Los Angeles, CA—It’s inarguably one of the most successful reality shows since its genre was introduced in 1992 by Rennie “Sneaky Phil” Rapp, whose show Who’s Missing Their Kidneys? helped launch the Fox Network, but NBC’s The Biggest Loser will have to finish this season—its fifth—without two of its contestants, who are currently overeating in the Orange County (CA.)  jail in lieu of bond.

The Biggest Loser, which pits grossly overweight contestants against each other in a team format to determine who can lose the most weight and survive the show’s trainers—baleful Jillian Michaels and the loafer-light Bob Harper—has been a surprising revenue windfall for NBC, attracting ironic advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Hostess snack cakes, Aunt Jemima syrup, and Trojan condoms. But this season has been marred by several controversies, including the discovery of a bathroom scale that was off by 35 pounds, brown rice that had been soaked in high-fat emu oil, and an ice cream vendor who keistered Nutty Buddies into the red team’s cabana each afternoon.

Then, on April 29th, Michaels and Harper didn’t show up for the show’s taping. Producers and contestants were shocked by their absence, primarily because that day’s agenda—humiliating contestant weigh-ins in Speedos and bikinis—was the trainers’ favorite. But producers decided to proceed as scheduled, then edit in Michaels’ and Harper’s insults, gasps and admonishments once they resurfaced.

“I wasn’t concerned for their safety,” said 469-pound contestant Manny Felcher, regarding the trainers’ absence, “because I think they’re both spawns of Satan. When I found out they didn’t show up that day, I was thrilled. It felt like the day I learned  Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell could all be bought under one roof.”

When blue team contestants Renee Harlingensen and Huey Ho stepped on the scale that day, even God gasped when their combined weight gain totalled 275 pounds, astonishing considering it occurred in just three days.

“I got a call from my nephew Sonny, who works on the show,” said Los Angeles homicide detective Rory Felsch. “He’s the skinny kid who spritzes Michaels’  face and tells her, ‘No, you’re not gaining weight, and you never will.’

“He was screaming into the phone and laughing hysterically, telling me She’s gone, she’s gone, and nobody can find her! I’ve never heard him so happy. Then he tells me the other trainer’s gone, too, and that he’s going to start going back to church, that there might be a God after all, that the devil has finally called his children home.

“So the next day I hear on the radio that these two fatties on the show gained 275 pounds between them, and that the trainers are still missing. I look up Michaels and Harper on the Internet, go to their web sites, spend 30 minutes or so on Michaels’ swimsuit photo shoot page, and it hits me: two hellish, patronizing trainers go missing, and two obese contestants, who are really hungry and tired of wearing swimsuits on camera, decide to do away with them. So they kill two birds with one stone; they eat ‘em.”

But Harlingensen and Ho insist they’re innocent, that their collective weight gain being identical to Michaels’ and Harper’s combined weight is merely a coincidence.

“These charges are absurd,” insisted Ho during a recent jailhouse interview. “To suggest that I’d eat a trainer is silly and grotesque. Have you seen them? There isn’t a piece of fat there; it would be like eating a table leg. Saying that I’d eat something, or somebody, like that is like saying I couldn’t select the right cut of meat. If I was going to eat anybody, it’d be the host of the show. She goes about a buck-fifty, and has thick, meaty thighs and wings.

“But if I was to eat them Michaels and Harper,” said Ho, smiling, “I’d surely wash them down with a nice chianti.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting