Mike is clearly not a fan-favorite in the wiki. I get that, it's not that hard to figure out. However, there is one of his personalities that is clearly underrated as a master strategist. Given that you clicked on this blog, you should know
The start of an unpopular blog.
who it is. If you didn't, I am talking about Mal.
Mal's strategy in Total Drama All-Stars is similar to the strategy of Dr. Will Kirby of Big Brother 2 and BBAS. Since TD is based off of the show Survivor, Mal is actually a cartoon version of Rob Cesternino of Survivor: Amazon and Survivor: All-Stars who ironically played the game based off of Dr. Will's strategy in Big Brother. If you don't know about the strategy, it is that you do not need to win challenges to win as the game is more psychological than physical. Obviously, this is Total Drama, so you only need to win one challenge to win the game, and that's the final challenge.
How was Mal strategy that good? It's because those he didn't say what he was doing, if you look at Mal's actions, his mischievous behavior caused some psychological problems with the other All-Star Contestants.
- Sam- From participating in 2 seasons, fans of TD know that Sam turns into a super saiyan, blows the challenge for his team, and be eliminated without the use of his game guy. Mal took the opportunity to break Sam's game guy before giving Mike back full control. Mike, seeing the broken game guy, stuffed it back into Sam's duffle bag. In Food Fright, Alejandro inadvertently caused Sam to turn into the Super Saiyan and did what no honest gamer should do- cheat
- Sierra- Okay, to be completely honest, Sierra is already insane. However, Mal decides to mess with her by breaking her phone in Food Fright. This causes a string of events that also impacted Cameron, Mike's closest friend and ally. The confusion Sierra has of mistaking Cameron for Cody has caused the Villainous Vultures to send her packing instead of a bigger threat like Duncan or Zoey.
- Duncan- Though Duncan's psychological insanity was mostly due to a team swap in Saving Private Leechball and is partly to blame to Chris, Mal did chip in a bit by sabotaging Duncan's knife. Though Mal didn't cause Duncan's elimination as most of it was indirectly caused by Chris, there was no reason for me not to include Mal breaking Duncan Do-Right's knife.
- Cameron- Unlike the three before him, Mal didn't need to break Cameron's prized item (which is apparently his glasses) for Cameron to go psychologically insane. Instead, Mal needed to break Cameron's trust with Mike. How does he do that? Manipulating the votes so that everyone would vote for him. Although Duncan's exit prevented it, it still caused a strain on Cameron's trust of Mike. Though Cam left the game because of injury, the strain Mal caused on Mike's and Cam's friendship could've been forever had he (Mal) hasn't been caught by Alejandro. Speaking of which...
- Alejandro- There are three qualities in order to win TD- you need to have brains, brawn, and beauty. And Alejandro has perfected all three of those qualities. However, he was outfoxed by Mal within three episodes. Let's recap:
- Mal (playing as Mike) made an alliance with Alejandro in You Regatta Be Kidding Me
- Mal tried framing Alejandro of vote-rigging in Zeek And Ye Shall Find
- Planted the rumor that Alejandro let Cameron fall in the same episode
- Helped lead the platoon to get rid of Alejandro in The Obsta-Kill Course
- Made Alejandro lose the challenge, causing his elimination.
- Courtney- In Sundae Muddy Sundae, Mal found Courtney's chart on her elimination order. While this was an interesting move seeing as how she was most likely the best one to win, it caused relationship trouble with her closest allies- Scott and Gwen. Needless to say, she got canned because of Mal's sabatoge.
Game over, Gameboy Sam
Texting...texting...texting...getting eliminated...
Duncan's not on the edge of things
Even with glasses, Cam couldn't see Mal coming.
How the mighty have fallen... with Humpty Dumpty all over them.
Courtney- "And this is the reason why I lost All-Stars."
I would also include Scott, but that was Zoey's choice and she wanted the Friendship-Finale and Gwen, but she did paint with bear leftovers, so those two have their own fault.
Though his strategy was great for a villian, I did not like Mal as a personality. If AS had a twist that one of the contestants had an evil twin and the two were switching places every other episode, then yes. Sadly, it was not the case. Am I looking forward to seeing somebody like Mal who makes use of a combination of grimlin and social skills to advance? Of course! That's a perfect character to have since they strategized and played dirty and in TD, you need to get dirt on your hands to leave a mark on the game.
Anyways, tell me your thoughts on Mal's strategy in AS. Was it perfect? Was it horrible? Was it risky? Leave them in the comments down below and I will see you all later. Peace.