Total Drama Refilming Action ; Episodes 13-18
Link to Part One and Part Two down below: 👇
https://destinygoldenstar.tumblr.com/post/671055378888474624/total-drama-refilming-action-episodes-1-6
https://destinygoldenstar.tumblr.com/post/673126603506827264/total-drama-refilming-action-episodes-7-12
Part 3
Episode 13: Ocean’s Ten- Or Eleven
Geez, first time I have to change the episode name for logic reasons. Wow.
Anyway, back to the show.
Episode 13 starts with Heather walking into the mess hall to grab food, complaining about the scent in her skin, which Noah teases that it sucks to be them, which grants him a death glare from Leshawna, Gwen, and Heather. (Remember, in the previous part of this rewrite, these three girls were blasted by skunks)
In front of Heather’s line is Duncan and Gwen, Gwen clearly stepping away from Heather when seeing her. Heather tries to make fun of Gwen, but accidentally bumps into Duncan and makes him drop a picture. Gwen catches it and hands it back to Duncan, seeing that it’s a photo of Courtney.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Duncan scolds, and Gwen instead asks “Do you think she’s routing for you?”
“Even if she’s not, she’s still feisty,” Duncan smirks at, and then stares at Gwen charmingly to claim “She’d have to fight for me if she was here.”
Gwen rolls her eyes, proclaiming as she grabs her plate “What do you think I am? A cheater?”
“Yes,” Heather says in the back, making Gwen stomp away. “Girls,” Duncan calmly brushes off, and as he pulls out a piece of wood from his pocket, he adds “You get some, you lose some.”
He begins chipping away at the wood with a knife, and Heather makes her “vandal” comment from canon. She sits down to see Harold and Leshawna looking away from each other in distraught. They’re both clearly holding letters to their chests that the other can’t notice, and Harold gives a brief lookover and blush at Leshawna, only for him to look back away when she turns her head. Tyler meanwhile is too busy admiring Lindsey, who is charmingly brushing away her gold locks. Even Heather waving her hand over him doesn’t work, and it makes her scoff sarcastically “Such a team player.”
“Like yourself?” Harold asks, where Heather only shoots back “Shut up, nerd.” Which just in canon, makes Harold stick his tongue out at her.
The rest of this scene goes, for the most part, untouched. Leshawna tries to keep everyone together, Harold has his confessional, Heather makes fun of Leshawna, prompting Leshawna to leave and get kidnapped. The only tweak here needed is that instead of Harold saying “That’s an interesting read” it’s Tyler, after Heather slaps his shoulder.
We then focus on the Grips, where Beth remarks how great it is to still be here, with all of them getting along beautifully, no one being a manipulative jerk. Lindsey then awkwardly points to Noah, claiming she forgot who's still here. Noah’s sitting away from the other three picking at his food, and accidentally makes a smiley face with his bacon and eggs that reminds him of Owen and Izzy. He looks up at Lindsey’s mention of him and proclaims “Are you kidding me? Call out myself but give Justin a pass?”
The girls don’t believe such, and Justin assures the gals that they don’t have to worry. Noah will be eliminated right out of the gate if they lose.
There’s then a Justin and Noah confessional back to back.
Justin points out that Noah should be thankful for his abs giving them a great advantage, plus he screwed over the Gaffer’s game pretty good. Noah didn’t do that. He did. So he should just give up.
Noah then points out that he’s not thankful for Justin at all, and he’s even more upset that he ended up getting to him. “Frankly, that’s my fault, since I gave in.” But now his only allies are out of the game, and Lindsey and Beth are too stupid to realize they’re being used. If the Grips lose a single challenge now, he’s dead. Unless of course he can convince Justin to just give up.
After the confessionals, Justin tries to offer Noah a truce in all of this. He tries to charm him, claiming that Noah can have some of Justin’s beauty products for a week if he just agrees in following Justin’s plan.
However, Noah doesn’t fall for it, and he instead remarks “Your ‘plan’ is to stand still and look pretty, and HOPE to win money.”
Justin however counters Noah’s snarkiness, stating that it’s how all the famous people get by. Noah rolls his eyes and declares he’d rather take his chances than ally himself with the big bad of the show. He gets up and leaves to get some more bacon, only for there to be none left available and he notices Chef isn’t in the kitchen. Noah calls out to him to ask if he’s on break, which leads to him going into the kitchen itself, and that’s where Noah gets kidnapped.
(This does mean we’re cutting out the gag with the crane being needed to lift the body, because I’m pretty sure Noah is like, a tenth of Owen’s weight. Maybe even a twelfth.)
Chris then comes in to explain the movie genre and the challenge. Tweaks here are needed, like Noah being the one the Grips need to rescue. And when Chris declares that they’re gonna save them, instead of the gasps, it’s an awkward silence for everyone, as no one cares, which makes Chris smirk “Heartless, are we?”
Other than those tweaks, the challenge explanation is untouched.
Same goes for the people in the vaults, Leshawna’s untouched scene at least. Before her, we get Noah’s reaction. He rips off the bag from his head and states that he’s been in detention before and it’s quite like this, basically correcting a teacher and calling her ‘show your work’ policy stupid is illegal and it can get you locked up. But that does NOT mean a reality Tv show needs to replicate that!
From there, the campers try to crack open the safes. Once Harold and Heather have their fight, Gwen asks Duncan if he has any ideas, where he lies that no, he has no clue. Then we get Duncan’s untouched confessional, and as Harold and Heather are wrestling in the background, Tyler attempts to simply bust open the safe on his own terms with his muscles… and he fails at such. Seeing the chaos, Gwen sighs and joins Duncan in leaning on the wall with their arms crossed. She remarks that it’s a casual day today, isn’t it? To which Duncan adds “Right back at ya.”
The Grips meanwhile are trying to figure it out themselves, Lindsey asking if it’s like cracking an egg, where Beth remarks that no, gritting under a failed combination that it’s like cracking teeth. She should know, she and Brady have both been through recent dentals. Lindsey asks who exactly is Brady to Beth, and Beth at first claims that he’s a boyfriend, someone she got along with beautifully.
“Like… someone you know you can trust?” Lindsey asks, to which Beth remarks that he’s one of the only people she can trust in her life outside of her and Justin. Lindsey glances over at Tyler crashing to the ground, after failing to break open the lock by force, and it transitions to the Gaffers as Heather steps over him. Harold, beaten up, thanks Tyler for moving, trying to hear the clicks in the lock. Heather and Harold scold each other just like in the original, and instead of the flash edit to the Grips, the camera moves over to Lindsey’s eyes watching everything. She asks if cups can help with their case, and Justin counters that with the declaration that the only good thing cups are for are containing cologne.
Lindsey then tries to figure it out herself, proceeding to ask from Justin’s suggestion that the numbers are the code from a cologne bottle. She tries such, only for it to not work. Justin asks if Lindsey actually used his cologne bottle to memorize that, and Lindsey asks back “Wait… did I forget to ask first?”
We then cut back to the Gaffers with Heather’s attempt at the lock, and this bit with Heather and Harold goes completely untouched, until after it’s through. After Heather scolds Harold to stop, Tyler wonders if Gwen and Duncan know anything about the safe. Gwen claims that it seems like they’re too busy for them to step in, and she herself genuinely has no idea if they even want her to interfere. Duncan simply puts that he’s well off as is, and he and Gwen both share a handclap in smirks. After said contact, Gwen glances at her hand awkwardly and hides it under her other arm, clearing her throat and looking away from Duncan.
Tyler scoffs that they’re all trying to save Leshawna here, like it or not, plus this is a game show. So at least give him a hint. To that, and remembering Leshawna, Gwen decides to give him a bobby pin. Harold scolds this idea, and Heather snatches it from Tyler to try it herself, claiming it’s the best thing Gwen has done for them in two whole seasons.
We cut back to the Gaffers where Lindsey and Beth try to bust open the lock by force, and when they ask Justin what they do, Justin looks over at Chris and claims he has an idea. Walking up to him, we get the untouched scene where Justin tries to seduce Chris into giving them the combination, with the same results. While that’s happening, Lindsey and Beth hear a vague voice from the vent, and Beth leans over to hear it. It’s Noah, trying to get through to them from the other side, and a brief cut to him shows that he’s moved a ton of lockers out of the way to reach the vent, and all of them are knocked over.
“Do you two have brain cells?” Noah asks them, where over the Gaffer’s shouting, they can barely hear him. This makes Lindsey say “What? Do we have plain bells?”
“I didn’t think so,” Noah scolds in response to that, then trying to give them a hint to the code. He tells them to think less numbers and more structure. This is a vague line that indicates that there is NO combination to open the lockers, as that’s not how bandits get in.
Beth however, remarks that they’re not listening to Noah, not after his stunts. Lindsey meanwhile, studies the lock and comes up with the idea that they can simply unscrew the lockers altogether and make it crash down, finally noticing the loose screws on the top corners of the doors. Beth calls out to Noah to get rid of the screws from his side, and Noah’s eyes widen at this as he remarks “Oh my god, they’re actually human.”
With that, Noah tries to stack the collapsed lockers up to the screws, with Beth handing Lindsey and Noah (slid through the vent) two pins to use to screw the bolts. With no confessionals interrupting this process (Sorry Beth) the three proceed to do exactly that, and slam down the door altogether. Noah gives a ‘not bad’ to Lindsey and Beth, and he hands them the robbery supplies and tells them to get going. He goes over to Justin still trying to seduce Chris, and Noah calmly asks “Am I missing something here?”
Chris and Justin both stare at Noah awkwardly, their eyes darted briefly to the collapsed door and back onto him and seeing he’s free.
Justin asks “Did you die in there?” And Noah responds monotoned “Yes. My ghost is taking your ladies to another challenge.”
Seeing the Grips go, Duncan finally proclaims that they don’t need Leshawna to rob a bank, and though both Harold, and Gwen try to counter this, they end up going anyway.
From there, the Gaffers proceed to formulate their own plan and robber cosplay, and this scene goes completely untouched. There’s only one tweak at the very end where Gwen is in the back and looks over to see the photo of Courtney and Duncan on Duncan’s bed.
She has a confessional, where she admits that Duncan is pretty much the only person here who doesn’t hate her now, she very much respects that carelessness of him. “Courtney must be very proud to have him steady.”
We don’t cut back to Leshawna at all, instead we go right to the Gaffers and the next scene with them edging the robbery table, only here Chris reveals that he got bored of waiting, the Grips already left. Instead of cutting to said Grips, Duncan bangs his fist on the table and holds the fake gun to Chris’s head, scolding that “If we’re going to have a problem stealing, then you’re not going to like the rest of this conversation!”
To which Harold points out in the back “I don’t think that’s the right movie, Duncan.”
(I mean, WOW, you name the episode after Oceans 8, but DON’T make an Oceans 8 reference?! You disappoint me canon)
To this response, a voice in the back of the set remarks “Bad as ever, I see.”
It’s a sweet, slightly smug voice, and we pan over to a spotlight transitioning over to a certain figure, who smiles and adds happily “I hope that doesn’t get in your way.”
This causes Gwen, Duncan, and Harold to exclaim in absolute shock “COURTNEY?!!!”
Courtney gives a smug smile to the camera, and the screen fades out.
After the fade back in, we have everyone on the set shocked to see Courtney in the game. Duncan especially is stammering, unsure what to say to her arrival, he thought she followed rules! Gwen looks up at Courtney and waves in greeting, claiming she doesn’t think they’ve talked before. Duncan told her a lot about her. To that, Courtney only looks away from Gwen and shrugs off with the saying “So I’ve heard.”
From there, the scene goes untouched, with the Gaffers winning the money, and the Grips winning Courtney. YES, we’re keeping Courtney’s confessional too. (As much as you want to complain about Courtney’s brattiness, (I certainly have) this IS in character for her)
But yeah. Courtney is back in the game. And this was the time for many that Courtney fanboys had their hearts shattered for better or worse.
The only other change needed here is an addition of everyone gushing over the cars while running, one of Duncan explaining to Gwen and Courtney how he used to drive getaway cars in his time. Courtney calls that controversial, and Gwen compliments his daredevil nature. Gwen’s compliment is the one that makes Duncan smirk back, and this makes Courtney gaze bitterly at Gwen.
Again, we DON’T have Leshawna’s scene AT ALL. Instead we go right into the teams trying to assemble their carts. As the Grips are working, Gwen comes over to talk to Courtney, and at first Courtney tries to push her away that she’s busy. But then Gwen points out that she wants to talk to her about Duncan, which gets her attention enough for her to ask what’s going on. (Courtney is clearly weary about everything throughout the entirety of this conversation.)
Gwen asks what part of Duncan compliments Courtney, clarifying that she’s wondering because Gwen herself can’t even keep a boyfriend for a week. Courtney clarifies that Duncan compliments her as a foil, a foil she can tamper with and repair like the carts. Gwen asks if that’s what it takes to gain trust, and Courtney clarifies that “Who cares about trust? What matters is what YOU want, what YOU believe, what YOU want to be.”
Gwen then hugs herself, making it clear to Courtney that she doesn’t intend to harm anyone, she just wants to do HER. “And… as you might have seen, after Trent left me partially because of Duncan, I just wanted to make sure we were cool with that, and you’re cool with me hanging out with him.”
“That depends,” Courtney finally says, asking directly “How do you see Duncan?”
Gwen hesitates, asking “What do you mean?” Courtney clarifies, “I mean, as a friend, as an acquaintance, as an enemy, as a pawn, as a crush…?” She lingers on that last example.
Gwen’s eyes noticeably dart to the side at that, unsure how to respond to her question. To her lack of answer, Courtney focuses back on the cart, and tells Gwen that she’s heard enough. Gwen tries to ask again if they’re okay, and Courtney snaps at her to Get. Out. She needs to focus on her work, and not deal with Gwen’s plotting to ruin her life.
As Gwen leaves, Beth tries to calm Courtney that it’s just a game, and from there we get Courtney scolding Justin about the pipes, which are completely untouched. And as Courtney says “Useless-ville,” her point is clarified when Lindsey tries to put a bolt and pipe together, and it doesn’t work at all.
She glances over at the Gaffers working on their cart, and it’s for the most part untouched, only instead of Heather complimenting Duncan, it’s Gwen. Once Duncan crushes his hand, Gwen comes in to help him with the wheel, even grasping Duncan’s hand to see if it’s hurt. This is, realistically speaking, a platonic exchange. However, Courtney sees it and sees it differently, snarling. She then has another confessional where she downright claims “Gwen is plotting. She’s playing the loner act to plot against me and use Duncan for her own gain. And she wants me to envy that? I don’t think so!”
Regardless, the Gaffers finish their cart first and start driving out. Seeing this and after the Duncan tease, Courtney demands them to pick up the pace. Noah scolds her that they can’t rush filling in the oil, making a cart isn’t easy when you have three useless sets of hands! Courtney however scoffs at his snarky comments and proclaims that FORGET IT! They’re not gonna make it in a traditional way, and she doesn’t think Lindsey even knows what geometry is! (Prompting a brief cuttaway to Lindsey trying and failing to get another bolt attached in the wrong spot.) Courtney suggests they improvise, on HER lead!
“Hold on, you can’t just call that-” Noah tries to say, only for Courtney to cut off that she just DID!
We cut briefly to the Gaffers, and this drive through is completely untouched, except for the tweak that Gwen and Tyler are obviously here, and Tyler is dangling off the back struggling to hold on. And at the end of the poster smash they drive into one more of a rock, and by that point they stop screaming and instead are expecting it to be another poster…
Only to reveal it’s a real rock, and they crash, with Gwen adding afterwards “Nope… this is real.”
Just like in canon, the Grips carry the cart over with Courtney’s bossing around, and by the finish, the Gaffer’s cart is busted, (due to the engine snapping from their crash) and despite their efforts to push the cart to the finish line, the GRIPS end up crossing the finish line first and win the challenge.
Courtney rubs it in their face, Harold specifically, mocking that she guesses this means he’s gonna cheat her out again, right? Harold however, only says back “I’ve redeemed my honor, Courtney.”
Courtney brushes that off, excited over the victory and embracing her teammates warmly. Beth asks why, since she literally just called them duds a moment ago, and Courtney openly expresses in the embrace that she overreacted, she didn’t mean a word she said. Noah and Justin stare at each other in concern over this.
We then FINALLY cut back to Leshawna, who has been on her own reading every letter she had in her pocket to pass through time. So much so that she’s currently repeating the words of one poem to herself about how she’s the beauty to Harold’s strength, a compliment that counteracts games and time. The door then finally opens revealing Gwen and Harold letting her out.
Gwen immediately apologizes for leaving her in there all this time. Leshawna takes it lightly, wondering how much time has actually passed…? Neither are sure how to answer that, making Leshawna stammer at them to give her the answer to that, and it results in friendly awkwardness as Leshawna demands to know how long they’ve abandoned her. As they stammer and leave, Harold looks back to see all the letters in the vault, and his eyes widen at seeing them. He mutters “You keep the letters…?” Only for no one to answer.
We then cut to the elimination ceremony.
So now we reach the voting sessions, where the votes have been casted, and losers have been selected…
But then Chris rips apart the voting papers, revealing that the Gaffer’s votes WILL NOT COUNT.
Why?
Because as assigned in the lawsuit, COURTNEY, for her dayview episode only, is going to decide who’s going home amongst them!
The others protest this and how this isn’t fair, but Courtney, on the stage, only apologizes that this is HER game to play. So she hopes she doesn’t offend anyone with her choice.
Harold specifically tenses up at this and squeezes Leshawna’s arm against her will, thinking she’s going to choose him after he got her booted in Island. Duncan also smirks at this, thinking that will be her choice.
With that, out of all the Gaffers, Courtney decides to eliminate…
…
GWEN.
Yep. She still gets 12th this season guys. Goodbye Gothie.
Everyone is shocked at this, with Heather being the only one genuinely happy about this. She even downright says “I envy your choice, Courtney.”
Gwen stands up to ask “I’m sorry, did I do something to you?” To which Courtney answers “Don’t take it personally, but you did become a finalist in Island. I have to play a strategy.” She doesn’t downright say it, but I think we all know that’s obviously NOT the only reason she’s booting Gwen.
But yeah, Gwen departs and has her Lame-O-Sine. Leshawna briefly apologizes to Gwen for this inconvenience, and asks if they’re still friends, to which Gwen confirms. Duncan bids her farewell before she gets in the limo of losers, asking if she’ll be okay out there. Gwen says that she doesn’t know, but she’ll be free to hear him mock her about her bad life choices. They share a hug, and Gwen leaves the game.
Duncan walks out to the back of the stage on his own, and Courtney catches up with him. Duncan asks what she wants, and Courtney simply expresses how much she’s missed him. She tried to say that before, but… she thought he was busy, with challenges and stuff. Duncan makes it clear that he missed her too, actually glad that she’s back.
Courtney then asks if they can work together to win the entire game. Under her leadership, they can become the finalists of the season. Duncan expresses that he really doesn’t care about the money, only for Courtney to suggest that maybe they can at least see where their relationship goes now.
Duncan looks her in the eye again, unsure how to take that, only for Courtney to calmly press a finger on his lips and wrap her arm around him, flirting that she thought he was more aggressive than this… but she likes the new him.
“Oh trust me sweetheart,” Duncan flirts back, “I can be spicy if I want to.” “If I want to,” Courtney corrects, and the two share a kiss into the night. The camera transitions to the night sky, and the episode ends.
Episode 14: One Million B.C
Episode 14 starts with everyone hanging out in the morning. In the girls cabin, Lindsey is brushing her hair, remarking that she kind of feels bad for Gwen being booted like that. Heather however claims that she doesn’t, if anything, they all should be thankful of Courtney for making such a good choice with her trump card. Lindsey then remarks that she wonders if Tyson feels sad over Gwen’s elimination, and everyone corrects her that it’s Tyler.
Leshawna then comes in, and her exchange with Heather goes completely untouched. (Yeah in this rewrite people did let her out, but she was still locked in that vault all day, so her point still stands.)
Heather then helps Lindsey with her hair knot, and again, just like with Harold, while I AM keeping the first confessional, the timing of it was off. So here the first confessional doesn’t start until after Heather yanks at Lindsey’s hair the first time. And as for the second confessional, I am cutting it out altogether, because… two Heather confessionals in the same scene? Like, at least space them out!
Other than that, the rest of this conversation goes completely untouched.
At the end of Leshawna asking if Lindsey said something, Tyler reveals himself to claim that she said she was trying to be a boss. He himself envies that.
He pushes Heather away and calmly helps Lindsey with her hair, who is thanking him for his support, even though she calls him the wrong name.
It prompts a Tyler confessional where he admits that it’s hard to be there for her when she’s smarter than he is. And she doesn’t even remember him well enough for him to make an impact for her in this game… It kind of makes him want to try harder. For her sake.
We then cut over to the guys, where Justin is putting so much spray on his hair, it’s ridiculous. Noah scolds “Who needs that much spray?!” And Justin gives his canon explanation about how it’s his best feature. Noah instead asks if his brain is also his best feature, coughing up some spray as he says so.
“Good, but not the best” Justin claims, which makes Noah mad at him, and the two get into a petty argument, one that triggers Duncan, who is in bed with exhausted looking eyes. He gets up crossed, with papers all over his bed, and he noticeably isn’t wearing his piercings. He scolds them that he hoped to get at least five extra minutes of shut eye, but apparently that’s not a possibility.
“Well then,” Noah scolds, “Maybe you shouldn’t have gone to bed so late at night!” Which makes Justin add “What were you doing anyway, robbing something?”
“I was with Courtney,” Duncan claims.
The two boys give him an awkward stare and raise eyebrows.
Duncan then adds “We TALKED.”
“You talked about lawsuits?” Noah asks, looking over at all the papers on the bed.
Duncan then has a confessional, basically a similar one to a canon one (that was originally in episode 24) about how Courtney gave him a package of notes on how to ‘correct his faults’ and MEMORIZE them. The only change here is obvious, and that’s that Duncan doesn’t mention alien probing at all, since this confessional in this rewrite takes place BEFORE that.
Justin asks in concern if Duncan is really okay with this, and Duncan proclaims that it’s all good. She’s hot, she’s helping him, it’s not a big deal.
Tyler then comes back in the trailer to ask the guys how it’s going, and they all turn to him and ask where he’s been. Tyler is honest that he was with Lindsey, and that it doesn’t matter. Duncan straight up says through his exhaustion that he thinks Tyler is more invested in the blonde chick than his own team.
“I’m still good for the team!” Tyler shoots back, accidentally spilling some hair spray when charging forward. Justin scolds him for spilling it, and before Tyler can apologize and pick it up, Harold comes in wearing only a towel. From there, that moment goes untouched with the context of the spray being on the floor instead of the soap. After Harold loses his towel, Courtney walks in to check on Duncan, only to see what’s happening and casually remarks “Okay sue the crap out of me, I don’t know what’s going on here!”
Duncan covers her eyes and stammers that it’s just a setback. Harold claims he’s comfortable in his own skin, Duncan demands he keeps his skin to himself, Harold leaves, and then afterwards Courtney scolds Duncan that part of the paper was that he actually keeps his space cleaned… and covered.
Duncan apologizes that it won’t happen again, he’ll make sure of that, and Courtney forgives him. Just like she forgave her 376 other lawyers who failed her.
“That’s concerning,” Noah downright claims, and Courtney scolds in confusion that first the girls, now them, isn’t anyone besides Duncan at least happy to see her?
We don’t cut back to the girls, instead from there, we have Chris sounding the horn for the challenge.
Starting off the bat for Chris, we don’t have the awkward flash cut and instead as Chris is laughing everyone is walking up to him. For the most part, Chris explaining Courtney’s rules goes completely untouched until we get to her bit with Duncan. While Courtney does scoff him for the Gwen stuff just like in canon, Duncan scoffs instead that his friendships are not getting in the way of anything, he’s still with her. (And now here Courtney’s beef with Duncan ‘hooking up with Gwen’ while she was away, actually makes more sense)
“Well at least you have common sense,” Courtney claims happily, offering him the lobster dinner she’s having tonight. Duncan agrees delightfully, but then Courtney snaps that ONLY if he can follow suit with her papers, prompting Duncan to wrap his arms around her from behind in comfort.
After this exchange, Chris’s explanation of the challenge and the stone age goes completely untouched.
Everyone’s reactions to the cavemen outfits are pretty good too. But I am adding one reaction with Tyler where he asks if the caveman outfit is what makes him look strong. Lindsey agrees, but Noah, flicking away a bug in his pants, asks if that implies sanitary, because if so, absolutely not. Justin also adds to that response “For once, I agree with you.”
From there, Chris goes on to explain the first challenge and give everyone the rocks, and Harold and Duncan’s exchange goes completely untouched.
We don’t fade out and back in though, (cause that was awkward) and just go right to Chris’s untouched explanation. The Gaffers collecting the sticks goes, for the most part, untouched. Yes, we’re keeping Chef catching Duncan cheating, that’s funny. Changes don’t come until after Harold’s confessional.
Duncan still trips Harold over and makes him get dragged away by the beavers, but Tyler steps in with the stick to save him, and manages to knock out the one gripping Harold. Tyler holds it’s neck and admirably stares at Lindsey, who giggles at his rescue. That is until a beaver grips his arm and drags him away, and Leshawna is too busy making sure Harold’s okay. He is despite his scratches, and he thanks her, asking flirtingly for a revival with a kiss. Leshawna backs away from that, clearly weary on the whole thing and unsure what to tell him.
From there, the Grips’ fire scene is untouched script wise. The confessionals once again have bad timings, so alongside Duncan and Courtney’s back to back, Lindsey’s is there instead of Heather’s. Heather still snips off Courtney's hair, but for most of this episode, that’s just gonna be a consistent side gag visually.
From there, we go on to start the fire, and it pretty much goes untouched. Yeah, I’ll explain the Courtney glare later.
With that, the Grips are handed the bigger bones, for the same reason. Only addition being that Courtney had a cameraman reviewed the footage and correct Chris. When Lindsey is declared to have made fire first, Tyler wraps her in his arms and congratulates her, which causes a stare from the others.
Tyler has a confessional where he explains that cavemen worshiped the girls, and from what Lindsey can accomplish, he has no problem with giving her the attention she deserves.
At the same time, Lindsey has another confessional where she expresses how great it is to have Tyson support her. She’s an idiot, she’s aware of that, but she’s his idiot. That’s admirable.
Courtney expresses to Duncan that she appreciates the gift (indicating that this was their intention) And Duncan happily remarks that he has a lot more for her, “Sweetheart”. Courtney snarls, making Duncan correct “Courtney.”
Chris then goes on to explain the challenge of the cavemen fighting against each other on the rock pillars. We don’t get Courtney whacking Duncan in the head at all, we’re cutting that part out. Aside from that, this goes untouched. Matches are then set up. The matches themselves are somewhat different from canon.
First is Leshawna vs Noah. Leshawna asks if she’s supposed to knock off this small boy with this just as small bone. Noah retorts back that at least he’s a smaller target than she is, though he’s struggling to lift his own bone. Chris has his untouched moment with the signal to start, and it’s enough that Noah stammers and drops his bone. Leshawna grins at him as he looks up, and Noah laughs nervously that she’s looking GREAT in that fur! Only for Leshawna to grab him by the arm, wrap him in a ball effortlessly, and slam him into the tar pit.
Point goes to the Gaffers.
Noah pops up from the tar pit, asking what this is made of, and Chris ignores him to declare the next match, as well as the arrival of the paradactyls.
Next is Heather vs Beth. This match is completely untouched, except that Beth’s confessional doesn’t happen until AFTER Heather completely falls into the tar pit.
Point goes to the Grips.
Next is Tyler vs Lindsey. Tyler asks casually how she’s doing, and that it must be great to have a high ground like this, that she deserves. Lindsey thanks him, and Duncan recoils that it was a great roast. Only Tyler was being genuine with his words, and wasn’t sarcastic. Lindsey asks in confusion what this means, and the sound of the horn, plus the paradactyls still around, makes Lindsey nearly fall off. Tyler however, catches Lindsey before she can fall, claiming that he’s got her, he’s not giving up on her like this. Lindsey blushes at his words, and the two lean in and lock lips despite dangling over the edge.
At this kiss, Duncan snarls and calls out how STUPID they both are! “Just let her go, Tyler! Save yourself!”
A paradactyl comes up at them, and at a last ditch effort, Tyler whips Lindsey over the pillar as he’s pinned by the monster’s beak, making him comedically dangle off the flying bird for a few seconds before losing his grip and falling on the edge of the tar pit, just barely missing it.
Point goes to the Grips.
And for the rest of this episode, Tyler has a bandaged arm.
Next is Harold vs Justin. We don’t have Justin’s confessional and instead go right into the fight. And for the most part, this fight and with the beavers gag is completely untouched. The result however, is different.
Harold does get thrown off by the beavers, but as he grabs Justin’s fur, he is able to spin around him and catch himself. Justin tries to whack him with his bone, only for Harold to rip off Justin’s fur piece accidentally, which makes Justin fall into the tar pit, with Harold barely dangling off and saving himself. Harold notices the fur piece in his hand, and looks down at Justin rising from the tar pit. Harold apologizes to him, making it clear that it’s okay being comfortable in his own skin.
Point goes to the Gaffers.
As Justin rises from the pool, Noah angrily asks “How could you lose that?!”
And Justin snaps back “How did YOU lose?!”
And they’re both silenced in the roast being a draw.
And lastly, we have Duncan vs Courtney, in the same column. Duncan teases at Courtney’s grip that he’s grateful to be stuck here with her, and Courtney recoils that it’s nice, being stuck up here with the only thing standing between you and victory is your guy, and a bone. Duncan doesn’t catch this foreshadowing, and helps catch her from falling, driving her into a kiss to try and replicate Lindsey and Tyler’s moment.
However, after the confessionals, the result is the same. As Courtney uses the opportunity to whack Duncan smack in the groin with the bone, and knock him off (With Chris comedically replaying the frame).
And with that, the Grips win Immunity.
Duncan climbs out of the pool in pain, and looks up to see Tyler focusing less on his safety and more so on Lindsey. He congratulates her for the win, and Lindsey asks if he actually meant what he said on those pillars, and Tyler claims that he does, that she is capable of so much. Smart, beautiful, she deserves a lot.
The two embrace happily, and Duncan watches, a sad look in his eyes.
The Grips are declared to win the rib, but we don’t get the egg stuff, the rib falling in the tar, or the confessionals AT ALL.
Instead, the Gaffers are going to be voting someone off.
(Yep, you guys can already tell where this is going)
After a brief comedic bit with Heather chasing the bird with her wig, and Duncan asking in pain why girls go for the kiwis, we go exactly there.
We then cut to the elimination ceremony.
So now we reach the voting sessions, where the votes have been casted, and losers have been selected…
The awards go to Leshawna…
Harold…
Heather…
And Duncan.
Which means that yep. It’s time for Tyler to go.
Tyler asks why this became the case, and Duncan makes it clear that he hasn’t been a team player to them. To the girl, sure, but not to them. Tyler apologizes for such, and tries to ask immediately afterwards if he can say goodbye to Lindsey, only for him to get picked up and thrown into the limo of losers.
There’s then a last Lindsey confessional where she remarks that Tyler is gone, he’s not in the game anymore. Now she has to deal with the Grips alone and without his support? “Ah well, like Trevor said, I can handle it. I hope. He lives on in me.”
Kudos Tyler, and thank you for your addition into Refilming Action!
Episode 15: Million Dollar Babies
Episode 15 opens with Leshawna in the communal bathroom by herself extremely early in the morning. She’s only wearing a robe, and her hair is in the afro, where she takes a box filled with hair pins to fix it into her ponytail. She sighs at herself, staring at her reflection to tell herself “You’re here to win. What you said was not a big deal.”
She glances over at the PDA on the table and holds it close, unsure how to respond to the image on it with her and Leshaniqua at the spa. She plays a brief clip of Leshaniqua talking, who expresses how insane it is that she got kicked off reality TV for popularity alone. “Isn’t that just unfair?”
“Unfair or not, I’m still doing it,” Leshawna says back, repeating her own words from the PDA. Leshaniqua recoils “I can’t understand how you’re even able to put up with all of that! I mean, my career is already a slog to get through, but doing life threatening challenges on a daily basis?! Battling a bear?! Putting up with all those crappy people competing with you for the prize?”
“Heather, definitely,” Leshawna points out, adding to try and disagree “But I wouldn’t say that-”
Leshaniqua cuts her off, proclaiming “No?! From what I’ve seen of that show, I feel bad for you. You deserve a better influence than them, I mean, they’re idiots, delinquents for crying out loud!”
“I guess…” Leshawna trails off, where Leshaniqua keeps pushing the gossip and claims that at least Leshawna knows how to play a game, be a legitimate sabotager and come across as likable. “You really expect me to believe that people not like that are a good influence?”
Leshawna’s face in the present grits her teeth at this, when her voice from the device hesitates, but soon enough claims “Good influence? Of course not! You know why?! They’re all-”
Leshawna turns off the recording, not wanting to hear any more. It’s clear from her face that she’s ashamed of the recording. She mutters under her breath how the heck Courtney found footage of this, and she decides to open the PDA and rip out the SD card inside, throwing it in one of the toilets to discard the memory.
She has a brief confessional where she remarks that Courtney is a SNITCH. As much as she wants to pound Courtney for that, she has to acknowledge that it’s her fault that recording even exists. She should have never lied in the first place, her relationships are already damaged as is. “Maybe it’s better than being booted from a parrot? I don’t know, it still sucks.”
We then cut over to the guys trailer, where this scene is pretty much untouched. The only addition being is that in a counter of Justin’s line “I’m moving to Canada, except I’m already there.” Noah responds with “Then move to the North Pole.”
They’re interrupted by Courtney springing open their door to shout “WHO TOOK MY PDA?!!”
She glares directly at Harold, who stammers that he didn’t take it. Courtney snaps that he’s a liar, and Duncan tries to assure her to calm down. Courtney snaps “Rule 33 in that packet, don’t tell me to calm down! He rigs me out, then he steals my legal right!”
“I didn’t take it!” Harold tries to say, only for Duncan, frustrated with both of them, demands that Harold give it back.
That is until Leshawna reveals herself from behind Courtney, fully dressed, and holding out the PDA to hand back to her. Courtney gives a death glare at her before Leshawna lies and says that she found it in the communal bathroom, Courtney must have left it there last night.
“I don’t leave things out of place like that,” Courtney counters, where Leshawna hands it back to her regardless. Leshawna asks that she just take the PDA back, and also take a chill pill while she’s at it. Courtney thanks her, then quietly snarls under her lip that someone better not have tampered with it.
Chris calls them to head over outside with everyone else, and they all oblige. From there, Chris and Chef hand over the spaghetti, and explain the sports movie challenge, and it’s all completely untouched.
And to be honest, while the campers’ running to the court is fine, this part of the episode is just 3 minutes of filler that ends up contributing nothing to the remainder of the challenge or the episode at all. The only thing worthwhile in this is Leshawna getting the idea that the others are trusting her again, but this is something we can easily move to another point. There’s also nothing in there that applies that this sets up the matches for the games, as the teams were doing everything together, plus they ignore that screen and just announce who’s against who anyway. So to prove my point, we are NOT doing all of this.
Right after the lawn comment, Harold comes over to help up Leshawna. She hesitates in not needing it, but ends up accepting it, where he claims that teammates do things together. This makes Heather scoff in the back, and it prompts confessionals from Leshawna and Heather. Leshawna basically has the same confessional from the original about asking if her team is finally trusting her, just reframed with this context.
Heather scoffs at the idea that ‘teammates look out for each other.’ “The Merge exists for a reason people! And I also cut out Harold and our alliance for a reason! I don’t want to be around someone as uncooperative and daring as them, I’M supposed to be doing the calls here! When I had hair I did anyway.”
From there, Chris goes on to explain the sports challenge, claiming that each team member will be selected by Chris himself in separate games. Heather scoffs that it sounds too far-fetched, but Harold assures her that they’re playing their parts. That is until Chris brings up that someone from the Grips gets a freebee since they have an extra member, and Noah immediately volunteers.
“Have fun repeating history, Noah!” Justin calls out as Noah sits on the bleachers, and Noah shoots back, “I will!”
Lindsey has her gardening confessional, and we get started.
We then go on to the marshmallow boxing challenge between Lindsey and Harold. Only TWO tweaks are needed. One is that we don’t have Beth finding the PDA, (especially when she takes that find way too casually). The other is that Chris doesn’t mention that Harold and Lindsey were last place in the football drill, as in this rewrite’s context, there were no football drills.
Other than that, this entire challenge is one of the best moments of the season, especially for the two best characters in the canon, I LOVE IT, and ALL of this is staying. Every line, every frame, every movement, the whole shebang. Just… if the entire season was this ridiculously delightful and entertaining, I would not want to do this rewrite. It’s THAT good.
And YES, we’re keeping the exact same results with Harold winning despite Lindsey knocking him out. Even that makes sense because Chris established those rules before the fight. Plus, Chris is a psychopath, that’s always rule number 1.
We then move on to the badimin challenge. To Justin’s questions at the start, Noah snarks from the bleachers “It’s badimin, genius.”
“Same thing,” Justin calls out, and Noah argues back “No, it’s not.”
From there, Chris’s part is untouched. However, I am cutting out the Chef confessional for being pointless. And there’s a brief shot of Noah writing something down in the book.
The badimin challenge between Beth and Heather goes untouched until the point where Leshawna starts denying Beth’s boyfriend. Which not only does this come out of nowhere in canon, but also because in context of this rewrite, no one’s denied Brady’s existence, they just don’t care. Instead when the Gaffers start cheering, Leshawna goes on to scoff “It’s embarrassing when Heather has more of an edge, sweetie!”
This angers Beth, and we get her badimin moment where she beats Heather. Again, this is kind of untouched, until Leshawna’s comment, which is MUCH different.
Leshawna instead scoffs at Heather's loss that “That was just uncalled for!”
Beth calls out, “I don’t think it is, Leshawna! I think you just don’t get what I can do on my own.”
“I don’t deny that,” Leshawna makes it clear, only smirking and narrowing her eyes at them that “I’m just saying, it sucks to have a crutch on your team that is Courtney.”
This triggers both Courtney and Beth, and they both stomp up to her with Beth asking “What’s that supposed to mean?!”
“I mean that you shouldn’t need her,” Leshawna clarifies, rolling her eyes and muttering “Sheesh, so touchy.”
“You want to know why we’re touchy?!” Courtney points her finger at her in objection, proclaiming to everyone “It’s because people like YOU don’t care about us, and just want us left in the dust!”
Leshawna stands up for herself, accusing Courtney that “I DO NOT THINK THAT! You’re just mad at my team for being competition!”
“Competition? Or that I actually VALUE my teammate’s competence?” Courtney asks, pulling out her PDA, which stuns Leshawna hard with her entire confidence drained from her face.
Courtney proclaims with a grin, “You’re just here to destroy us! You hate EVERYONE here! All of your compliments and teamwork value was just an ACT. Because in reality, we’re just PAWNS to YOUR game!”
“You’re one to talk,” Noah scoffs in the back, where Courtney ignores him and reveals “There was a bonus clip of your spa night, Leshawna! Where you said all of that LOUD. AND. CLEAR!”
Leshawna scolds that she has NO proof!
And Courtney then gives her exactly that, asking “Well what did you do to my PDA in the bathroom this morning? Steal it? Rip out the SD card and destroy it because you didn’t want anyone to figure out about your TRUE feelings?!”
Courtney then smirks and reveals a spare SD card, adding “I think you didn’t realize, I POSTED that clip on the TDA website! EVERYONE online already knows it!”
Leshawna demands that Courtney stops, failing to grab the PDA from her hand. She proclaims that they can talk about this later, the others don’t need to hear this. Heather however, claims that she WANTS to know what exactly Leshawna said about them that was so insulting. (Her voice is clearly sarcastic in disbelief.) Courtney adds onto that, claiming that the others deserve the truth.
With that, she plays the clip.
We don’t fade back out and back in just yet. Instead we hear the recording and see everyone’s reactions right away. There’s some static in between lines, indicating that Courtney’s putting all of this out of context to make Leshawna look more spiteful than what the actual moment was. (Because wow, the dialogue in that canon scene was just unnatural)
(And, if we’re feeling ambitious, we can even have a separate bonus clip of the entirety of the conversation Leshawna and Leshaniqua had)
But yeah, overall, this is a pretty brutal scene, as there’s no music at all, just everyone’s hurt faces and Leshawna’s words from the PDA.
“Good influence? Of course not! You know why?! They’re all pathetic! I mean, seriously, not a single word of sincerity and respect has come out of them! Heather for example, just mean for the sake of it.”
“The Grips have nothing against me! They’re brain dead AT BEST. Noah and Justin, just a bunch of lazy egotists who think they own the team because their strategy ‘works.’”
“If Beth and Lindsey’s brains were made of soap. I’d believe it!”
“I mean, my OWN TEAM doesn’t want to cooperate with me! Duncan REALLY wants people to think he’s a bad boy, but he’s more so just whining and playing the act.” “Cause he’s scared?” Leshaniqua asks, and Leshawna answers “Probably! Can you say insecurity?!”
Courtney pauses the recording, and everyone glares at Leshawna. Leshawna stammers that it’s not TOO bad, Courtney put that out of context, her sister was… was…
She can’t figure out how to describe it other than “She prompted it, basically.”
“You still shouldn’t have said that!” Duncan scolds, and Leshawna tries everything to explain. She tries to explain that she was just being REAL. They’re playing this game in such a pathetic way and allowing so many things to get the best of them, THAT’S what she means.
Courtney rolls her eyes, scoffing “You just hate us! You just want to win yourself!”
Leshawna tries to come up with something, only to find she has no words to counter that. Realizing at that moment, that Courtney is right.
Harold, the only character not being made fun of in the recording yet, tries to separate the two. Though he’s lingering himself. “Look, she made a mistake. A BIG mistake, but… I don’t know, maybe that was the past, she’s opened up to things now-”
Courtney shoves the PDA in his hands, pressing the record button for Harold to see himself.
“What about the scrawny kid?” Leshaniqua asks, “He gets a pass?” “What do you mean ‘a pass’?” Leshawna asks, and Leshaniqua recoils that the boy has gone all sweet and soft over her. “What an incel that boy is, giving you NO space and no say of your own? You’re way over that boy’s level!”
Leshawna in the recording claims that he’s not entirely a bad guy, but Leshaniqua cuts her off and asks what she thinks he’s WORTH.
Leshawna says “Oh, I don’t know, probably an old schooler getting as much love as a background post in a play!?”
In the present, Harold is completely saddened, his hand shaking on the grip of the PDA. He looks up at Leshawna briefly, who is unable to say anything.
The recording keeps going, where Leshaniqua says directly “Seriously girl, you deserve better! You deserve so much more than that dweeb. To think you actually KISSED him…”
“If I could, I’d take that back!” Leshawna claims in the recording, trying to prove to her sister she’s a winner by doubling down that “I don’t care.”
With that, Harold drops the PDA altogether in his shock, and Courtney barely catches it. She scolds Harold to be careful with the device, but no one responds. Instead Harold turns his back and walks out of the court, claiming he needs some air.
Leshawna immediately runs over to try and stop him, apologizing over and over again. She makes every excuse she can possibly make as he keeps walking away and refuses to look at her. That she was just making a point. That she wasn’t thinking straight. That Leshaniqua wanted her to say that. That she was joking. That she was just trying to make an impression, and he’s…
“-An embarrassment?” Harold finally asks to that last one, pausing his movement.
“No! No… you’re just…” Leshawna tries to say, trying to hold his hand in comfort, only to end up saying “You’re just not my type, that’s all.”
Harold finally turns back at her and snatches his hand away, the heartbreak in his eyes becoming contagious to Leshawna as he exclaims “Then why didn’t you just say that to my face?!”
Harold stammers “Why didn’t you just punch me in the face like everyone else does, instead of teasing me by actually reading my letters and giving me all those loving gestures?! Why didn’t you just throw them away? Why didn’t you just shove me in that boat in rejection? I thought you cared about me, Leshawna… I thought you loved me.”
Leshawna has nothing to say in the heartbreak of his words and crack in his voice. She can’t say anything, as she already knows very well that this is all her fault. She hugs herself alone as Harold walks into the dark tunnels in between the bleachers, transitioning to the screen fading to black.
As we fade back into the show, the other campers are leaning by the tunnel walls near the entrance. Leshawna is the only one not there, as she’s sitting in the bleachers staring at the court blankly.
Noah and Justin are next to each other, with Justin being unfazed by the situation. “The fact she could pull that off…” Justin mutters quietly, referring to Courtney “That’s insane.” “She had a point,” Noah claims, having his arms crossed, where he’s clearly letting Leshawna’s words sink in. Noah looks at the book in his hands, asking himself “Why am I still here?”
“Leshawna told it as is, and that was just brutal honesty,” Heather claims, which brings everyone’s attention as she makes it clear “So what? People bad mouth each other all the time, it’s a form of speech. I do that to you guys way more often.”
Lindsey tries to break that by claiming that Heather was called mean and nasty, but Heather shoots back that she can live with that. “You could say I’m the queen of that title.”
Chef blows a whistle to have everyone come along for the next game, and though they hesitate, all but Heather oblige. Heather looks back to notice Harold doesn’t know the instructions, and she turns back to find him.
She finds Harold jogging outside the court, clearly losing his breath quickly as the camera focuses on his sweating face and the gushes of wind in the sky. Heather chases after him and joins him, trying to lighten his mood and tease “You do realize you’re going circles, right?”
And a zoomed out frame shows that Harold is only jogging around a tree over and over again.
Heather tries to scoff that she didn’t break their alliance so he could be petty, she did it so he could be as pathetic as he was before. “Thanks for spelling it out!” Harold bitterly scoffs, continuing his jog with Heather constantly trying to block him off.
Heather claims that he really should just get over it, let that fish go, there are others in the sea. But Harold doesn’t listen, and as he’s jogging past her, he recoils that so far today he’s been told to die, got falsely accused for stealing someone’s device, got set up to be beat up with marshmallows, and turns out the only crush in his life so far hates him. And considering Heather FORCED him to work with her before and tried to drag him along her orders, he really doesn’t want to hear a thing from her.
Heather cuts him off from his track, proclaiming “You know, I thought you said you were alone by choice.”
“Yeah, cause I accepted that I wasn’t gonna be liked by anyone a LONG time ago,” Harold says, trying to get through only for Heather to grip a hand on his shirt to stop him and make him look at her.
“And I finally understood what you meant by that now and not before the Island, now you spit that claim in my face,” Heather scoffs, clearly annoyed with him and adding “Thanks a lot.”
“You deserved it,” Harold scoffs back, “You tried to use people, including myself. I’m still trying to figure out what I did.”
“Well sometimes people are just stubborn like that!” Heather blurts out, unsure how to put it herself “Maybe… maybe we just can’t see anyone as people for the sake of getting what we want.”
Harold finally sits down on the tree to catch his breath, unsure what else to say as his hand grips the grass. “But I never meant to view Leshawna as an accessory, that’s not how I see her. Do you not understand what it’s like to finally find love, and it turns out she doesn’t even want you? That you really are just a desperate incel who drove her away?”
“No I don’t,” Heather proclaims bitterly, “I don’t know what love is.” (Which, again, is FORESHADOWING)
Harold argues back, “YOU didn’t even want me to help you. YOU. So just let me wallow away like a rational person!”
“Dude, I have no hair!” Heather argues, removing her wig briefly to show him, “I have no power left to carry around someone like you! You know why I ditched you when you saved OUR LIVES?!”
“Because I was holding you back,” Harold guessed, only for Heather to sit down next to him and answer “Because I couldn’t contain what you brought to the table. I thought you were a pawn, I thought I could use you for my own gain… and turns out we all do that. But does a pawn really have a crush? Feelings? Be sincere with people? Be annoying as I’ll get out and drive you crazy? Make you want to punch them? Let alone that again, you saved my life! You saved all of our lives! With that dedication, who cares if Leshawna doesn’t feel the same way for you? Who cares if Duncan hates you for stupid reasons he can’t get over? Sometimes… sometimes we just need to look out for ourselves. Decide what WE think is good for us that doesn’t involve others.”
Harold looks at Heather awkwardly, especially after Heather tries and fails to touch his shoulder in comfort, where she slaps her hand down too hard.
“You’re really bad at this, you know that?” Harold brings up, and Heather rolls her eyes to scoff “I am trying here! Okay? Give me a break.”
Harold gives a smile at her, soon enough looking away to add “I really should have listened to her the first time before I tried to push a relationship. Maybe she said that out of discomfort.”
“Eh, possibility,” Heather shrugs, adding “Girl’s feisty.”
“Right?” Harold says in delight, beginning to gush again “And the way she’s direct with everyone and being such a boss all the time…”
As he’s gushing, Heather mutters “I’m starting to think ‘incel’ was a great word for Leshawna to use…”
We then cut to the other campers by the ball pit bleachers. Leshawna noticeably away from everyone. From there, we get Chris explaining the challenge and the set up between Courtney and Duncan. This goes pretty much untouched, even their confessionals, though one cut being that Duncan doesn’t mention Trent and Gwen… cause there is no point.
But the Courtney and Duncan wrestling match in general is…
Surprisingly untouched.
Remember, Courtney values winning more than Duncan, and Duncan himself in this version is okay with that, thus okay with her assault. But this IS going to come into play later in this rewrite.
We then move on to the last face off, Justin and Leshawna in the slam dunk competition. Already there’s a tweak here, as instead of Harold’s insults from canon, Harold and Heather are both walking up to the challenge. Leshawna gazes at them, but they both look away from her, and Leshawna is saddened by this, prompting her canon confessional.
Before Justin does his slam dunk, Noah calls out to try and give advice, saying to go for the drama spice. Which Justin does with his canon dunk. And Leshawna’s slam dunk goes canon as well, with the same results.
With that, we move on to the tiebreaker that includes cheering for someone. The explanation goes untouched from Chris. (Gosh I feel like I’ve said that a lot) In the Grips huddling, Noah steps in to claim he knows who they can cheer for, holding up his book and proclaiming that he’s studied ‘his’ actions today. It could work.
We don’t hear his plan, instead we go to the Gaffers, and they go pretty much untouched. They get timed out, leaving Leshawna to improvise on the spot, doing a cheerleader apology to the other campers. There are some tweaks here, with the cheer itself, the framework and animation is totally fine, but since it can somewhat be classified as a song, and that’d mean I’d have to rewrite the whole thing if I do that, please work with me on keeping it brief.
In this cheer, Leshawna gushes over the pairing of Duncan and Courtney, calling it ‘sad but superefficient,’ claims Lindsey and Beth have the hearts that overpower their brains, digresses Noah and Justin as brains vs beauty that match in brutality, calls Heather the Queen of Mean, and lastly confesses through the cheer that she values Harold’s ‘goofy and scrawny’ demeanor in more ways than anyone, including herself, can express and see in him.
She ends the whole thing with “I think you’re crazy, but hey I am too. Who cares about the win when I have all of you?”
This cheer gets the same reactions as canon, pretty much.
And also in canon, the Grips counter it all with a cheer for Chris, and OF COURSE Chris picks them as the winners, because loves himself. And probably no one else.
After the cheer, Justin high fives Noah for the good idea, but they both immediately take it back in disgust. Instead, Noah retoils “Try studying from the sidelines once in a while.” To which Justin points out, “Trust me Noah, I have… and we gotta do something.”
We then cut to the elimination ceremony.
So now we reach the voting sessions, where the votes have been casted, and losers have been selected…
The awards go to Harold…
Duncan…
And lastly, unfortunately for Leshawna…
She’s safe.
Which means that just like in canon, Heather is eliminated.
But I do want to clear something up, and that’s that the voting process in my mind, looks like this: (Harold -> Duncan, Duncan -> Heather, Leshawna -> Heather, Heather -> Leshawna) So if anyone asks ‘Why did Harold vote off Heather in this continuity?’ He didn’t.
But the confessional collab with Duncan and Harold is fine enough and stands with that point, so I’m okay with keeping that in.
(Yes, even the hug in that. I know you Duncan and Harold shippers exist for some bizarre gross reason, and you exist because you reframed this context. Don’t you hide from me!)
Anyway, Heather departs to the limo of losers. (I’m still shocked that’s not what it’s actually called.) But before she leaves, Harold runs up to her to bid her farewell, even apologizing for her loss.
Heather asks, hanging on the limo door, if he remembers back at the river where he asked if they could be friends at the end of all of this. Harold confirms, and Heather proclaims that she wants to put that into consideration. For real this time, not for the game’s sake. But if he tries to push the crush talk to her, or talk about her hair, she’s going to take it all back. “Got it!?”
Harold agrees to such, and Heather leaves.
…
And in case anyone's wondering why I did this instead of Leshawna and Heather becoming friends, basically why I cut that altogether, here’s why. I originally DID keep this, but the show does nothing with that concept. Especially in World Tour, which forgets about it altogether. Plus in this canon episode, it was just rushed and made no sense. Heather and Harold meanwhile had been built up from the Island special, PLUS Harold does end up helping Heather in World Tour, something the show doesn’t forget about. So focusing on their mutual friendship instead with Heather discovering Harold as more than just a pawn, and Harold understanding her shoes, feels more like a fitting continuation from Island, that ends up impacting World Tour all the more.
Continuity. It matters.
So anyway… BACK TO THE ACTION!!!
Episode 16: Dial M For Merger
Episode 16 begins with everyone sitting around the trailer grounds. Courtney is chatting away with Duncan as they both share toast and jam. Duncan calls her move brilliant, as well as complimenting her wrestling skills, remarking how he has a sore throat now. Courtney happily chimes back that it was playing a good game, and she might even say that they have no competition whatsoever.
As she bites into her toast, Duncan points out that Courtney has jam in her teeth. However, this makes Courtney snap, asking him to remember a certain page of the packet, that he doesn’t criticize her! EVER.
Duncan apologizes, complaining that it’s just hard to study. “I want to burn something so bad it’s making me sick!”
“Well unless you want to go back to prison, that’s too bad,” Courtney says simply.
Noah and Justin are watching this, and Noah tells Justin “I didn’t know you studied.” Justin ignores him and asks “You’ve seen them, right? Courtney has her own alliance up her sleeve?” This indicates that off screen, they’ve been talking about this situation.
“Girl has lawyers and admin privileges,” Justin points out, making it clear “Look, I know you and I never liked each other.”
“That’s putting things lightly,” Noah says.
Justin continues “And we both want to drown each other in each other’s skin right now.”
“For me, it’s textbooks,” Noah points out.
“Whatever,” Justin gets to the point, claiming “Point is, you and I both know that we HAVE to take. Courtney. Down. If we let her play her cards, she’s going to destroy both of us. Then we BOTH lose the game.”
“Thanks obvious,” Noah claims, standing up to deny his deal. He asks Justin “Give me one good reason why I should be in any alliance with you?”
Justin is ready to charm him, only for Noah to snap “And I DON’T want to hear ‘ah well, I’m so hot I can win anybody over!’ YOU CAN’T!”
“Never doubt yourself, Noah,” Justin shrugs, and in his words Leshawna walks up to everyone. From there, the scene goes completely untouched. Nobody wants to be around Leshawna, she tries to get support from her teammates, she fails, and of course, everyone gets kidnapped.
This is untouched, the only tweak needed is how Noah gets captured, and that’s because he gets locked out of the trailer alongside Harold. Noah tries to scream at Justin that now he leaves him to die?! And he gets zapped by touching the door and passes out, making Harold run away and prompt his confessional.
With everyone waking up, it’s also untouched except for one tweak. When Justin starts whining, Noah is the one to smack him in the back of the head with his book, directly calling Justin pathetic. To this, Justin grabs Noah’s arm to pull him closer, snarling in a question if Noah would like it if he was ugly.
“Relax, prince,” Noah scoffs, “It’s just karma. That’s all.”
Justin swears that he’ll SHOW him what karma looks like, and then it cuts to the Beth and Courtney moment. Other than that, this is completely untouched, Chris’s moment and explanation of the challenges, the confessionals, and the announcement that these characters are all MERGED.
Yep, we’ve finally reached that point.
Unfortunately, I do have to cut out the merge song, for THIS part of the episode. (I’m moving it) Because as much as it’s such a satisfying scene, it really comes out of nowhere and breaks the flow of the current moment. Instead this merge song is going to happen at the very end of this episode, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
When Leshawna says her “After all we’ve been through?!” line, Duncan tells her coldly to get over it. From there, this scene goes pretty much untouched. The only change here is with the confessionals. Justin’s is pretty much the same, only here when he pounds his head he accidentally spills a perfume jar on the table, making him scoff “No, no it’s not there.”
Then we have another confessional after Justin’s, one of Noah.
His eyes are widened in shock as he asks “Oh my gosh, does Justin actually have brain cells? Is he finally going to listen to me?!” He looks down to see the exact same spilled jar, and he groans at himself to say “I’m going to take this as a no.”
We get to the challenge of stealing the bag. Though instead of Duncan going ahead first before the lasers come in, it’s Justin. (Because seriously, Duncan is a delinquent and a criminal, he should expect this.) Another tweak is that Justin asks Noah directly if he has any ideas, rather than his own brain line, and Noah scoffs “Do I look like a criminal to you?”
Lindsey and Beth’s scene, and Courtney and Duncan’s moment, are untouched. Again, changes come with Justin. Justin is in the back with Noah, who the latter scoffs at the former that he doesn’t think Justin’s brain has been exercised for sixteen years. “I can do this,” Justin assures him, and Noah laughs at that, asking “Oh, what are you going to do? Use that mirror of yours to reflect the lasers?”
Justin grabs Noah again and picks him up, making a short Noah dangle from his grip to meet Justin’s height and for the two to lock spiteful eyes. “I have no problem shoving you in!” Justin snarls, and Noah smirks back and asks “Why? Cause you don’t have anything left to lose? How do you think I felt when you not only broke my friend’s jaw, but also shoved me in the dust years ago?!”
Justin steps forward to shove Noah into the lasers, but because Noah dropped his book when he got grabbed, Justin trips on it and they both slide across the floor. Justin is barely able to clutch his mirror to save himself from the lasers. Noah is crushed under his body, unable to do anything as Justin grins at him and asks “How’s that for the brain dead model you call me?”
“Just…” Noah tries to speak, but being crushed makes his voice raspy “Don’t get us killed.”
Before we cut to anyone else, we have Justin questioning his circus career. Noah is able to barely climb out, and he tries to roast, but is breathing heavily “I would… never hire you… even if you… you… I don’t have the oxygen to insult you.”
From there, starting with the Leshawna, Harold, and Duncan bit, the remainder of this goes completely untouched.
After Courtney gets the bag, Chris does the explosion fakeout. We DON’T fade out and back in, then just replay the moment, that was extremely awkward, and the show has NOT done something like this up until this point, so it doesn’t work. Some other tweaks are here with everyone’s reactions, like when Leshawna hugs Justin, Harold is standing there and backing away in distraught, opting instead to curl up in his own way. Instead of him saying “I’m too knowledgeable to die!” It’s Noah.
But of course, it’s a fakeout.
Courtney doesn’t push away Duncan though, and they don’t have their confessionals, because in context here, she’s in a relationship with Duncan.
I’m also going to extend their escape time to one minute instead of thirty seconds. Because even if you want me to stretch out the amount of time these exchanges actually take in the tower escape, THIS is just crazy. So yeah, one minute.
But the exchanges themselves are completely untouched. There really isn’t anything out of character or anything to add here that I can find. Courtney opts to escape herself and leave them to die, she gets them to share the prize money with her to save them, and turns out it’s all a false alarm.
We then move on to the untouched explained bomb defusing challenge. These are untouched until, again, Justin. (Sheesh Justin in the canon episode) To Justin’s moment, Noah angrily scoffs “It’s called PICK ONE!” As he’s trying to study the wires himself.
“I suppose you know?” Justin asks, and Noah scoffs that of course he doesn’t! But at least he’s putting in the effort. Justin asks why he’d do that, and in a quick explanation with Noah being bitter the whole time, Noah says that what Leshawna said about him at the spa, WAS THE TRUTH. She had every right to say that about him, even if it hurt. “Because honestly, school sucks, I didn’t have to try to get straight As, I didn’t have to be challenged in any way to get a president position, and neither did you! But we’re in the real world, and in a real world stance, we gotta take this stuff down before it destroys us!”
As he’s holding some wires, Justin asks “So… what do you mean by that? The bombs, or…”
“YES!” Noah finally proclaims “I don’t want to, but YES, I will work with you! But only until we get rid of Courtney, AND you listen to MY plan on how to do it! Deal?”
Justin agrees, and then asks Noah what his plan is to defuse the bomb.
To which in a brief comedic line, Noah says “I have no idea.”
And with that, the Lindsey moment is completely untouched, as she’s able to use her own knowledge to break the blue wire and attempt to save everyone…
But because the bombs were going to go off anyway, regardless of what wire they cut, they all die to the lack of oxygen to their scent.
RIP Mergers. You all lived good lives.
The tomato bath moment is, for the most part, untouched. After all this reward talk and the entire moment, we get a transition to the morning sun after those twelve hours of tomato bathing. Everyone is worn out and sick of each other, especially when Lindsey finishes off her extremely long monolog with “And that’s me and my genius knowledge of cheese!”
“Great,” Noah face palms, slumping into the juice to groan “I really want to die.”
Duncan and Courtney are cuddled together in their own section of the pool. Courtney is smiling in his arms, admitting that if it weren’t for these losers around them, this would almost be bearable.
“Would you really leave us to die in a building?” Duncan asks, where Courtney answers “That depends. Would you take into consideration that I NEED to be an efficient CIT?”
“I thought I already did, but I guess that’s not good enough for you,” Duncan sighs, and Courtney makes it clear “You just have to change for me Duncan. There’s no problem with that. We have an entire merge to explore.”
“So guys?” Lindsey tries to bring up, excited over the news to bring up “I guess this means we’re all together now! No more teams, right? We can just have chats like this in harmony!”
Everyone is dead silent at her enthusiasm. That is until Leshawna brings up “At least it’s better than hearing you guys talk for a whole night in a tomato bath.”
“Watch your words,” Noah calls out, and Leshawna counters back “Watch yours.”
With that, Harold jumps out of the tomato bath and grabs his keytar, and from there, we get the Merge Song.
It’s pretty much an untouched song, except that they’re all near the tomato bath as the stink clears away to reveal the bright daylight sky as the song progresses, and by the end of the song, everyone is united in one happy merge, and as they throw their hands and confetti into the air, the camera floats up to the light in the sky as the music ends.
Fade to black, and the episode ends.
Episode 17: Super Hero-ld
(Okay, I actually messed up what this canon episode was called, for the longest time I thought it was called ‘Super Hero-ID’ But it wasn’t until I looked up the episode on the wiki for understanding the references in the episode better, where I realized it was actually a play on Harold’s name. Yeah, Harold of all people has an episode named after him. I kind of don’t like that for this specific show, having episodes be named after certain characters when every single episode is focused on multiple people, but hey, good for Harold.)
So… to clear that up, Episode 17 starts just like with the original with Duncan bullying Harold over a burrito.
And since it was prompted in the rewrite’s last episode, Justin and Noah both try to recruit Duncan and Harold in their alliance. We don’t get a mention of there being more girls than guys here, because in this rewrite’s logic, there’s 4 guys and 4 girls here. Instead, we get the two mentioning that Courtney is a huge threat to them with her lawsuits, and her power and skill, with Noah even mentioning that they think these two can help out because Duncan is her crush, and Harold rigged her off last season.
Harold scolds them to STOP defying him by that one wrong action, claiming he’s not doing it again, but they don’t listen. Duncan then scoffs that they don’t have to target Courtney specifically, with the statement that she over relies on her lawsuits and it’ll bite her in the butt when the time comes.
Justin asks “But what if it doesn’t?” And Duncan rolls his eyes to claim that if they want him to turn on his own girlfriend, they’re gonna have to do better than that.
Both Duncan and Harold walk away, and Noah face palms from behind. Justin asks Noah “Are you sure about this?” And Noah asks back if he has anything better to say in his own chessy brain.
With his line transitioning to the cut of the girls cabin with Courtney and Lindsey returning from their cheese factory tour. When they get inside, Courtney immediately goes for the spray and Lindsey happily greets back Leshawna and Beth. Since Beth is closer Lindsey pulls her in for a hug, and Beth pushes her away to comment that she stinks. Lindsey then brings up that the smell is the cheese she brought back, taking it out and offering it to the others. When Beth says no, and Courtney says “Not if your hands were on it,” Lindsey asks if Leshawna wants it, but she gets no answer.
Leshawna is in her bed curled up, her mind lost in thought as she scrolls through Courtney’s PDA, and with earbuds on she hears the recording play over and over again on the part where she bad mouths Harold. When that part ends, Courtney rips off the earbuds and snatches the PDA from Leshawna, scolding that if she wants to mope, do it when she wins, that’s her best advice. Leshawna says nothing to that, even after Lindsey asks her if she wants the cheese and she kindly denies.
We then cut back to the guys with Justin trying to persuade Duncan in the bathroom while they’re brushing their teeth. Already there are tweaks here, like Harold is NOT in this scene, and Duncan is looking over the packet as well.
“You gotta listen to me, and if I’m working with Noah on this, that should be a guaranteed message that I’m being sincere,” Justin explains, but Duncan spits on the floor and scolds, still reading “I really don’t care about your toddler act in the sand pit with him.”
“If we don’t boot Courtney, we’re going to be next on her chopping block.” Justin counters, “Trust me when I say, she doesn’t care how much you try to be her slave, she’ll ditch you for the million bucks any day. Frankly, I’d do that too, but… I’m not helping my case.”
“I’m fine with that,” Duncan tells him, and before he can leave Justin grabs the packet from him to look at it. After skimming through it, Justin says “This looks way too similar to my modeling documents.”
“I guess you could say that,” Duncan claims, putting his toothbrush away along with several piercings. (Cause remember, Duncan isn’t wearing his piercings anymore) “You’re frustrated with her,” Justin assumes, and Duncan turns his head back to jab Justin “Don’t tell me how to deal with my girlfriend! Get your own!”
He walks out of the bathroom, leaving Justin to only roll his eyes at the jab.
I am cutting out the Chris massage scene, because it’s pointless.
We then cut to Harold and Noah in beds across from each other, Noah having explained everything to Harold. “Well, you say I know how to get rid of Courtney,” Harold tells him, “Truth is, I don’t, and I won’t. Last time I did, it left everything in my screen time to go wrong.”
“Well, what do YOU want from us?” Noah offers, where Harold brings up “Respect. Admiration. Time away from Duncan.”
Noah then says, “Out of stock, sorry.”
“Then I’m retired,” Harold states, curling up on his bed to declare “Find someone else.”
Noah chimes in, “Hate to say it, but you’re the best option I’ve got, I mean, there’s two stupid chics, a boyfriend to Courtney, a brain dead male model, and Leshawna.”
“And a snarky know-it-all,” Harold adds, making Noah feel the roast and scoff “Oh shut up.”
“You just want to use me as a sidekick,” Harold tells him, “How do I know you’re not going to ditch me once we do get out Courtney?”
Noah puts a finger up, ready to object, only for his breath to linger.
It transitions to a confessional from Noah, where he admits “Dang. He’s got a point there. I should have considered my track record.”
In the present, Noah answers “Because I know someone who will, and hesitate less than me.”
“Even if I want to get rid of Duncan, even if he wasn’t in a relationship with Courtney, he’s a lot more powerful than myself.” Harold brings up, where Noah claims “Power is subjective. That’s just your perspective from such, this is the real world, not a world where people have superpowers and break through windows at their own free will-”
And just as he says that, the cat crashes through the window and makes a karate pose, making Harold jump and let out a girl's scream, and for Noah to scream “Are you kidding me?! What is this script?!”
That’s when they all hear Chef’s screaming, causing everyone to run outside and see him tied to a tree from a rope, wearing his dress.
Courtney scolds that a girl CANNOT get her sleep, and Leshawna asks what is even happening. Which brings up Chris in the Batman outfit to save Chef, which is basically the same scene but in the night behind the trailers instead. (I mean, come on, he’s parodying Batman, a hero who only comes out at night, get your DC heroes right Total Drama!)
Chris’s superhero explanation is, by his dialogue untouched. Only in this context, it’s the middle of the night, and they’re expected to work all night to get their superhero costumes done to present early in the morning, which also means a lack of breakfast. Harold and his owl monolog is also fine enough that I’m okay with keeping it in.
After the explanation of the challenge, the guys walk back to get to work. Noah catches up with Justin to ask how it went, and Justin claims that he expects him to reason with a criminal. “Come on, we’re guys!” Noah tries to say to both Justin and Duncan, “We become sleep deprived together, we starve together-”
And it prompts Harold to walk by and thank Duncan for the burrito.
Noah is left silent at that, and Justin scoffs “You really need to keep your mouth shut.”
After Harold’s confessional, we go straight to costume designing. We don’t have the girls' aged cheddar exchange because it’s pointless. Chris’s explanation of the challenges is untouched completely.
Again, the confessional from Lindsey is staying, but the timing was bad. So we do the whole scene of her fighting with Courtney over fabric, the latter winning, and THEN get to that confessional. Other than that, this montage is completely untouched.
In regards to the presentations, Beth and Justin are pretty much untouched. But in between Justin and Harold is Noah’s superhero costume. Now, just like with the cheerleading song, I am gonna keep this brief. Basically, Noah is ‘Bolt of Burns’ a parody of Shazam, where in his case his superpower is burning things… with his words. He barely cares about the superhero act, and just demonstrates by saying that Justin and Beth’s designs look like cardboard cutouts, which offends them, and that Chris’s obsession with tights is so tight, he should audition for a ballerina in a cheesy musical.
Chris however isn’t fazed by his words, claiming that he actually has been in one. With him barely being fazed by it and calling his powers ‘ineffective’, he gives Noah 4 points.
Harold’s is… untouched, pretty much. Not gonna lie, I WAS thinking about changing it. Not because it’s gross, but because this style is more so Owen than Harold, and even the canon episode acknowledges this. But then I remembered this is the same guy who is the worst roommate ever, so… eh, I can believe this enough that he gets a pass.
Duncan’s is untouched. I mean come on. It’s Duncan. He doesn’t give a s**t.
Courtney and Leshawna are also untouched pretty much, but of course Lindsey with her Wonder Woman cosplay wins the game. This is really just too funny to cut. Ah, we love our airheaded princess.
From there, we move onto the second challenge, explanation completely untouched.
Lindsey’s round is also completely untouched. Nothing else to add here. Harold’s round is also untouched, but I AM getting rid of Leshawna’s confessional response, cause… NO. Keeping Harold’s hero persona is already gross as is.
We then get a montage with everyone else. Error correction with Beth interacting with Dunacn’s test, even though they’re doing this separately.
Just like in canon though, Courtney wins immunity.
The guys meet up at the trailer that night, Harold complaining about how he got robbed from the challenge. None of them want to listen, as Duncan asks who they’re gonna boot together. Justin recommends Courtney, only for Noah to snap “Courtney has immunity you piece of plastic!”
“Well if we’re not booting Courtney, I guess I can help you,” Duncan says, then recommending they vote off Leshawna. Noah claims he likes that, but Harold calls this out, claiming they’re supposed to be helping her, and they should vote Duncan off.
Duncan threatens him that unless he cooperates, the girls are going to outnumber their votes. He HAS to cooperate with this. He tries to threaten him, but it doesn’t work on Harold. This is framed as basically that same moment, but afterwards, Noah comments that even if they all cooperate on voting off Leshawna, they need help from at least one of the girls to do so. Otherwise there could be a tie, and who knows if whoever they’re choosing to vote off will actually win that?
Justin asks “So what do we do about that?” And Duncan, knowing who they can get to work with, claims that he has an idea. They get to Courtney behind the girl’s back, convince her, and then it’ll be five to three. “Yeah, but we’d have to go behind Leshawna’s back,” Noah brings up, asking “How do we distract her?”
Which makes everyone stare at Harold.
The girls in the shower go untouched for the most part. After Beth leaves, Leshawna sighs to herself, which makes Lindsey ask what’s wrong. Leshawna smiles and assures Lindsey that it’s not her, “It’s just… I don’t think I’ll make it out of this. If I don’t, I’d have to go home… no other path for me.”
Lindsey however, laughs at that, laughing at the idea that there’s no other path. This confuses Leshawna, only for Lindsey to clarify that who cares if she doesn’t win a million bucks? She never passed seventh grade, but that didn’t stop her from being here. Leshawna, confused by these words, puts on her clothes and heads outside, claiming she’s going to get some quiet and think about it. Before she leaves, she apologizes to Lindsey for the inconvenience she caused at her time here.
She walks out to the trailer grounds to sit down on a hillside and look at the stars, taking a deep breath as she does so.
That’s when her silence is interrupted by the sound of a slamming trailer door, a lock being clicked, and someone banging, as well as a deep raspy voice shouting “You steal my cape and then you kick me out of the place?! GOSH!”
Leshawna looks up to see Harold, still mostly in his costume but without the stamp and the cape, stomping out of the trailers in frustration. She calls his name softly, making him stop dead in his tracks to see her sitting by the hillside on her own. He hesitates, but walks over to her and sits down, greeting her quietly.
Leshawna greets back, asking if he couldn’t stand this drama either, to which Harold shrugs. He looks over for a second to see Duncan, Justin, and Noah, all in their superhero outfits, escaping from the windows of the trailer and making their way to the girls cabin, Duncan pointing at him in a threat to keep the act going.
Throughout the rest of this scene, these three are seen from time to time in the background running into a few shenanigans to get to the other trailer, like animals, trying to stalk on the two, and whatever you guys want to imagine.
“So…” Harold tries to start a conversation, unsure what to say to her, “Here’s the thing, I feel like I should be talking, but I don’t know what to say if I don’t write it down…”
“What?” Leshawna raises an eyebrow at that, and when Harold tries to apologize, Leshawna stammers that it’s fine.
“I just… I should be the one apologizing…” Leshawna admits, “About what I did to you. I have no excuse for that, I was nervous, I didn’t think I was doing what they wanted, I… I completely forgot what made me such a popular camper in the first place.”
“It’s okay,” Harold admits, hugging his knees and telling her that he’s not mad at her. He really should have considered her position and her feelings before he put all of this on her, he should have respected her choice to dump him the first time she said such.
He buries his head in his legs, groaning to himself that he’s an idiot. Leshawna tries to comfort him and assures him that he’s not an idiot, he shouldn’t apologize for what others see in him.
“Really?” Harold asks, unsure how to take that, “I mean, here I am as a laughingstock for everyone, Duncan keeps beating me just to complain about Courtney, you didn’t even want me in the first place. You were just kissing me back at the Island out of sympathy, you don’t actually care-”
Leshawna cuts him off, immediately stating that she didn’t mean that. She didn’t mean a word she said about him at that spa night, and she regrets ever being scared to reject such thoughts.
Leshawna also hugs her knees, pointing up at the bright stars and the night sky to try and prove her point to him.
“I’m not… very good at seeing people besides their first impression. A ‘black and white’ mindset I guess… Like, once Heather said one mean thing, I rivaled her for all it was worth and casted her out of my heart. Once I saw Gwen for her soft side, I considered her a shining star… thing is, I never knew how to classify you.”
“Classify… me?” Harold asks, where Leshawna tries to explain “I mean… you’ve got issues. You’re pushy, you’re clingy, you made some regrettable choices, you pick your nose in your sleep-”
“You know about that?” Harold asks surprised, and Leshawna ignores him to bring home her point “But even with that, I could never shun you out. You weren’t like any guy I’ve seen in real life before, and it… it gave me something else to see, a whole other path in my life, let alone in this game. I was… scared I was doing something wrong when I broke up with you, that I’m expected to date a buff rich boy, and therefore I should… not what my heart was telling me.”
Harold’s silence lingers at that, gazing at Leshawna still looking at the stars. His face uncovers a shade of pink as he tries to look away from her. He assumes that what she’s saying is “Look… if I’m not the hero you need, I totally get it. If you don’t want me, I get it… it hurts but…”
That’s when to his shock, Leshawna crawls over and presses her lips on his cheek, soon enough hugging his side and resting her head on his shoulder. Harold is stunned at this, especially when Leshawna claims “I do want you, Harold…”
Harold’s eyes widened at this, shocked to hear her words. That’s when Leshawna adds “But I don’t deserve you… I need to know myself before we can be in a serious relationship.”
“Okay…?” Harold wonders, and Leshawna asks, “So please, just take things slow with me, be patient. It might work out, it might not, but… I’m sick of this game right now, I want something true.”
Harold hesitates, unsure if she’d take the gesture, but seeing as she’s smiling, he takes a hand and caresses her back, keeping her close. He smiles himself, and replies “Yeah… me too.”
Duncan, Justin, and Noah reach Courtney, and she face palms in the presence of all three of them, asking “What? Is someone naked again?”
Duncan tells her they need her help to vote off Leshawna. Courtney asks to give them a good reason why she would listen to that, and Noah answers that she doesn’t have invincibility forever. Maybe LINDSEY of all people could take her out. Courtney smirks and claims that no one can take her down, let alone Lindsey. Justin then brings up that Leshawna is competition, and competition is something they should all get rid of.
“Please Courtney,” Duncan toughly pleads, “For me?”
Courtney gazes into his eyes and she smiles, asking “So who do you have so far?”
We then cut back to Leshawna and Harold, who are laughing together and pointing at the stars. Harold is giving a whole biography of a certain constellation, and it only makes Leshawna smile.
The other boys head back to the trailer with Courtney with them, and briefly Duncan glances at Harold and Leshawna laughing happily and getting close. Without any words, he looks at Courtney, then back at them. He grits his teeth at the sight of Harold having a happier relationship, and he stomps back in the trailer.
Beth then comes up to them and scares the two briefly. She apologizes, asking if she was interrupting something. Leshawna claims that she’s fine, and from there, Beth explains to Harold that they have to vote off Duncan, and Harold agrees as such. This is, dialogue wise, the same exchange between the two, only they aren’t whispering here since Leshawna’s here as well.
Harold, still blushing, then returns to the trailer, only to be shocked to find they brought Courtney with them. “I assume it went well…?” Harold asks, and right away, Courtney claims “You KNOW you owe me.”
“You beat me with a lamppost, what more do you want?” Harold asks, standing his ground. Courtney then goes on to tell him that they NEED him to cooperate. Not just for her sake, but also for his place in the game as well. The girls could very much be planning to vote off HIM.
“I want to make a deal with you, and don’t think I can guarantee this, I can’t,” Courtney offers, “You help me this one time. I’ll take you to the final four along with me and Duncan.”
“Wait, what about us?” Justin asks, to which Noah scolds “No one cares.”
Harold grits his teeth and makes it clear he’s NOT voting off Leshawna. They can’t make him!
Courtney however, pins him to the wall and traps him in place, her voice becoming edgier as she asks if he can really trust her, after everything she’s done to him? She doesn’t love him. And Duncan then adds that REAL lovers have everything figured out off the bat, kissing Courtney’s hand as he does so.
This gets under Harold’s skin, and Courtney, Duncan, Justin, and Noah trap him in place and leave him covered in their shadows, with Duncan making it clear “It’s up to you Captain Alberta. It’s either her, or YOU.”
And it cuts away before we can hear Harold’s answer.
We then cut to the elimination ceremony.
So now we reach the voting sessions, where the votes have been casted, and losers have been selected…
Courtney is safe.
The awards go to Justin…
Beth…
Harold…
Lindsey…
Noah…
And Duncan.
Which means that just like in canon, Leshawna is eliminated.
And with all the work we’ve done in the past episodes, the scene where Harold apologizes and Leshawna embraces him hits harder, so there really is nothing to change here, and this canon moment makes it a bittersweet elimination. Bitter because Harold gave in to what the others claimed of him and Leshawna’s leaving, but sweet because Leshawna no longer cares about winning the game. If anything, she’s relieved of being pardoned and that she’s able to reconcile with Harold.
Just like in canon, with Leshawna’s parting words being the reminder that Harold should stand up for himself from now on, and kick Duncan’s butt. Which is then followed by Duncan kicking him and Chris breaking his glasses.
(Eh, I’m sure it went somewhere in canon and I don’t have to do justice to it…)
Episode 18: Aftermath The Third
Episode 18 kicks off our third Aftermath show of the season. Geoff and Bridgette introduce themselves, and also go over the new guests lined up: Gwen, Tyler, Heather, and Leshawna. With the exception of the tweaks that Gwen isn’t in the loser line, and a noticeable part that will only be brought up at the very end, Owen is also not here. Other than that, these Geoff and Bridgette exchanges are surprisingly untouched. After their exchanges, they go on to review what Gwen has gone through in the saeson.
In their video, they talk about how Gwen was originally a fan favorite, and finalist of season one, as she won everyone’s hearts with her cold gothic exterior and her romance subplot with Trent… that is until season two happened, and the two went their separate ways from inconvenience, and Gwen was left to clean up after Trent thanks to Justin, and in doing so, she lost all of her friends, and all of her fans, who have been berating Geoff and Bridgette ever since the second Aftermath show. But despite the hate, Gwen has pushed through and fixed her ties with Leshawna, and grew closer with Duncan, it seemed like everything was going back on track for her! Until Courtney came along and put the hammer down on Gwen, booting her from the show in a rather rigged way.
They call up Gwen, but she doesn’t show up. They show a video of everyone in the waiting room, Gwen pacing around nervously as the other three watch. Gwen stammers that they’re gonna crash an anvil on her head out there, they’re gonna kill her! And then Trent’s out there as well…
“Oh my gosh, get over it!” Heather snaps, proclaiming “He hates you, they’ll kill you. So what?” The camera guy comes in to claim that Gwen is up, and nervously, she asks if they’re live. She waves at the camera and nervously greets everyone, but we hear booing from the audience.
Tyler then volunteers to go on with her so they can die together, and though Gwen is hesitant, Tyler insists.
Hearing this news, Geoff and Bridgette decide to also touch on Tyler, playing a video of his story.
In this video, they talk about how Tyler was, from day one, a daredevil on the field who was in over his head, and cheated death every other episode. This season, his own girlfriend Lindsey doesn’t even remember his own name, but that didn’t stop Tyler from supporting her through and through, at the cost of trust from his own team. Ah, the things we do for love.
With that, Tyler and Gwen both come onto the stage.
They both hesitate, with Tyler stammering “On second thought, maybe I get your pain-”
But Chef shoves them both on stage. Tyler crashes onto the floor face first, and Gwen catches herself on her feet. Gwen nervously greets everyone, but they boo at her, one guy even shouting at her to get off the stage.
From there, Gwen basically has the same pressure planted on her from the canon episode 12, including the Katie and Sadie recording. Gwen, the whole time, tries to avoid talking about the breakup, but Geoff keeps pushing, asking about her friendships as well and how terrible her track record is now. Even her own fans despise her for their sunken ship.
“Wait, people are shippers?” Gwen asks, rolling her eyes to add “How invasive.”
“It’s called TV Gwen,” Geoff says.
Tyler then gets back up to try and change three subjects, asking if anyone wants to hear about HIS relationship problems with Lindsey. Gwen raises an eyebrow and comments “Since when have you two had issues?”
“We uh…” Tyler tries to figure that out, only to realize he doesn’t have an answer to that.
“Well, you guys want shipping, right?” Tyler asks, soon showing several video clips of his happy times with Lindsey, when they danced on the beach, their grins at each other in the prison episode, him helping her in the war challenge and them later making out, and basically all of their scenes in episode 14.
Geoff stops this and says “That’s all sweet, I’m happy for you… but happiness doesn’t really give us ratings, does it?”
Bridgette asks “So? They’re happy! Do you seriously think ratings are more important than that?”
Geoff dodges the question, instead asking Tyler if he REALLY thinks Lindsey loves her. Tyler says yes, but then Geoff shows clips of all the times Lindsey has gotten his name wrong.
“I dunno about you, but I’d be pretty sad if my girlfriend doesn’t even know me,” Geoff says, and Bridgette exclaims back “I am right here!”
With that, Geoff decides to proclaim that relationships are only good when there’s juicy drama, thus deciding to start Truth or Electrocution on Gwen.
Bridgette is shocked to hear this, and immediately shoots back that they SHOULDN’T do this! But Geoff assures her that it’s low voltage. Gwen claims she doesn’t want to do this, and Trent stands up for her as well to fight back that Gwen has suffered enough.
Gwen is surprised to see him stand up for her, but Trent stands his ground. To this shock, Gwen apologizes all over to him about what happened, and the break up, she didn’t get to make things up to him, she screwed over everything and everyone, she doesn’t know who she is, she’s sorry Trent had to go through all of this because of her-
Trent stops her and makes it clear that they’re cool. He’s not mad at her, he doesn’t blame her for anything. He knows she makes mistakes, but she’s still a great girl, and no matter what she chooses, whether it’s to be with him romantically or to just be friends, even if she goes for someone else, he’s okay with it.
Gwen is relieved to hear this and they hug each other, asking if they’re still friends. Trent agrees that they’re JUST friends, and he’s happy with that.
This however gets a boo from the audience, and hearing this, Geoff interrupts them to put Gwen in the electric chair.
When we cut back, she’s strapped in, and she, again, basically says the same things she’s said in the canon episode 12, about how she still likes Trent, has a lot of love for people, Geoff tries to push the Duncan talk, Gwen compliments Leshawna and other people she considers friends, but again, all they want to hear is about Trent.
After such, Geoff brings up that the amount of rage she caused to her fandom is unreal. Gwen rolls her eyes and remarks “Whatever. If anything, they’re probably thankful Courtney booted me.”
“No,” Geoff corrects, “It’s because you dumped Trent for Duncan.”
Gwen immediately shoots that down, claiming that she THOUGHT she told them multiple times. THEY. ARE. JUST. FRIENDS.
But then Geoff pulls up that video clip of Gwen and Duncan wrestling each other in the night, (that again, was originally in episode 12) The only tweak here being that Courtney isn’t on the stage. However, Gwen stands her ground that they are just friends, claiming Geoff is twisting this, and Bridgette makes her comment that fame is getting into his head.
Bridgette relieves Gwen, and Tyler tries to help her out, only to get caught under the cap himself and accidentally break a side of the chair. Thinking he’s safe, he claims he didn’t do it, but then the chair shocks him. Bridgette and Gwen make sure he’s okay, and Tyler gives them a thumbs up that he’s fine, though he’s clearly dazed.
“I think we should put this away, Geoff!” Bridgette calls out, but Geoff plays the act and instead asks what time it is?
That’s a transition to the pain segment clips, where they’re pretty much untouched, except fully cutting out the bits that weren’t in this rewrite, like Owen snapping off the wires in his jaw, Owen in the kitchen, Owen crashing down the vault door… basically everything Owen centric is cut here.
After that break, Bridgette argues back that Geoff isn’t hearing her! Geoff asks back what the big deal is, this is their job! They have to do this! Bridgette however scolds that NO, they don’t have to do this. And with that, she chooses to resign from her job, leaving Geoff stammering at her to come back. She leaves the stage entirely, and thus, the only thing left for him is to move on to Heather and Leshawna.
This video itself is pretty much untouched, except there is no mention of Leshawna and Heather becoming friends, because in context of this rewrite, that did not happen.
With that, Heather and Leshawna come onto the stage, and they have the usual ‘hi how are you? Good to have you here!’ exchange.
Then Geoff immediately prompts Heather onto the electric chair, and Heather is cool with it like she was in canon.
And Heather’s time in the electric chair goes pretty much untouched. As well as the video, only instead of Bridgette calling the video, it’s Tyler, who tries to interrupt the whole electrocution process with something random.
Leshawna doesn’t claim that she and Heather are friends, as she only high fives Gwen as they both claim it makes her look funny. With that, Leshawna is called to the stand.
We don’t get Geoff asking about Heather defending her. Yeah I know Heather kind of did in the context of this rewrite, but Leshawna wasn’t there when that happened. Instead Geoff goes to ask if she was mad at anyone for the spa incident.
Leshawna admits that the only thing she kind of has an edge towards regarding that, is Courtney posting it online. But even then, she has to admit that she deserved it, if she was her, she’d be mad too. But though she said nasty things, she does value the nicer things she said more often. We then go onto that video question, and this is pretty much untouched on this guy’s questions. Yes, even the part where Leshawna claims that she and Harold are just friends. Because even in the context of this rewrite, they didn’t ‘hook up’ , they just accepted each other’s boundaries and haven’t decided to become an official couple on their own terms.
When Geoff claims in the clip that Leshawna looked at Harold the same way Bridgette looked at him, Bridgette is seen at the side by the curtains gazing at Geoff in surprise. Tyler notices this and gets up to talk to her.
Other than that, Leshawna’s response to that clip is completely untouched. With the exception of Bridgette being in the scene, the others stand up against Geoff and call him out for his behavior, their dialogue pretty much untouched. Only Gwen replaces Owen’s lines, and Geoff shows more visible restraint on his face when he says his lines.
Heather then brings up the suggestion on how they can pry such out of him, and points at Geoff to declare that HE should go in the electric chair!
Bridgette watches this in shock herself, as Gwen, Heather, and Leshawna join together to trap Geoff in the electric chair.
Leshawna goes on to ask if this really is the true Geoff, or if this is just out of stress that this is what people want from him. (Basically Bridgette’s canon question) And Geoff lies that this IS the real him, and he gets shocked. Heather asks who is the hottest girl on the show to him, but before that question gets launched, Gwen looks over at Tyler, who gives her the thumbs up, and she then asks Geoff how he truly feels about Bridgette.
He lies that he could care less about her, and he gets shocked, and immediately Bridgette runs over to him in concern over his state and his words. As he stammers that he loves Bridgette with all his heart, and that he just wants to do the best for her, Bridgette reveals herself to have come back, and she frees him, hugging him tightly as he apologizes for his act.
The two kiss and make out, and as they do so Leshawna brushes off her hands in relief, claiming they saved the Aftermath show, she calls that a win! The others agree, and with that, all the previous losers of the season gather around to call off the episode!
…With a brief comedic line at the end with someone asking “Hey, has anyone seen Owen?”
And that’s where we’re going to leave things for today. As you can probably tell, there’s no set schedule for these parts to come out, and I want to thank you all for the support given to this project. Also know that you guys are free to reply down below any friendly notes, criticisms, or just something you want to say. I will do my best to address anything you guys say, whether I admit that you’re right and that I goofed somewhere, or defend myself and some of my more… controversial writing choices. We have 7 campers left in the running for the million! Who are the finalists? Who wins? Tune in next time on TOTAL. DRAMA. REFILMING ACTION!!
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