If you didn't get quite enough of Jillian Michaels' motivational, um, speeches during the last "Biggest Loser" season, you get another chance to fill up at the banshee buffet when Jillian's spin-off "Losing it With Jillian" debuts tonight at 10.
In the series, Jillian will visit eight families and help them try to transform their lives (the other shows will be at 8 p.m. on Tuesdays). She pushes and screams and hugs and screams and offers psychoanalysis and screams in order to help them find the root cause of their overeating issues and overcome them. Then she revisits the families a few months later to see whether they were able to persevere.
In the debut, Jillian spends five days with the Mastropietro family of Wilmington, Mass., a timeframe Jillian says colors the situation with some pretty intense urgency. Father Michael has already had an unsuccessful gastric bypass. Mom Agnes is scheduled for one. Daughter Michelle has had a bypass and is thin, but as Jillian points out, a bypass might fix your fatness but it does nothing to fix your mind. Brother Michael needs to lose at least 40 pounds, too. They're all trying to be healthier before Michelle's wedding, two months away.
Jillian does not have a psychiatry degree. Jillian does not have a degree in physiology that I can find. What Jillian does have is a black belt in both Akarui-Do and Muay Thai, however. I'm not sure how that qualifies her to dig deep into people's fragile psyches and to scream at them until they break, but it makes for some pretty intense TV at times.
I don't think I'll spoil it by saying there are a lot of tears and happy hugs when all is said and done -- and when all is not cooked in oceans of oil.
