How About That Thing?

In 2008, there was a show on Cartoon Network that came to us from the magical world of Canada. A cartoon that, in defiance of logic and reason, managed to hold my attention from start to finish. Seriously, you wouldn’t think a cartoon about teenage melodrama could hold my attention… But it did. And that show… Was Total Drama Island.

Oh, and 6teen was there too, I guess.

Yeah, I’m just going to give it to you straight: I never really liked 6teen. A lot of it had to do with the fact that when it showed up on Cartoon Network, I was well into my twenties, and plot lines like “ZOMG! I need a date/dress for the dance!” or “MIDTERMS! AAAAAHHH!!!”, and “Oh no! that cute guy/girl at [INSERT MALL LOCATION] doesn’t notice me!” didn’t really interest a twenty-something who was working retail, and channeling all of his misanthropy into a movie script that never did get past the second act, and eventually got lost to time and the formatting of hard drives.

It also probably doesn’t help that when I was sixteen, I wasn’t hanging out at the mall with all my normal friends, dealing with the kind of topics this show considered normal teenager things. I did have friends, but we hung out at the trailer park, drank smirnoff despite being grossly underage, and watched movies. Either someone would bring the movies, or we’d just flip through the various HBO channels available at the time and hope for something good. Some of the guys smoked, but those who did went out of their way to make sure the newer members of the clique never picked it up. Hell, one o us even brought over porn once!

Was it a great way to spend my teen years? Probably not, but what’s there is there. And we did all that because being visually impaired to multiple degrees meant none of us could drive. So none of us had a car, most of us didn’t have money, none of us had any other friends, and none of us really had any ambition outside of never getting employed at Alphapoint like all the other broken toys who had life way worse, and were either too mentally handicapped, or just too stupid to realize it.

My first summer job wasn’t at the mall, either. It was at The Coalition for Independence, translating print documents into braille. The job lasted four weeks, and by week two, they ran out of shit for me to do. It quickly became a pretty sweet, do-nothing gig that paid me to wait around for paperwork that never showed up after week 1.

I guess what I’m trying to say with all of this is that at no point in my life did I ever relate to, or find anything about the lives of the six main characters in this show interesting. Not as a sixteen-year-old, not as someone in their mid-twenties… And yet, I found myself watching it on Pluto TV fairly recently. Largely because I like to watch mindless things to help me go to sleep at nights anymore.

After watching several episodes across several evenings… Yeah, no, I’m still not impressed for the most part.

Getting ahead of myself, I DID find intrigue in the plot about Jen’s mom and Jonsey’s dad getting married, and both families having to deal with each other’s bullshit. Hell, if anything, they ought to have made this into a show. I mean I didn’t have a step-dad, or any step-siblings, either, but compared to teens hanging out at the mall, I can’t help but feel like this has potential. It’d be like The Brady Bunch, but animated, Canadian, and not sucky.

More importantly, though, here in 2024, I can’t help but notice how the show has taken on a lot more of a time capsule quality. It’s not just about Canadian teenagers in the mall living their Canadian teenager lives, but it’s very heavily rooted in the 2000s. The decade that gave the world DVDs, Emo music, and cell phones that could make phone calls and… Well, that was about it, really.

For someone like me, it’s an era filled with warm fuzzy nostalgia. A bustling mall full of people shopping at video stores, spending handfuls of quarters or tokens at the arcade, actually CALLING people instead of texting… Hell, I remember when we used to make fun of texting as a concept. Even just getting something from the food court is something we’re never going to see anymore. The movie store was crushed into powder once Netflix became a thing. Arcades ended up going a similar route, what with home consoles being capable of graphics on par with the arcade cabinets, and the fact gaming became less about wracking up points and more about telling interactive stories. Hell, the mall itself as a concept is on its way to extinction, thanks to Amazon.

People born in the 2010s and beyond will probably look at this show, and insist that it’s definitely showing its age in these regards. And they aren’t wrong. But those people are entering those awkward teenager years where your body begins mutating into something that hates you and lives to make you as awkward as possible. Though the culture may be outdated, perhaps they’ll relate to the characters?

Well, let’s see.

This is Jen. AKA, MASTERSON! She’s the dead serious one of the group. She’s already figured out what college she wants to go to, she’s the only one who got the job she actually wanted, so forth, so on.

This is Caitlin. She’s that kid whose parents are loaded, and she spends their money like she has no concept of what money actually is. Or she DID, until her dad finally did the right thing, cut her off, and forced her to get a job. And that’s how she ended up at The Squeeze: the resident lemonade stand at the mall.

Not only is she a spoiled rich daddy’s girl at the beginning, but she’s also a glittery pink Barbie type of girl who goes through boyfriends like I go through bags of Ruffles. The kind of girl I was not into when I myself was sixteen.

This is Nikki. Honestly, she’s probably my favorite of the girls… But that’s not saying a lot, in the grand scheme of things. Basically, she is, for all intents and purposes, the anti-Caitlin. And yet, she finds herself stuck at The Khaki Barn, having to share oxygen with equally annoying glittery pink Barbie girls.

This is Wyatt. He’s what us filthy millennials would probably refer to as “the token black guy.” His character consists primarily of pining for a coworker of his, then getting the chance to date her, only for her to dump him so she can date some loser named Chad, and he spends the rest of the show (as far as I know, anyway) whining about it. Oh, and I guess he’s a caffeine addict as well

I’ll give the guy credit for playing guitar, though. Most guys like him I knew wanted to “make beats” and mumble about bitches and buttcheeks rather than play an actual instrument and write actual music.

This is Jude. And it’s right here where I find myself with abit of a paradox.

On one hand, Jude is probably my legit favorite character in the entire show. If for no other reason, a lot of his wacky adventures in the mall have gotten actual honest to god laughs out of me. Nobody else on this show has been able to do that in any capacity.

On the other hand, he’s the token boardhead. And I fucking hate boardheads. Thank god, skateboarding and skateboarders aren’t as commonplace nowadays as they were in my day, but all the same, there was just something about those guys that made me look at them, and think those guys were so lame. Part of it probably comes from ad executives of my day thinking they could pedal whatever crap they wanted on the youth of America by giving their mascot a skateboard and a backwards hat… But upon further reflection, I think a lot of that came from the fact a lot of the boardheads I knew IRL also happened to be hardcore Jesus freaks. These were the kind of lamewods who’d have posters of Tony hawk on one wall, a portrait of white Jesus on the other, and somewhere in between, there’d be a poster for P.O.D., or Skillet, or some other christian rock band that tried so hard to rock, but ended up coming off as unbelievably tacky in the process. The venn diagram for brainless skateboarders who were geniuses with the board and idiots at life, and hardcore christian youth group fodder had so much overlap in my neck of the woods, it was practically one circle. I don’t know who I felt more embarrassed for: them for trying and failing to relate to the youth who weren’t already in the cult, or me for being dragged to these groups by my parents

All I know is Jude is the embodiment of a duality that makes my head hurt.

Last up, there’s Jonsey. Oh lord, Jonsey.

Like Jude, he’s dumber than a sack of wet hair, but where as Jude is that vapid airhead kind of stupid that usually comes with the territory of being a boardhead,Jonsey is just REGULAR stupid. He can’t hang on to a job for more than one episode, he thinks all the girls are in to him when the opposite usually ends up being true, he owes everybody money, he’s irresponsible as hell… And yet, SOMEHOW, not only does he end up with a girlfriend, but it ends up being Nikki of all people! Now I’m no Mysterious Mr. Enter or anything, and I know we all make bad decisions when we’re that age (lord knows I made a few myself), but girl, you can do so much better than this loser.

So yeah, I’m not really big on any of these characters. Especially Jonsey. In fact, the closest thing to a relatable character for ME didn’t come till season 3, when they introduced this guy.

This is Wayne: the guy in charge of Underground Video. He has terrible taste in movies, yet considers himself above everyone else. He’s a snob, he’s an elitist, he’s thoroughly into the whole irony thing us millennials were famous for… And sadly, at that age, I was probably this exact guy.

Oh well, at least I wasn’t this guy.

This is Darth. He’s one of THOSE Star Wars fans. At best, he’s probably what my brother-in-law was like when he was sixteen. At worst, he probably grew up to be one of those losers who gatekeeps the fandom, and posts rants about how you’re not a REAL fan if you like the Disney trilogy.

But yeah, I personally don’t find any o these characters relatable, or any of these situations all that interesting. In fact, the only remotely positive thing I can say about this show is that the theme song is actually kind of catchy. Like, I wouldn’t say it’s my jam, but it’s not without charm. It reminds me of a simpler time, back when hating Nickelback was fun, butt rock was a thing, and before Imagine Dragons came along and made everything all beep-boop and even MORE obnoxious.

Outside of that opening theme, though… Yeah, this show doesn’t really do it for me. As I found myself watching it, hoping my anxiety-induced insomnia over job hunting and the shrieking baby in the room next to ours would sleep through the night would eventually go away, I found myself fast forwarding through, and even skipping entire episodes of a lot of it.

I will admit, though, I’m kind of surprised this even aired in America sometimes. I guess Canada has more relaxed standards when it comes to showing characters taking a seat on the toilet, or barfing on camera. God forbid you allow that episode with the gay character to air, but sure, let’s watch Caitlin take a wizz on camera. I mean yeah, they didn’t show anything below the belt, but still…

But, once again, I’m clearly not the target demographic for this show. I wasn’t when I was sixteen, I wasn’t when I was in my twenties, and I’m not now. But maybe in about 15.25years, my child will be. And if Pluto TV is still a thing, and is still hosting the show, maybe he’ll find something in it I don’t see. As long as his hero doesn’t end up being Jonsey.