Episode Summary: Don't worry, the contestants aren't homesick as the title may suggest. Instead they are heading towards the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where the next challenge is about to be held. After establishing a few "important" sub-plots for a near five minutes, the challenge finally begins. What is this challenge you may ask? Well, it is first chasing man-eating sharks to get the next tip. You know, a challenge element that Chris has been overusing on the regular series for years now! How original of the writers to bring that element of the series back for this brand new spin-off. Hope no one gets mauled by any sharks as usual!  Oh, and no one will die due to lawsuits if this were to occur as well.

After clearly surviving that, the teams must build sand castles modeling the nearby famous Placa of Versaille. While some teams breeze through this aspect of the challenge, other teams take too long creating math equations in the sand to get every single detail of the building right. That title belongs to the Geniuses, who waste so much precious time on the equation (that gets washed away by a huge wave) instead of building the stinking sand castle. My be the Geniuses should consider getting their name changed to the Time Wasters.  After finishing the sand castles, teams must travel by sea on worn down motor boats in order to reach the next Chill Zone. The victors of this challenge are the silver metal hating Ice Dancers, who see this win as further redemption towards their "failure" at the Olympics.

The Best Friends and the Surfer Dudes just barely finish the race after of their motors fail on the way to the Chill Zone. While the Best Friends do the smart approach in this situation, and just slow their boat down, the Surfer Dudes decide to speed themselves up by having Brody reconnect the wires with his fingers. The result of the Surfer Dudes' "brilliant" idea gives Brody possible permeant neurological damage, but places them in second to last place. (The Best Friends arrived before them.) The Geniuses end up being this episode's big time losers, and are sent home without even having a chance to try to reach the Chill Zone. Well, at least the challenge in Iceland can begin next episode.

Positive Aspects: If you could tell by the tone of the episode summary and the C rating, I clearly don't like this episode a whole lot. There are a lot of problems this "special" episode has, which I will mention more in depth once I get to the negative aspects of this episode. For now, let us focus on the few things this episode actually got right.

Despite the Surfer Dudes being complete and utter idiots throughout the episode (as usual really), their sub-plot was pretty good. The writers were able to create some tension towards Brody's safety while trying to get the tip from one of the sharks, the friendship between Geoff and Brody felt almost real, and it was pretty rewarding to see them make it to the Chill Zone despite all the odds stacked against them. However, I do have to say it was kind of cringe worthy seeing Brody getting electrocuted again and again to repower the motor boat. Yeah, I found more cringe worthy than the drinking of the camel spit in episode 2.  Maybe seeing it happen repeatedly rather than once is the reason this scene kind of bothered me a little bit.  The whole thing made me realize one unimportant thing though; what will these contestants not do for a million dollars?

Also, the humor makes up for a good chunk of the problems this episode presents. I couldn't help but laughing after some scenes. If there is one thing I can thankfully count on for the writers in episodes like this, it is the humor. In almost every bad episode of the original show, there are at least a few jokes that help take away some the cringe-worthy moments. Apparently, the bad episodes of its spin-off act in the same way.

Finally, one should note the clear research done on the region and the mathematical equation used by the Geniuses during one point in the challenge. Other than that, there is nothing here to really compliment.

Negative Aspects: As Courtney once said in the Total Drama: World Tour episode "I See London...", "Every cloud has its silver lining." There, she was mentioning Heather's vulnerability when she was being stretched on that British rack. Here, it can be said that the Ridonculous Race, like the original Total Drama series, can have a fair share of bad episodes once in a while. After watching this episode quite a few times, there is no doubt I do not like this episode all that much.

The main problem with "Mediterranean Homesick Blues" is its lack of importance in the series. Nothing noteworthy besides the Surfer Dudes' side plot and the elimination of the Geniuses happened. When other things besides those two plot points happened, it usually was either pointless or boring. An episode like this can only be defined as one thing; filler. From what I've seen from this episode, the only reason it exists is to eliminate the Geniuses and to fill the 26 episode quota. Besides that, there is no reason why the writers had any intention to make this episode. This episode is not the worst one from the Total Drama franchise; in fact I admit it was quite funny at times. However, I still call it the worst episode of the Ridonculous Race so far.