Recap / Total Drama: "Taking It to the Rim Reaper"

The contestants compete in Waterslide Basketball for their next challenge, where they must try to earn a total score of 21 points by making it into the rim of a giant wooden basketball hoop after sliding down water slides of differing points… including one ultra dangerous slide that could have the challenge end in disaster for both teams…

Tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Despite supposedly having nothing but disdain for Ripper at this point, Axel admits in the confessional after the below incident that she actually thinks that he's pretty funny.
• Amazon Chaser: In the time span between the two seasons, Ripper's supposedly outright rivalry with Axel is revealed to have turned into an enormous crush on her, and he spends the brunt of the episode trying to impress her.
• A Rare Sentence: During his recap at the elimination ceremony, Chef says that Ripper flung his naked, buttery self into the woods and led an angry bear into a crowded toilet, which Chris instantly lampshades as the strangest sentence ever spoken on the show.
• Batman Gambit: Emma takes advantage of Chase's narcissistic tendencies to manipulate him into wasting time filming an intro instead of doing the challenge, annoying his teammates into voting him off.
• Brain Bleach: Ripper covered in butter, then losing his speedo.
  MK: I was going to donate my eyes to science, but now they're ruined.
  Julia: I don't believe in donating.
• Butt-Monkey: Julia takes a lot of punishment during the challenge, rarely making it the basket in spite of several attempts and at one point hitting the poll the basket is attached too.
• Camera Fiend: Emma uses the fact that Chase always overthinks his intros whenever he films his own stunts and pranks to trick him into using one of the production team's cameras to film himself as he goes down one of the slides. As a result, Chase ends up spending so much time trying to film himself and redoing his intros that he never actually goes down any of the slides himself, which leads the rest of Team Skunk Butt to send him home when they lose.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Chef calls Chase out on spending too much time on his intro instead of helping his team, Chase simply states how beautiful his hair looks.
• Could Say It, But...: Chris says that the Death Boot is worth four points if someone goes down it, but also clarifies that it isn't officially part of the challenge due to legal reasons.
• Dumbass Has a Point: When Chef is giving his usual reasons of why some campers are on the chopping block for their poor performance, he tells Ripper that he not only failed to score a single point for his team in the challenge, he flung himself into the woods by buttering himself up and brought an angry bear back. Ripper says in a confessional after this though that he isn't worried since he's the one who unclogged the three-pointer for his team which gave them a massive amount of points, including from the bear.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite being one of the harshest campers on the island, even Axel is appalled by Millie's betrayal of Damien's trust and outright says that it was wrong in the confessional.
• Exact Words: At the beginning of the challenge, Chris tells Team Rat Face to pick who goes first. Never once does he say that the teams will be taking turns or that they can only send down one player at a time.
• Forbidden Fruit: The Death Boot, a vertical slide through a working gear shaft that ends with you being launched into the net by a gigantic boot. Though Chris states that you could get 4 points if you use it, Chef makes it clear that the slide is not an official part of the challenge and that the contestants should ABSOLUTELY NOT BE USING IT, since at least 6 interns who tried it out, as Chris put it, "didn't exactly survive" and later heavily injures Damien when Millie tricks him into going down it.
• Groin Attack: After the clog is unblocked, Bowie ends up taking the hoop rim between his legs and missing the shot.
• Hated by All: Millie becomes absolutely hated by everyone in her team after she pushes Damien into the Death Boot without him knowing.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: Raj, Wayne, Bowie and Julia all wind up stuck inside the Three-Point Pooper.
• History Repeats:
  • Like his elimination last season, the Drone of Despair takes Chase away by grabbing whatever he's holding in his hand at the moment.
  • Ripper doing something disgusting with the last marshmallow then eating it when he relieves it that grosses out a female contestant.
• Humiliation Conga: Ripper's got it so bad for Axel that he tries to impress her during the challenge by stripping down to his speedo swimsuit and buttering himself up so that he'll slide down the waterslide faster, which only ends with him getting his swimsuit caught at the edge of the slide, slingshotting back up the slide again, losing his bathing suit, being launched into the forest completely naked and covered up in butter, and getting chased all the way back into the challenge by an angry bear. Though the incident actually helps his team by getting them unclogged from the Three-Point Pooper and earning them a big 12 point score to catch up to Team Rat Face (including the bear), it also lands him in the bottom 2 with Chase due to how completely and utterly embarrassing it was.
• I'm Standing Right Here: After Nichelle manages to score three points, Julia complains to Bowie he should have picked Nichelle instead of being stuck with Ripper, who complains he is right there.
• Jabba Table Manners: Even though she's got a spoon right next to her, Axel prefers to eat her bowl of gruel with her hands like an animal.
• Moment of Weakness: Seeing that they need 4 points to win the challenge against the Skunk Butts 1, and being too afraid to go down the Three-Point Pooper slide herself, Millie betrays Damien's trust by sending him down the Death Boot instead, which both severely injures him and earns her the ire of her entire team.
• Naked People Are Funny: Axel chuckles at Ripper's incident during the challenge.
  Axel: Heh. That naked guy is funny.
• No One Should Survive That!: Even for the show's standards, the bone-crushing gears of the "Death Boot" slide should be deadly, as Chef and Chris mention that the 6 interns who had tested it "didn't exactly survive", and Damien, though a fast enough healer that he's fine in the next episode, is left battered, beaten, bruised, and babbling like a madman after Millie tricks him into going down it himself.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: After colliding with Caleb while taking the one point slide, Zee mumbles this school is so watery before Axel drags him back to shore.
• Pet the Dog: Showing that she's serious about making an effort to be nicer this season, Axel first helps a dazed Zee swim back to shore and later carries a severely-injured Damien back to camp.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Despite winning the challenge, absolutely no one on the Rat Faces are celebrating their victory due to it being caused by Millie's deliberate betrayal of Damien's trust in her and his subsequent serious injuries that came from it. Even Millie, who was initially cheering over their victory, immediately quiets down when she realizes just how badly she had hurt Damien and just how angry she has made him and the other members of the team become at her.
• Running Gag:
  • Chase restarting his intros, thus not participating in the challenge.
  • The members of Team Skunk Butt getting themselves wedged in the Three-Point Pooper.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: After Ripper clears the clog, Chris not only counts the points made by Julia and the Hockey Bros, but the bear that was chasing Ripper as well, giving Team Skunk Butt an 12-point leap into the lead.
• Shipper on Deck: When Ripper confesses to his crush on Axel, the Hockey Bros and Bowie all give him their support and tell him to tell her how he feels.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The rest of the contestants are absolutely appalled when Millie tricks Damien into going down the severely dangerous and intern-injuring Death Boot slide instead of the 1 point Ouchie slide like he had wanted to and severely injures him as a result, with not even Priya being able or willing to defend her best friend in that moment.
  Caleb: Damien’s going for a 4-Pointer?.
  Axel: I bet it wasn’t by choice.
  Priya: Oh no. Millie. Why?
• Writers Cannot Do Math: For Team Skunk Butts' points, they were shown to have had 7 points right before Ripper's initial failed attempt to go in the two point slide. However after his failed attempt, they are mysteriously shown to have 8 points (unless someone on Skunk Butt went on the 1 point slide during Julia and MK's confessional discussing Ripper's failed attempt).