Note: If you ship Noah with anyone else besides Emma, you might be pissed off with me in this review. If you want to skip it, please do. I'll really understand.

Episode Summary: As a "special treat", the remaining thirteen teams are taken to Dubai; home of the first seven star hotel Burj Al Arab. Also, if you think the show is making up that the hotel has seven stars in real life, you would be surprisingly wrong. Believe it or not, the Burj Al Arab has strangely enough two stars over the five star limit. Okay, how does the five-star system allow this to happen in real life? Could someone please tell me?

The first six teams arrive at this famous seven star hotel, where they are given an Either/Or from the nearby Don Box. Teams can either wash an entire row of windows on an extremely dangerous high lift, or play tennis on the top of the building against the tennis menace, a parody of the Dalek robots from Doctor Who. The writers go so far with this odd joke as to make the robot constantly state the word "participate", which sounds a heck of a lot like the word "exterminate". Congratulations to the few Total Drama fans that actually watch Doctor Who. Your fan-fiction dreams have sort of come true! Strangely enough, only half of the teams do the tennis challenge, while the other half washes the windows. Alright, half of the teams have death wishes I guess. Good to know!

Meanwhile on the continuation of the much controversial Noah and Emma romance sub-plot, things seem to be heating up between the obviously soon to be couple. However, Emma will not admit her feelings, or attempt to make an alliance with Noah's team, the Reality TV Pros, so she could be closer to her love interest. The reason for this is her break-up with a guy named Jake a stinking three years ago, which she still hasn't fully recovered from. Wow, and I thought Courtney held on to her break-up with Duncan longer than anyone else. Due to this problem, Kitty and Owen come up with a plan to work together, so Emma will let go of the past. So, what is this genius plan of theirs? How about almost letting Emma fall to her death from the high lift due to the tennis menace falling from the top of the building, and be reduced to a damsel in distress so Noah could grab her at the last second to save her life. Okay, are they both crazy?! After Emma is saved, the two teams make an alliance and a whole row of windows gets cleaned in another WTF moment from Owen. At least this all brings Emma closer to Noah, as evidenced by the end of the episode.

Also on the plot side of things, Kelly starts to realize that her actions in the last episode just made her daughter Taylor despise her more, after having a conversation with Dwayne. She starts to question whether she has turned Taylor into the brat she is today, all while cleaning the windows at the Burj Al Arab. Kelly loses it once they are at the bottom of the hotel, when Taylor uses her shoulder as a place to wipe extremely disgusting bird poop on. Realizing then that Taylor won't stop being a brat unless she starts acting stricter, she forces Taylor up to the middle of the hotel on the high lift until she apologizes. At this point, the game no longer matters for Kelly. All she wants is to take back seventeen years of mistakes, instead of making herself richer off of the Ridoncuous Race. In a cleverly written moment, Taylor admits that her mother can be cool sometimes and apologizes for her actions throughout the competition. This allows the two to bond, and attempt to catch up in the race.

After teams finish their tasks, they must take a taxi (preferably golden) to the Gold Souk shopping mall, where the Chill Zone is located. Due to the power of their alliance, the Sisters and the Reality TV Pros arrive first at the Chill Zone, and win the challenge. The Adversity Twins (who for some reason were able to finish the tennis challenge first) place third, while the curse of the Hawaiian lava rock places the Ice Dancers in fourth. The last to arrive are the Mother and Daughter team, who were so distracted by shopping that they forgot to get to the Chill Zone first. Thus, they are eliminated, and the world can be glad that Taylor won't occupy a great chunk of the season after all. After rehashing on their travels on the Ridonculous Race, the Mother and Daughter team head for home, but only after Kelly decides to cut Taylor's allowance for her bratty behavior. Parent of the year everybody?

Positive Aspects: Although I surprisingly really like this episode a lot, I admit that it has some flaws. That is the reason this episode earns a B+, despite actually having quite a bit of great material. I'll explain in the negative aspects section what these flaws exactly are, but for now, let us see what the writers did right for this episode.

For one, the two main plots I mentioned in the episode summary are really well written, and surprisingly act less on comedy. Instead, both of these plots focus highly on character development, which is something the Total Drama writers don't do that often. The last time this type of serious writing was expressed was in the episode "Grand Chef Auto". In that episode, the writers focus more on the seriousness of Mike's multiple personality disorder and the possibility he'll lose Zoey if he tells her he has this disorder. Through some serious, but a little cliché moments, Mike is able to tell Zoey the truth without losing her out of fear with the disorder. Then, in a tragic plot twist, Scott causes Mike to get eliminated and forces him to make a really bittersweet goodbye to Zoey. It is this episode that shall act as the template for explaining what makes both Noah and Emma's, and Kelly and Taylor's plots act in such a serious fashion.

Starting off with Noah and Emma's plot, most of the character actions here seem a bit more realistic than usual. The reason Emma won't go out with Noah is because she is still hurting from her break-up with Jake, which happened three years ago. In real life, sometimes after a harsh break-up, a person avoids dating all together in fear that they'll just end up hurt yet again. The case is clearly expressed here with Emma, who definitely likes Noah, but doesn't want to take that risk. Her sister Kitty sees this, and ends up teaming up with Noah's best friend Owen to try to get Emma to give Noah a chance. After a near death experience during the challenge, Emma realizes that Noah would probably never try to break her heart, and starts to let him in more during the last scenes of the episode, as well as makes an alliance with his team, the Reality TV Pros. Sounds pretty familiar to the way the writers made Mike confront a challenge in "Grand Chef Auto" before gaining Zoey's trust, by fighting his personalities back in his head. Well, at least serious wise, maybe.

The same goes for Kelly and Taylor's plot. Kelly realizes that her daughter Taylor is a spoiled brat and despises her for telling her all her awards were farce. Torn on what to do, she talks to Dwayne, who has a child as well, but of opposite gender and lower age. After a long conversation, Dwayne tells Kelly she needs to put her foot down, which at first she despises the idea of. The whole thing would be outside of her comfort zone, and hurt like heck to do. However, she starts to consider the advice more after her daughter continues to treat her like trash during the challenge, where she sees the error of her ways. After her daughter uses her shirt to wipe bird poop off of her boot, Kelly decides to put her foot down, knowing things won't change unless she takes some action right now. This causes her to put Taylor in a "time out" on the high lift, until she says she is sorry. After having an actual punishment put on her for once, Taylor makes up with her mom, and the healing process appears to start for them both. This kind of internal conflict was present in "Grand Chef Auto", where Mike for the entire episode has to decide whether or not telling Zoey about his multiple personality disorder would be a good or bad thing.

It is really nice to see this types of plots in a series like the Ridonculous Race; a normally comedy based serious parodying the actions of the Amazing Race. It really proves that these writers really know what they are doing, and that they have the ability to successfully engage their audience in relatable plots. This is why I really think this spin-off series of the regular Total Drama franchise is great, if not superior to the original source material. A lot of people may not agree with me on this claim, but this is what I really feel is the show's biggest strength, besides of course the comedy.

Speaking of the comedy, I think most of you are used to me saying it is great or it hits me every time by now. So, for the comedy today, I'll keep things brief with stating I found the episode hilarious. I don't think repetition would be good for my reviews on this series at all.

Negative Aspects: Now you are probably wondering now why I gave the episode a B+ despite saying the two main plots were very well done? Well, the simple answer for that are two simple writing related mistakes; using clichés and pointlessness. Both plots of the episode, despite being very enjoyable, are sadly filled with these problems.

Remember how I said back on the episode summary that Kitty and Owen's plan to get Noah and Emma was basically just having Noah save Emma's life? Well, the reason behind saying this was to subtly state I felt their plan wasn't expressed enough in the episode. Despite this plan clearly being in action, all the two do is mention Noah and Emma a few times and that is it. They really did nothing to help the two get together. It was the fall that brought them closer together, not the combined help of their teammates. By the episode doing this, it makes the whole plan just be reduced to filler. Worse, the writers made Emma get closer to Noah in the most cliché way possible. A character having their life saved by another character that they have a slight crush on has been used in various other media for the same purpose, and really doesn't make the story better. All it does is take away interest in the story from your audience. Also, I thought the writers learned their lesson about these types of situations when they did the exact same thing in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island to get Zoey interested in Mike. Didn't the audience hate when Zoey almost died all those times in the season so she'd fall in love with Mike? So why do it here?

Kelly and Taylor's plot has less of these two major problems, but still are tainted by them. How many times have you seen this kind of parent reform in media before? Also, if Kelly was going to take away Taylor's allowance, why did she go shopping with her first? Clearly, a edit or two maybe would've made this sub-plot stronger.

The lesson we can learn from the mistakes this episode made is to always look over our work first before we publish it. Therefore, we can make strong plots that could inspire an entire generation, without using an accidental cliché or use pointless filler. I just hope the writers for the Ridonculous Race learn this lesson after seeing this episode themselves