Reality TV: The Biggest Loser's Feminine Side

Before this season, I never paid any mind to The Biggest Loser. Why would I want to watch people work out and eat healthy? I do neither of those things very regularly, and I certainly don't need to be reminded of that fact. Though I sometimes enjoy reality television with frivolous goals (be a top model, be a no-name designer), my favorite reality genres are those with no goal at all: the "get a bunch of losers together and watch them become minor celebrities" genre or the "laughing at the young and stupid" genre. The Biggest Loser is the bland nice guy of reality shows: it's earnest, clear-intentioned, and despite its efforts to fit in with the mean crowd, it just can't help its tender-hearted nature.
That said, during a particularly boring winter's night in the throes of the writers' strike, I set aside my misgivings for the premiere episode of this season's installment, featuring "couples" of various types. What is immediately jarring about the show is that it is the opposite of most competitive reality shows: it doesn't aim to place its contestants into "life-threatenting" situations in the hopes of conflict. It doesn't have to: these people's lives are already threatened, and it's the job of the show, however sensationally, to bring them back.
This season's "couples" theme was an attempt to create conflict and drama, and it did, slightly. Kelly and Paul, a divorced couple, obviously had some issues, Mark bullied his brother Jay mercilessly during the challenges, and Ally and her mother Bettie Sue discussed vulnerabilities and abandonment issues. But it was only when the show carried on and the couples dissolved that the competitors, delirious from punishing workouts and miniscule meals, began to really lose it (weight and sanity). I'm just going to say it right now: I have never seen so many men cry on television (in a non-sports related context). Furthermore, I don't think I've ever seen a reality show more in touch with feelings. And I mean real feelings, not those expressed in the saucer-eyed frown of a model told she has no personality.
The contestants were split into two teams, one of which eventually whittled down to a touchy-feely fraternity: brothers Mark and Jay, former linebacker buddies Roger and Trent, and 20-year-old Dan, whose mother got the boot early on. Each week, these men seemed to fall more in love with each other, at the expense of the two last ladies standing, sweet-natured Kelly and man-eating powerhouse Ally. It was a challenge-won trip to Vegas that sealed the deal: the men spent the night in a casino, smoked cigars, and each got a garish tattoo featuring the word "pride" (and also invented a "pride" handshake).
Sickening, right? These are major bros we're talking about. But every week I sat riveted as these men blubbered like babies when a friend was eliminated, as though it was the end of the world. Mark, the reformed bully, became unrecognizable: he was now skinny, bearded, and constantly had tears streaming from his eyes. On the phone with his wife during the semi-finals, even she seemed fed up, exclaiming, "Are you crying again? You're a mess!" Good guy Trent and Dan, the impressionable youngster with rock star dreams, eventually lost out to the show's crying-est contestants, Mark and good ol' southern boy Roger, who soldiered on, bleary-eyed and trembling, to the finals.

Where were the women during all this, you ask? Most of what we saw of the women on The Biggest Loser this season was dramatic and tearful, but not in the way we're used to. Kelly and Ally are mostly shown doing impossible, painful-looking workouts, with trainer Jillian screaming commands. There they are lifting huge weights, dragging Jillian across a beach, running, exhausted on a treadmill. They don't have time for tears: they want to beat the boys. And they did. I cried during the second-to-last episode, as Kelly, who never thought she could do it, lost an inconceivable amount of weight to put Mark and Roger up for the vote (with Roger victorious).

Finally, neither Kelly nor Roger could match Ally, the crazed 20-something now down to 122 lbs, who kicked Roger's ass in the finals, just as we all knew she would.
What is it about losing weight that does this to people? I'll leave the gender-role analysis open here and just say that this season's The Biggest Loser was weird and emotional and a lot more real than most reality shows. And it also made me really, really afraid of gaining weight. I personally couldn't eat much for awhile after Ally said, "I put the weight on five pounds at a time. I didn't realize I had gotten so big." Scary.

(top left: Mark with trainer Bob, center right: Ally wins.)

The original "Hills": Sweet fantasy in everyone's favorite zip code

As I grow older, there are some matters of taste from my past that I just can't reconcile: the Mariah Carey singles, the windpants with zippers up the sides, the frosted lipstick and the love of "TGIF" (post-Belvedere, even). One thing hasn't changed, however: my love of Beverly Hills, 90210. I’m been revisiting this fine show via Soapnet for years, and now there’s news of a new spin-off hitting the CW. Thrilled as I am, I just can’t imagine how that special 90210 something will be revamped for the new generation. My guess is it will be too slick, too shallow, too self-aware for 90210 devotees. Oh yeah, and the actors will probably be, like, young and attractive. How millennial.
This news has caused me to contemplate just what it is about this show that was able to captivate my 9-year-old self just as completely as my 25-year-old self. A child during its early seasons, I would watch 90210 every week (a fact that doesn't necessarily make it unique, considering my ritualistic viewing habits and vast knowledge of TV Guide). My favorite characters, goody two-shoes that I was, were Kelly and Brandon who, despite my preteen hopes, didn't manage to fall in lust until the series slipped into its unfortunate decline. It's hard to remember what I thought of the show then: how I interpreted Brenda's sociopath behavior, Brandon's bleeding-heart liberalism, Donna's questionable looks, and Andrea's questionable age. Impressionable youth that I was, I swallowed it all without question, and the characters and their stories became fodder for my imagination. I pretended I was Kelly Taylor, a girl with a bad reputation, a nose job, and a recovering-addict mother. Having stolen my best friend's boyfriend (with a pompadour a permanent grimace), I'd hop in his vintage car for a retro evening of pie and diet pills at The Peach Pit.
Now I'll admit that the older I get and the more brunette I remain, the more I prefer Brenda. Sure, she's pure evil, but the more I see of Kelly the less of a personality I detect. We know Brenda likes acting, at least. What is Kelly interested in? She doesn't do anything at all except sit around at the Peach Pit, make out with Dylan and make herself miserable (I'm focusing purely on the high school stuff here, but, yeah, I know about the cult and the gunshot wound). As for guys, Dylan and Brandon are the hot ones, but how about a shout out for Steve? In my younger years, I found him grotesque (and was I wrong?), but he’s the most realistic character to me now. He’s flawed, funny, and, despite his middle-aged appearance, actually acts somewhat like a teenager.
As I watch the show now, I can't help but feel that it could not have less to do with my own teenage experience. The teenage years I imagined as a child snapped conveniently into a template created by 90210 and Sweet Valley High. What I encountered instead was neither this nor its opposite, the bullying and mortification typified by other young adult propaganda. It was instead an in-between space in which, well, not too much happened. Instead of riding to the Peach Pit in a ’68 mustang, I was slumped in a chair at the Dairy Queen, with nary a rockabilly haircut in sight. Much of my time was spent watching TV, reading, or listening to music, three activities the teens of 90210 just didn’t partake of, unless they were reading about Dylan’s dad, or listening to one of David’s embarrassingly bad demos.
My one and only high school boyfriend was no Dylan or Brandon, type, either. He was quiet like Dylan, but I’m pretty sure it was an awkward silence, not a brooding one. I think he was a liberal, but he hardly wore that on his sleeve. And lord knows he was no David Silver on the dance floor. He was a skinny, girl-phobic sophomore fond of Monty Python and Pete Townsend solo records (his Holy Grail was All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes). He had no car, and no more of a life than I did. Needless to say, in high school I focused more on shows truer to my own experience: Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life, and perhaps the truest of them all, Daria.
And yet somehow I returned to 90210 in recent years. I no longer view it as realism, and there are certainly things that still bother me: Why do the characters listen to so much instrumental synth-pop? Why does liberal activist Andrea marry a man who threatens to dump her if she gets an abortion? Who in their right mind thinks Donna could be a model? Why does Brandon act like a 50-year-old man? And so on. I think what charms me most about the show now is its complete disregard for realism, a strategy Aaron Spelling has always excelled in. The show has a distinct retro feel, one that in my own warped mind I’ve mistakenly attributed to the early ’90s themselves, instead of Aaron Spelling (mostly due to my then-affinity for 1960s pop music). Though billed as an edgy show focused on teen lives full of drugs, sex, and wealth, it is remarkably innocent. This wholesome group of friends may be popular, but they aren’t snobs or bullies, and though they may have struggled with substance abuse (Dylan) or legal trouble (Steve), they all seem wise beyond their years, loyal, and cautious.
The nostalgia of the show’s writers and creators comes through loud and clear: why can’t Beverly Hills rich kids, at the end of the day, still congregate at the old malt shop? In one typical high school episode (by which I’m embarrassed to admit I was moved), we are offered a rare glimpse of the friends all at peace with one another: Brenda, Kelly, and Dylan have called a temporary truce, and the gang gathers at the Peach Pit for megaburgers and malts. Dylan, of all people, starts up the jukebox, and Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons’ “Let’s Hang On” fills the room. Now, I don’t know what Dylan typically listens to (instrumental synth-pop?), but I have a hard time believing he’s into The Four Seasons. But this moment, so full of sweetness and blatant disregard for the content of the show, is what makes 90210 worth watching. It’s a subtle high school fantasy for jaded snobs to watch half-ironically, half-longingly. Beverly Hills, 90210 doesn’t remind me of my own teenage experience at all; it reminds me of a time when I didn’t know what being a teenager was, and I was free to dream Spelling-tinged dreams of mustangs, motown, and megaburgers.