User blog:Tamoti/What went wrong? Pahkitew Island.

This might be a bit soon since the season hasn't ended yet but I feel like the second half of Pahkitew island is going downhill on a fast paste. All of the plotlines are resulting into anticlimaxes and the top 3 is just worthless. I read somewhere on Julie's wall that they had a change of writers halfway through the season so maybe that's the problem? I don't know. Let's see where I feel it went wrong: Now I'll share how I think this could have been fixed.
 * IMO it started with Topher in episode 7 "this is the pits" and episode 8 "three zones and a baby": Topher's gimmick of "taking over the show/giving Chris a midlife crisis" could have worked. But it didn't, Chris cared about Topher's insults about his age untill episode 5 "a blast from the past" where he got slowtox. The next episode his slowtox was gone, it was never mentioned again and Chris suddenly didn't care anymore about age comments. So that's where the "midlife crisis" plot stopped. Topher suddenly started focussing on taking over the show, stealing Chris' phone and waiting for a call from the producers for about 3 episodes. Eventually Chris called him in a disguise that didn't fool anyone and revealed at elimination ceremony that he was the caller. The first big anticlimax, after 8 episodes of build up they just rush and wreck Topher's plotline in about 1,5 minute.
 * Then comes episode 9 "Hurl and Go Seek" where they wreck two plotlines: Skave and the zombie plot. I don't think that they derailed or flanderized Dave's character. But they definitely overplayed him on the past two episodes. His elimination was saddening (not in a good way) and poorly written. The problems with the zombie plot are kinda the same as with Topher, too much build-up, not enough payoff. It's the zombie episode, Shawn should have been the main focus. But no, they decide to stall the zombie element till the 17th minute where Shawn sees Jasmine being chased by "zombies", he encourages her to climb the tree then he sacrifices himself at 18.30 minutes. An entire season of tedious zombie puns and excuses and they only give him literally 1,5 minutes in the zombie episode. Ridiculous. And the worst part is that they don't give this plot closure. They're still dragging out the tedious zombie references. Making Shawn confuse Chris robots for zombies and crocodiles for zombies. If you would point towards a banana and shout the word zombie Shawn would totally fall for it. Isn't he supposed to be a zombie expert?
 * Episode 10 "Scarlett fever", two main problems. 1. They don't give Sky a personality, which is something she desperatly needed after Dave being eliminated. Until episode 6 I got mad when people referred to her as Zoey 2.0 cause she wasn't, at that point she was still an interesting character. But after episode 6 her blandness starts increasing with each episode and especially after Dave's elimination it becomes painfully obvious how irrelevant she is. Sigh, Sky turned out to be the second Zoey. 2. Max's elimination, it was forced, rushed, pathetic. Chris basically just eliminated Max because he got annoyed with him. I think Miles Smith must be a Topher fan cause he made Chris seem despicable in literally every minute of this episode. Scarlett as the antagonist of this episode would have worked better if they didn't make Chris 5 times worse than Scarlett.
 * Episode 11 "sky fall", again two main problems. First Sky, she shouldn't be here! They force in a last minute plot where she starts an alliance with Sugar who betrays her almost immediately and unnecessary (btw didn't they already start one last episode? I remember Sugar saying "we should team up". Sky didn't give a clear answer since Sugar started insulted her, but I thought it was still pretty obvious). The combination of those two and their last minute "conflict" is just ... meh. It was necessary to have this plot because until these two last episodes Sugar had zero interactions with Sky, an insignificant one with Shawn and Sky hasn't interacted with Shawn ... ever. So the top 3 is pretty awkward, none of them have much to do with each other. So the Sugar-Sky alliance plot where Sugar betrays Sky was necessary but it feels very unnatural. It just doesn't flow well. My second problem is Jashawn/Jawn/Shamine, this is mainly personal and I think many will dissagree with me on this one. But I feel like they wrote the main Pahkitew couple quite bad. In the first five episodes they don't let Shawn make a move on Jasmine because of lame "zambie" excuses. Then Jasmine is seriously mad with him for about 4 episodes, which IMO dragged on for too long. Her anger was understandable, crushing over Shawn caused her to make mistakes in the game which almost got her eliminated. She believed that Shawn was playing a tactical game to make her loose. So she had to stay away from him. But then she get's over her 4 episode anger in less than 1 minute and all off a sudden they're a lovey dovey couple. I feel like it got a bit rushed in the end but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that their relationship is written somewhat onesided. Shawn does cause Jasmine to loose her focus on the competition which leads to her making bad decisions and sacrificing herself for Shawn (again!) is what eventually got her eliminated. They didn't balance the relationship out well. Jasmine sacrificed herself twice for Shawn in "a blast from the past" which almost got her eliminated, and In "Sky fall" which did get her eliminated. Shawn did sacrifice himself for Jasmine in "Hurl & go Seek" but neither of them even risked getting eliminated that episode, so it was a bit more meaningless. Jasmine's love is strong enough to look past Shawn's zombie obsession. While Shawn wants to change Jasmine so she would have a zombie obsession. While Jasmine wants to split the money Shawn wants to keep it all for himself, he also completely shot down Jasmine's future plans. Which was completely unnecessary. Maybe this is all set-up for if he would get into and win the finale. That after winning he does decide to split the money and support her dream, so I might change my mind about them in the finale but at this point I refuse to ship them. Their relationship is too harmfull for Jasmine.
 * Topher, earlier elimination or an increased payoff. For example why didn't they let him take Chris' place? At the end of an episode he follows Chris to find out where Chris stays after filming. Topher locks Chris up so he can take his place when Chris doesn't show up for filming. Eventually Chef finds out and saves the day.
 * Skave, simply give them (mainly Dave) less screentime in episode 8 and especially 9. With less screentime going to Dave they could have given more to the zombie plot and provide some sort of closure for it. They should have also cut down on the eating challenge, it lasted about half of the episode while the only reason for it was to provide an excuse to make the contestants look like zombies.
 * Scarlett should have kept Max as her sidekick, he could have been the eventual reason that she lost. Max fell for the Chris bot (cause it was OOC for Scarlett to fall for something so stupid) and opened the door. So that it would have made sense to eliminate them both.
 * Eliminate Sky instead of Dave. Dave had a friendship with Shawn and a connection with Sugar (he has germaphobia and she is gross), an alliance between those two would have been more interesting and natural storywise. Dave is easily manipulatable, so Sugar could have manipulated him in getting Jasmine eliminated. He would have felt bad about it since Shawn is his friend and it's the second time he betrayed him, so in the following episode Dave decides to ditch Sugar and team up with Shawn. Sugar wins the last challenge and eliminates Dave for betraying her. Which would result in an enemy finale between Sugar and Shawn.

The season started really well and until episode 6 I think there was very little to complain about. But after episode 6 you can clearly see all of the plots starting to deteriorate (or even crash and burn). I'm also getting annoyed with the character inconsistencies of Shawn and Sky. Sometimes Shawn is a zombie expert and hero who attacks any upcoming danger without any hesitation, at other times he's a wimp who can't tell the difference between a robot and a zombie and who runs away from the slightest problems and ditches his girlfriend/friends without ever looking back. Same for Sky, sometimes she's very sportive, smart and independent and at other times she's completely useless, dumb and dependent.

The episodes are still enjoyable and worth watching, but I can't ignore the serious plot flaws in the second half of the season. At this time I'm not looking forward to the finale, I'm getting worried about it :(