TELETOON
Just to say about Courtney: if she can't compete in the most dangerous of challenges- like the others- without the extra pampering, she deserves points deducted from her, in terms of being a player. Heather in the first season, at least used her brains and cunning skill to get whatever she wants. She didn't have the special treatment that Courtney's getting now, and still then, Heather managed to manipulate and knock out anybody she was up against. Frankly, I think that the only thing Courtney has in her favour is the extra pampering she's getting. The only player that she has managed to get the better of was Duncan. She may also have had the rest of the challenges in her favour, but that is only due to luck being on her side. The extra pampering; the matches set up between her and Duncan and Leshawna pushing the idea of an alliance upon her teammates. These are all major factors that contribute to Courtney's wins. Heather didn't need all that. All she needed was a brain, which was something that she used to get her through challenges and she may have not won all of them, but at least she didn't need a good lawyer, a companion or member of her alliance thrown off their game (even if the members of her alliance were incompetent) or material posessions to better her chances of winning.
I'm just saying: how good can Courtney be if she needs all of these lifelines to get her out of situations? Love works in many ways and when you're in love, one of those ways involves confusion. Having to fight the person that you care most for, twice, is enough to throw you off guard.
Courtney may have retrieved the items, but only to see that everyone else was tied up before doing so. Beth was on top of Lindsay, Harold and Duncan were helping Leshawna and Justin just couldn't bring himself to clearing a path.
In terms of being mean and nasty, Courtney is at an equal point or has right about surpassed Heather in that department. In terms of skill, she has potential. She has great skill, but she should rely less on material possessions.
| Riankg wrote: |
| In this episode and if he doesnt get eliminated in the future ones as well.. I think we will see more about Justin being EVIL. |
| n5d25d90 wrote: |
| I still go by Justin being more of a starter antagonist for reasons I've mentioned before. If you also look at other games, shows, etc. with starter antagonists, starter antagonists also end up becoming comic reliefs and overall terrible antagonists. Jack Spicer from Xiaolin Showdown comes to mind, as well as several main antagonists in video game series such as Mario and Sonic. Not to mention games such as, for example, Final Fantasy VI with Emperor Gestahl, or Resident Evil Code: Veronica with Alfred Ashford. My point is, the starter antagonist is often always terrible, or becomes terrible once a greater foe appears. Justin, though, I will admit... would fall under the former. Aside from the deal with Gwen, he hadn't been a very good antagonist at all in the season. |
| HaydenAvery wrote: |
| ok well if courtney had the entire season to rest then your pretty much contradicting yourself meaning courtneys special treatment is a very unfair advantage. you could let courtney win everything and she would still be a mean and crappy CIT. shes so the villain right now. |
I didn't contradict myself at all. I said she started out rested from starting late, and the pampering is an unfair advantage because it'll help her stay in top shape. There's no contradiction between those thoughts. Starting the season late wasn't Courtney's idea or plan. She's not that cunning. Starting rested is the result of how long it took for them to put her back on the show and was in no way shown to be a stipulation of her lawsuit. She would have started with everyone else if she could have. Without the special treatment, the restedness would have just worn off by itself after a few challenges. What I said was that cumulative benefit of her special treatment is going to cause the unfair advantage later by keeping her in top form after the unplanned advantage of starting late should have already worn off. I never said her special treatment wasn't an unfair advantage. I just think she's getting the benefit of the special treatment later rather than attributing all of her initial wins to it. Reread rather than trying to put words in my mouth. This is what I had said:
| : |
| Courtney came back to the game fully refreshed from being at the Playa Des Losers (or whatever resort the Losers are at this season). Physically she's already in a peak state over the other contestants. She doesn't need the extra perks for an initial physical advantage, but they will have a cumulative effect for keeping her at the top of her game. One Million Bucks BC seems to be the morning after her return, for example. It's less then 24 hours. She wasn't going to go downhill in that amount of time without the pampering. |
I also never said she wasn't mean, etc. I just find it presumptious to attribute everything that Courtney does to the perks from her lawsuit. You could give Sadie every advantage Courtney has, and she wouldn't have the same results. Just because Courtney is a cheater doesn't mean that she has no ability at all.
We're all agreed she's the villain.
Duncan seems to be a secondary antagonist now, as they're playing up his bullying of Harold. He's a bully. That's what they do.
Justin is basically the Dr. Evil of TDA. Fine by me. He's better at comedy relief, imo.
@ImVeryBasic
I've maintained since my first post on here that Heather is a better villain. It's not like Heather never had luck on her side though--the treasure chest with immunity comes to mind or else Heather would have been voted off instead of Trent. Strikingly, Heather was also helped in that situation by LeShawna banding everyone together to vote off Trent instead of going after someone who was really one of Heather's allies. Heather was lucky when Cody got mauled by the bear, or else she'd have probably been eliminated as the most hated member of the team. During the bike race, Heather was darned lucky that Lindsay was actually able to help her through when Duncan and Owen couldn't get through. Bad guys always need a certain amount of luck to stay in the game despite the fact that everyone hates them. The writers give the villains these free passes for a couple of reasons:
1. Because the villain can't be eliminated before the intended climax, despite the fact that everyone is gunning for them
2. Because it makes the viewers angrier at the villain when we see the mean twit get lucky
So I don't blame Courtney for the fact that everyone else was incompetant at getting through the lasers. It wasn't any different than the bike race from season one. Duncan and Owen crashed out, and Heather used Lindsay to get a win for herself. In this case the others got themselves stuck, and Courtney used Duncan's advice to get herself the win. After getting the bag Courtney even turned against Duncan by requiring him to give her half his win if he wanted out of there before it exploded. The whole thing was very similar if you look at it objectively.
Where Courtney falls short of Heather for me is in not being able to do the things she claims to be skilled at (a CIT who can't make fire), in her initially pretty much announcing herself as a backstabbing cheat (getting special treatment in front of the others, being as subtle as a brick to the head in demanding half their money), in her trying to rely on her lawyers to complete challenges or if things don't go her way (at least Heather manipulated other players rather than paying outsiders), and in the fact that Heather usually did it first and better.
Heather was a lot more subtle, and she built up to showing her full ruthlessness. She managed to manipulate people with a variety of techniques. She did everything from using Eva's temper to turn the team against her to manipulating Duncan into cleaning latrines because she was still pretending to be tranqued.
Courtney improved in Super Hero-ld. Her manipulation of Harold was much smarter than before. Why Harold would trust her over Beth needed more explanation for me though. Heather's scheme to turn Gwen against Trent had lots of development. Even if LeShawna lied to get a spa night, she'd never demanded half his winnings. He has feelings for her and an alliance with her. Beth had never lied to him. So flattery was enough to make Harold forget that Courtney is a lying cheat? Courtney was sneaky, but Harold had to lose a few IQ points for that trick to work.
At this point I'd say she's probably getting some benefit from her perks. She's at least been around for one early morning wakey wakey, so sleeping better during the time they did sleep seems useful. I'm wondering how far Chris is going in order to thwart her though. I'm suspicious about all her out of office messages, and I loved his favoritism towards Lindsay.
Courtney's best potential as a villain for me is that, unlike in the Heather/Lindsay alliance, Courtney actually has feelings for Duncan. Evenso, she's still willing to betray him for money and winning. That's pretty evil. You can complain that she's just lucky because she got paired against Duncan twice, but she still had to be ruthless enough to go all out against someone she has feelings for too. Seems rather unfair to penalize her for being Duncan's weakness without crediting her for not letting him become her weakness in those same challenges.
| KarmaGoddess11 wrote: |
| @ImVeryBasic I've maintained since my first post on here that Heather is a better villain. It's not like Heather never had luck on her side though--the treasure chest with immunity comes to mind or else Heather would have been voted off instead of Trent. Strikingly, Heather was also helped in that situation by LeShawna banding everyone together to vote off Trent instead of going after someone who was really one of Heather's allies. Heather was lucky when Cody got mauled by the bear, or else she'd have probably been eliminated as the most hated member of the team. During the bike race, Heather was darned lucky that Lindsay was actually able to help her through when Duncan and Owen couldn't get through. Bad guys always need a certain amount of luck to stay in the game despite the fact that everyone hates them. The writers give the villains these free passes for a couple of reasons: 1. Because the villain can't be eliminated before the intended climax, despite the fact that everyone is gunning for them 2. Because it makes the viewers angrier at the villain when we see the mean twit get lucky So I don't blame Courtney for the fact that everyone else was incompetant at getting through the lasers. It wasn't any different than the bike race from season one. Duncan and Owen crashed out, and Heather used Lindsay to get a win for herself. In this case the others got themselves stuck, and Courtney used Duncan's advice to get herself the win. After getting the bag Courtney even turned against Duncan by requiring him to give her half his win if he wanted out of there before it exploded. The whole thing was very similar if you look at it objectively. Where Courtney falls short of Heather for me is in not being able to do the things she claims to be skilled at (a CIT who can't make fire), in her initially pretty much announcing herself as a backstabbing cheat (getting special treatment in front of the others, being as subtle as a brick to the head in demanding half their money), in her trying to rely on her lawyers to complete challenges or if things don't go her way (at least Heather manipulated other players rather than paying outsiders), and in the fact that Heather usually did it first and better. Heather was a lot more subtle, and she built up to showing her full ruthlessness. She managed to manipulate people with a variety of techniques. She did everything from using Eva's temper to turn the team against her to manipulating Duncan into cleaning latrines because she was still pretending to be tranqued. Courtney improved in Super Hero-ld. Her manipulation of Harold was much smarter than before. Why Harold would trust her over Beth needed more explanation for me though. Heather's scheme to turn Gwen against Trent had lots of development. Even if LeShawna lied to get a spa night, she'd never demanded half his winnings. He has feelings for her and an alliance with her. Beth had never lied to him. So flattery was enough to make Harold forget that Courtney is a lying cheat? Courtney was sneaky, but Harold had to lose a few IQ points for that trick to work. |
I'm not denying the fact that villains need luck for the build-up on a good climax. I agree about the recent challenges Courtney has been in. Comaratively, Heather has had her downfalls. And while the villain is needed for an unfair advantage, an antagonist also needs to have their defeats to make them more convincing. Courtney has just been portrayed as perfect in every department. She's written to be good in challenges, ruthless and all around skillful, and all this according to writing. Now I'm not implying that Heather hasn't been written as well (she's a cartoon and it's a show), but during the time that she was the villain, she managed to manipulate people all on her own. I'm saying that if Courtney can't compete without outside help, that doesn't make her so great as a convincing antagonist. She's just plain nasty. At least Heather had a balance of being nasty and skillful. I agree that Heather was the better antagonist, but Courtney is twice as nasty as she is. Never once the season has showed her to have any defeats and downfalls. I still stand by my theory about her being Duncan's major threat. He tried not to pull a Trent throughout both challenges, but I'm still maintaining on the posibility that she had it too easy on both of those challenges. I find that if both had to compete in separate challenges, both would do equally well. Duncan is a very strong competitor and although he tried not to make it look like he was letting her win, deep down, he was afraid to fight her. Completely agree with you about the Super Hero I-D challenge. While we both agree that Heather is the better villain, I guess I'm judging Courtney in the sense of being a competitor. So we both agree that Heather's the better villain, but Courtney is just the nastier person.
[QUOTE"KarmaGoddess11"]At this point I'd say she's probably getting some benefit from her perks. She's at least been around for one early morning wakey wakey, so sleeping better during the time they didn sleep seems useful. I'm wondering how far Chris is going in order to thwart her though. I'm suspicious about all her out of office messages, and I loved his favoritism towards Lindsay.[/QUOTE]
I'm just suspicious about the perks that she's getting. To me, it doesn't really make sense. Everyone else had enough of the pampering when they returned for the season, including Courtney. So it would be completely unfair for her to get the extra sleep since she's already in top shape.
We totally agree that Heather's the better villain, and Courtney is at least twice as nasty.
Courtney's had losses and downfalls since her return. Courtney lost the first challenge she had with the Grips when their car fell apart before the finish line. She couldn't make fire after all her bragging so that was a personal failure, despite Lindsay eventually winning for the team. She didn't diffuse her stink bomb. Very importantly, the other players were able to blackmail her out of their agreement to split their winnings. What she did win was a prize that made her miserable.... a trip to a stinky cheese factory for a lactose intolerant person. She's disliked by everyone but Duncan. Her continuing attempts to consult her lawyers all end in failure now, as she only gets a series of "out of office" replies. For four episodes worth of being the villain, it's not too bad a start. They aren't as good as Heather's list, but Heather had much more screentime in the first season than Courtney has had so far. Courtney could still manage some pretty memorable downfalls and failures, but it'd be hard to top things like Heather's sewage shower, the red ants, being shot by her own team, the stinging jellyfish on her head, the blown off eyebrows, just about the whole episode for Triple Dog Dare Ya...
One thing I really enjoy about Heather is the snippets we have for why she's the way she is. Teletoon's profile hints that deep down she doesn't really love herself and gives examples of her insecurity. According to her TDI profile on CN she was heavy, pimply, and unfashionable in Jr. High (as Harold had guessed at in TDDDDI), is picked on by her little brother, and now she's the controlling Queen Bee in high school. It's a solid backstory for why she goes to such extremes and doesn't trust anyone.
From the TDI profile on CN, Courtney just loves to win and will follow the rules only until they get in her way. That's pretty weak...
| HaydenAvery wrote: |
| if you watched the latest ep youd know that justin has gotten serious about eliminating the girls. hes not funny at all so harold has that role. if courtney is a cheater that should make her totally useless. she has to use other people in order to win. and so what if bullying is what duncan does? it still makes him a complete (censored) jerk! |
I never said that it didn't make Duncan a jerk. If you'd bothered to ask my opinion of Duncan instead of assuming, I'd have told you he's often a jerk. I just said it's what he does as a bully and that he was an antagonist. He is what he is, and I accepted that he was an antagonist way back in season one. How you took antagonist and bully as positives on my part is beyond me. You're so touchy about the subject; it sounds like you need to take a step back and breathe.
Courtney is a cheater, but without a villain there would be no drama for the series right now. That's far from useless. She's necessary for the plot. The fact that her wins are not all accomplished through her attempted cheating is something that I take into account as well when evaluating her value and prowess as an antagonist. Heather used other folks to win plenty, and she was a great villain. I like pretty much all of the characters on TDI/A for what they bring to the show, whether they are protagonists or antagonists. The villains are just as worthy of serious discussion as the heros. I'm trying to be objective about Courtney's contributions as a villain, her strengths, and her weaknesses. She's a fictional adversary, and I'm trying to keep her in that context. I'm discussing her abilities, not the moral philosophy of cheating. She didn't use anyone else to ninja jump through the lasers, so it seems pretty biased for someone to refuse to acknowledge the ability she showed just because she wants to call her lawyers later. I think she's equal in talent to Harold, and I'm rooting for Beth or Harold to finally take her down.
I found Justin quite funny in the latest episode. Justin totally cracked me up describing his black eye from last episode as "a near death experience" that changed him, listing his powers as Timberman (I can make fire.... as long as I have matches... and I don't get too close to the flame... ouch...), getting fried on the powerlines... he was quite funny for me. Harold isn't the only funny character on the show. Lindsay, Beth, Chris, Justin, Chef... lots of characters are contributing humor. Comedy relief is not a role designated for one character and only one character in TDA. I compared Justin to Dr. Evil, for pete's sake. I compared Justin to an ineffectual comedy antagonist. Are you seriously saying that HAROLD is an ineffectual comedy relief villain? Seriously? Harold was more tied to the drama on this episode, and while the fart jokes were a nice reminder of Owen they weren't as funny as his usual jokes. It's perfectly possible to love Harold without putting him on a pedestal as the only protagonist, the only underdog, or the only source of comedy. Maybe Justin's brand of comedy isn't your cup of tea, but to label him as a serious antagonist in the latest episode is off the mark from what I saw.
He suggested voting off a girl because he feared a girl's alliance would lead to the guys getting picked off one by one. He suggested booting one of the girls. One does not equal all. And since when does joining an alliance warrant an automatic assumption of villainy? He wasn't being mean; it was the same strategy that the guys' alliance had last season when they realized they were outnumbered. Alliances are a normal part of the game, because the players are trying not to get voted off. He didn't cheat or manipulate anyone to get his way in the episode, unlike Duncan and Courtney tricking Harold. Plus, the girl he really wanted to vote off was Courtney, which is the same person that everyone but Duncan (and Courtney) wanted voted off. Had the girl's banded together into an alliance, they could have ensured an all female final. The guys gave the girls too much credit for being able to work together. Again that's just like last season. Justin didn't even vote against anyone he had a previous alliance with--unlike Duncan and Harold.
| KarmaGoddess11 wrote: |
| One thing I really enjoy about Heather is the snippets we have for why she's the way she is. Teletoon's profile hints that deep down she doesn't really love herself and gives examples of her insecurity. According to her TDI profile on CN she was heavy, pimply, and unfashionable in Jr. High (as Harold had guessed at in TDDDDI), is picked on by her little brother, and now she's the controlling Queen Bee in high school. It's a solid backstory for why she goes to such extremes and doesn't trust anyone. |
I also happened to come across that. As soon as I read this sort of info, I was compelled to start a discussion on it. It's interesting to come across websites with backstories about characters, especially the mean ones. I really like how Teletoon dropped hints about her downfalls and insecurities. I know a lot of people who go to great lengths to maintain a special image or reputation (just) to keep other people from stepping on them. It's amazing how many people from the human population do that and out of all those people, about 90% of those people are revealed to be acting.
Knowing about Heather's past would have helped the contestants with standing up to her. All anyone would have to do is pose a threat against her if she ever got out of line. Needless to say, this backstory balances out both sides of Heather. There's the lying, backstabbing, doublecrossing twit we all see on t.v, and then there's the more innocent, naive and maybe good-natured Heather. And as much as I feel the need to kill her for her nastiness on the show, reading her backstory has made me feel sympathetic towards her just the same. She may be the most evil, untrusting person in public. Contrastly, she is the insecure, misunderstood teen behind closed doors.
| LordGrievous wrote: | ||||
Playing the game is what Heather did in the first season and that's why she was the antagonist then. |
Courtney is the main antagonist cause shes mean to everyone except Duncan, she tricked Harold into voting LeShawna off, got Owen eliminated and she might even get Lindsay out next, and the more i see her the more i hate her shes meaner than Heather this season, anyways i hope she gets bitten by karma in the finals
