User blog:DCT0473/Reviewing Literally Every Season of Total Drama Part 2: Total Drama Action

Soo... Total Drama Action... that was a thing. Anyways, let's see what my thoughts on this season are.

Total Drama Action is the direct follow up to Island's finale special: Total Drama Drama Island. At the end of said special, Chris picks 15 (Technically 16, but Courtney didn't really join until about halfway through the season) out of the 22 contestants to compete in another season of Total Drama. This time, Chris has taken the contestants to an old abandoned flim lot to compete in various movie genre-themed challenges to get one step closer to the prize money, which is now $1,000,000 thanks to Owen.

The movie genre-themed challenges lead to some good new writing, as well as parodies of the tropes in the movie genres. My only main problem with it was that as the season progressed, you could tell the writers were kind of scratching the bottom of the barrel to find movie genres to parody. I mean seariously, an Animal-Buddy movie-themed genre? But still, the idea of doing challenges based off of movie genres is a good way to keep the formula fresh.

Speaking of keeping the formula fresh, Action introduces two new types of episodes to the series to keep things interesting: Reward challenges and the Aftermath Show. Reward challenges are challenges where one team wins a prize, but the losing team doesn't need to send anyone home. It allows the writers to give characters more time to develop than normal, as well as build up drama in a more intense fashion. At first, I found reward challenges to be a cheap way to pad out the season's length, but over time they've grown on me. It's a shame they were dropped for a good portion of the series and didn't return until Ridonculous Race.

As for the Aftermath Show, it's literally a TV show within a TV show. Hosted by Geoff and Bridgette, the Aftermath show basically brings back 2-3 eliminated contestants for an interview where they reflect on their time on the show and clear up misconceptions. It allows characters to get some quick last minute character building before they are shoved away for the rest of the season with the fear of them never returning. The Aftermath episodes are also pretty funny, so that's a good plus. Sadly, the Aftermath Show has been dropped for a while, and unlike reward challenges, have yet to return. Maybe Dramarama could save the Aftermath Show?

As stated earlier, a good portion of the Island cast has returned for this season, and for the most part, they're all good choices to bring back. Sure, Justin and Beth are a bit questionable choices to bring back, but at least they do stuff this season. Do to them returning, most of the contestants go through character arcs. Some are good-like Lindsay becoming more independent and Harold overcoming Duncan-but not every character is lucky.

One thing Total Drama Action is known for is its fairly bad writing compaired to Island. Episodes can get dull, boring, or downright bad thanks to the writing.The writing also effects some of the characters, with some of them getting pretty bad character derailments. I won't go over them all, but I'll go over what I consider the worst:

-Trent becomes weird, clingy, and obsessive, a stark contrast to his chill and lax personailty from Island.

-DJ becomes a momma's boy. Great...

-The writers try to make Justin the antagonist, but he doesn't do anything except be a direct cause to two elimations (Both near the start, mind you) and try to backstab Harold at one point. No wonder the writers replaced him with a different antagonist halfway through.

-In their brief time on Action, all Geoff and Bridgette do is makeout. And then when they start to host the Aftermath Show, Geoff just becomes a bit of a jerk. Thankfully, he ended redeeming himself near the season's end