The "Total Drama Series" is a parody of many well-known survival reality shows and their annoying clichés. The animated contestants are teenagers stereotypes that you shouldn't take too seriously, since it's all played for laughs. The premise has a lot of potential, but everything seems horribly written. Also, the show desperately wants the attention of older viewers, yet most of the fans are 9 or 13 years old: that's because it has horrible childish/toilet humor, which is really bad. Also, the animation is below average (though it has improved over time).
Basically, the first two seasons of the series, respectively titled "Total Drama Island" and "Total Drama Action", are uninteresting. However, the third one, known as "Total Drama World Tour", is actually much better than the rest of the series. The writing in Season 3 is good; humor and animation have improved; also, every episode features a nice song, obviously played for laughs, yet they're quite catchy so far (this was probably inspired by Disney's "Phineas and Ferb").
Overall, thanks to its third season, this is an OK show, though not nearly as good as other animated series on TV...