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Total Drama: Pahkitew Island is the second half of the fifth season of the Total Drama series, with the first half being Total Drama All-Stars.
Cannon of Shame Qualities
- The biggest problem with this season is its unnecessary choice of a new main cast: the third-generation cast. Most of these characters aren't as memorable as the original or the Revenge of the Island cast, and some of them are very unlikeable and annoying. Not to mention, this new cast never goes beyond the overuse of clichéd stereotypes, thus resulting in the complete mess this whole cast suffers. While many of the characters from earlier seasons were stereotypes in some form, at least they did have actual personalities, but here in Pahkitew Island, these characters consist of little to no personality, aside from these awfully weird stereotypes. When you think about it, some of these aren't even real stereotypes: A guy who thinks he's an actual wizard, a girl who acts like a princess, Honey Boo-Boo, Dr. Evil, a guy that's paranoid over zombies, a guy that doesn't talks and only makes sound effects and a literal evil twin. Most of the characters here also go into the downright unlikable territory, to the point where they can make the character flanderizations displayed in All-Stars look tolerable in comparison to the characters displayed here in Pahkitew Island. There's also the fact they removed one of the most critical aspects of Total Drama contestants: the relatability, to the point where all of these things result in the following consequence that presents the following list of characters here:
- Beardo is a very useless, annoying, and forgettable contestant as he spends the majority of the time making sound effects. He hardly even talks and just makes sound effects. He honestly just feels like cannon fodder as he just comes and then goes, and we never see him again. He's only in the show for one episode, despite his cameos on a CD in "This Is the Pits!" and on a TV screen where Shawn and Sky were choosing their helpers in the season finale, "Lies, Cries, and One Big Prize".
- Leonard is very annoying and delusional since he thinks he's a wizard and his magic is real, which is obviously not true and thus hinders his team. Also, his voice, albeit good, can be very annoying at times. For some reason, he was included in The Ridonculous Race, despite already receiving hate from Total Drama fans.
- Rodney is a one-joke character whose only character trait is that he falls in love with any girl he sees. Plus, like Beardo, he contributes little to nothing to the season and his gag is annoying.
- Max, while tolerable, can be pretty annoying sometimes and has no character other than being "the wannabe evil mastermind". He also has an ugly, albeit passable character design like Beardo.
- Topher is a male rip-off of Sierra from World Tour, someone who's a huge fan of the host and tries way too hard to gain his attention, which usually causes him to hinder his team just like Leonard. The thing is that Sierra is simply a wild fanatic while Topher is technically obsessed with Chris and the idea of taking over the show and goes as far as to steal Chris' phone for this.
- Sugar is extremely unlikeable and much like Dave and Amy, definitely one of the WORST and most hated characters in the series since she is very annoying, disgusting, harsh, and manipulates others, mostly Ella and Sky. What's even worse is that she appears in nearly every episode of the season, minus the finale, making you suffer as long as possible. Unlike prior villains such as Heather, Courtney, Alejandro, and Scott, who all had suffered small setbacks along the way before their humiliating defeat, Sugar practically gets off scot-free for her actions, making her a Karma Houdini.
- Amy is one of the most hated characters in this season, if not the show in general, as she bullies and humiliates her twin sister Samey for no reason whatsoever. To make matters worse, she didn't even apologize or show any kind of regret for her actions towards her sister, despite the fact she's always at Trina Riffin levels of unlikability, but unlike Trina, she doesn't even go "Diary Mode". Amy is Heather without any of her redeeming qualities. However, unlike Sugar, Amy is eliminated early, but she returns two episodes later to get revenge on Samey.
- Dave (from episodes 7-9; 13) is considered by many fans to be one of the WORST contestants ever created in the Total Drama series since he's a crybaby, annoying, and the biggest problem: He's a simp who's extremely obsessed with Sky, to the point where he voted himself off because he didn't want to be on the show unless he had a chance with her. He's the meaning of a "nice guy", even worse than Hal from Megamind. He's also very vengeful, as shown in the final episode when he finds out that Sky has a boyfriend and, feeling betrayed even though they never were together, tries to harm her simply because she rejected him. Even though Sky tells him that she is going to break up with her boyfriend, he doesn't even care. The fact that his label is "The Normal Guy" is almost completely nonsensical, as while in the first few episodes he was pretty normal and had lots of common sense, in the recent episodes he's been anything but normal. It also doesn't help the fact that at times he feels like an awful version of Noah from the original season, as they're both of Indian descent and have similar outfits and sarcastic behaviors.
- Sky (from episodes 9-13) isn't much better, either, since she becomes over-competitive that she cannot handle even the slightest bit of losing, which probably makes her unlikable to some fans, and she was very angry just because she didn't win the eating challenge (even before Dave rubbed it in her face), and to the point where she yelled at Dave very harshly (while it's understandable that Dave was acting cocky by trying to prove that he can beat Sky so he can impress her, her yelling was still unnecessary). She was against anyone who exhibited foul play, yet she would manipulate someone if it meant winning a million dollars and shows unsportsmanlike qualities at times in the last few episodes, which makes her a selfish hypocrite. In the final episode, she uses Dave's feelings so she can win the million dollars, and when Chris shows Shawn's confessionals to Jasmine, Sky gloats at Shawn for his mistake, which is very rude and disrespectful. And when it seemed like she and Shawn were about to lose to Dave and Jasmine, while Shawn took it well, she threw a childish temper tantrum! What a brat!
- The concept of a season with a new island that is artificial was great on paper, but it was executed very poorly since the artificial concept is poorly underutilized in the show, and if the show was placed on another generic island like the first season, the plot would remain the same.
- Because most of the characters are unlikeable and annoying, as mentioned in Cannon of Shame quality #1, they don't have good character development, which is unconvincing for a Total Drama season.
- Like All-Stars, Chris is more cruel, selfish and cynical than the previous seasons. He even tried to kill the contestants as he left them on the island alone to die.
- As with All-Stars, Chef Hatchet barely gets any screen time in this season, making him more like a background character than a secondary character like the previous seasons. Out of the 13 episodes in Pahkitew Island, Chef only speaks in 5 of them!
- To top it all off, the problem seems to have worsened with Chef rarely talking this season, as it marked the lowest amount of episodes where he has any lines.
- The winning rewards are lame and very worthless for everything the contestants have passed during the challenges since they are just meals from trashy restaurants sponsoring Total Drama.
- A lot of gross-out humor, most of it courtesy of Sugar, such as:
- Wâneyihtam Maskwak's pig farting in Sky's face in "I Love You, Grease Pig!".
- Shawn shooting a snot rocket onto Dave and the rest of their teammates in "I Love You, I Love You Knots".
- Sugar knocking out Chris, Sky, and a whole cave of bears with one of her farts in "Sky Fall"/"Break Back Mountain".
- Disappointingly missed opportunity: None of the original and Revenge of the Island characters appear or are even mentioned in the season, which makes it look more like a reboot than an actual sequel.
- The last episode didn't even bring back the contestants who were eliminated except for Dave and Jasmine, who returned to help Sky and Shawn, respectively. Couldn't the other contestants have at least appeared in some sort of Peanut Gallery, like the other seasons?
- Most of the challenges aren't that interesting or unique. The eating challenge from "Hurl and Go Seek" was simply a rehash of the "Brunch of Disgustingness" challenge from season one and the Chinese Fake-Out's Chinese street food challenge from season three.
- It has a lot of mean-spirited moments, like when Dave is left behind on the island and suddenly gets attacked by a bear in the last scene of the season. Sure, he was very unlikeable in this episode, but even he didn't deserve that.
- The team names are in Cree, which is a very bizarre design choice and makes it far too easy to get the teams mixed up, and also very hard to remember.
- However, in many dubs, the teams are still called the "Confused Bears" and the "Floating Salmon" in their respective languages.
- Like in All-Stars, the beloved intro with the iconic theme song was shortened and the singing voices sound very off unlike in the first seasons.
- If not for the 2023 reboot, it would have overall ended the Total Drama franchise on a sour note as it would have been the last time we saw some of its main characters (Chris and Chef) until the 2023 reboot, and as most of the original contestants never returned (aside from Owen in the 2023 reboot as a cameo). What we got instead until 2023 were two spin-offs.
- Because of the show's sudden cancellation in 2018, many characters didn't get a proper sendoff and many plot lines were left unresolved.
- Thankfully, all hope wasn’t lost for the series yet, as in February 2021, a reboot (technically advertised as two new seasons) was confirmed to happen.
- Despite the 2023 reboot being good, none of the original characters aside from Chris McLean, and Chef Hatchet (and maybe Owen as a cameo) make appearances there either.
Good Qualities
- The animation, while still downgraded from Revenge of the Island, is at least decent.
- The designs of some of the characters, especially Ella and Sky, are unique and well-made.
- Passable voice acting, despite sounding annoying and obnoxious. The best one would have to be Sunday Muse as Ella because she had a beautiful singing voice.
- There are still some likable and memorable characters such as Ella (one of, if not the best, Total Drama characters), Jasmine, Samey, Scarlett, Max, Dave (Episodes 1-5/6), Sky (Episodes 1-8), and especially Shawn (He, Jasmine, and Ella are easily the best parts of this season).
- It is a good improvement from All-Stars, though unfortunately, not by much because of the problems the season had.
- Some funny jokes here and there, like when Chris is attacked by a bear but can't express fear because of his "slowtox" (a spoof of Botox), which makes him always seem to be smiling in "A Blast from the Past".
- The friendship between Jasmine and Samey is portrayed nicely and is one of the highlights of this season.
- As mentioned before, the concept of a new island that's artificial was somewhat interesting.
- The idea of bringing siblings (Samey and Amy) to compete on Total Drama was also interesting. This concept was used again on Ridonculous Race with Emma and Kitty as well as Jay and Mickey, to much better results.
- After five straight seasons of having male winners (Owen, Duncan, Alejandro, Cameron, and Mike, all in that order) in Canada, Sky becomes the first female contestant to win a season of Total Drama in that country.
- Although Shawn is considered to be the canon winner given the fact that his ending is satisfying Sky was awful in that episode.
- There are some good episodes such as "Scarlett Fever", which would make a great season finale if the show hadn't made "Lies, Cries, and One Big Prize".
- The reboot in 2023 is a massive improvement over season 5, and would really start to redeem the series overall.
Reception
Total Drama: Pahkitew Island received mixed reviews from fans, but was received much more favorably compared to All-Stars, and has a rating of 6.3/10 on IMDb.
Trivia
Despite being produced as the second half of the fifth season, many countries bill Pahkitew Island as "season 6".
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