Total Drama Review Week 4: Not Quite Famous

And so we hit one of the show’s greatest moments, and one of its grossest. Welcome back to the weekly Total Drama review and we turn now to one of the show’s most recognizable episodes, “Not Quite Famous”. Even my friends who don’t watch the show are familiar with the beat-boxing so let’s start there.

This challenge marks two in a row that Harold has won for the Killer Bass. What’s funny is this show happened before John Cochran, the quintessential nerd, won Survivor. This means Harold couldn’t have been based on him. Of all the archetypes they have on hand, the show could have chosen any number of them to be a challenge beast, but they chose the nerd. That’s part of why I fell in love with the show to begin with, anything could happen.

And speaking of anything could happen, we get the first big gross out moment of the season. Poor Bridgette, while trying to do a handstand, ends up projectile vomiting on literally everything and everyone. This was the first time the show really played its hand on the gross factor, and if it weren’t for this moment, several others later on would not have happened.

As far as actual relationships in the show, the eternal struggle of Tyler and Lindsey continues here, and proves to be both A, the most stereotypical teen romance, and B, the funniest. On the other major front, Gwen and Trent continue to bond, and poor Cody gets left out in the cold. Personally I always liked Cody, but I’ll admit he seems like a doofus here. A realistic doofus mind you, but a doofus nonetheless. We see a couple other cute moments but at this point the show is still making sure it has all its characters in order before honing in on relationships.

The rivalry between Heather and almost everyone heats up here and is the first time she actually makes a big sabotage in public. She pays for it pretty soon after, but still the fact that she’s that bold shows she feels untouchable. It’s a good storyline, some would argue it as one of the franchise’s best, and here it shines.

So ultimately at the end of the episode it’s Justin who walks the dock of shame. Curiously enough he didn’t say a single word this episode…or last episode…or the one before that. Justin was never fated to stay long, and that was clear from the way he was presented, but nevertheless he was a fun character and his return later in the franchise I’d argue is the best performance as a main antagonist of anyone.

So we’re left now with 18, interestingly enough it’s ten girls and eight guys, so go girls! The gender ratio does eventually even out but early on this season definitely favors the women. Good on them for giving us some great girls to root for! See you all next week.

Tags: total drama