The Biggest Loser Season 11, Episode 3: An End to the Mystery.

Warning: There is a spoiler in this post.  If you haven't seen the show yet, you might want to hold off on reading this until after you view it. 

This week, we finally get introduced to the Mystery Trainers. The info I had found on them turned out to be correct, with one interesting addition: Mystery Man Brett Hoebe was an overweight teen before getting involved in martial arts and training himself into godlike proportions. Mystery Woman Cara Castronuova was a poor kid who grew up to be a fairly competitive boxer, but doesn't seem to have any training credentials or experience to make her an appropriate trainer for morbidly obese people.  When asked what she brings to the show, she says, "I'm a fighter." The contestants seem to like her, though.  Maybe she will turn out to have more substance than she seems to have. Instead of seeing the trainers on this team working with contestants on their issues, we see the Yellow Team giving some tough love to a couple of other male contestants. I would have been annoyed by this -- Rulon may have been an Olympic athlete, but on the ranch, he's just another obese contestant. I would have rather seen the trainers take the lead and start going deeper with these contestants. Everyone knows that diet and exercise result in weight loss, but the  people who end up on The Biggest Loser have issues that go beyond laziness and a love of pizza.  These players have a few weeks of immunity, which would be a great chance to start working on some of those blocks.

There is a challenge that pits the Unknowns against the Ranch players in an egg-balancing contest. They are separated by a partition, which is weird, since they have met before and there doesn't seem to be a reason for the mystery.  The players are competing for a chance to have dinner with Curtis Stone and compete in a challenge for a 2-pound advantage at their next weigh-in (the Unknowns can save their advantage for after their immunity period is over). The Unknowns decide to give the chance to the Pink Team's Denise, who is one of the older players on the team and who hasn't had great weight losses.  Courtney's mom Marci, from the Aqua Team, manages to beat out all of the other Ranch players, even as the Unknowns hurl their eggs over the partition.  Curtis Stone cooks a dinner for the two women, who seem so starry-eyed at his Aussie hunkiness that they ooh and ahh over the dinner he makes, which is just a salad, quinoa, and pan-seared fish.  I notice that Marci doesn't eat her entree -- maybe she doesn't like fish?  He makes them poached pears with Greek yogurt for dessert.  They are supposed to guess how many calories the meal has.  Marci guesses first, and even though Denise had originally thought the meal was higher than Marci's guess, she guesses a number 20 calories under Marci's guess to try to steal the win.  It turns out that her original instinct was a better guess, and Marci wins the advantage.

Back at the Ranch, Jillian talks to the Purple Team and finds out that Hannah had big sports dreams as a teen that were sidelined by a car accident. Her goal, and her father's goal for her, was to compete in the Olympics, but when that dream was crushed, she just gave up completely on fitness and health. Jillian also talks to Dan and Don. Dan has struggled with grief since his son's death, but says he doesn't need to talk about it, because he doesn't want to bring anyone else down. Jillian tells him he can't succeed without working through this issue, which offends Dan, who just wants to lose weight and doesn't want to be psychoanalyzed. He seems determined to leave the ranch after this.  I know I said that I would keep this spoiler-free, but Dan and Don manage to mysteriously gain 9 pounds each this week, which suggests a clumsy attempt to throw the weigh-in.  This turns out to be a lucky break for Arthur, who had a terrible week because of limitations and antibiotics.  

Dan seems to do well at home on his own. Let's hope that he can keep the weight off on his own too. He has obviously burned bridges with Jillian and everyone else on the show.