rachel. But nobody criticized him for being a poor role model, or worried that he was going to become anorexic. We knew this was show business, and he wanted to win an Oscar, and it was only temporary.  Both she and McConaughey seem to be up to a healthy weight now (I’m only judging by Rachel’s Facebook posts and recent photos of McConaughey).  Hey, I’m only playing devil’s advocate here….

Now we have to wonder, will both the show and the trainer survive, or even thrive, without each other?   “The Biggest Loser” has gotten along without Jillian in the past. Although she has a lot of fans, the show isn’t about Jillian, it’s about the competitors and their weight loss challenges. As for Jillian, I doubt that her products, books, magazine covers and endorsement deals will be as lucrative when she no longer has the platform of a major network TV show. But, maybe she has other priorities now that she’s become a parent. It would be nice if she can kick back and enjoy two her kids and the financial success she’s already achieved.