Friday Jan. 6th

Pretty standard first evening in the house episode.  I found the secret task to be entertainingly awkward. There is no way anything like that would work on the American show, it would be game suicide.  I felt Natalie did a pretty good job of taking truly embarrassing orders and spinning them so they didn't seem so bad.  I would have liked to have seen exactly which part she failed at, and felt it was poor that this was a task to avoid punishment rather than gain reward.  Hopefully they keep Romeo's suitcase from him for awhile and constantly toy with him about it.

Other random thoughts:
I don't think I'd wear an American flag shirt onto a British television show where the British public will be in charge of if I stay or go.
I've never heard of jumping jacks called "star jumps"
It seemed that at some point Michael Madsen looked around and went "I thought this was a celebrity show, where are the other celebrities?"

I find it interesting how very different all the different programs the different jails use to try and scare the kids straight.  While watching the show you can almost guess how many success stories there will be at the end depending only on how the program works.

This episodes 4 day approach I felt was one of the better programs I've seen.  I especially liked the courtroom day, and how they showed the kids that when it comes down to brass tacks even your best friends or significant other are going to turn on you rather than face the music themselves.  I would have liked to see all the kids go through the funeral part.  I think that would work on a lot of kids and shouldn't just be saved for the worst offenders.  The only complaint I had was it didn't seem like much time was spent at the jail.  They went into one room and were yelled at, and that seemed to be it.  I also wonder about the real day structure because those kids were wearing the same clothes during the day one jail visit as the day four awards ceremony.

As for the kids:
if you get busted with coke and that much weed you deserve some jail time and you shouldn't get out of it by attending a four day program. 
So Daria, all you learned was not to drink and drive and to drink indoors so you won't get busted....have fun being a stripper honey.  What a waste
the award for "All right my scared straight, now how the eff do I get out of here" goes to Christopher.  Way to pay attention if the inmates son is facing 25 to life, yes that will make it so he can't get into the marines.

No you didn't miss an episode of TBL, this is for The Biggest Loser UK which started the same day as the American one.  I've never watched two versions of the same show at the same time, it might lead to overkill.  I've also never watched the UK version of TBL, so I don't know how it differs from the American.

Well, I found the first difference, they weigh everyone in stones and pounds.  I don't really understand the purpose of that.  I get different locations use different measurements.  I've watched TBL Australia before where they weigh in Kilo's.  But to use a unit of measurement like the stone where you also have to use another unit to correctly describe the weight doesn't make sense.  Why not just give your weight in pounds.  I don't know, maybe I'm just being an ugly American. A stone weights 14 pounds by the way.

It's interesting that all the contestants are relatively the same size (around 19 stone).  That has to give some group a big advantage, I'm just not sure who, I think it favors the women.  To cast everyone at 19 stone  and then have one guy weigh 32 stone is also strange.  If he gets to where everyone else started at he'll basically have it won.

A 5k run cross country on the first day seems like a pretty hard challenge.  I don't know why they didn't start everyone at the same time it didn't add anything and took away from the ending of the race since everyone was racing their time rather than each other.   And how pissed would you be if your on the only team made up of strangers and you get stuck with the one guy who has no motivation to get moving.

Other random thoughts:
It's got to suck to get on the show, then have a mild heart attack that you don't even know about, and not be allowed to go onto the show.
I wonder if the contestants knew what was going to happen at the end of the episode.  It seemed like everyone had bonded with the brown team and not the purple.
No where are they now segment. That's slightly odd....apparently its on the web site after the show airs, but being in America I'm not allowed to watch it. Thanks for that ITV.
All in all a ok show,  at only a hour it seemed kind of rushed.  Which is odd since I find the US version to be very stretched to fill its two hour slot.

Remember everything I said yesterday about storage wars being fake?  Well reverse my opinion and then you know my general feelings about storage hunters.  It's like they aren't even trying to make things seem real.  From the name, a combination of storage wars and auction hunters. To the auctioneer stopping the sale to check out the units with the new buyer. To the fact that there seems to be a fist fight in every episode.  Don't get me started on how contrived and fake it all seems.