Couch Potato Chronicles: Disventure Camp Season 4

by Amy McVeigh

Why Logan Winning Doesn’t Work

Welcome back to Couch Potato Chronicles, the column where I talk about pieces of media I like in many different ways. Though this issue I’ll be tackling something in a more negative light.

Recently, the Survivor and Total Drama-inspired animated webseries Disventure Camp concluded its fourth season, with the season’s winner being determined to be Logan Bell. However, instead of this conclusion being celebrated by fans of the show, it ended up being heavily criticized by fans and crew members alike. So I’d like to take the time to explore what makes Logan such a controversial choice for a season winner.

Background Information

Logan was first introduced in a promotional “Audition Interview” teaser for the season. Apparently, Logan is not only an Olympian swimmer, but also won the bronze medal. Logan’s personality is also shown here, painting him as a happy-go-lucky individual who values teamwork above all else.

We see Logan again in the season premiere, where he’s placed on the Blue Team. Later in the episode, after noticing his teammate Alessio Castelli, an italian painter whose recently lost his motivation, wandered off somewhere, he uses the confessional stump to comment on how this isn’t exactly going to make him popular with the rest of the team, and also wonders if maybe he’s looking for the immunity totem.

In the next episode, Logan finds Alessio trying to paint a picture of a fortune teller machine in the carnival. Logan tries to help, only for Alessio to get frustrated. This episode’s challenge involves knocking your opponent off a platform into the mud using a dueling stick and Logan’s opponent turns out to be Ivy. Logan ends up hesitating, not wanting to hit a girl, but he ends up swallowing his pride and scores a point for the team. However; it ends up being all for naught after the Blue Team still loses the challenge. After the challenge, Logan tries to include Alessio in the strategy discussion by asking him who he plans to vote for, only for Alessio to say he doesn’t really care who gets voted off as long as it isn’t him. Logan then attempts to improve Alessio’s painting by adding a moustache to it, leading to the painting beginning to resemble Alessio, and this ends up helping Alessio rediscover the inspiration he’s been looking for. Alessio realizes he needs to get his head in the game and tries to find an alliance to vote with. However, his epiphany ends up being too little too late and he becomes the first person voted out of the season, disappointing Logan.

In the third episode, Logan’s still upset about the events of the previous episode when his teammate Natalia Baez, a Puerto-Rican office worker, approaches him and tries to cheer him up. Later, during a truth/dare-themed challenge, Logan is dared to kiss a model. Logan accepts, assuming the model in question is a woman, but is shocked when it turns out to be a man. Though unsure about it all, he decides to go through with the dare and kisses the model after all and ends up enjoying it. Logan isn’t terribly involved in the rest of the episode and the Blue Team wins.

Logan begins episode 4 discussing strategy with the rest of his alliance which is composed of Richard Miller, a basketball coach, Ted Gordon, a poker player, and Lynda Anderson, a housewife. During their strategy meeting, Logan was tasked with interacting with the rest of his team, those being Natalia, Isabel Carboni, an influencer and a nun, Anastasia Sizova, a Russian supermodel, and Marissa Xulu, a woman who plans to enlist in the military. Logan has another conversation with Natalia about the events of the previous episode and starts a friendly rivalry with Anastasia. This rivalry begins with Logan and Anastasia competing to see who can start a campfire faster, and though Anastasia wins, Logan is a good sport. After the Blue Team loses, Natalia, Anastasia, Isabel, and Marissa are all willing to discuss the vote with Logan and much to his surprise, they tell him they’re voting for Richard. Although it turns out that this is a misdirect, and that they’re actually voting for Ted. Back on Logan’s actual alliance, the plan is to vote for Anastasia, but he ends up voting for Richard instead. This costs his alliance and Ted gets eliminated instead, much to their annoyance. This is the first of many times during the season where Logan flips on his so-called alliance.

The next episode picks up where the previous one left off. Logan tries to apologize to Richard and Lynda for breaking their trust and Richard reassures him that they can still salvage things if they can get someone from the other alliance to flip.

Nothing comes of that aside from a conversation where Richard reveals he recognizes Logan from having watched the Olympics. Logan asks him to keep it a secret so that he isn’t seen as a threat (a plotline that doesn’t go anywhere).

The sixth episode doesn’t have much relevance to Logan’s story until the end of the episode, which features a cliffhanger where Natalia tries to talk with Logan and Richard. Then, in episode 7, Natalia warns Logan and Richard that Lynda has completely flipped and joined the other alliance and so Logan and Richard have to find some kind of advantage in order to save their place in the game. They find a box that presumably has some kind of advantage in it, unfortunately for them, the box is locked and they have no way to open it. They try to hide the box so they can come back to it later without worrying about anyone else finding it, but unfortunately someone, specifically Anastasia, does find it and picks the lock with a bobby pin. The challenge of this episode also serves no real importance to Logan’s character, and since the Blue Team wins again, they don’t have to vote anyone off.

In the next episode, Logan and Richard head back to find the box only to learn the aforementioned bad news. When they then tell this to Natalia, she suggests she’ll be the lookout while they could search through their teammates’ bags to see if they find anything, despite it being a bit of an invasion of privacy. Natalia successfully distracts Isabel, but Lynda slips past her and catches Logan and Richard, threatening to report them before Isabel covers for them and convinces Lynda to let them be. Apparently Natalia wasn’t the only member of Marissa’s alliance whose loyalty was starting to waver. Once again, the challenge has no real relevance to Logan’s character and the Red Team lose, sparing the Blue Team from having to attend an elimination trial.

The next episode shakes the game up. Spencer Lawrence, a British mathematician on the Red Team, was supposedly voted off, but instead of being eliminated, he was allowed to swap teams with any Blue Team member of his choosing. As a result, Spencer joins the Blue Team and Isabel is moved to the Red Team. The first interaction Spencer has with any of his new teammates is getting accidentally punched in the face by Logan. However, later, Logan is curious to get to know his new teammate. Apparently Natalia noticed Spencer seemed to have a romantic connection of some sort with former-teammate Diego Olivo, a tour guide who was voted off by the Red Team quite some time ago. Spencer doesn’t seem to like being reminded of this and storms off. When Natalia questions why Logan takes such an interest in their new teammate, and correctly guesses that it was because he found him attractive, Logan just shrugs this off, lamenting that he doesn’t believe his bisexuality fits the “golden child” label his parents have given him. And for the first time in what feels like forever, the Blue Team ends up losing the immunity challenge and has to attend elimination, where, in a surprising turn of events Lynda ends up betraying Marissa and getting Logan’s alliance to vote her off while Natalia instead votes for Spencer with Anastasia and Marissa.

Logan spends more time with Spencer the next episode and continues to flirt with him. The Blue Team loses another challenge and Logan discusses the vote with Richard, Lynda, and Spencer. They plan to vote off Anastasia. Logan ends up flipping on his alliance and votes her off. Since Lynda receives the most votes, she’s now at the highest risk of being eliminated. Why isn’t she eliminated yet you might ask? Well, as a twist, Lynda and whoever gets voted out next will have to compete in an extra challenge to see which one of them will be eliminated.

Natalia is proud of Logan for having flipped on Lynda, having disliked her for quite some time now, Spencer, however questions this move. Logan explains that he’s close with Anastasia and Natalia and didn’t want to betray either of them. He tries to reassure Spencer that he’ll still have his back when push comes to shove, but Spencer laments that he had voted off someone who would’ve also had his back prior to switching teams. The Blue Team loses yet another challenge, and Anastasia volunteers to get voted out so she can eliminate Lynda herself.

After the elimination ceremony, Logan and Spencer have a friendly chat on the beach where Spencer confirms to Logan that he did, in fact, have Diego eliminated because he felt too scared to enter another relationship after his ex dumped him prior to the season. Logan cheers Spencer up and encourages him to move on from his past mistakes as nobody is perfect. No interesting developments happen in the challenge and the Red Team loses, sparing Logan from elimination. Logan doesn’t appear in the next episode, due to it focusing on what the eliminated contestants have been up to since their eliminations.

In Episode 14, Logan and Spencer are gathering firewood together when Logan finds a gun-shaped stick like a and playfully points it at Spencer, who then turns the tables by warning Logan he used to date a self-defense instructor. After they head back to camp Logan confides in Richard that he is unsure of whether or not he wants to ask Spencer out. Richard reassures him that it’s not always easy to figure out your own feelings, and that he never got the chance to come out as gay to his parents before they died. Both teams are then called over to the carnival’s pirate ship where Derek and Trevor announce that the teams are being merged into one, and starting now they will all be competing for individual immunity. The challenge is in pairs and Logan pairs up with Spencer. Whoever wins the challenge will be able to receive a special belonging from home. During the challenge, Logan starts running out of oxygen and nearly drowns and Spencer asks for everyone’s assistance. Jade, a marine biologist who had been on the Red Team, simply wants to focus on the challenge, but we’ll come back to that later. Anastasia and Isabel bring Logan up to shore, but he has a hard time breathing so Spencer rushes to give him CPR, which, predictably, looks like a kiss. Spencer tries to talk strategy with Logan, Richard, Zaid Hakim (a Moroccan chef), and Benji Hatori (a college student). Spencer suggests voting for Anastasia, to which Logan objects. Benji also refuses to vote for his friend Hannah Roxas, a bartender. But in the end, Zaid betrays the alliance and votes off Benji as revenge for voting off his girlfriend, Ivy Berki, an up-and-coming actress, back in Episode 12.

The next challenge is a Haunted House where contestants have to go through three rooms of the mansion and escape before anyone else in order to win immunity. When Logan and Spencer are on their own, Spencer admits he’s the most at risk of elimination if he doesn’t win immunity, and so the two of them agree to make sure Spencer wins the challenge. The two of them fall into a hole leading into another room, and accidentally kiss, but before they can process this, Logan falls through a trapdoor. When they see each other again, Logan tries to bring up the kiss, but Spencer refuses to talk about it and runs away. Logan then meets up with Natalia and tells her about how he and Spencer kissed. Natalia congratulates him at first, before reassuring him when she notices he’s still having trouble coming to terms with his bisexuality. After the challenge, Richard ends up being eliminated, much to Logan’s disappointment. Before he boards the boat of losers, Richard leaves Logan his basketball to remember him by and encourages him not to stay in the closet forever.

In the next episode, Logan and Spencer finally address the elephant in the room from last episode, that being the kiss. Spencer admits he genuinely doesn’t believe he’s ready for another relationship, and Logan admits that he was mostly just using their situationship as a means to come to terms with their sexuality, rather than having feelings for him specifically. They agree not to get together, but still stay friends. For the challenge, it’s announced that two of the previously eliminated contestants will be able to rejoin. The two rejoiners are determined to be Amelie Pierre, a French businesswoman who was voted out second, and Marissa. Logan, however, does not do anything of note during the challenge.

The challenge for the seventeenth episode involves having to answer questions truthfully, and when you answer truthfully, whoever asked the question receives a disadvantage in the challenge, but if you get caught by a lie detector, you’re the one who receives a disadvantage. The most important part of this challenge for Logan’s arc comes when Marissa asks Spencer what role he played in Richard’s elimination. He responds by admitting that he took advantage of information he got from Logan in order to convince the other alliance to target Richard, which understandably annoys Logan. Soon after, Anastasia asks Logan if he’s still upset at Natalia, who also had a role in Richard’s elimination; however, Logan forgives Natalia. After the challenge, Natalia tries to form a new alliance to take down Anastasia and Marissa, but she makes the mistake of including Spencer in the conversation, despite him being on bad terms with everyone still in the game. Everyone begins arguing and Natalia gets voted off at the trial which upsets Logan even more.

Logan has no interest in talking to Spencer at the start of Episode 18 and he forms an alliance with Anastasia, Marissa, and Zaid. The challenge has no relevance to Logan’s story, but at the elimination, Spencer is eliminated and Logan takes this opportunity to forgive him for his betrayal.

In Episode 19, Logan, Zaid, Marissa, and Anastasia team up during the challenge, but Logan tries to ditch the girls at the first chance he gets, much to Zaid’s annoyance. Logan is pretty stubborn about not actually helping Anastasia during the entire challenge, for reasons that are honestly kind of lost on me. After the challenge, Logan ends up leaking plans to vote out Isabel to her and Jade which allows Isabel to use her immunity idol to save herself and forces a tiebreaker between Anastasia and Marissa leading to Marissa being eliminated.

Logan tries to console Anastasia after Marissa’s elimination; however, Anastasia isn’t in the mood to talk. Meanwhile, Hannah tries to fix things with her own ally, but Amelie doesn’t want to speak with her. As a result, Logan and Hannah ending up talking to each other instead, realizing they’d both be on the same side of the vote. Hannah is upset but tells Logan how her mother always encouraged her to put on a brave face to get through life and expresses frustration about how she misses her, as she died when Hannah was very young. Logan tries to relate to her by complaining about how he only got bronze at the Olympics. As if those two things are remotely comparable. And no, the writing does not acknowledge how insensitive this is. Later, Jade watches as Logan tries to get back into the water, but chickens out. The challenge is a mix between a maze and a multiple choice quiz, where throughout the maze there are several paths that ask a question about one of the other contestants and if you get more than one question wrong a pit will open below you, removing you from the challenge. Logan spends a lot of this challenge with Hannah and Amelie, trying to patch things up between them. Eventually, however, Logan gets a second question wrong and falls in a pit with Isabel, who asks whether Logan has any regrets about betraying Anastasia. Logan admits he’s not thrilled about the way things went down, but still thinks it was for the best to lower Anastasia’s threat level. What they didn’t know however is that Amelie overheard this entire conversation and now plans to use this to her advantage. Later, Anastasia, Logan, Hannah, and Amelie are all gathered at the campfire together, and Amelie tries to get Logan to confess he was the one who leaked information to Isabel and Jade. Instead he lies about it and throws Zaid under the bus, although he feels guilty for doing so. Zaid still gets voted off but is confused as to why everyone’s so mad at him. The closest to an explanation he gets for what happened is when Logan sheepishly tries to play it off as a “game move” which only serves to anger him further. Even though Logan managed to get away with shifting the blame onto someone else for now, he’s not off the hook yet, as Amelie plans to blackmail him over this.

The next episode begins with Amelie reminding Logan that she still has leverage to blackmail him and so his game is now in her hands. Logan tries to take his mind off this and tries to get over his fear of the ocean yet again. He meets Jade on the beach, who comforts him and helps him make a plan to get Amelie out of the game. The challenge is in pairs decided by the hosts, and those pairs are Anastasia and Isabel, Hannah and Jade, and Logan and Amelie. Logan feels conflicted about being put in a position where he can’t win immunity without Amelie also winning immunity, though he and Jade already agreed to have him throw the challenge so Jade and Hannah can win immunity. Logan actually feels more conflicted about this as he values sportsmanship above all else. With that being said, he still ends up caving in and throws the challenge at the last second, and he and Jade work together to get Amelie voted off. Although Amelie doesn’t reveal Logan’s secret to Anastasia out of respect for his ability to outplay her, she whispers it to Hannah instead in the hopes that she can use this information to keep Logan in check. But, as one last twist, everyone finds out that at the final three that the jury will decide who gets eliminated right before the final two, and the episode ends there.

After the elimination, Hannah is frustrated with Logan, having genuinely believed him about Zaid’s alleged betrayal, and having said horrible things about Zaid because of it. When she breaks down and expresses how much she dislikes the game, Logan tries to relate to her, expressing how he doesn’t enjoy having to lie to get further, but it doesn’t work because of one major difference in their situations; Logan knew what he signed up for, Hannah was recruited without being given much information on what to expect. The challenge is a VR simulation of a D&D campaign, where Logan is a warrior, Hannah is a ranger, Jade is a mage, Anastasia is a barbarian, and Isabel is a cleric. Isabel and Jade “die” pretty quickly in the simulation which leaves the challenge down to Logan, Hannah, and Anastasia. The three of them arrive at the final room of the dungeon and it becomes a free-for-all between them. Anastasia begins targeting Hannah, who uses this as an opportunity to reveal what Logan did in an attempt to try and turn her against Logan. Unfortunately, this ends up backfiring on her because, as she puts it, she’s not “a tool whose paranoia is meant to be exploited and manipulated” and Anastasia “kills” Hannah and lets Logan win the challenge… for some reason. Anastasia and Logan continue their friendly rivalry and Jade blindsides Isabel.

Logan doesn’t appear in the next episode as it focuses on the eliminated contestants. Although, I’d still like to call attention to how the jurors describe Logan. All of the following is from the 23rd episode of Disventure Camp Season 4: Carnival of Chaos, titled “Panel of Peers”:

Natalia describes Logan as “talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing” and “show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique.” She also argues that “Logan's the most popular person. He's beating everyone else in a jury vote.”
Richard describes Logan as “A pillar of growth, sportsmanship, and, above all, kindness.”
According to Spencer, “[Logan’s] game has evolved to the perfect balance of physical and strategic.”
Isabel, who’s more critical of Logan, points out that “it took him too long to start playing. For most of the season, he just went with the flow.”
According to Amelie, “Logan's game has its merits. As social as Hannah but with far less blood on his hands. Eliminating [Amelie] was a good move. He knew, so long as [she] remained, he would never have ownership of his own game.”
Zaid doesn’t voice any specific observations, but when he makes a point that he’s rooting against Logan and still doesn’t forgive him for framing him to save his own skin, nobody takes him seriously and he gets dismissed for being “salty”.
Benji and Marissa don’t seem to have any strong opinions about Logan, and if they do, their opinions go unvoiced.

Onto Episode 24, which opens with Jade and Logan meeting up on the beach. Logan questions what happened at the previous elimination and Jade explains how despite Isabel being her closest ally, she was also the biggest threat and felt the need to vote her off while she still had the chance. Although she apologizes to Logan for keeping him out of the loop. Logan then meets with Hannah at the carnival’s roller coaster and the two of them start bonding. They also realize that Jade and Anastasia seem to have formed an alliance and that the only way they’ll stand a chance is if they do the same. The entire episode is essentially dedicated to the bond Logan and Hannah form, which, while sweet, feels very last minute. Eventually, Anastasia wins the bumper cars challenge and Hannah and Logan end up flipping on each other. Anastasia and Jade can’t agree on which one to vote for which leads to one of my favourite scenes in the season where Logan and Hannah have to face a tiebreaker to survive elimination, but they end up not taking the tiebreaker as seriously as most of the game has been for the both of them so far having fun instead. Of course, Hannah loses this tiebreaker and is eliminated, but instead of being devastated, she’s honestly just relieved it’s over, and so her run in the game ends on a high note.

It’s now the penultimate episode. Logan, Anastasia, and Jade have all made it to the final three. But Emily, the host, has one last twist up her sleeve. The final three will now have to attend another trial where they’ll take a vote to give one of them a disadvantage in the immunity challenge. Remember when I said Jade wanted to focus on the challenge instead of trying to help Logan when he was at risk of drowning? Well, now Anastasia reveals this information to Logan in an attempt to turn him against Jade and give her the disadvantage. Logan gets understandably upset with Jade about this revelation and ends up not wanting to talk to her for the rest of the episode. During the challenge, Jade and Anastasia spend most of their time trying to sabotage each other which leads to Logan winning immunity. This leaves the jury vote down to Anastasia and Jade. Luckily for Jade, she wins this vote and joins Logan in the final two.

Finally, we’ve made it to the finale. Jade begins the episode by apologizing to Logan for nearly letting him drown, but as it turns out, Logan’s been able to cool off since then and forgives her. The final challenge is a mishmash between several, but not all, of the previous challenges, and both of the finalists are allowed to choose a helper out of the contestants sitting in the peanut gallery to support them. Jade chooses Isabel, and Logan attempts to pick Hannah but Natalia volunteers instead, which Logan is also fine with. Near the start of the challenge, Jade and Isabel sabotage Logan and Natalia, and Natalia gives Logan a coconut, saying they’ll need it to sabotage them back later. Later during the challenge, Logan has to go through a water slide, but starts freaking out due to still not having gotten over his aquaphobia and goes on a whole tangent about how he can’t do anything right and even when he can others are just better, citing how he only got bronze at the Olympics. Natalia slaps Logan in the face reminding him that he doesn’t have to be perfect and encourages to get over his imposter syndrome. This cheers him up and allows him to slide down and continue the challenge. Towards the end of the challenge, Logan and Jade are racing ambulances to the finish line and it looks like Jade is about to win before Logan places the coconut Natalia gave him earlier on the gas pedal, jumps out of the ambulance and wins the season. In the end, he and Zaid make up as well, ending Logan’s arc this season.

My Thoughts

Logan’s win here feels like a slap in the face to the entire season up to this point. For starters, Logan’s whole arc about being ashamed of only getting bronze at the Olympics just doesn’t make sense on principle. Typically, even just getting bronze at the Olympics is something to be proud of; it shows you still made the podium. This already makes it hard to sympathize with Logan as his “sob story” unintentionally makes him come off more spoiled than anything.

But, even if getting Bronze was something to scoff at, I just need to ask, why is the conclusion of the storyline to a character with golden child syndrome who’s upset about getting bronze at the olympics, to have him win and reinforce his need to always be the best? If anything, this is the kind of story that would suit Logan way better if he was the runner-up; that way he can learn to appreciate getting 2nd or 3rd place instead of always needing to be the best. Having him win however, just shows a lack of understanding of what Logan’s character arc should be on Odd Nation Cartoons’ part.

Not to mention, it’s also strange that Logan makes Richard promise not to tell anyone he’s a bronze medalist Olympian so he doesn’t get viewed as a threat turns into Logan being ashamed for getting Bronze and not Gold.

From a thematic standpoint, Logan is also one of the least satisfying characters to have won in a season that covers heavy themes of being discriminated against. Sure, he’s bisexual, but the themes of facing queerphobia are given way less focus then the themes of facing misogyny, and personally, I just can’t wrap my head around why they thought it was a good idea to have a white cisgender man win a season with so many scenes where the female characters express frustration with the misogyny they’ve faced in their lifetimes. It just makes the whole season feel thematically confused on that front.

There have even been rumours that apparently the entire team behind the show advised Jared and Robert, the creators and directors of the show, that Logan winning would be a terrible decision, but they were stubborn and went through with it anyway. Which, if true, really rubs me the wrong way as it shows that the people in charge of this show think they know better than anyone else. This I can understand to an extent, it’s their show and character after all, but if they’re the only members of their team advocating for said character to win, it feels like they should make more of an effort to understand why that is.

All and all, I think Logan winning was a terrible writing decision and single-handedly ruins a lot of the season for me, which really sucks because aside from a few episodes, I had really been enjoying the season.

And with that, this is Amy McVeigh signing off for this issue of “Couch Potato Chronicles”.

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