Million Dollar Babies

'''The final eight compete in sports-themed challenges. One's infatuation with a mysterious love, combined with another's new rules and conditions, causes a small problem to arise between one cast member and the other seven. However, after an accepted apology, a different person gets sent home instead.'''

Plot
The episode opens with Harold, Duncan, and Justin waking up to Chris's trumpet alert, dazed, and confused. Beth walks out of the girls' trailer "sleep-twirling" Courtney's personal digital assistant. Courtney is horrified and dives to get it after Beth throws it, yelling at her enough to wake her up properly.

The castmates find out that they are eating pasta for breakfast, and that they will be competing in a sports-themed challenge. Chris brings the cast to a football field, and puts them through a variety of training exercises. First, the Screaming Gaffers must push Chef across the field like a football dummy. Heather refuses to help, but Leshawna forcefully tells her to put effort into it. Duncan sides with Leshawna, which she happily interprets as the first step in repairing the damage done by the spa incident. When Chef badmouths the Gaffers one too many times, Leshawna gets so furious that she charges at Chef with significant force, and manages to knock him down all by herself. Next, the Grips have to run through tires, which is made more difficult by the fact that the tires are too small for their feet, and have mousetraps planted inside them. For the final exercise, both teams have to crawl through mud under barbed wire. Courtney thinks this is somewhat over-the-top, but Chris explains that he wanted to reuse some props from the war-themed challenge. With the obstacle course completed, the teams are wondering who won, but Chris tells them that the obstacle course isn't their challenge, rather a simple test to determine their rankings for the real challenges. He explains that the real challenge will be four sporting events, with members of each team facing off based on their seeds.

Harold and Lindsay are ranked fourth, so they are pinned against each other in boxing, using marshmallow gloves. Chris then tells them that in true boxing style, they will have to fight in slow-motion. Despite this, Lindsay fights at a normal speed, but Harold fights in slow-motion, awing Leshawna. Lindsay easily blocks Harold's slow-motion jab and takes a bite of his glove, since the marshmallows are real. Courtney begins yelling at Lindsay, and doesn't notice that her PDA has fallen out of her pocket. Beth notices this, and decides to borrow it so she can write an e-mail to Brady. However, while browsing the Internet, she finds something that shocks her. Lindsay knocks Harold out after he is distracted by Leshawna's support. However, Harold wins due to his use of slow-motion. Chris also docked Lindsay for biting Harold's glove, angering her to the point where she has to be physically restricted.

The next challenge pits Beth against Heather in a game of badminton. Before the challenge, Chris mentions his role in a movie about badminton after Justin refuses to believe that any badminton movies exist, as he believes "that would be seriously lame." Heather begins pummeling Beth, and it looks as though all hope is lost for the Grips. The Gaffers start trash-talking Beth, and Leshawna tells her that her "chances of winning are about as real as your boyfriend." Her comment sparks fury in Beth, and she transfers her anger into the game, easily defeating Heather. Leshawna again tells Beth that her boyfriend doesn't exist, and Beth retaliates by revealing that she saw a video on Courtney's PDA of Leshawna saying bad things about all of the other castmates on her way to the spa to her cousin, Leshaniqua, as it was on the Total Drama Action's website. They then play the tape, and everyone else is angered by Leshawna's mean comments, except Heather, who says that she does the same thing, and wonders why everyone is so angry.

In the next challenge, Duncan is matched up against Courtney in Greco-Roman wrestling (which had to take place in a kiddie ball pit, thanks to Chris). Duncan reveals in a confessional prior to the match that he isn't going to throw the challenge on purpose, due to the results when Trent pulled such a stunt with Gwen. However, Duncan still has trouble against Courtney, due to her athleticism and determination. After a lost toddler calls him "Momma," Duncan claims he lost to Courtney due to the distraction, despite his attempts to compete normally. Courtney is seen to be very proud of her victory.

Leshawna is put up against Justin in a "slam dunk" challenge, much to Leshawna's dismay. She didn't want to play for her teammates, much less the camera, as she wanted to hide for the rest of the episode. Justin's slam dunk includes humiliating the Gaffers, by butt-bumping Leshawna, dribbling under Duncan's legs (hitting Harold in the chest), and stealing Heather's wig and putting it on the basketball, before dunking it. Leshawna returns the wig to its rightful place, on Heather's head. Leshawna's slam dunk is much simpler. She threw the ball at Justin's chest, tossing him into the trampoline. He bounces and lands in the basket, bruised and scarred. Chris gave the point to Leshawna, and with each team now having scored two points, Chris lead them to a tie-breaker. The tie-breaker is a cheer leading competition, which each team coming up with someone to cheer for. The Killer Grips began planning immediately, but the Gaffers have more trouble, not deciding who they'd cheer for, despite Harold's suggestion of Norbert Swindlow, inventor of the pom-pom, or Heather's suggestion of herself. When Chris announced time, and that the Gaffers were up, Leshawna improvises a cheer about the other castmates, as a way of apologizing. The apology is well-accepted, and she is liked once again. The Grips won the challenge, however, as they cheered for Chris, who is the judge of the challenge.

At the Gilded Chris Ceremony, Chris reviews everyone's reason for possibly going home. He then says that Harold is the only one who might be safe from elimination, and gives him the first Gilded Chris Award to prevent him from giving a speech. Chris then tosses an award to Duncan, mockingly calling him "Diaper Shark." To Heather's major shock, she is voted off instead of Leshawna, as Duncan and Harold liked Leshawna's apology. At the end of the episode, Leshawna walks Heather to the Lame-o-sine, telling her she can consider themselves friends. Heather then gives Leshawna her wig from the past episode as a farewell gift, so that Leshawna can use it when her real hair looks "as bad as it does today."

Exclusive clip
Heather surprisingly isn't mad at her elimination like last time, stating that she can now have the time to to grow her hair back. She mentions that with her father being cheap, she might end up having a pony tail. Heather then comes up of a plan to cut her mother's hair while she is asleep and claim it as her own as her mother's hair has a nice volume. She ends the video saying the possibilities of how she will get a new set of hair are endless now that the show is over for her.

Cast

 * A young boy speaks, but it is unknown who he is voiced by.
 * The cameraman is also heard laughing.

General

 * This is the second episode of the season with a title that references the million dollars. The first is One Million Bucks, B.C..
 * Coincidentally, both are back-to-back with each other.
 * This is the third episode to air in the USA before it aired in Canada.
 * This is the very first episode in the series in which Owen does not appear, or is not mentioned.
 * Leshawna was revealed to have insulted all of the other castmates on the show, while she was riding to the spa:
 * Heather: "Just mean for the sake of being mean."
 * Lindsay and Justin: "Has half a brain cell, max, that's usually gone out shopping, probably with Justin's giant ego".
 * Duncan and Courtney: "Likes to think he's a bad boy," but "when Courtney was there, she dragged him around by his eyebrow ring."
 * Beth: "Actually wears a side ponytail."
 * Harold: Is "sweet on" Leshawna, but "is getting as much play as an old school cassette tape in a world of MP3s."
 * Oddly, Leshawna wasn't shown to insult DJ, Izzy, or Owen, who were still in the competition while she was at the spa.
 * The little kid that comes out in the ball pit was also briefly seen in Wawanakwa Gone Wild! when the bear was relocated.
 * This is the first time a team is reduced to only three members, a record that is not broken until Anything Yukon Do, I Can Do Better with Team Victory.
 * This episode marks the first time that the Total Drama website is directly referenced.

Continuity

 * This episode also marks the first real time (out of three) a Screaming Gaffer is voted off (as Gwen orchestrated her own elimination in The Chefshank Redemption, and DJ quit the game in The Sand Witch Project).
 * This is the second challenge in a row where Courtney and Duncan and Beth and Heather were paired together. Coincidentally, the winner of both pairs are the same in both episodes.
 * This is the first episode in which Courtney is seen in her pajamas.
 * This is the first episode to use props from a previous episode; the barbed wire.
 * Mutiny on the Soundstage is the only other episode to reuse props from a previous episode.
 * Chris referring to Lindsay as "Miss Tyson" references the incorrect name she gave to her boyfriend Tyler in the One Million Bucks, B.C..
 * Leshawna compares Duncan and Beth, saying that they are like a pair. Coincidentally, the both of them are the final two of Total Drama Action.
 * Technically, this is the second time Heather is without her hair after being eliminated. In I Triple Dog Dare You!, she loses her hair, and in this episode, she willingly gives away her wig.
 * When Heather says in her exclusive clip that she "might end up with pony hair," it foreshadows her having a pony tail during season three.

Goofs

 * At the beginning of the episode, the cast is hit with spaghetti and sauce gets on their pajamas, but seconds later, the stains disappear.
 * When the Gaffers push Chef in the very first challenge, Duncan's shirt is gray instead of black.
 * There are several instances in the episode where Lindsay's eyes are a much paler, lighter blue than usual.
 * When Leshawna cheers for Harold, his hand vanishes for a moment.
 * When Duncan asks the person who laughed at him if it is funny to him, the piercings around his eyes, the one on his nose, and one of his earrings on his left ear are all missing.
 * At the end of the episode, Harold mentions Leshawna calling him "deluded" when, it was actually Chris who called him "deluded" during the boxing challenge. Leshawna has never called him deluded on-screen.