Thread:Greenhatdigital/@comment-1037137-20140410203821/@comment-1037137-20140411021404

I wish I could feel more optimistic about the series, but for the longest time already I've just seen a really great concept not live up to what it pulled off so brilliantly before. Island had the perfect balance of humor, drama, character development, and action. It was a really fun season and it was at the time an immensely refreshing idea to see play out onscreen. But even since the second season, things just have not held up at all that well. I feel that ever since then the character development has been just a mess and fallen into serious neglect. Most of the characters brought back the most often have just not been treated well or used well and it's really upsetting and disappointing to see so many characters we enjoyed early on going into this prolonged decay. I mean ever since Action and especially in World Tour onward, they have not been as much fun or as likable as before, acting too out of character and inconsistent to really enjoy. And then you got the rest of the cast: Eva, Noah, DJ, Geoff, Bridgette, Brick, Harold, Cody, Dakota, Dawn, and so on and so forth..........We never see them anymore. These were characters who all had huge followings and all are greatly missed by the fandom.And yet they've all been forgotten, to keep focusing on the same few but never the wider cast is just not working. There's no balance in it, I mean you can keep the regulars if you used them well. But since they're not, nobody's relaly getting much payoff on either side of the fence. And that being said, the show really has become frustrating not just for that but for other reasons. Besides the lack of balanced spotlight among all the characters and the way in which they're used, the show's become way too reliant on drama that simply goes too far. A lot of what I've been seeing comes across as more cruel and crude than it really is funny. And it pains me to say that because the show used to be extremely funny and clever with its humor. But that's not really so anymore, and we're tired of gags like the whole Feral Zeke gag which I don't think anyone ever liked. That's just one gag that simply is not popular with most of us. And as I have said, there was no payoff in the most recent season, which didn't tell its story well, was too eager to abandon a lot of what had been building up, and pretty much nixed most of the character development. There's not really anything to recommend with a season like All-Stars, which had a really disheartening finish and just fell apart the further it went on. I really wanted to enjoy the fifth season, but it was just a massive disappointment, and an especially frustrating one at that. Nothing came of it, and I personally felt deeply let down by it. I really can't recommend it to anyone for just how little it accomplishes, there wasn't really anything to feel good about by the end for anyone. And as so many have probably said already, it was pretty controversial in itself, not just for the whole ordeal surrounding the character of Mike and his alternate personality Mal, but that was a huge part of it that just can't go unsaid. There unfortunately was too many misleading implications in how the whole thing was portrayed. And it's really created a lot of discontent, this is a point that does not sit well with many. Also, the inconsistencies and plotholes were just too many. There was a lot of things that were just inaccurate and a lot of points that amounted to nothing in the end. And these just piled up too much after a while. The characters once again weren't consistent, the stories weren't consistent, and the facts were not consistent. It just made for too many holes that were impossible to ignore. Also, the show could benefit from the clever and witty adult humor that TDI pulled off so well, it gave the show a nice edge to it. But it's become pretty juvenile since then and it's hard to deny that the ongoing claims that the show is becoming a tad too childish in at least a handful of regards. Also, we need a balance of the lighthearted with some of the show's harsher elements, as the show seems to focus a little too much exclusively on raw drama now whether it makes sense or not, or without any regard as to whether it has a negative impact on character development and story development or not. And this show once did manage to work in the right amount of drama at no cost to those elements, so I think this is another element that needs to be looked at, I mean there's no reason both development and drama can't co-exist on the show and complement each other as they used to. That balance can be found again.

As I said, I do believe the show can be great again, but that just hasn't been the case in too long a time. Total Drama Island was funny and dramatic, but it never went too far with what it did and it had a great cast of characters who were brilliantly developed and had a nice chemistry. A lot of what was there in Island isn't there in its sequels, and that is pretty disheartening. The characters are not developing, in either a positive or meaningful way, it's deeply in the red. A lot of the other characters we never ever see, the show just seems to be becoming too mean-spirited that it's become both frustrating and disengaging, the lack of integrity shown in most of the major plots is really making it hard to follow along or to take seriously, the inconsistencies and lack of clever adult humor is taking a toll..........There's just not any balance in anything that has been done with the show ever since Action. Island was the best balanced and the best structured, but the subsequent seasons have brought up needlessly divisive controversies that didn't need to come up and they have not been kind to the characters of either of the first two casts. All-Stars has been an especially big debacle, since it just seemed to embody everything that fans take issue with in the series, and for it to have spiralled out of control in the way it did was just hugely disappointing and it made a lot of folks mad that the whole thing amounted to so little. Nothing in this fifth season worked and what did work was just done away with. I'm really hoping positive changes can be made to restore the show to its former success because these especially bad trends are just dragging the whole thing down when I know for a fact that this show can do so much better and be so much better. All-Stars was the show at its worst, the worst I've seen since either Action or World Tour, with whom it shares a lot of the same problems but seemed to accentuate them further. I know this show can be something great again, but a serious effort needs to be made at character and story integrity, a new balance achieved between character growth and drama, and a more satisfying payoff for all fans. The payoff lately has just been nil. I wanted to really like the fifth season, but it was just a complete and total mess, and I know this show can do a hundred times better without causing so much controversy among fans and without causing disappointment to so many. I think that with a serious effort, Total Drama can find its way again.