by David McAlpine

Last week on The Biggest Loser 9, Koli gave into the temptation challenge and ate his way to the chance to getting to sole vote in elimination, attempting to save his brother, Sam. He managed to stay above the yellow, securing his power to pick between the two lowest weight losers: Sunshine and Victoria. The Yellow-Gray alliance remained intact as Koli sent Victoria home..

This week, the contestants get a chance to visit Texas, where the phrase "Everything is bigger in Texas" was taken to the extreme. There were endless references of the fact that most of the people on this show are big, as well as the state, as well as the people who live in that state. Fun fact, though, Texas is not the biggest state in the nation, it's Alaska. Guess that one's out the window, isn't it?

The contestants land and hit the ground running…literally. Their first task is to inspire the local people in Texas (who, according to Ali, are some of the "most obese in the country") by running a 5K run with them all (for everyone who's metrically challenged, it's about 3.1 miles). Granted, many of these people said the most they'd walked is one mile, let alone run at all.

During the race, everyone meets several overweight people who are inspired by them, want to be them, want to do what they're doing, etc. There were lots of inspirational words, lots of tears, and lots of support. I'm all for feel good moments on this show, but this kept going and going and going. It was, however, nice at the end to see that some of the characters we met had already made progress on their own weight-loss journey.

In true Texas fashion, this week's immunity challenge was a rodeo. But not just any rodeo. Each contestant had to capture as many baby cattle as possible and bring them back to their pen; the person with the most won immunity. Since it's clearly become a 4 vs. 3 game, everyone wanted to win this one, so people were actually throwing themselves at the animals.

Sunshine started to get on my nerves being so overprotective of her dad, and I have to give Ashley and Michael mad props for trying. Sadly, none of them got any baby cows. O'Neal got a couple thanks to Sunshine helping him, but it came down to Daris (who was competing by himself) and Koli (who was being helped by Sam). Of course, it was Koli who won, securing one of the 4 alliancemates a pass into next week.

Jillian finally gets her spot on the show (since Bob has been so busy shamelessly promoting various products), as an in-show promo for her spin-off, Losing It With Jillian Michaels. Her and Abby, the season 8 success story, headed to a local high school and she bared a little bit of the overweight teenager in her as she counseled a very heavy teenage girl.

At the last chance workout, O'Neal and Sunshine are nowhere to be found because they were headed to his brother's funeral. Dun dun dunnnnnnn…could the father-daughter team be the next two on the chopping block? The possibility set in as everyone else got their butts worked off by Jillian and Bob. I never even knew people could sweat that much! It was clear everyone wanted to keep themselves safe. With O'Neal and Sunshine back, the weigh-in results were as follows:

Koli: -1 (-0.38%) [immune]
Michael: -15 (-4.16%)
Sam: -6 (-2.44%)
Ashley: -6 (-2.36%)
Daris: -5 (-2.28%)
Sunshine: -4 (-2.09%)
O'Neal: -5 (-1.85%)

Like it was so aptly foreshadowed, Sunshine and O'Neal fell into the bottom two, ending the Yellow Team's time together in the game. I couldn't help but roll my eyes as O'Neal stakes himself for his daughter, because we've seen this happen so many times before and, like he asked, O'Neal was voted off unanimously.

While at home, his quality of life has improved dramatically. He can drive his car without the seat set all the way back, he can walk with his fellow mailmen and he can even ride his motorcycle. He's down 159 pounds and plans to lose a whole lot more before the finale.

See which contestant is the next one to get kicked off the ranch only on The Biggest Loser, Tuesdays at 8/7c on NBC!

(Photo courtesy of NBC)

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