Total Drama 2024 Review Rant Part 2

Hello again, thanks for all of the support from Part 1, check it out if you missed it, due to popular demand and all the wonderful users in this sub loving my review and others comments incorporated, I've decided to continue with Part 2. This was originally double the length of part one but I decided to split this into a third part. There were so many amazing comments, and due to that I was not able to reply to them all but I appreciate them!

I zoned in on how the writers are making the same mistakes and the piss poor writing decision on Damien (my favorite character alongside hockey bros) among others. This time will be more so on Emma, hockey bros, and the awful plot, among a few things. Hopefully, Terry can react well to constructive criticism for any future seasons that will happen. I love this show, if I didn't I wouldn't care to be writing these long reviews, hell this goes for other people who took time to write reviews, but one bad writing decision after another just can not be ignored, especially when there were so many EASY and simple routes to offset this.

The episodes we got after waiting a month are simply not good enough (honestly could've been an email), and even the eliminations from before were very lazily written. Its like the writers split off into two different parts of this, one team writing episodes 1-8 and the other team writing the last 5 and the whole seasons boots. This season is in my bottom three and perhaps two in the future below PI. The season is not as bad as AS, but then again that's a shallow bar, so that's where it stands for me right now.

Starting with Emma, u/WinAxelWin made a great analysis of Emma's character as a whole. Wasnt that fond for her at first but their post really changed my views on her character. For this post so I don't get carried away, I'll include a cut of her post for her elimination:

"The nail in the coffin was how she was treated in S2E4. The whole episode is everyone making fun of her biggest insecurities and how she always makes the wrong decisions even though she is doing her best to help her team. This can be funny for the goofier questions but when it comes to the final question involving Chase, perhaps the most important question of her life, it isn’t funny anymore. (...) She finally understands everything she has experienced: car crashes, pee puddles, multiple break-ups and get-back-together, constant stress, and drama. But the greatest tragedy of all is her teammates have no faith in her just when she has figured it all out. This is her moment to shine, speak out, and finally make a good decision for herself!

…But they don’t allow her to do that. Instead, they tell her she shouldn’t trust her instincts because they’re always wrong, basically saying they will lose if Emma goes with her first answer. I’m sorry but this is level 100 gaslighting. Why is Priya telling Emma to not listen to her gut? Who is she to tell Emma this as if she knows Chase better than her? She does not. Nobody knows personal questions about Chase better than Emma. Period. I get it, they’ve been on a roll by going against Emma’s instincts and the adrenaline is insane during a challenge but the team gaslit Emma so hard she just sighed and gave up even though she knew she was right. Emma revealed herself to be a broken person who did not have the strength to believe in herself because she had made so many poor decisions in the past."

Episode 4 was a crack, the second after Chase's elimination but a much bigger crack for what will follow. The problems in this episode were magnified later on in the season. Their post was exactly right, they cut Emma's time short just for some sick joke about her character. Then she drops down into the pool of dogs and nobody bothers to help her out. Her elimination was very awful because of how she was mocked for her insecurities throughout the episode. One of the most tragic things is that Bowie and Emma never made up and everyone ended up just making a joke out of her. u/Antman526 makes a great point saying:

"I think in episode 3, Chris said the vote between Millie/Emma was 5/3. I fully believe the three votes against Emma were Priya, Damien, and Millie to save Millie’s ass. Emma being thrown under the bus entirely by her “alliance” that she went out of her way to join on the bridge adds another layer of tragedy it makes sense when she says she has no Alliance the episode right after. Plus says a lot about Priya to pick her fully strategically to be on her alliance just to vote against her the first chance she got."

IDK if it was a scrapped idea but it explains when she mentions that she feels like the only one outside her alliance. One thing that I do not like is how people are saying Zee should be voted out for ruining Priya's plan when he hasn't done anything to get the boot in those first four episodes and was well-liked.

Switching gears here, I find Chase's character this season weird this season. (Rip u/PantsandLove) First, he's great in episode one, with a peak moment of outrunning the paint balloons and taking risks. The momentum falls flat in episode 2 where he just simply doesn't do the challenge for a cheap joke. u/thickvms mentions Chase's poor execution well here:

"As obvious as the boot was from the first few minutes, I'm glad we don't have to deal with him for another season. Although I will admit it's incredibly lazy how they handled the Chase/Emma plotline. From the getting back together to breaking up in between seasons and her getting him eliminated in ep 2? If she had this much of a read into his psyche, why couldn't she manipulate him this easy season 1? As much as I disliked Chase it was narratively unsatisfying how it all played out."

This is unpopular, but they lazily booted him. Chase is one of the easier characters to get out and write an elimination for, yet they didn't even make him do the challenge. I find that very hard to believe. The guy went from taking risks to doing a cheap intro joke. While I liked them breaking up Chemma offscreen, they hamfisted the end of their plot. Look at Eva's in Island or B's in ROTI, there would be small hints such as the team being pissed at Eva's outburst at the start, then the anger taking over after the challenge was finished. Those weren't overly predictable unlike Chase here and his random gag going on the whole episode.

Wayne and Rajie, two of my favorite characters, were dumbed down this season, Wayne got worse of the two and almost was as bad as Cat from Victorious. There's simply no reason that both should even make it to the final 5, especially when they did not write it well. Wayne was solid but it’s like halfway through the season they were gonna boot him but then they were like “How funny will it be to randomly make him a winner.” It felt like Raj was going to go farther and was the main one of the duo when Wayne didn't get anything for four straight episodes. Raj was one of the few characters this season that improved from the last, especially in the first few episodes for how he was the main one. Hell, even Wayne stans admit that it wasn't written well for him to win that way. They both immensely needed to be on their own. One episode that did that well was episode 6. Raj was with Bowie and Wayne was with Julia, which was great since both were away from each other and developing new interactions.

I will say Raj had a really good goodbye with Wayne at least and the animation was some of the best I've ever seen in the series. In season 1, they were leaders of their team and led their team to victory multiple times and interacted with everyone. This season, they were reduced to merely comic relief and only interacted with each other sadly. Once Bowie left, they both lost their wits and in Wayne's case, did not even compete in some challenges and was on an island by himself. My good friend on this sub u/Ace_TD pointed out how while he enjoyed him winning, there are just numerous reasons why it's not very satisfying, and he's damn right about that. The whole finale was just "How did Wayne make it here" 5 times.

u/LunasticPlastic makes a great point on Wayne, "I love Wayne and after seeing this atrocious finale I was like "Yup, his winner run is wasted." I mean cmon did these writers seriously think that this would fly with the fandom when he goofs off for half of the finale to the point that he comes back with two minutes to spare? Separating them sooner was the easier route to go, but they pulled the trigger way too late.

u/No_Carob_8550 makes an excellent call about the humor this season, which the season was very central on: "The humor was also bad, I barely laughed this season because of how invasive the humor was. I have no enjoyment watching Emma getting bullied over her insecurities for a whole episode before getting kicked off, Chase dragging the YouTube intro for the entire episode, or the eliminations being big jokes instead of actually taking them seriously. Hell, even the winner won to push a joke. Julia was the only saving grace of the season other than MK and even she had problems: for some reason, no one can remember how much of a threat she was last season allowing the characters to get manipulated by her on top of doing too much stuff off-screen."

Maybe it's just me, but I also don't think it's so funny for this. It's not funny watching Emma getting mocked around the whole episode with a finishing touch on the question about Chase, or regarding Chase, the intro joke takes over the whole episode. It's not fun watching Priya and Caleb hog the screen for twelve straight episodes and evade eliminations like a baby kangaroo, leading to Damien having the worst boot due to this. While it was fun that Priya got the boot, it was way too late and overly predictable, since having a former finalist go that far to the penultimate episode is egregious. Years that we mentioned we didn't like that. Fans clearly didn't like it with Owen in Action or Gwen in AS yet you are doing the same thing again, but in an even worse and blatant offense. u/lilacempress brings up a great comparison about how Julia feels "a bit too much of Lila from Miraculous Ladybug. The writers want you to think they're competent schemers, but in reality they just dumb down everyone's IQ so they can get away with the same low-effort plans over and over again." That comparison there is absolutely spot on, characters around them are dumbed done just so that the villains can have an easier time with them. Realistically speaking, nobody on the island would believe a word Julia says excluding maybe Wayne.

An underrated point about Julia that I've not seen come up before comes from u/chinchirakingu, which states (they still enjoyed Julia):

"I still regret the fact they turned Julia into a Bowie-like mastermind/schemer when her thing was originally to be ruthless and unhinged, more brawn than brain. Like isn't that why the writers put her in an alliance with MK? Julia's superficiality often caused her to lack foresight and end up in very stupid situations, like her elimination in S1, or the fact it took MK to get her to realize getting chosen by Bowie wasn't good for her in EP1 of S2.

The only "brainy" move of hers I liked this season was giving bad advice to Prileb or ruining MK's reputation because that seems like what a shallow influencer would do. Mess with the social game and people instead of being hyper-strategic like Bowie was."

This shows that they kept the same thing that they did with Bowie's excellent strategies from last season, except in this case, it's even more appalling because it's all offscreen and so half-baked. I mean at least put some effort into it here. u/bitchimback69 is exactly right that it even makes Julia a little worse as a villain since they can't even be bothered to show it here ("basically all of Julia’s schemes happening off-screen"). Watching her mention that the Caleb alliance was offscreen, I legit thought I missed something until I realized it was just another offscreen event. The same deal with Bowie's elimination this season where everyone believes Julia after what they just learned from what happened with Nichelle (weird elimination, u guessed it). Just three characters hogging all the screen time is not fun and not what we want to watch. It's total drama, not Total Prileb starring special guest Julia. Things always had to go Julias way instead of her struggling at times and anyone who comes at her gets swiftly taken care of in a sloppy manner to the extent that there are no rivals to keep her in check, which u/externalthinker excellently shows: "I think one of the big problems with Julia this season is that she always got her way. Yes, as the antagonist, Julia does need to succeed to be effective… but she is damn near the only strategist this season, and nobody can impede her. And anyone who tries, like Damien, gets eliminated."

Even Damien's detractors disliked the elimination. u/1ohokthen1 says it well here on Part 1: "I feel the same way. As someone who didn't really like Damien that much, I literally froze for like a minute after watching his BS elimination cause what was that?" I mean look how heartbreaking and miserable it was to watch for anyone showing him running to find his idol, because oh my goodness this was insulting after all the buildup in season one. Had to stop watching for a few minutes just to process what the actual hell happened there on one of the worst eliminations in these past few seasons, easily taking the top spot for the reboot. They didn't even allow him to leave with his head held high since he was running looking for his idol (not even Damien's fault). This AS writing is unacceptable simply put, especially when there was an episode about FEARS. Nobody is even going to laugh at him for this as well.

Don't get me wrong, Julia was a highlight but a lot of this was due to MK who was shining bright this season. Their friendship was easily one of the best dynamics of the season and always brought something new, which is something you can't say about Caleb and Priya, plus they didn't take up all the screen time and were not stretched out. Julia's character was massively inconsistent this season, where her social game is bad yet she is still able to trick everyone. There were also no rivals to keep her in check, unlike in other seasons like Heather in Island. u/LunasticPlastic shows that: "Last season, Julia's social game sucked; she was really good in challenges. In my opinion, that was good because it showed us that Julia has some flaws, but she still is a pretty strong player.

In Season 2, though? Her social game is still bad, but suddenly she can fool everyone (off-screen 🙄). You tell me that Priya, a girl who saw first-hand what Julia was capable of in Season 1, believes anything she tells her? GIRL BFFR?! In Season 1, when Julia was just mean most of the time, you and Millie pushed her away and said, "She can't be trusted." While here, you saw Julia's tricks of getting Nichelle eliminated (wouldn't say Nichelle was robbed with what we were given with, more so for what we received), and her admitting to it (which is a MAJOR red flag), and you still eat up everything she says in the next episodes."

This season was such a headache as it went on and I honestly felt like skipping at some points during this current batch, whereas in the first 8, I'd go back and rewatch it because I enjoyed it so much and reviewed it. The show genuinely felt like it was two different seasons when the first 8 were balanced and then we were subjected to watching the same three characters and the same drama only to result in a random character going home. Just seeing Priya getting angry all the time at Caleb isn't fun to watch. It's cool seeing Caleb go from last to first but it genuinely was not fun to watch for me. I mean god damn, she tried to sling a boulder just to crush him even though he's been protecting her and allowed her to win invincibility. It's even more frustrating that many characters were set up for this season and they don't even bother to show the narrative or write something that makes sense, all for some humor. u/Julian_Mark0 is exactly right when pointing this out on how they keep telling but never showing anything to back it up:

"This definitely feels like an "untrustworthy" narrator or a lazy studio. So many of those scenes should have been shown not talked about off-screen like they had no idea how to write it and make it relatable/believable.

It honestly feels like they wrote the script with huge plot holes, the animation got them and they asked: "Yeah, but... why?" And the writers were like: "Just add some text there! A line! A facial expression! And stop bothering us!""

I wanted to like this season, I genuinely did, but it's just not fun to watch down the wire man. Never understood why people are saying that this season is "overhated", when so many people on here have legit reasons that they dislike the season. The first season is taken very seriously and even the first few episodes but the last 5 and the eliminations were written comedic. They should listen to the fandom feedback which will help immensely not only for the season but for the future of the show. A decade of seeing what we love and hate and the same mistakes are showing. Still going to support the show, but damn can't lie that this didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth, even if I'm thankful for these new seasons.

(u/YouGotSnubbed, u/shadowshade011, u/AcceptableSlip3522 I see your excellent comments btw about Nichelle and the season and that will be in part three)