Celebrity Fit Club 7, ep. 5: The Art of War

Enthusiasm slipping…please send cookies…

Bus.

Ahahaha. They don’t even show a bus segment. Good for them.

Role call.

They line up and Harvey tells them they are at the half-way mark. This episode is about Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I’m sure you know about this book. It’s rarely ever read. Mostly, it’s flipped through by two types of people: 1) corporate jerks and 2) people who have taken two mixed martial arts classes and think they’re the ultimate badasses. The film adaptation of 300 took some steam out of Art of War because those same douchebags changed their douche jargon to “I’m a Spartan warriorrrrr!!!” over their lychee fruitinis. Rest assured, however, The Art of War still has capital with this crowd.

Each of our Fit Clubbers gets a copy of the book. They sit around reading it together as teams, but Bobby falls asleep. Jay interviews that he’s sick of acting like Bobby’s mom. Wake up, Bobby. Time for school. Here’s your lunch: a fruit roll-up dusted in crack.

Bobby and Jay are going to have little tiffs throughout this episode, so this is just the opening salvo. I’ll break the bad news now: nothing major happens. You can almost hear the producers pleading for them to up the ante in their interviewed mini-insults, but it doesn’t happen. A real war on The Art of War week would be sweet, but the conflagration settles into mutual disrespect.

Pugil sticks.

Here’s how they do pugil sticks Fit Club style. There is a pool. At each end of the pool is a flag. In the middle of the pool is a small circular platform. Narrow walkways connect the flags to the center platform. The object is to get the opponent’s flag and return with it to your own side without falling into the water. First team to 3 points wins. Each round will consist of two players per team. Honestly, this is a nice set-up. Not only would I play this, but I would watch this as a televised league sport. It would easily get higher ratings than hockey. I call it Pugil Stick Sumo Flag Ball.

The Red Team is Jay McCarroll (I have never bought any of his clothing), Bobby Brown (I have never owned any of his albums), Nicole Eggert (I was more interested in Pamela Anderson) and Shar Jackson (I never watched Moesha).

The Blue Team is Kaycee Stroh (I have never watched High School Musical), Sebastian Bach (I have never owned any Skid Row albums, but I wouldn’t feel guilty if I did–I mean, it’s not Winger), Kevin Federline (I have never…what does this guy do? Dance? I’ve never seen him dance.) and Tanisha Thomas (I have seen a couple of Bad Girls Club episodes but all I remember is a bunch of interchangeable whores with horribly mutated and incurable STDs).

Round 1. Shar knocks out Kaycee and Tanisha to get the flag. Shar is channeling all her rage at Federline in this event. Kaycee and Tanisha are intimidated by her and I can’t blame them. Tanisha also has her “I can’t swim” fear going on, but she’s doing more coping than complaining. Well, except for the part where some hapless crew member jumps in to fish her puffer-fish-shaped body out of the pool.

Round 2. Jay gets knocked into the water quickly and that upsets Bobby. If you think about it, it’s kinda funny. Pugil Stick Sumo Flag Ball is a new, completely made-up sport that nobody has ever played. Unlike the obstacle course where running, jumping and climbing are reasonably general activities, pugil-sticking is not. I can’t get too worked up about Jay’s early exit. Bobby, on the other hand, is the Michael Jordan of Pugil Stick Sumo Flag Ball. He loses his stick and still grabs the flag, blows past Sebastian and Kevin, and scores the point. Touchhomerungoal!!! Red Team 2, Blue Team 0.

Round 3. Kaycee loses her stick, but is able to grab the flag. Shar is waiting for her. Kaycee takes a deep breath and plows by.

Round 4. Jay and Bobby get knocked into the pool immediately. Blue evens it up at 2 apiece.

Round 5. Shar and Kaycee knock each other out. Tanisha sumos Nicole out and Blue Team wins. See how much better that is than hockey?

Jay, the team captain, gets the dead weight vote and Nicole gets all Fletcher Christian on his ass during the interview, “once that whistle blows, there’s no team leader.” Jay’s back went out, however, so Harvey makes him pick a helper. He picks Bobby. The medic doesn’t let Jay help, so Bobby is pissed and doesn’t talk to Jay the whole time. Jay feels like the team is ignoring him and keeping their distance.

Next morning.

The show continues to shoehorn Art of War quotes in at every segment. Harvey has brought and NFL conditioning coach in. Bobby abruptly grabs his ass and goes to the bathroom. One of the girls says she smelled it.

Tanisha pops off at Harvey but comes back and finishes the exercises.

Rhonda.

“Anger and weight gain are correlated,” Rhonda says as if she’s addressing 5-year-olds. “If you don’t get your anger out, it will own you.” Sweet. It’ll be stuck with my credit card bill this month. Own that, anger. Own me and pay my bills.

Rhonda’s kindergarten project this week is for the Fit Clubbers to draw their anger on a t-shirt. Then they can put the shirt on a punching dummy or pillow.

Jay is angry at his high school bully. He whacks the dummy with a tree limb. His first swing is–there is no other way to say this–gay. After that, he starts to put more force behind his swings.

Sebastian. When he was 8, his dad (an art teacher) married a student and left the family. “Real anger comes from childhood,” he says. Sebastian tosses the dummy on the ground and steps on it.

Tanisha. As a 5-year-old, she was forced to fight by her caretaker against 16- and 17-year-olds. Who was her caretaker, Tina Turner in Thunderdome?

Nicole complains about something. We don’t see Nicole or Tanisha get any aggression out, but we don’t know if it didn’t happen or if it was edited out.

Kevin is angry at the guys who cut him off in traffic. Then he decimates the dummy.

Shar hates betrayal. She chooses to attack the pillow instead. Here’s the thing about attacking a pillow: no matter what you do to the pillow, you look like a wuss. You could point the Death Star at it and blast it to itty bitty Alderaan pieces. It’s still just a pillow and you still look like a wuss.

Kaycee and Bobby get no screentime.

Weigh-ins.

Kevin. 215 lbs. -3 lbs. He says someone in a Las Vegas elevator told him he looks like “K-Fed when he was skinny.” Yeah. Don’t get too excited about what gets said on Vegas elevators from people blind drunk off slot machine cocktails. He is still a tub.

Jay. 238 lbs. -2 lbs. Nicole says Jay’s a good leader but not in combat (what I would give to see this bunch in Afghanistan). She backs off when Harvey asks if the team needs a new leader.

Bobby. 191 lbs. -1 lbs. He and Jay have a little back and forth, then Jay says he sees so much potential in Bobby.

Kaycee. 184 lbs. -1 lbs.

Shar. 137 lbs. -3 lbs. She’s 137? She must be 4 feet tall, because she is thick.

Tanisha. 229 lbs. +0 lbs. Oh man, is she not wearing a bra? I don’t think she’s wearing a bra. Dr. Ian is disappointed, calls her inconsistent and says he doesn’t want to have this conversation again. I hope he’s talking about the bra.

Sebastian. 211 lbs. -3 lbs. Rhonda loves that he’s completely expressive. I wish someone would express how useless Rhonda is (besides me).

Nicole. 124 lbs. +0 lbs. “I don’t get it,” she says. She drank 2 glasses of wine today. White wine. Yuck. “You’re drinking wine on a fitness show,” chides Dr. Ian. “I’m still human,” Nicole non sequiturs. “What you’re saying is, ‘Be perfect.’ And I’m not,” she continues. Dr. Ian responds that she’s misinterpreting him and that she needs to understand portion control. “Are we turning this into rehab?…This is a hard process, you guys,” she sobs as only an out of touch celebrity could.

Red Team is leading. Kevin is in the individual lead.

Next episode, the Red Team appears to be unraveling. There’s either major drama with Bobby and Nicole or there isn’t, which is hard to tell from the previews. I expect the latter, but I’m demanding the former.

To the next episode or back to the season guide.