TBL3: The Timberlake Special
Now, some less than kind observers might suggest the TBL has become predictable, stale and mono-dimensional. I say, AJ left years ago. I also say, ye of little faith in the amazing powers of TBL to draw on popular culture to cunningly reinvent itself. The latter half of week one is testament to this show’s ability to assemble a narrative so diffuse with allegory, so ripe with allusion, so laden with the refrain of familiar song, that Ezra Pound would take a year just to annotate the tapes.
We find our hero, Shannan, clutching the letters of commitment from his four stallions. But all is not well. As in so many great country songs (yes, both of them), Shannan’s boys have cheated him. Out of 300 calories. His entirely rational response is to declare Armageddon in a training room. The boys’ expressions make it clear that this is every bit as excruciating as listening to that Areosmith song. Unlike Steve Tyler, Ryan does want to close his eyes, which unfortunately results in him being flipped off the back of the treadmill. Dr Frankenshagger is determined to rebuild his boys from the inside out; but only after he models this new commitment to training by tearing up their letters, throwing a tantie and storming out of the gym.
Over at Hornbag HQ, Dr Commando paid a visit to Alex. Some other stuff happened, but I didn’t notice.
Outside, the red team were trying to rid themselves of the painful, nagging, soul-destroying burden that they had been dragging around for so long. After Michelle let go of the harness, she unleashed the full fury of her eyeballs on Brenda. Reaching 5.8 on the Feldman scale, La Bridges honed in on that beautiful lady, telling her that she was going to make it her personal mission to be ‘bringing Brenda back’ (go ahead, be gone with it).
Then it was time for the first challenge, a test of Herculian strength drawn straight from Greek mythology: pulling ferries with a rowboat. With Alex in a moon boot, Commando took his place in the boat with his dark knights. The other trainers propped at the helm to shout encouragement, while Alex shouted, ‘we’re the oldest and the fattest, but we’ll do it’. Defying all laws of physiology, Tiffiny told her team to forget their limited upper body strength: they can win if they are ‘strong in their heart.’ M.Briddy, fresh from her Timberland turn, started furtively crumping at her team. Shagger, clearly having read one too many Nicholas Sparks novels, not only STILL believed his men could commit, but offered such observations on romantic love as ‘one bad stroke affects everyone else’. For a while, everyone rowed N’Sync (get it? It’s more JT, people!). Then Commando took charge and, like Jerry Hall spying Mick Jagger across Studio 54, decided to ‘ditch that damn Ferry.’
Needless to say, Commando single-handedly rowed himself, three men and a ferry to victory. Alex remained convinced that ‘we could have won it without Commando’ (really? I mean, REALLY?). T-bag, so proud of her ninja’s last placing, told them all that they ‘pushed themselves to exhaustion, and that’s girl power’. Stay tuned for the coming Jenny Craig cross-promo (just text ‘Mel B’ to 1800 Jenny).
Back at Camp BL, it was time for the first weigh-in. Like seasoned pros, the contestants fell all too easily into such inanities as ‘strategy’, ‘I need to be here’ and everyone’s favourite, ‘pull big numbers’. Hayley, looking into the soul-o-scope (reference 2), carefully explained that the weigh-in works by everybody getting weighed. Looking relieved now that the confusion was cleared up, Margie revealed herself to be this little blog’s own spy in the house of Bridges, having herself recorded the ever changing eyeball circumference. Having pulled big numbers and avoiding eyballagedden, the red team set about ‘bringing sexy back’ (Timberland! Yeah!). The rest of the weigh-in progressed smoothly, until Michelle let Tiffiny and the white team down by stepping on the scales to reveal, to the audible shock of her team, that her name is spelled correctly.
After all had been weighed, it was the Dojang Dyslexics against Shagger’s Commitments. Left to work out their ‘strategies’, T-zone’s Bratz dolls quickly fell apart even as Bek appealed to logic by declaring that girls like her who are, like, totes popular shouldn’t go to elimination for being, like, totes popular. While they deliberated, I prepared myself for the elimination by following the same routine that I have for the last eleven thousand BL elimination shows: a few simple pilates stretches, a herbal tisane, and shouting at the screen ‘voting off the fattest person isn’t STRATEGY, you f*ckwits!!!!’
This elimination, had a little twist: almost as much of a twist as when I Google searched the song title ‘You don’t have to go home tonight’ thinking that it was by Hart, when in fact it’s by The Triplets, which kind of ruined one of my jokes. However, in a twist almost that big, the contestants didn’t have to tell someone to go home tonight if they didn’t want to. They also didn’t have to tell them ‘I am a flower, you are the seed, we walked in the garden, we planted a tree.’ See, contestants: THAT’s persistence in the face of adversity. Anyway, some people didn’t vote, some people were pretty mean about what they perceived was Selena’s lack of motivation, and to wrap it up she’s gone. But, as has always been the case, the brutality of elimination is softened by the addition of little sad faces on the name plates. L
So, despite winning our hearts for actually turning a deaf ear to Tiffiny, Selena has left Camp BL. On a positive note, however, all eight members of the black and red teams have received invitations to join Tony Blair’s Middle East peace team in recognition of their strategic thinking.
