User blog:King Flurry51/How Mal and Scarlett could have been better

Mal and Scarlett are well known as the most evil and contemporary least exstimated of the villains of Total Drama, at least here. In fact they're respectively the overpowered villain of the worst season and the least effective villain uncapable to cause a single elimination ( a truly unprecedented record). Scarlett isn't even considered the main villain of Pahkitew by the majority. This blog isn't to defend them because I know all their flaws perfectly, In this blog I want to say which were my expectations on them and how they should have been used and orchestrated by the writers of TDAS and Pahkitew, because they're both good ideas on the paper just poorly executed. (Blame writers, blame Cartoon Network and blame the low target of the audience for this...)



Mal The Malevolent One
Let's begin with the number one hated, Mal. Mal has an unique concept: he's the dark side of a nice guy like Mike. As a dark side he's intended to be an irrational force of evil and chaos that doesn't need explanations for his acts of pure mischievousness, what Mal does is always funny by his skewed heartless point of view, careless if he does it for strategic purposes or for personal pleasure. He can't stand what love or friendship is at all. I had huge expectations on this villain, fascinated by the idea of a dark side personification in freedom, that weren't granted.

In my idea Mal was going to be the master of chaos that he would have spread among the cast. So, breaking stuff isn't unfitting for a destroying force but isn't enough especially if there's no conniving strategy behind. Mal should have been the perfect mischief maker able to use his powers of brutal force and manipulation to spread spat and discordance between the opponents, both Vultures and most of all Hamsters (for example putting Cameron and Zoey against each others). In this way, breaking specific objects would have worked better, even in moments of randomness (chaos irrational force, remember?) to raise tension and suspects in the cast. Of course, breaking objects is just one of the several cards he should have played!

Posing to be Mike all the time, Mal could have easily exploited the kind facade of him to gain the trust of people (instead he did the opposite with Al, Gwen and whoever wasn't guillible as ZOEY), look less then a threat to them and at the right moment show his true colors menacing, backstabbing and blackmailing those he previously gained the trust of. Also, Mal should have been characterized better in his chaotic attitude: more random and unpredictable even to himself, Mal once decided to befriend someone and then suddenly changed idea, just for the evil. (That means I didn't want him to be 100% strategic and flawless, pay care of this note.)

Therefore my ideal Mal would have been this. The irrational dark side prone to be a mischief-maker but also a non-sequitur sociopathic changing his mind when you least expect it and in a way we, normal people, cannot really understand. Mal certainly would have been far from flawless and invincible but his unpredictability and lack of empathy sure could have been enough to scare everybody and assure him effectiveness in the blackmailing/mischief-making part of his plans. Mal with Zoey & Company playing exactly as the Joker with Batman: one moment an evil connivering genius, another a random ax-crazy prankster full of irrationality.

Last note on my idea for Mal: he could have provoked and used Zoey's dark side "Kommando Zoey" as well close to the finale.