User blog comment:Epic~00/Why Total Drama All Stars Was Such An Abysmal Season (PART 1)/@comment-24971793-20140825192141/@comment-24971793-20140825204752

Ratio's can damage the quality. One more 1st gen contestant than 2nd gen contestants wouldn't have been a disaster.

I don't think Lindsay's character got damaged from being first eliminated. If the focus of the season wasn't on Mike (and Courtney) she could have stayed longer. They could have used Lindsay to go deeper into Jo's gender insecurities that they briefly hinted at in ROTI which would have been interesting. And I like the Lightsay ship. So there where interaction possibilities between Lindsay/Jo/Lightning. Unfortunately the first 3 eliminated (she also had significant interactions with Heather and Courtney in the previous seasons that the writers seem to like to forget about).

Brick would have probably undergone the same faith as Sam of being pointless filler/fodder, with his character most likely being damaged in the process.

Another possible switch was Sam/Owen and Sierra/Dakota (or Anne Maria). Sierra's purpose (IMO) was to make Cameron a bit more relevant just so they could keep him long enough for Mal. But that Camcody plotline was just plain awfull. Instead they could have done a plotline of Cameron examining and curing Dakotazoid. A human turned dinosaur makes a more interesting study subject then that multiple personality mess, being too focussed on his new "study subject" could explain why he didn't notice the changes in Mike.