User blog:DCT0473/Reviewing Literally Every Season of Total Drama Part 5: Total Drama All Stars

Last time on: Reviewing Literally Every Season of Total Drama:

We made a long-anticipated return to Camp Wawanaka to review Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. There was good writing and characters, but also some forced quest appearances and the season tried to play it safe. Unfortunately, poor ROTI only got a 4/5.

Today, we’re down to the final three seasons, and this next guy claims to be an “All-star”. But is he really one? Find out today on Reviewing. Literally. Every Season of Total Drama!

Today, we’re going over Total Drama All-Stars, the first half of the fifth season of Total Drama. Yeah… for some reason, FreshTV considers All-Stars and Pahkitew Island to both be part of season 5, but I consider both separate seasons. With that introduction out of the way, let’s dive into All-Stars.

All-Stars takes place one year after Revenge of the Island, with Chris still in prison (Forgot to mention this in the ROTI review, but at the end of the season Chris is sent to jail for having the contestants compete on a nuclear dumpsite). Whilst in prison, he composes an idea for a new season, and after twisting his therapist’s words by perceiving “Being around those you love” as “Being around those you love…to hurt”, Chris is released and begins to host a new season of Total Drama.

For this season, Chris decides to bring back fan favorite contestants from both the OG cast and the ROTI cast. From the OG cast, Duncan, Courtney, Gwen, Heather, Lindsay, Sierra, and Alejandro return, and all of them are reasonable contestants to bring back. The only questionable choice was to bring back Courtney-since the fanbase is very divided on her-but she wasn’t the worst choice to bring back.

As for returning contestants from ROTI, Cameron, Lightning, Zoey, Mike, Scott, Jo, and Sam return. For the most part, all the contestants returning from ROTI make sense, except for Sam. While Sam is a good character, he isn’t exactly an “All-star” contestant, or much of a fan favorite. I’d probably replace him with another contestant, preferably Brick or Owen to balance out the male/female contestant ratio.

While this concept sounds like an interesting season, what we got was a complete mess. The writing is awful, as it frequently stoops down to the quality of Action’s worse episodes. There are three major issues in the writing, and I’ll tackle all of them:

Issue 1: The OOC Moments:

OOC, for those who don’t know, is an abbreviation for Out of Character, and All-stars has a lot of those moments, especially in the first half of the season. It’s just infuriating to watch the characters we’ve followed for four seasons stoop down to this level and makes me think we’re just watching robotic doppelgangers trying to act like the contestants we know and love. There are quite a few of these OOC moments, but here are the ones that I personally hate the most or just make no sense “Aka all of them.”

·         Lindsay doesn’t know push a shopping cart: I get that Lindsay is dumb, but this just feels ridiculous. Lindsay loves going shopping at malls, so how does she not know how to push a damn shopping cart? It makes about as much sense as a dolphin not knowing how to swim, and it leads to another BS elimination for Lindsay (Like pretty much all her eliminations, save for maybe her World Tour elimination).

·         Lightning acts more self-centered than usual, leading to his early elimination: Lightning’s arrogant, I get that, and he made to the finale last season, so he has almost no chance of getting as far as he did last time. But the way he gets the axe feels wrong. He spends all of Evil Dread fancying his muscles, which he does do, but not to a point where he doesn’t do jack squat for his team. It doesn’t come off as something Lightning would do, as he does say in some of his confessionals from ROTI (And maybe his audition tape as well, I can’t remember) that he is a team player (Well, when he’s on a team).

·         Sierra mistakes Cameron for Cody: This amakes no sense, as since Sierra is a Cody fangirl-to the point where she tried to force him to merry her-her mistaking Cameron (Who doesn’t even resemble Cody and I think is shorter than him as well) seems really dumb. A YouTuber named Noahh proposed in his “How I’d Improve Total Drama All-Stars” video that maybe if a certain plot device (Who we’ll cover very soon) played a role in Sierra thinking this, the whole “CamCody” situation would make more sense, and I agree with him on that.

·         Heather’s elimination: This whole situation just makes me wonder “How? Just how?” In the episode No One Eggspects the Spanish Opposition, Heather ends up finding the Mclean-Brand Chris Head, a plot device introduced in ROTI that grants any player who uses it immunity at an elimination. Naturally, since Heather is a master strategist, she’d probably keep the Chris Head close by so no one steals it, right? Wrong. She foolishly decides to not keep it near her and ends up trying to hide it, and then she tells Alejandro about it, another foolish decision. It just doesn’t feel like something Heather would do. Anyways, Alejandro finds the Chris Head (Big shock) and ends up using it against Heather, causing her to get the boot. And she could’ve avoided the whole situation just by keeping the Chris Head near her. But that’s not the only OOC moment in that elimination…

·         What Alejandro does during Heather’s elimination: For most of All-Star’s first half, Alejandro pretends his legs are paralyzed to present himself as weak and not a worthy target, which is a classic Alejandro tatic. But during Heather’s elimination, Alejandro reveals he can walk infront of EVERYBODY. It goes against Alejandro’s “Try-not-to-present-yourself-as-a-strong-opponent” strategy and just makes him a huge target for the rest of the season.

·         Sam’s Elimination: In the episode Food Fright, Sam gets himself eliminated because he stole food from the competition, so he could have a snack. Not only does this feel like something Own would do, but it further raises the question, “Why didn’t the writers just make Owen a contestant?”

There are some more OOC moments, but I’ll get to those in the next two parts. For now, let’s go over the biggest writing issue of the season:

Issue 2: How the writers handled Mal:

So, Mal… what can be said about him? Well, let’s talk about what the writers intended for Mal.

So, if haven’t watched All-Stars, Mike ends up getting hit in the head by Scott in ''Evil Dread. ''This head on collision ends up releasing Mal, an evil persona that ends up gaining control of Mike and his multiple personalities. Mal’s plan is to cause chaos throughout the season and win the grand prize at the end. But, Mike ends up regaining control in the finale. This sounds like an interesting concept, but the way the writers wrote it was horrible (Mal was only threatening in one episode: Regatta Be Kidding Me).

To start, let’s go over the glaring plothole with Mal: If Mike couldn’t control any of his personalities in ROTI, how did manage to control Mal during the time he wasn’t in juvie (Yes, you heard me right. At one point in his life, Mike went to jail via Mal’s control) and during ROTI? It makes no sense and just comes off as very fan-fictiony.

Then there’s Mal’s actions. For half of All-Stars, Mal is an incredibly petty for a villain. He just beats up Cameron and breaks stuff. Talk about threatening.

Then, once the merge comes, Mal actually does stuff. But he acts like how Courtney was in Action: A petty Gary Stu who had nothing bad happen to him until the end of his run. Mal never has any trouble, and seemingly can do whatever he wants. It leads to some annoying episodes like The Obsta-Kill Course, where his constantly hindered by Alejandro (Who, for once, actually tries to do something good) yet no one catches on to the fact that Mal is in control of Mike and gets off scot-free.

Worse still, Mal’s whole story leads to so much dumb writing and dumb plot holes that make no sense. There are quite a few, but these are the notable ones:

·         Of all the people to catch onto Mal being in control of Mike first, it was Duncan and Izzy? Neither of them have probably met the real Mike in person, so it ends up making no sense.

o   Also, how did they find out Mal was in control of Mike before Cameron (The first person to realize Mike had MPD) and Zoey, who gee, I dunno, is Mike’s GIRLFRIEND?

·         If Zoey’s love for Mike is shown to break Mal’s control of Mike, how come it only works once and never again?

·         Why does Chris have a convenient DVD showing all of Mal’s actions on it? It’s like he was asking for Alejandro and Zoey to find it?

·         Wait, so Mal can control Mike’s other personalities? Why did he not do that when trying to convince Zoey he was Mike?

·         How did Mal find Courtney’s chart in Sundae Muddy Sundae? It’s unexplained and feels like an overly forced and contrived way to give Courtney the boot.

·         In The Bold and Booty-ful, why are Scott and Gwen so willing to work with Mike, yet in confessionals prior they said they were actual weary of them?

·         Why did Zoey never bother to try and help Mike break free of Mal’s control? All she did was call out Mal for his BS at the end of The Bold and Booty-ful, and then she just spent all of the Final Wreck-ening going “Golly gosh, I sure hope Mike’s in there somewhere!” If Zoey loves Mike so much, she probably would’ve helped him, but nope.

All of these annoying writing choices and plot holes lead up to the finale, ''The Final Wreck-ening. ''In the past four seasons, all the finales were exciting and fun (Though Hawaiian Punch was a bit mediocre, but still not bad). Not this one! It’s boring and unenjoyable! For most of the finale, nothing happens except for the fact Alejandro and Heather become a couple, which admittedly, is nice. Oh, and Mike finally regains control of himself, but the writers wrote it horribly!

Instead of a climatic internal struggle where Mike uses his willpower and Zoey’s love to break Mal’s control, all we get is Mike pushing a button, which magically puts him back in control of his body. Seriously? That’s the best the writers could come up with? Worse still, the button “kills” all of Mike’s other personalities, which were Mike’s most outstanding feature. Without them, Mike is sort of… nothing. All of this leads up to an anticlimactic ending where Mike wins the money… and the Island sinks into the water. Yeah… not the greatest way to end your series.

Issue 3: How the writers handled World Tour’s Love Triangle arc:

Okay, this issue isn’t all bad, but there are some bad writing decisions in it. That, and I felt like talking about.

So yeah… with Duncan, Courtney, and Gwen all returning, the writers naturally thought that they needed to resume the god-awful Love Triangle arc from World Tour. Yayyyyy. Regardless, Gwen and Duncan end up breaking up and her and Courtney become friends again. While this sounds nice, there are a couple of issues with it.

To start, Duncan’s and Gwen’s breakup felt incredibly forced. The writers had Duncan act uncharacteristically rude about his former relationship with Courtney because… why, exactly, other than to make Courtney and Gwen friends again? Duncan never did this at all before, so why he doing it now? I’ll never know.

So, when Courtney and Gwen become friends, it’s actually pretty fun to watch them, and they end up becoming one of the few good things in All-Stars. Not only that, but for once Courtney isn’t a complete b****. She actually acts like how she did in Island where she was bossy but had a nice side.

Sadly, this relationship wasn’t meant to last. The writers felt like ending it (Because why not) and ended up bringing Courtney back to her Action/World Tour behavior. What a way to end the arc, by derailing an already derailed character. AGAIN.

Final Verdict:

Yeesh, what happened with Total Drama All-Stars? I mean, there were some good things, like how some of the episodes were written, the return of old cast members, Courtney and Gwen’s former relationship, and Duncan had a pretty funny arc after he and Gwen broke up. Sadly, plot holes, OOC moments, and an annoying villain really weighed the season down, and it gets a 1/5. Easily the worst Total Drama season.

Favorite Character of the Season: I hate to do the same character twice in a row, but Scott is my favorite character of the season. He’s just too funny. Should’ve been a finalist with Courtney.

Least Favorite Characters of the Season: A two-way tie! For our worst characters, we have Zoey and Mal (Just Mal. Mike isn’t too bad of a character). Let’s start with Mal. He’s a petty Gary Stu who gets no suspicion thrown at him and gets off scot-free every time, regardless of opposition.

As for Zoey, god, she’s unbearable this season. She’s so damn oblivious to Mal’s actions to the point where it hurts. To directly quote Alejandro, “How can (Zoey) not see the truth?! Argh, maybe they deserve each other.”

Favorite Episode of the Season: Regatta Be Kidding Me. This episode is what All-Stars should’ve been: OG cast and ROTI cast working with or against each other. Also, it was the only episode where Mal didn’t seem too petty, and Duncan’s elimination was hilarious. Honorable mention goes to Evil Dread for attempting the same thing, as well as having my favorite post-elimination scene: Lightning’s. I won’t say much about it, but it is pretty hilarious.

Worst Episode of the Season: The Final Wreck-ening. Dull, boring, and a horrible conclusion to Mike’s arc. Also, the writers brought back Owen but only for a pretty bad cameo? Are you serious?!

Anyways, that is all for today. Next time, we’ll look at Total Drama Season 5’s second half, which honestly isn’t much better.