Biggest Loser Asia Season 2 premiere

Two hour long season premiere of The Biggest Loser Asia! Woo hoo!

Which means a portion of the programme would be spent on showing us the audition highlights in 5 cities - Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, KL and Bangkok. There was no sign of the host this round of auditions, which should've been a giveaway; instead, Kristy and Dave (plus last season's winner, David, in Jakarta) did the auditioning. Plenty of cringe-worthy, awkward footage to be had, as well as the touching stories of why people are signing up for the show.

Long story short, the 16 contestants are shipped off to the lovely IOI Resort in Putrajaya, where they meet the new host, future Mrs Naza Marion Caunter, dressed in a brown jumpsuit. First, she tells them to "expect the unexpected" (that cliché), then she nicely tells them that they're gonna into a challenge on the equestrian track where they race through a 4-stage obstacle course, where the fastest man and woman would have the power, as captains, to pick their teams and colours. Trust two of the Singaporeans to win that race (Raj and Fish). The contestants were led to the mansion that they're gonna live in (it's HUGE) and everyone gets to know each other and then there is the selection ceremony where the team captains picked their team members and handed out the red and blue shirts. Notice how she's in the same outfit in the different segments.

So the teams meet their trainers and we get to see the spanking new on-campus gym as well as the dreaded scale, the "lifeline" of the show. Marion (or the producers) threw them the "double elimination" curveball, whereby the two people with the least weight lost would be going home. Ouch. There was no team challenge this round, so we get the usual training footage of people sweating, barfing and falling over (not in that order).

We come to another curveball at the first weigh-in: the double eliminations would occur in the same team *jeng jeng jeng* so everyone was freaking out about being two people short on top of the possibility of going home and losing the weigh-in. That's a lot to absorb.

After some suspense, the Red Team wins the weigh-in and Rico and Desiree from the Blue Team are eliminated.