Hey y'all, I've once again been possessed by my roughly annual Total Drama hyperfixation!
And I'm going to absolutely yap about it rn so I can stop torturing my brother with my info dumps!
So I guess here's just a long info dump of general opinions I have about the show.
For context, my brother and I watched the first 6 seasons on Netflix within the span of like a year in 2016 And then watched Ridonculous Race Right when it came out on Netflix shortly after we finished everything else. We were like 11-12 at the time.
- Revenge Of The Island and the Reboot (at least season 1. I haven't seen all of season 2) are not bad, especially not as bad as the fandom says, they are fine seasons. Whether or not they are worse than Island And by how much qmostly comes to personal preference and probably nostalgia. AND THAT'S FINE. It just bothers me when people say those seasons are much MUCH worse than Island like it's a fact when it's their personal preference. (Presenting opinions and preferences as if they are facts is a general pet peeve of mine)
- I think this is obvious but maybe it isn't. The issues that the show's writing suffers from have very little to do with which characters are in, what cast but rather how those characters are written.
- I think the issues that the show's writing suffers from has a lot if not everything to do with two things
1. Character derailments. They have these well established and well written characters and dynamics from Seasons 1 and 4 but later on either because the writers didn't quite know what to do with them or they were instructed to do something that they didn't particularly want to do with them the characters were written in later seasons in a way where they suddenly change their personality or behavior in a way that contradicts everything previously shown, without any realistic or earned character development.
Some examples of this include
- Trent, Leshawna, Geoff, Bridgette, and to a lesser extent Courtney in action.
- Infamously Gwen, Duncan, Courtney, and Ezekiel during World Tour.
- Axel in season 2 of the Reboot
I think the reason All Stars is pretty reasonably considered to be one of if not the worst seasons of the show is because it's the season that suffers the most from this. Nearly the entire cast was derailed. Those who were already headed that direction like Duncan and Courtney went further, other gen 1 characters like Lindsey and arguably Sierra were completely massacred and quite quickly, And even Gen 2 characters who at that point we hadn't spent much time with weren't safe. Mike's character went completely off the rails and his character arc is EASILY one of the worst in the whole series and I would argue that to a lesser extent that characters like Scott and Cameron were acting oddly out of character.
2. The progressive increase in crazy concepts for both characters and challenges. I've heard this described as power creep.
It has been well discussed in the fandom. How over time the content of the challenges as well as Chris's mental state got crazier and crazier and crazier to the point where it is difficult to enjoy what is supposed to be the physical comedy of the challenges. Now the challenges have always been very absurd. That's part of the humor of the Total Drama series but as time goes on it gets to a point where it's just not funny anymore.
I think another place you see this power creep is how at the end of each season the villains get their comeuppance. Heather's ending in Island is perfect. She spent an entire season humiliating others and ruining their images to get ahead and her downfall was her owning humiliation because her own image was ruined. Same with Julia in the reboot (Although I wish they had been a little bit more creative with how they handled that but I'm being nitpicky). I also think Justin's comeuppance in action was handled quite well he spent the whole game using his looks to play everyone and got outplayed by a girl using her looks. I think the ways later main villains Like Alejandro, Scott and Ezekiel got their comeuppance were completely unjustified in how much harm they caused and mal villains like Mal and Scarlett got their comeuppance were so absurd in that they were stupid as f*** and not enjoyable because they were so ridiculous It wasn't satisfying.
And when it comes to the characters I was telling my brother about how when looking at the Island cast, you can probably recognize most of the types of people you see there from real life or at least believe that they are real. Revenge of the island does this well too? The archetypes are a little more out there and the season doesn't do it as well as Island but almost. The reboot does this really well because they can use archetypes or stereotypes that have really only developed this decade. I also think Ridonculous Race handles this really well because it seemed the writers were less focused on coming up with individual archetypes and stereotypes and rather trope-y dynamics and then assigning archetypes stereotypes or professions to that Duo.
I think this is why Pahkitew Island is considered to be one of, if not the worst season of the show and why if my personal least favorite because it suffers the most from this issue because when you look at the cast, it's very difficult to believe that any of these people are or could be real because they're stereotypes are so weirdly specific and are out there. Many of those archetypes and stereotypes were also just not executed well so they weren't very entertaining. And the progressing absurdity and cruelty of the challenges is pretty self-explanatory as this season is the last and worst offender of this phenomenon.
Pahkitew Island also has problems with character derailments which is pretty impressive because most of these characters weren't on the rails to begin with and yet they still managed to derail quite a few of them.
- Total Drama has never portrayed a character with a mental illness well And Mike's DID is only one of a laundry list of examples of that.
- As a huge Duncney and Gwent fan, I understand why fresh TV broke them up. I'm just disappointed at how that was executed and think Owen and Izzy were a much better example of how to handle the whole " not every date is a match made in heaven" kind of thing
- on that note, because of the whole Gwuncan thing as a kid and even now when I would rewatch action and World Tour, I would only start my rewatch of Action after Gwen was eliminated and I rarely watched World Tour and when I did it was either just the finale or I would skip any of the episodes with the Gwuncan crap. Now part of my reasoning is because I was and am a massive Duncney fan. But also I just hate what all of that tomfoolery did to those three characters.
- As a kid, my favorite Total Drama couples were Duncan and Courtney, Mike and Zoe, and Carrie and Devin. But now my favorite Total Drama couples are Duncan and Courtney, Alejandro and Heather, Mike and Zoe, and Emma and Noah.
- when I first watched Ridonculous Race, my favorite teams were the Vegans and the Best Friends. I expected to really dislike the Vegans when rewatching as an adult but my general opinion of them didn't really change. I am glad that they were written in a way where they're not shoving their veganism and animal rights stuff down everyone's throats. They were for the most part kind of doing their own thing. I still like the best friends as a team and as characters but I definitely like them less than I did as a kid. Admittedly, I think a lot of the reason I liked them as a kid is when I first watched it I was crushing on my best friend hard and had been for years so I related to Carrie quite a bit lol. The whole seven stages of heartbreak thing just wasn't entertaining to me as an adult and I think it affected my liking for Devin as a character. As an adult, I grew to really like the sisters. I love their individual characters. I love their dynamic and I love watching it grow as the season progresses. I also think the daters/ haters were much better written than I remembered. My general opinion of them hasn't changed but I remembered them being much more inconsistent because that's their whole bit. But for characters who are supposed to be so inconsistent with each other, they were written remarkably consistently.
- My opinions of the main gen 1 and 2 cast of Total Drama have generally remained the same since I was a kid. The only thing that's really changed is as an adult. I've really grown to like Post Island. Heather, I loved her character in Action and World Tour.
- All Stars was my favorite season as a kid. I don't really know why or how my best guess is because as a kid I was a massive Zoe fan and she was basically the main character of that season and in the Netflix release she won.
- maybe I'm too cynical because of the current political climate, but the existence of Total Dramarama given some of the content that these same characters were featured in throughout the original seasons makes me wonder if someone should check the hard drives of the people at FRESH TV
