User blog comment:Nalyd Renrut/Total Drama: Pahkitew Island Review - A Rope of Sand/@comment-1376932-20140821040308/@comment-1734566-20140828235312

Not even, Ryan. Gwen started out as a cold loner, yes, but nevertheless, that was where she started out. That was her personality. She underwent a VERY dramatic change by the end of the season that made her a very interesting and relatable protagonist. Sky didn't start out as a cold loner. Competitive? Yes. But she didn't have nearly the same drastic arc that Gwen did. And Gwen still had a character outside of her relationship with Trent, unlike Zoey and Sky. She had a close friendship with LeShawna, as well as Bridgette and Owen. She had her one-sided relationship with Cody, which ended pretty well for both of them. And, of course, she had her great rivalry with Heather. What did Sky have? Up until Dave's elimination, she was literally just the girl that Dave liked. Once Dave was gone, she just kinda floated between stories. Her conflict with Sugar was nice, but lasted only a little over one episode. Again, I agree with both you and Nalyd that the whole "screen time" deal is a HUGE factor. They really should just stop messing around and go back to 26 episodes so that we CAN get more effort. But for now, we just have to deal with this.

But nevertheless, I still maintain that Sky and Zoey are similar because, just among other things, they both have sudden bursts of athleticism that borderline on godplaying and, as WM pointed out and agreed with me, they wound up in situations that put them in a "protagonist" position simply because the script required it. Case-in-point: Sky literally did NOTHING in Scarlett Fever other than push the button (after Jasmine told her which buttons to push), and then just happened to be magically saved by a crocodile in Sky Fall. As others have pointed out, if such a scenario happened to Zoey in TDR or TDAS, you and a lot of other people would be flipping out. You seem to think that just because Sky rejected Dave, that automatically makes her a stronger character. And sure, that DOES defy the cliches that we've seen up until this point of Disney-esque, happily-ever-after relationships...but it was the way she handled it that ruined her in my eyes and many others' eyes, because it just made her so inconsistent and made her seem like a terrible person. Even IF she didn't want to intentionally manipulate him (which she admitted to doing in the finale), she still handled it with such inconsistency that even made Courtney look like a stable character.