I've seen references to Erik of season three being a "backstabber." Can someone refresh my memory on what he did to earn that designation?

The biggest move of backstabbing by Erik was voting out Marty, his former blue team member, as opposed to one of the remaining three former red team members. Erik's sense that Marty was his biggest threat and therefore had to be eliminated was stronger than any remaining sense of team unity.

Okay, thanks for the reminder. Now I recall how upset Bob was afterwards.

Erik wanted Bob to himself. With Bob focused on him alone, he could make some very good progress.

This is based on no verifiable facts, but on top of Marty being Erik's biggest threat I think Erik wasn't happy that Marty was cheating on his wife with Amy.

I thought I read somewhere that pretty much everyone knew about the affair and that a number of people were not happy with it. Based a little on how Erik acted towards Marty during the second half of the show I have a feeling he might have been one of the unhappy ones.

I could buy that. Erik was very obviously dedicated to his wife and especially his little girls (who were adorable, by the way).

Seriously. Those girls, with their gorgeous red hair, are so adorable, and it was so cute to see Erik with them.

Marty always bugged me, so I had no problem when Erik voted him off, though I did wonder if there was something beyond just the "he's a threat" reasoning. I had a feeling there was no love lost there. But when things with Marty and Amy came to light, it made me love Erik that much more, because it really does feel like he (and others) were totally turned off by the affair.

I remember feeling like Erik was such an underdog, because even when he did have good weeks (I couldn't tell you what his loss progress was like), he always seemed like he had so much further to go, and that the exercise was such a challenge for him. This season's crew feels the same way.

I confess that part of my rooting for Erik came from New York pride (I live upstate), and he really did kick ass with his weight loss and shape up. And the revelation about Marty and Amy does provide an alternate interpretation for his willingness to vote against Marty.

I couldn't stand Marty or Erik. Why wouldn't Erik be able to bust ass? He had Bob focus on just him because he whacked Marty. I'm not ready to make Erik a saint like others are so willing to do. His reasons were most likely self motivated and greed inspired.

Unless I'm mistaken, even Bob couldn't stand him toward the end, right?

Oh, I'm sure that Erik's motives were selfish and in his own interest, but I feel like the fact that Marty was messing around with Amy might have been how he justified it to HIMSELF, not any kind of true motivation. Erik's not a saint by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think the fact that he stabbed Marty in the back makes him a BAD guy...obviously Marty dealt just fine going home and was able to lose more weight. It's still a game and yeah, Erik played in his best interests but that just made him a smart player, not a bad guy.

Oh, and Bob was on the Erik team the whole way. He WAS really pissed when Erik voted off Marty and was really angry/annoyed with Erik for awhile, but that just led him to pushing Erik harder to make sure that he didn't get sent home--which, of course, was all in Erik's plan. But at the last episode before going home, where they all say goodbye to their trainers, Bob was blubbering about how much he loved Erik, so obviously he got over that.

Bob had a vested interest in keeping Erik around. Erik was the last person on Bob's team.