User blog comment:Rhonda the stalker fan!/Total Drama 30 Day Challenge: Day 2/@comment-1874924-20180713064131

In the team phase, I prefer challenges that require the teams to act as teams (e.g. the hot tub building and the dodgeball match) as opposed to those that could just as easily be individual challenges, such as the "last person standing wins for their team" and the "first to finish wins for their team" types. This is partly why, in my TDI reimagining, I changed the talent show rule from "highest individual score wins" to "highest cumulative team score wins".

Beyond that, it's hard to separate the challenges themselves from the episode that surrounds them, but I'll do my best. In other words, for the purpose of this blog, the bicycle challenge in Season 1 (for example) would rank relatively high for its interesting premise and would not be penalized for its horrendous execution. Conversely, I didn't much care for the Awake-a-thon, although I recognized it's importance in character development. (Tip to competition story writers: if you're going to do something like the Awake-a-thon, do it early, when the contestant roster is still large, for precisely this reason.)

TDI: The dodgeball match is probably my favorite, followed by the slasher challenge. The dare challenge is iconic, although a lot of the dares were softballs.

TDA: I don't remember as many of the challenge specifications from this season, but the murder mystery was probably my favorite. (As an aside, when my DW and I watched our DVD of Clue a while back, we watched "Get a Clue" as a curtain raiser.) I also liked the hospital drama and superhero challenges.

TDWT: This season presents the additional, er, challenge, of separating the challenge itself from the quality of its accompanying song. My favorites are probably the naval challenge in the Sweden episode, the Niagara Falls challenge, and the proxy challenge in the fourth Aftermath episode.

ROTI: None of the challenges in this season really stand out for me, but the aircraft building was probably my favorite.

All-Stars: The Moon Madness challenge is the one that really stands out for me because of the weirdness factor. As an aside, there is a series of season-remake fics on fanfiction.net where the author put Ella in the All-Stars season for one reason and one reason alone: to be in the Moon Madness challenge, where the blue harvest moon made her singing dangerous.

Pahkitew: The "grease pig" relay gets bonus points for occuring before the island's largely artificial nature began to manifest itself. "Hurl and Go Seek" combined the eating challenge with a hunt challenge, both of which usually yield good results, and topped it off with incomparable execution--spending the entire episode setting up the zombies-coming-for-Shawn gag.

Ridonculous: I loved that season, but for some reason I can't recall many of the challenge specifics, so I'll go with the Romania/Transylvania challenge.