The Fall of Total Drama: How it Happened

july 8 2007 a show by the name of total drama island created by jennifer perch and tom mcgillis would air on teletune and canada later in the united states on june 5th 2008 on cartoon network around the time promos for the show started making their way around and i didn't really think the show was for me me being 13 14 at the time the drama aspect felt corny to me but eventually i gave it a shot when the first episode happened to be on tv while i was scrolling through the channels one day and i don't regret watching it one bit total drama island became one of my favorite cartoons of all time the series didn't just end with total drama island either further seasons for the franchise were made total drama action total drama world tour revenge of the island all-stars pocateo island and more however after world tour the quality of the total drama season seemed to go down more and more with each passing season inevitably scrapping the cash prize competition aspect altogether and giving us the dirt pile known as total dramarama why did this happen though how did a franchise that did such an amazing job at making character interactions feel genuine slash mostly realistic along with solid comedy fall from grace so hard before i get into this behemoth of a rant only a small percentage of the people who watch my content are actually subscribed to my channel so if you haven't yet please consider subscribing thank you [Music] right from the first episode of total drama island the premise of the show is given to the audience 22 teenage contestants will compete for a hundred thousand dollars through various challenges that get harder each week in order to avoid being voted off the island the island in question is called camp wawanaqua a rundown filth of an island located in the middle of muskoka ontario canada the ringmaster of the competition is chris mclean an egotistical immoral host who cares little for the safety of the competitors as long as the ratings go up he doesn't really care who gets her in the process the show did an incredible job when it came to the introduction of the contestants you were able to get a pretty good idea of how these people would act in social situations slash and challenges just from their first interactions with chris some a lot weirder than others you had characters like bridget who acted like a typical teenage girl while characters like harold who's quite literally napoleon dynamite existed in the same competition the competition begins with chris splitting the competition into two teams of 11 called the killer bass and screaming gopher this forced people who didn't see eye to eye to work together however that didn't stop certain contestants from throwing challenges for their team if it meant helping them and only them get further on the competition i'm looking at you heather with each passing episode someone gets eliminated by the end of the episode usually it's the character who screws up a challenge in the episode the hardest but there have been some exceptions regardless most of the time when a character got voted off it felt justified there were few times it felt unfair when someone got voted off the times it did feel unfair though it was usually due to someone like heather i know a lot of people myself included wanted her gone as soon as possible because of how vicious she was towards other people and wasn't opposed to underhanded tactics and challenges if it meant she could get closer to victory even though she made it all the way to the final three they did her send-off rate having her tortured with dares throughout most of the episode and finishing it off with her having her head shaved and getting booted anyway because of a technicality romance was handled well during total drama island as well couples consisted of jeff and bridget gwen and trent courtney and duncan amongst a few others these couples that i mentioned were focused on the most though duncan and courtney were my favorite couple back then i think their interactions were always a treat to watch they were the couple that had the most development too and you know as more episodes passed duncan shows a softer nicer side to him more frequently the more times he spends with courtney while courtney becomes more wild and unhinged it's not like their personality is completely swapped or anything either you know duncan was still a badass and courtney still acted like an uptight goody goody threatening crisp with lawyers and such they just didn't feel like walking stereotypes anymore like some other characters you know that was definitely a problem that some characters in the total drama cast had and that you know continued throughout the rest of the franchise up until now but that's something i'll delve into more later of course for the season finale it's down to two contestants duking it out in one final challenge for the grand prize what was so great about total drama island's finale is i was rooting for both of the characters involved owen was one of if not one of the funniest characters from the original cast and gwen felt like the most human slash relatable i was also a goth ship still am in fact the great thing about these finales too is they would make two different endings so both contestants would technically win i think they did this based off region like one of them would win in canada and the other would win the united states they thankfully kept this trend going for the entirety of the total drama competition franchise so if there were fans who hated one of the finalists their more favored choice still technically won on screen because of how the show was structured i didn't think it was going to get multiple seasons let alone have contestants return i know survivor had players returned for other seasons but with total drama being a cartoon i didn't think it would go as far you know like i said i was only a you know 12 13 at the time so i didn't really understand a whole lot about the animation industry but just a few months after total drama island ended a second season of the total drama series began now titled total drama action this time only 14 contestants competed for one million dollars instead of a hundred thousand dollars the 14 contestants were decided during the one million dollar scavenger hunt around the camp for the epilogue episode of total drama island i think the crew deciding to reduce the cast size was definitely the start of my love for the show going down i know a lot of the characters they did keep were fan favorites but if they were going to get rid of contestants i think they should have at least added some new faces to even things out because some of these characters never competed again you know like eva or katie and sadie another issue was even though there were less contestants this season the season episode total still ended up being 26. there were eight episodes in action where nobody got voted off you know that's almost a third of the total amount of episodes one of the reasons why the og total drama was so great to me is every episode felt like there were you know high stakes not knowing who might get voted off until the final few minutes since only some episodes would imply who would get booted i believe total drama island only had two cases where nobody was voted off after a challenge was finished a lot of the relationships from total drama island didn't you know end up the same either jeff and bridget were just kissing 24 7. there was no real relationship development after they kind of got together it got so bad they were both voted off after the first challenge was completed because they just didn't stop trent and gwen broke up after what episode three and they were my second favorite couple behind court and dunk now trent is kind of the blame for this breakup though he became incredibly threatened by how close duncan and gwen were becoming it got so bad that he started throwing challenges if it meant you know he could get gwen's attention and make her go further in the competition it was weird though because trent never struck me for the jealous type he didn't really act super jealous in season one he was one of the most laid back and chill contestants from the og cast other than jeff but i suppose that jealousy ended up being somewhat justified since gwen and duncan became official in world tour a great thing about action though was characters who didn't get a whole lot of development in the first season got a lot in action characters like harold beth and justin had a lot more shine than they did before justin was somewhat of a main antagonist for the season until that role was kind of shifted to courtney during the second half of the season this guy barely even spoke about the time he was voted off in the first season so for him to go from someone i didn't really care for to one of my favorite characters in the entire franchise is an incredible upgrade beth was another great example she went from a major pushover that heather walked all over to being one of the total drama action finalists thanks to all her bad experiences at camp wawanakwa she wasn't easily persuaded by people like courtney offering a flimsy alliance having one of the most developed characters beth go against one of the best characters in the entire franchise duncan was solid for the finale even though beth's development was pogba i was still team duncan on this one once again after the season finale there was another epilogue-esque episode where by the end only some characters were able to compete in the secret third season enter total drama world tour this time the contestants would be traveling around the globe to compete in various challenges now even though there were characters who compete in that action that didn't compete in world tour characters who didn't compete in action got a chance in world tour characters like ezekiel cody noah and tyler returned plus two brand new faces were added to the competition sierra the total drama superfan who was madly in love with cody of all people and alejandro boromuerto also known as the male heather this time 15 contestants were competing for the 1 million well i guess 16 if you want to count the few appearances blatantly overall i think i ended up liking world tour more than action there were more contestants competing plus there weren't as many reward challenges as action so it felt like more was at stake every episode the reward challenge difference was small but it's better than nothing in my eyes world tour also added the musical number gimmick to each episode chris added this new rule for better ratings of course there had to be at least one song sung per episode and whoever didn't participate was automatically ejected from the competition i feel like a lot of total drama fans have clashing opinions when it comes to the song stuff in the world tour as for me i personally liked it while the lyrics themselves weren't anything super great you know the songs were still incredibly catchy i had no idea the entire cast had such good singing voices until then the challenge variety was also incredible due to how many different places they traveled to in order to theme the challenges around the location no challenge ever felt dull but without a doubt the best thing world tour did was make me like heather way more than i did there was finally someone who acted worse than she did that she had to take down the back and forth between heather and alejandro throughout the season were some of my favorite pieces to watch in all of double drama the fact that other contestants were happy that heather won if it meant alejandra lost was amazing to me of course i can't forget the love triangle between duncan gwen and courtney duncan was already beginning to fade away from courtney since the start of the season though once he made his return in the jack the ripper episode he became official with gwen for the remainder of her time in the competition her teammates were out to get her even if they met throwing challenges cody was the only one on one side by the end of the season gwen still wanted to make things right with courtney while courtney still hated both of their guts total drama world tour was the last time total drama felt like it was close to an all-time high for me next came revenge of the island this fourth season was compromised of a completely new cast of 13 contestants already the least amount of total contestants in all of total drama which worried me but i thought hey they're all new characters so maybe it'll even out spoiler alert it didn't really the revenge of the island cast wasn't nearly as likable as the og cast members stacy was annoying as hell so i'm glad she was out during episode one scott who was meant to be the main antagonist of the season just felt like a kind of scuffed alejandro i think the main issue with him was he felt you know kind of comedic reliefy a lot of the time because of his antics with fang the shark don't get me wrong i like comedic relief in villains but when there's no other serious threats around to balance them out it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot at stake which is something i valued a lot watching total drama you know take ludo from star versus the forces of evil for instance he was mainly a comedic relief villain but toffee was there to balance him out scott had nobody unless you want to count lightning i personally don't because he's just a dumber stronger you know slightly meaner version of tyler and maria sucked dakota sucked b and dawn were really cool but were eliminated way too early in my opinion even though b didn't even talk i enjoyed his calming presence on screen he might have even been a smartest cameron too but just didn't get the chance to show more dawn had one of the most forced eliminations i've ever seen in all total drama really unfortunate joe was solid she was pretty much a smarter slash more level-headed eva the main romance factor in revenge of the island was between mike and zoe oh boy i can make a whole video on mike alone to be honest his whole character was based around him having multiple personality disorder one of his personalities would come out if mike performed some type of specific action for instance if he took a shirt off a personality named vito would take over somehow making him stronger than before it's cool if you want to have a character be super versatile with their skills but going about it like this was probably not the best way to do it in my opinion how is this guy who probably was 120 pounds almost as strong as lightning now it's a very weird nitpick i know but mike being that skinny and being able to do those things even with veto in control just felt really weird and i wasn't a fan of how mike just kept lying about his condition to zoe too eventually he told the truth which was good but it felt like the lying went on for way too long he wouldn't have even gotten close to anne maria if he had just told zoe or her the truth it really didn't need to happen this is the season where i started to like chris a lot less as well he was never a stranger to making contestants do incredibly dangerous tasks for good ratings from this season and beyond though it just felt like he was adding random chaos just for the sake of random chaos there would be an already incredibly dangerous challenge where a contestant could legitimately die if they made one false move and then chris would just be on the sidelines like oh boring and blow up some random thing it was a form of sadism that wasn't really my cup of tea the whole brains versus bronze finale was cool but could have been executed better no the finale ended up having another instance of chris causing chaos just to you know spice things up but it felt forced and unnecessary all in all a very weak season compared to the first three total drama went untouched for almost two years until the debut of the fifth season total drama all-stars i think the saddest thing about all-stars was how much potential it had and it was never fully realized they brought back seven contestants from the world tour and before era and seven from the revenge of the island era to duke it out for a million dollars pretty much every character they brought back was mostly a fan favorite slash a character that made it decently far in the competition before the teams this time around were split into heroes versus villains and you were put on one of the teams based on how you acted in the previous seasons the only two characters that made no sense when it came to their initial placings were gwen and courtney i get gwen was the you know boyfriend stealer but she spent the majority of this season trying to make up with courtney not only that but when it came to how courtney acted in all of the seasons i think she was definitely worse than gwen in my eyes that's why her being on team heroes you know didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me but some characters felt like they lost development in the sense too you know heather of all people got tricked by alejandro which made her the sixth person voted out you think after all the time she dealt with him on world tour something like this wouldn't have happened especially so early on but without a doubt the most controversial aspect of total drama all-stars was its main antagonist mal mike mal was a hidden evil personality mike had locked away in his memory until this personality was freed due to mike receiving a head injury in episode two mal would occasionally take over every now and then to mess with other contestants sabotage challenges etc it wasn't until episode six when mal permanently took over due to mike purposely giving himself another head injury to try to get rid of mal that plan backfired of course first thing about mao that could have been way better was his whole relationship and passed with duncan it was established that duncan knew mal because they were in juvie together mal was one of the most dangerous inmates at the facility the fact that this backstory wasn't used for dunkin development at all really sucked in my opinion duncan kept trying to prove to others that he was still a badass and hadn't gone soft you know beating mal slash helping zoe beat mal would have been a perfect way to go about that but instead he blows up chris's house to prove himself and gets kicked off the show for it you know i get the whole point with mal was to make him out to be this unstoppable force that could only be taken out by mike you know i get it mike getting control back was the inevitable end game it just sucks how duncan and mal weren't able to interact much at all when they had history together it almost felt pointless for duncan to have even known him in the first place when he was hardly explored the courtney gwen friendship development went well at first until they decided to backtrack on courtney's character having her be secretly selfish all along her relationship with scott felt super forced as well was not a fan zoe being oblivious of mal for as long as she was got old super quick she didn't realize he had fully taken over until the second the last episode of the season another issue with mal was he felt super unrealistic like almost too stereotypical he legit acted like a comic book villain pretty much wanting to take over the world and live on top of a volcano if he won the million dollars what was nice about antagonists like heather and alejandro is they felt human they acted in ways where i could you know see real human beings acting in a competition like this if they were out for themselves as those two total drama was never super realistic to begin with because they added a lot of stereotype characters but these stereotypes became you know very specific and less and less realistic more and more this factored in with how challenges work too i get it's a cartoon so they don't have to make the show feel super realistic but the issue is it started feeling fairly realistic and worked super well that way the more cartoony slash unrealistic it became with its character the less i began to enjoy watching it the way the finale played out too was super depressing mal and zoe had a chance to bring back certain contestants to help him in the final challenge why on planet earth was duncan not one of the contestants burned back they legit set up a second chance for duncan and mal to have a confrontation but no he just floated off into the sky the reset button thing was also terrible another great point with total drama becoming too cartoony mike is somehow able to cure his multiple personality disorder by hitting a mental reset button are you kidding me dude if you're gonna pull some garbage like that at least have mike and mal duke it out properly in his head not gonna lie i almost completely gave up on the huddle drama after all starts but with season six aka total drama pocket tayo island coming out about six months after all stars i ended up deciding to give it one more on a shot good god was that season to train wreck i'm not kidding you when i say the contestants from this season with maybe the exception of sean jasmine and sammy were completely insufferable the main antagonist if you want to call her that was literally a teenage honey boo boo who acted even grosser than owen max acted like a even more stereotypical haha i shall rule the world villain than malden ello was a poster board disney princess dave is arguably one of the worst total drama characters of all time you know the whole thing was a nightmare the main thing that kept me engaged was shawn and jasmine the way the romance was handled between them was actually solid way better than mike and zoe anyway sean's whole zombie stick never got super annoying to me either you know the comedy that came from it was solid plus his survival skills were really cool to see in action so it mostly evened out scarlett secretly being evil the whole time just for her to get booted the same episode was the dumbest thing on the planet i would have rather had her stay the calm dirty genius i legit think i can make individual videos on most of the pocket table island characters ranting about how much they blow eyes shawn being the winner was the reason i was able to stick it out until the very end but like i said sammy was pretty good too you know her interactions with jasmine were wholesome once again thinking my love for total drama was over i just hadn't given the series that much thought for a while then came the redonkulous race this show had been fully aired and concluded for a good while before i even decided to check it out i was pretty adamant about not wanting to go into this completely blind due to how much all-stars in pocateo disappointed me however because i heard more good things than bad things on social media for this series i caved in and binged it all in the span of a couple days honestly it was pretty good this time the competition was a parody of the real life show the amazing race where contestants would be in pairs competing for the million together there was a brand new host for this competition too named don i thought he was a fairly solid host i don't think i liked him as much as original tdi chris but i definitely liked them more than revenge of the island and beyond chris most of the characters competing were brand new characters still most of the pairs were very likeable so it was great to see the development and relationship between pairs you know some of my favorite you know development pairs were the step brothers kitty and emma and the goths some familiar faces returned too like owen noah and jeff noah of all people actually had a romantic storyline with emma i always thought noah was a great character but he was the last person i suspected to get a romantic storyline if he was ever to return in total drama again but they actually made it work the ice dancers worked well as the main attacks too since pochito never felt like it had a true man in tag it lowered my enjoyment so i'm very glad the ice dancer team were clearly established as the villains of this season i like them more than scott as a man attack but probably not as much as tdi heather or world tour l once pocket 2 concluded i felt like total drama needed to stop beating a dead horse with all these seasons that just kept getting progressively worse however redonkulous race gave me hope that if another total drama season were to be made after the race maybe it wouldn't be half bad it felt like they you know were mostly going back to the roots of what worked really well in the first place bringing in new ideas that didn't suck but of course all that hope was crushed when this atrocity came to cartoon network it's total drama but babies what the [ __ ] after seeing what the show was all about i completely gave up on total drama this show revolved around baby versions of some of the og tdi cast members and jude from 16 for some reason with chef hatchet as their caretaker in daycare the total drama cannon has been completely thrown out the window with this series even existing you know it was established that none of these characters knew each other prior to tdi with the exception of duncan and mal but now most of them grew up together jude just completely swapping universes too there's so many characters they could have chose from the total drama universe but they chose to use jude from 16. you know i liked june 16 he was funny but why is he in this show i'm i'm generally confused about that i would have rather total drama ended on a semi-good note with the redonkulous race than force another season that's going to be this bad baby spin-offs were never really a great concept to me the baby version cartoons almost always ended up being very watered down versions of their original forms total drama rama being no exception one of the decent examples i can think of is a pup named scooby-doo but is that even really a baby cartoon scooby is the only one who's kind of a baby now the rest of the mystery ink gang are just younger kids instead of teens total drama just seems like the last series that should have been considered for a baby spin-off it's not even a parody of a baby spin-off like how you know the previous scenes were reality tv spin-offs it's legit just a normal ass baby cartoon with total drama characters none of what i've seen has looked like it's meant to parody the baby drama it really does seem like they're being as genuine as can be and that really sucks it's really a shame what happened to total drama i'm curious what you guys have to say about the total drama franchise as of now do you agree or disagree with anything i've said in this video where do you think total drama started to fall off for you personally if you liked all of total drama hey more power to you i'd be curious to hear your reasons why of course if you enjoyed the video be sure to leave a like down below and another reminder to subscribe if you haven't but for now i will see you guys next time peace out take care bye bye [Music] you

Channel: VGMarkis

Views: 1,238,901

Rating: 4.9286957 out of 5

Keywords: VGMarkis, total drama, what went wrong, total drama island, total drama action, total drama world tour, total drama revenge of the island, total drama pahkitew island, total drama all stars, ridonculous race, total dramarama, cartoon network, total drama reunion, chris mclean, total drama ridonculous race, total drama new season, total drama full, the fall, downfall, what happened, bad, rant, fresh tv, total drama review, total drama theory, total drama chris, tdi, hbo max

Id: TsSTcRsomuA

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021