LAST EDITED ON 02-22-12 AT 07:55 PM (EST)

"I can't believe it. Wow. Just... After all this time... I have finally found the very worst liar in the entire world."

In fact, we found a whole pack. They sure don't recruit them for their acting ability, do they? And I'm about fifty percent sure that when Bob walked off the screen, he found a producer and punched hir in the face.

The eternal conflict of this series is between the trainer's drive to genuinely help the contestants and the producer's need to throw pointless drama into what should just be a no-frills competition show. Does it make more sense not to have that temptation and its consequences? Sure. Would that mean they have to actually feature contestants and weight-loss methods instead of giving minutes to The Drama? Yep. And as with Bachelor daemons feeling the fights are all anyone watches for because love is a joke, the local brimstone-in-charge just wants to see people screaming about betrayal while forgetting to calculate how many calories The Drama is burning. So they keep switching things up. They cast for gameplay instead of need. And they will never stop, because as far as they're concerned, they're doing nothing wrong. Remember: It's Cheap And It's Paid For: the official motto of NBC. As long as the ratings outdraw anything, who cares what the show's quality is like?

But Bob and his opposition of the season are there to help people lose weight. That's their goal: change some lives. And whenever the producers add 'for the worse' to the end of that, there's nothing they can do about it except quit -- and it's not as if new trainers won't come. Any protest they make is ultimately pointless. Any problems the contestants have with it don't matter because they'll be gone at the end of the season and new suckers will come. And anything we saw is ignored because we're not the ideal target viewership and if we drop out, so what? It's still outdrawing the set-your-HD-tuner channel, if just barely.

The other similarity to ABC's favorite travesty: the producers have no motivation to get better. To them, this is working, so there's no need.

A supposed life improvement show which loves to make things worse...

ETA: By the way, do you know what that twist was? An excuse. They're settling in, they're getting the routine, steady loss is on the horizon -- so let's upset them. Give them something they have to take, because paranoia is the excuse no reality show can do without. And then once the thing you knew would happen has? Blame them for giving in to you. Because as a producer, it is never your fault.

Think they're done for the season? Think again.

"I was a fighter for twelve years before I was recruited as a paladin! Charisma seemed like a safe dump stat at the time!"