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Recap / Total Drama: "Mo' Monkey, Mo' Problems"

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The teams are sent to go hunt down golden coins held by monkeys in order to use a vending machine. Shawn deals with the fallout of loosing Jasmine's trust, Ella deals with the fact Dave likes Sky and Scarlett tries to get Max eliminated after her patience with him runs out.


Tropes:

  • All Love Is Unrequited: Dave doesn't reciprocate (or even notice) Ella's crush on him. Shawn still likes Jasmine, but now she's lost trust in him after he hit her in the head with the dueling stick in the last challenge. Subverted with Dave and Sky, as Sky returns Dave's feelings but doesn't want to act on it due to the competition.
  • Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Upon being asked why he thinks Jasmine doesn't fear him, the ever-mature Max replies that it's because she "has a dumb-face disease and is a stinky bad person."
  • Batman Gambit: Scarlett manipulates Max into getting himself eliminated and her plan would have been successful hadn't Sugar sold Ella out.
  • Caught in a Snare: Max sets out a net trap to catch Jasmine and Topher in so that he can make them fear him. Because he doesn't mark the trap in a way that he can tell where it is, the entirety of the Pimâpotew Kinosewak ends up in the net. Jasmine is furious rather than intimidated, but fortunately for the team their combined weight is too much for the trap to hold up.
  • Continuity Nod: The prize food in this challenge are Chef's candy fish tails from World Tour's "Super Happy Crazy Fun Time Japan".
  • Dung Fu: Max thinks he can intimidate a gang of monkeys into cooperating. Instead, they pelt him with a brown substance that Max assumes is mud, but which Jasmine assures him is not mud.
  • Facepalm: The Pimâpotew Kinosewak manipulate the monkey that has their coin into giving it back by means of Monkey See, Monkey Do. Once the monkey realizes it's been tricked, it smacks itself against the head.
  • Fetch Quest: Each team must go and retrieve a gold coin from a monkey.
  • Graceful Loser: Ella takes her elimination/heartbreak well, holding no ill will toward anyone on the island.
  • Hand Gagging: Sky puts her hand over Sugar's mouth when the latter is about to tell Chris that Ella sang despite his orders not to. She simultaneously lies that she herself hypnotized the bear.
  • Heroic BSoD: Ella spends a portion of the episode in a heartbroken slump since Dave doesn't reciprocate her feelings, but she gets over it when her team calls on her to sing in order to tame a bear.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Sugar can throw the golden coin to the vending machine from a considerable distance and manages to make it land in the slot, which makes the Wâneyihtam Maskwak win the challenge.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: The Wâneyihtam Maskwak are horrified and grossed out that Sugar stuffs her whole arm inside the monkey to get the coin out and beg her to stop. That is, until Jasmine comes running with her team's coin, upon which Sugar's team encourages her to find that coin no matter what.
  • Lost in a Crowd: The Pimâpotew Kinosewak's monkey escapes its capture by removing its collar and climbing up in a tree full of identical monkeys.
  • Maniac Monkeys: If not necessarily violent ones.
  • Matryoshka Object: The monkey eats the coin the Wâneyihtam Maskwak have to retrieve from it. Then the monkey gets eaten by a bear. The team guides the entire bear back to Chris, who reminds them the coin has to be useable to win the challenge. Sugar performs the Heimlich maneuver on the bear to get the monkey out and grabs inside the monkey to get the coin out.
  • Misspelling Out Loud: After spelling "anonymous" as "ugnonymous" on paper, Sugar gets into the confessional to declare the spelling error is irrelevant. She proceeds to declare her elation that "Ella is, G-A-W-N, gone!"
  • Must Make Amends: Shawn now he realizes how important Jasmine is to him. At this point, she isn't interested.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Dave gets captured by a bear and there's little that can be done to save him. Ella goes against Chris's ban on singing to get the bear to let go of Dave and follow the team back to Chris, as they need something the bear ate to win. And the Wâneyihtam Maskwak do win, meaning Ella would've been safe if Sugar hadn't been waiting for this opportunity. She lets Chris anonymously know that Ella went against his orders, which gets her eliminated.
  • Non-Gameplay Elimination: Chris kicks Ella off the island for singing one too many times after he told her not to.
  • Oblivious to Love: Dave somehow doesn't notice Ella's huge and incredibly obvious crush on him.
  • Pet the Dog: When Sugar laughs at Ella's heartbreak, the members of the Floating Salmon all give her a Death Glare despite Ella not being on their team.
  • Percussive Pickpocket: Topher steals Chris's cellphone by running into him. He excuses himself by saying he was chasing his team's monkey and makes a break for it. Chris discovers the theft two episodes later.
  • Plot Allergy: Dave is allergic to flowers as he sneezes every time he sniffs one. He mentioned it as a likely allergy of his earlier in "Twinning Isn't Everything".
  • Plot Hole: Chris usually watches the challenges live, yet in this episode he has to be informed of Ella's singing during the challenge resulting in her elimination.
  • Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title is a play on the song "Mo Money Mo Problems" by The Notorious B.I.G..
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Scarlett reminds herself to simplify her words around the others with "Use. Little. Words."
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Wâneyihtam Maskwak's victory is ultimately rendered moot thanks to Sugar selling Ella out for singing leading to the latter's Non-Gameplay Elimination.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Scarlett comes up with a strategy to get the coin back from the monkey. She explains it to her team first by using big words, but as no one understands it, she rephrases it as "We play Monkey See Monkey Do." She angrily reminds herself to use little words around the others.
  • Team Killer: Scarlett giving Max the idea of setting a trap for Jasmine and Topher is just a plan of hers to eliminate Max, one of her own teammates.
  • Wedgie: Jasmine hangs Max from a tree branch by his underwear when she's under stress and he annoys her.

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