First off, the show is great. Think it was a fantastic idea. Love it like it was movie popcorn or hot clothes right out of the dryer. Probably what I like most about it is that everybody on the show loses weight. I’m not going to say that it’s easy to lose weight or that it isn’t more difficult for some people, but I think we get stuck when we focus on genetics and the idea that genetics are working against us. I’m big-boned. My metabolism is slow. My thyroid is on the fritz. Whatever it is. Bottom line: excuses are almost always easier than exercise.

But on “The Biggest Loser” everybody loses weight. People come on to the show with all different concerns and health issues, from all parts of the country, all ages and backgrounds and races, and yet they all lose weight. It’s not boot camp on there, but excuses don’t fly. It’s tough love. They eat healthier and exercise more, and ta-da!, shrinkage. They eat fewer calories. They burn more calories. They lose weight the way Charles Schwab would do it. It should give every overweight person hope. I don’t know if it does, but it should.

All that said, the ending of each season goes against everything the show stands for. People aren’t there just to lose weight – I know, I know, it’s the name of the show – they’re becoming healthier. They’re getting stronger. They’re building self-esteem. If the show was just about losing weight, they wouldn’t have anyone lifting weights or doing push-ups. They’d be jogging constantly in a suana. I like to think of the contestants as losing lots of stuff besides pounds; their negativity, their fears, their inhibitions, their cholesterol levels. That’s how the shows creators envisioned it. (Or I’m just making it up to supplement my overall point. But it certainly sounds like something the creators could have envisioned.)

 What I’m getting at, is that Helen is too skinny. Helen being Helen Phillips, the winner of the latest “Biggest Loser.” Season 7, I believe. This would be the pre-show Helen …

She came to the show with her daughter as a partner, weighing 257 pounds. During the show, Helen lost 110 pounds, all the way down to 147. Before the show’s last episode, there is a longer break where they go home, and have some time to lose additional weight on their own. And when Helen came back for the final episode, she looked like this …

She’d lost 30 more pounds in less than a month. Yes, for the subractionally impaired, that’s a final weight of 117 pounds. As my friend Jocelyn said, 117 pounds probably isn’t a sustainable weight for a 47 year old woman. And as I said when Helen burst through the paper sign for her introduction on the last episode: “Holy crap! What the heck happened to Helen!? She must have been kidnapped and starved and tortured with spray-on tan!” She looks 10-15 years older than when she started the show and I’m in no way trying to be mean-spirited. She just did.

I’m not faulting Helen for it. That’s how you win the $250,000, by losing the highest percentage of weight. And that’s the problem. A great concept is hijacked at the end when three people lop off every possible ounce, even ones they don’t need to lose. Tara and Mike, the other two finalists, both lost amazing amounts of weight, but Helen out-shrunk them. I don’t know how she did it, but the last 30 pounds are supposed to be the toughest, not something you just peel off in a few weeks. I know that for $250,000, I’d definitely so some bad things. Live on cooked spinach. Scarf diuretics. Become bulimic. Try heroine. Maybe meth. Whatever it took. (I’m kidding. I would never, never, never eat cooked spinach.)

The current rules of the show are encouraging that sort of behavior. I haven’t come up with a better plan, unfortunately, but there’s got to be something. Part of the problem is the more dramatic the weight loss, the more buzz it creates, the better ratings it produces. People don’t tune in to see Helen at a responsible weight, they want to gasp and talk about how jiggly her arms are. I get that.

The people of NBC should get together, brainstorm a little, try to come up with something better. The show is filled with challenges, so why not have a challenge on the final episode. Or have the winner decided by a three-part equation tabulated by percentage of weight loss, a test of strength or endurance (handicapped for age and gender) and a quiz show based on knowledge of the food pyramid. OK, you’re right. That would be lame. Scratch that last part. But you see my point. There has to be some sort of way to decide the winner besides having everyone go all Kate-Moss-on-”Survivor” for three straight weeks.

I realize we’ve picked on Helen a little bit here. Tara and Mike were much younger and if either of them had lost a few more pounds, I’m probably not still thinking about this a week later. Instead, it’s eating away at my soul on a daily basis. Thankfully, my soul is almost calorie-free.

Murray was eliminated from “Stars” last night, leaving three contestants, gymnast Shawn Johnson, Melissa Rycroft* (the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who was engaged and then dumped on “The Bachelor”) and actor/model Gilles  Marini. I’m still not entirely sure whether Gilles is the man or woman in his dance partnership. Either way, really good at dancing.

*From this point on, I’m referring to people who have no real reason for being famous as A.A. (Aspiring Actors) or maybe D.S.A. (Desperately Seeking Attention). Hmm, I’ll have to work on that.

The continued survival of Murray on the show was a bit of America’s running joke, I think, like keeping Donald Trump on a reality show called, “Constructively Working Out Our Differences of Opinion.” That’s part of the charm of the show, of course, watching bad dancers dance badly, or watching bad dancers really improve. The truly entertaining part, though, was that the stiffness of Ty Murray didn’t confine itself to the dance floor. He’s just not that personable, at least in public, his face looking a little Botox-ed when he smiles, his grip on his partner’s shoulder reminding you of an awkward 8th-grade encounter at the movie theater.

His partner Chelsie Hightower’s strategy seemed to be, “Let’s put you in as many sparkly, farmer’s-tan-revealing, sleeveless shirts as possible, and have you do as many ridiculous butt-shaking moves as we can fit in every week.” And they rode it as far as it would take them.

Part of me thinks that after three weeks, Murray was rooting against himself. (”Um, yeah, Sis, this is Ty. How are ya? So ya know I’ve been doing that dancin’ show on ABC. Well, I was just sorta hopin’, maybe this week, ya know, if it’s not too much trouble, you could kind of stop votin’ for me. Oh, and tell everyone you know.”) I kind of felt bad for the guy. When they announced he was leaving, I almost expected a heel click and a cowboy hat to get thrown. Instead he said some pretty funny stuff: “Trying to teach me to dance is like trying to teach a blind man to paint. I don’t understand what makes it look better. I can see I’m not doing as well as the other people, but I don’t really know how to make it better. I just try to remember the steps.”

You think Jewel helped him with that blind man/painting line? Maybe Ty is one of the 28 people who read her book of poetry and felt inspired.

Sorry, didn’t mean to turn this into roast. I’ve heard a few of the bull riders on the circuit say Murray is anything but friendly at times, a hard-nosed businessman, but he came across as pretty likable on the show. It’s interesting, you could put a bull rider in an astronaut suit and 10 seconds into a conversation you’d know he was a bull rider. Almost all of them have that shy way about them. They don’t need or usually want attention. They all smile with the corners of their mouth as if they know something you should know.

People love an underdog, and maybe Murray’s problem is he got a little too average at dancing. If he falls on his partner and chewing tobacco leaks out of his mouth onto her dress during Monday’s show, no way he gets voted off Tuesday. People would have loved it, and Melissa would have been treated to her second on-air heartbreak of 2009. Speaking of Melissa, I wish Shawn Johnson wasn’t so young and nice, partly because it’s a little odd to be watching a 17-year-old dance so romantically with her older partner (I know, I know, he’s on 22), and partly because I’m now almost positive Melissa will not come to blows with anyone on set. Melissa was a tinderbox coming into this show. That was my theory. Weeks I’ve spent waiting for her meltdown. Sigh.

All that said, we bid goodbye to the lone Waltzer, the quick-roping quick-stepper, the last man standing — unless Gilles turns out to be a dude – Mr. Ty Murray.

Here is the third video. Apparently, they disabled the embedding, so you’ll have to travel through cyberspace to see it. Like In-N-Out Burger, well worth the trip.