User blog comment:Epic~00/Why Total Drama All Stars Was Such An Abysmal Season (PART 4)/@comment-24971793-20141030161213/@comment-1037137-20141030201246

I personally just wanted to see her redemption and her arc with Gwen seen through to the end, but if it really had to come to this, with her not making the finale yet again despite her being one of the strongest players, then why not just make Mal the mastermind the entire time of that plot? Because again, she was NOT the villain of this season, and to violate and undo her arcs with Gwen and Scott was insulting and the way they did it was absolutely inexcusable. No solidarity of any kind shown in that entire mess there. It would've worked a lot better for the reasons you mentioned, though honestly it would make more sense if Courtney had simply caught on to Mal sooner and taken it upon herself to get rid of him when it became apparent what he was doing, if you were to still have him as the main villain of this season. And actually justify him as such, which they didn't do. Because these plots she had should've been seen through to the end, they were the only ones aside from that damned Zoke finale to receive a long and determined season-wide focus and they destroyed them out of the blue rendering much of the season irrelevant. And Courtney's no idiot, in fact she should've been one of the first to know something was very wrong with Mike, she's insightful and is aware of most of what goes on around her. But no they dumbed her down like they did the rest of the cast, just to make excuses for him getting farther, one of them being a half-a**** scheme to derail her yet again without cause purely to get her out of the way for his finale. I'm not even sure she actually ever acknowledged Mal was for real, which is absolutely ludicrous for the fact that she's one of the smartest and most alert players. Ultimately this entire scam was nothing but a pure insult to all who were watching and showed how afraid they seem to be of character growth. POSITIVE character growth. Because they literally threw it away just for Mike vs. Zoey, even after playing things almost completely straight for almost the whole season before self-destructing it at the last minute.

The real problem is they are perfectly capable of it, as we have seen even after Action she had strong bouts of likability and wasn't at all villainous for some periods between TDWT and TDAS. But they keep looking for excuse after excuse to keep playing the same derailment card in a way that is hamfisted and offensive. I don't know anyone who actually felt that making her a villain in TDA was a wise decision. Sure, some see her as a decent villain but I think for the most part it's been considered a bad decision and to keep playing it has annoyed many numbers of fans and haters alike. They are fully capable of getting her back on track and they almost did in TDAS. Which is what makes this sudden turn as offensive and contrived as it was. Nothing was accomplished by it.