The plot FW S1 only moved forward because Shredder made stupid errors.

[neatoman]

Have you ever noticed that the plot of Fred Wolf season 1 only moves forward because Shredder makes weird tactical errors? Like really weird stupid ones.

He followed Yoshi to America even though he was already out of the way.
He mutated Yoshi instead of "destroying" him through more conventional means.
He did not anticipate that mutating Yoshi could come with certain consequences.
He sends common thugs to assault April when the robots might have been a better bet (just getting the thugs involved to begin with is a bit strange).
He dresses his robots in the Foot uniform, making them easier to track back to him.
He thinks the Turtles finding out about the Technodrome would be bad in the first episode, yet his plan in the second involves letting them find it. This means they can track him more easily.
He builds the MOUSERs with Baxters trademark on them and lets Baxter build the master control himself, making the plan easier to thwart.
Despite knowing the Rock Soldiers are loyal to Krang and having an overall need to keep the origin of the Technodrome a secret, he still opens up the portal which lets them know where Krang is and the Turtles to find out it's of alien origin, ultimately what allows them to send it back.
Despite realising Krang can't be trusted with a body and still having the retromutagen ray as a plan, he still builds the body which allows Krang to take control.


Pretty much everything that happens relies on Shredder being... Well... Really dumb.

[Zog The Magnificent]

Whaaat?? And here I thought the '87 show was the pinnacle of storytelling, characterization, and overall quality!

For real though, I enjoy the show, but it's not exactly a masterpiece. Though to it's credit, you can't exactly say that it's not entertaining. Just really dumb. And sometimes, that's okay.

[IndigoErth]

Hey, if you're going to be a longtime villain existing in most episodes, either the heroes have to be good at stopping you or you have to be dumb enough to keep stopping yourself... or both. :trazz:

[IMJ]

Have you ever noticed that the plot of Fred Wolf season 1 only moves forward because Shredder makes weird tactical errors? Like really weird stupid ones.

He followed Yoshi to America even though he was already out of the way.
He mutated Yoshi instead of "destroying" him through more conventional means.
He did not anticipate that mutating Yoshi could come with certain consequences.
He sends common thugs to assault April when the robots might have been a better bet (just getting the thugs involved to begin with is a bit strange).
He dresses his robots in the Foot uniform, making them easier to track back to him.
He thinks the Turtles finding out about the Technodrome would be bad in the first episode, yet his plan in the second involves letting them find it. This means they can track him more easily.
He builds the MOUSERs with Baxters trademark on them and lets Baxter build the master control himself, making the plan easier to thwart.
Despite knowing the Rock Soldiers are loyal to Krang and having an overall need to keep the origin of the Technodrome a secret, he still opens up the portal which lets them know where Krang is and the Turtles to find out it's of alien origin, ultimately what allows them to send it back.
Despite realising Krang can't be trusted with a body and still having the retromutagen ray as a plan, he still builds the body which allows Krang to take control.


Pretty much everything that happens relies on Shredder being... Well... Really dumb.

Cartoon tropes man.
It's like having a cartoon show literally about military specialists and a war on terror but no one dies and everyone parachutes out of exploding airplanes without fail. G.I. Joe.
And so if your point is to truly understand the things you've pointed out, then I'd say that the rest of us just knew it was a cartoon all along.

But if your point is that sort of funny conversation about ridiculous things in the stuff we love, then I'd say that there's a lot of humor in everything under scrutiny. Like Indiana Jones didn't even have to be in the Raiders of the Lost Ark for the outcome to have been exactly the same. He did nothing, lmao! He was just a witness and not a protagonist and had he not even gone after the ark it would've unfolded the same way all along, except for maybe the ark winding up in America at the end.

[Topay84]

Interesting thought - especially from a plot perspective.

Breaking it out into the 7 times the Turtles altered the course of the Technodrome, you'll find that in several instances (more often than not) the villains squandered a clear-cut opportunity.

Season 1: this is actually one of the times that the Turtles' efforts (specifically, Donatello manipulating the Dimension X portal) was the driving factor.
Season 2: Krang insisted on blasting the Turtles personally. The ensuing power failure of the Technodrome (for requiring so much to get through the portal) allowed the Turtles to get the upper hand and keep the plot moving.
Season 3: Shredder, obsessed over avenging Splinter and the Turtles, steered the Technodrome into a position where the heroes could use a rocket to send the Technodrome back into Dimension X.
Season 5: Similar to Season 1, it was moreso the Turtles and their abilities (again, Donnie on the controls) that steered the Technodrome into the frozen Arctic.
Season 6: This was more on Bebop and Rocksteady, fighting over a comic that ended up plummeting the Technodrome into the bottom of the ocean.
Season 7: The Turtles were banished in Dimension X, and Shredder just HAD to give into his pride/thirst for honor and open up the portal for the Turtles to come back to Earth. This then led to Donnie AGAIN manipulating the controls, this time sending the Technodrome to Dimension X without Krang and Shredder.
Season 8: No real "dumb moment" by the villains, as it was Gargon's assist that allowed the Turtles to regain themselves and subsequently destroy the Technodrome's main engines.

So out of the 7 times where the Technodrome was either re-situated or effectively destroyed, 4 of them involved a critically dumb moment by the villains. At least the show was able to mix it up and not make it 7 out of 7!

[FrederikWolferson]

At least there was plot,more then you can say for the following 6 seasons.

[shredder orokusaki]

I beat the turtles a lot of times and some times i got very close to kill them. And like i killed 2012 Splinter i will kill the turtles too in the future!

[Kendamu]

Have you ever noticed that the plot of Fred Wolf season 1 only moves forward because Shredder makes weird tactical errors? Like really weird stupid ones.

He followed Yoshi to America even though he was already out of the way.
He mutated Yoshi instead of "destroying" him through more conventional means.
He did not anticipate that mutating Yoshi could come with certain consequences.
He sends common thugs to assault April when the robots might have been a better bet (just getting the thugs involved to begin with is a bit strange).
He dresses his robots in the Foot uniform, making them easier to track back to him.
He thinks the Turtles finding out about the Technodrome would be bad in the first episode, yet his plan in the second involves letting them find it. This means they can track him more easily.
He builds the MOUSERs with Baxters trademark on them and lets Baxter build the master control himself, making the plan easier to thwart.
Despite knowing the Rock Soldiers are loyal to Krang and having an overall need to keep the origin of the Technodrome a secret, he still opens up the portal which lets them know where Krang is and the Turtles to find out it's of alien origin, ultimately what allows them to send it back.
Despite realising Krang can't be trusted with a body and still having the retromutagen ray as a plan, he still builds the body which allows Krang to take control.


Pretty much everything that happens relies on Shredder being... Well... Really dumb.

It took you over 30 years to have your fridge logic moment so I think we can forgive the errors.

[Jephael]

It happens all the time in different TV shows and movies involving heroes dealing with "criminal masterminds". Typically the good-guys are meant to save the day, but instead of making the bad-guys a serious threat to overcome, these writers make the villians out to look like incompetent oafs who shoot themselves in the foot (instead of shooting the hero when they have the chance). Heck, we've even seen characters like Frozone from The Incredibles and Dr. Evil's son Scott poke fun at it, so yea this isn't just an issue with TMNT. It's just lazy story writing.

[ZariusTwo]

Have you ever noticed that the plot of Fred Wolf season 1 only moves forward because Shredder makes weird tactical errors? Like really weird stupid ones.

He followed Yoshi to America even though he was already out of the way.
He mutated Yoshi instead of "destroying" him through more conventional means.
He did not anticipate that mutating Yoshi could come with certain consequences.
He sends common thugs to assault April when the robots might have been a better bet (just getting the thugs involved to begin with is a bit strange).
He dresses his robots in the Foot uniform, making them easier to track back to him.
He thinks the Turtles finding out about the Technodrome would be bad in the first episode, yet his plan in the second involves letting them find it. This means they can track him more easily.
He builds the MOUSERs with Baxters trademark on them and lets Baxter build the master control himself, making the plan easier to thwart.
Despite knowing the Rock Soldiers are loyal to Krang and having an overall need to keep the origin of the Technodrome a secret, he still opens up the portal which lets them know where Krang is and the Turtles to find out it's of alien origin, ultimately what allows them to send it back.
Despite realising Krang can't be trusted with a body and still having the retromutagen ray as a plan, he still builds the body which allows Krang to take control.


Pretty much everything that happens relies on Shredder being... Well... Really dumb.

We get it, you have a raging Bryan Alverez level hate boner for the FW cartoon and a man who is no longer alive to defend himself, and are once again trying to point this out to anyone within shouting distance hoping they someday "realise the error of their ways" , nod in agreement, and never watch it again, or continue to insist it's template be the only one that should be adapted.

Forget it. That's never happening. And all the better for it.

Have you ever thought of sitting down, spending time with your kids....and hitting them?

[Leo656]

Hey, man, I'm not gonna stop insisting that Shakespeare was an overrated hack just because he's been dead a couple'a hundred years. :lol: That shouldn't have anything to do with anything, quite frankly.

[T-U-R-T-L-E POWA!]

You're right. It would have been better had Shredder just killed the Turtles and Splinter in the first episode and then we wouldn't have to worry about all the plotholes going forward with other iconic characters like Leatherhead, Baxter, Rat King, Bebop, Rocksteady, Casey Jones, and others and we could then have a website where we just talk about that one episode where Shredder killed the Turtles and how we can't wait for NECA to make more variants of the few characters that populate the first story arc. The same goes for Masters of the Universe and Thundercats as well.

[neatoman]

We get it, you have a raging Bryan Alverez level hate boner for the FW cartoon and a man who is no longer alive to defend himself, and are once again trying to point this out to anyone within shouting distance hoping they someday "realise the error of their ways" , nod in agreement, and never watch it again, or continue to insist it's template be the only one that should be adapted.

Forget it. That's never happening. And all the better for it.

You're right. It would have been better had Shredder just killed the Turtles and Splinter in the first episode and then we wouldn't have to worry about all the plotholes going forward with other iconic characters like Leatherhead, Baxter, Rat King, Bebop, Rocksteady, Casey Jones, and others and we could then have a website where we just talk about that one episode where Shredder killed the Turtles and how we can't wait for NECA to make more variants of the few characters that populate the first story arc. The same goes for Masters of the Universe and Thundercats as well.

None of these are really arguments, the story didn't have to be written featuring the elements it did. Even if it did have to feature all these elements, the story still didn't need to be put together the way it was.


Shredder didn't have to mutate Yoshi and the Turtles, the mutation could have happened some other way, one that didn't rely on Shredder not knowing what he was doing.
Shredder did not have to enlist the help of common thugs when he has an army of robots, if they were just there to be mutated in Bebop and Rocksteady, the zoo animals themselves would have worked fine.
Shredder and Krang's dynamic did not have to rely on this weird "I need a body" thing, the looming threat of the Rock Soldiers could just have depended on the construction of a portal.
Most importantly, there was no reason to paradoxically write Shredder as having nearly unlimited resources, while also being afraid sewer hobos will be the ones to bring him down.


If I say it's stupid for Shredder to be afraid of the Turtles finding out about the Technodrome in episode 1, only for his plan in episode 2 to rely letting them find the Technodrome and enter it, the proper response would be to point out why it makes sense anyway.

What you shouldn't do is say something that boils down to "F#ck you, asshole! The show is iconic as is!". Wheter or not the show is iconic has nothing to with the quality.


Have you ever thought of sitting down, spending time with your kids....and hitting them?

... I can't say I have. If you're implying that if I were to abuse children, then that would be better than or equal to pointing out that the Fred Wolf show was bad from the start, I don't know what to tell you.