Did the FW cartoon have good humour?
 

Just wanted to hear your opinions on this, I'm betting there will be quite a few different perspectives.

Do you think the FW show in general had good comedy and how does it compare to other comedy giants like Looney Tunes and Animaniacs?

Me personally, I found it very funny and alot of the jokes to be clever. One thing I noticed that not once throughout the show was there gross and excessively kiddy/cheap humour like fart jokes and burp jokes which I really appreciate. There's quite a bit of slapstick definetly, but I think the best source of humour in the show came from the dialouge and interactions of characters which was really funny either due to being very clever or very corny.

It's hit or miss. The Krang/Shredder stuff is golden.

Yes. Some episodes of the Fred Wolf toon are actually more enjoyable for me to watch as an adult, as a lot of the humour such as Raphael's sarcastic remarks and the banter between Shredder and Krang went over my head as a kid.

Oh yeah, they were like an old married couple. Krang was basically the technodrome wife.

I guess I'm in the minority on this. Don't get me wrong, I love the original TMNT cartoon. I loved it as a child, and I still love it as an adult. But I've never really found the series to be funny. Do I find it to be silly? Absolutely. But silly doesn't necessarily equal funny. I've actually always found the 4Kids series to be much funnier than the first cartoon ever was.

It can be rather hokey, but it does have its moments.

Esp things that are a little under the radar that the original kid audience might not have gotten back then. Such as...

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Sometimes?

Of course, yes. No other series has such a great dynamic. Three main-"bases". the turtles' sewerlair, Channel 6 and the Technodrome.

No. Too much of it revolves around pizza and the jokes that aren't tend to be dry or predictable.

What episode was that from?

Of course it was. I do admit the pizza puns were lame and some of the slapstick too, but most of Raph's material and Shredder and Krang's bickering was comedic gold. Shredder and Krang were masters of the smacktalk. Plus all the 4th wall breaking jokes that wasn't all that common in action shows.

The humor was very self-aware parody and drywall satire humor. It's a lot different than say the humor in the Nick cartoon, which goes for the modern cartoon approach of "loud and in your face" type humor.

Even stuff like the Channel 6 news crew banter is far funnier as an adult than a kid, because now you can understand where they were going with those characters and all the stereotypes. As a kid this stuff would fly over your head.

This is more or less my answer. :tlol:

A lot of the humor is tongue in cheek which is why I think a lot of it still works, the more cultural and of the time jokes not so much. The "kids humor" which not even as a kid I found funny are bad though sometimes it does fall into the "so bad it's so good" and finally some of the humor is so abstract that it's funny for that whole fact.

This series had a lot of self aware humor, which is what amused me. If something completely stupid was occurring or something was going on that probably shouldn't have been going on, like how characters from a dimension in ancient Japan can "of course speak English", it'll be referenced. That's silly and the show was self aware. That humor style still holds up, imo.

What were some good jokes from it?

Season 4, ep 11, "Menace Maestro, Please". The one with the wannabe Phantom of the Oprah.



Cracked me up in my first re-watch as an adult a few years ago, suddenly realizing Leo pretty much just called them a couple of jackasses. lol Or however you want to take that.

Well there was... Uhm... Well... I mean... Hm... How many are you asking for? Let's see... This really hard...

Alright, to be fair, there is one joke I thought was actually good rather than just mildly amusing. Donatello invents a VR machine that simulates a fantasy, turns out one of Raphael's fantasies is to enslave the other Turtles. It's unexpected, informs something about the character and it's the only time I can remember the humor not being so damn toothless.
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net...20141220211229

Tonight I dine on Turtle Soup NSFW

Some times it was funny. Sometimes it was unintentionally funny. Sometimes it was painful.

Yeah, it did have some good moments that made me laugh and I still do laugh at it when I watch it. Some jokes were corny, but others were pretty good and the banter between Shredder and Krang was the best.

Completely agree.
I just watched a couple of random episodes and I only laughed once in each, but most of the humorous bits were enjoyable, even the corny ones.

I don't really laugh as in the, "tremendous amount of laughter" aspect like you would in a movie theater, but I do crack a smile and chuckle at some of the funnier or more amusing moments.

I loved the scene in the Mutagen Man episode where he changes into Vernon, and then the real Vernon walks right up to him and sees himself and says, "What a handsome fellow" and just continues walking right by like he's not shocked to see a duplicate of himself walking around. :lol:

Agreed. One of my favourite dialogue is between Shredder and Vernon in Attack of the Neutrinos when Veron says he doesn't know anything and Shredder replies "That's never stopped you from talking before." The cartoon had some great one-liners.

My favourite funny moment is when Casey Jones gets hired in Corporate Raiders for Dimension X.

That was hilarious alright. Reminds me of another funny episode (Plan Six from Outer Space) when Rocksteady and Bebop were working for Channel Six.

Someone enlighten me, I remember a funny moment from Shredder but can't remember the episode. He says:

"Id give you a hand, or better yet, a finger!"

Mm... Good Humor.

I think the funniest part about the old show was usually the premise of the plots themselves and the way the various characters played off each other. So big credit to the voice acting cast, because the show would have never worked with static delivery or actors who didn't truly understand their characters.

He said that in Shreeka's Revenge, one of my favourite eps. Loved the banter between Shreeka and Bebop/Rocksteady in that ep.

There should've been an option on the poll for sort of or sometimes.

The humor can be childish at times or dated.

Honestly, going by the audio alone, it becomes a question of which finger is in question :lol:

My current re-watch is up to that point, literally just watched that one last night. Did give me a chuckle. The show does have some good snarky humor at times.

I don't remember many of them being all that good, but a few definitely made me chuckle. Especially the Shredder and Krang stuff.

Honestly some of the stupidest scenes in the OT could be funny. Like the scene where Bebop was dressed up as an old woman carrying chocolate chip cookies and she hits Rocksteady over the head with his pocketbook saying, "You nasty brute."

For all intents and purposes this scene should be dumb as hell, but for some reason it amuses me watching it. Even the dumbest scenes in the show could have amusement value.

Ah yes. The idiotic disguises they used for "The Gang's All Here". One of my fave episodes. I found the scene in season one where they come across all of Shredder's "Ninja" businesses while heading to the security company with April pretty funny. "Ninja Dentist"?! Ouch, indeed!!

I found it so bizzare how the turtles didnt recognize bebop and rocksteady through those disguises. Either disguises in the FW show look much more convincing within the show than to us the audience or the turtles were just messing around with those two on purpose.

It's just cartoon logic. It's the same reason Team Rocket's disguises in pokemon always fool Ash and his friends, even though they're barely disguised. This all dates back to Looney Tunes stuff or Clark Kent wearing glasses and nobody can tell he's Superman.

Or sonics disguises in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Who could forget those :tlol:

Well it's the same for the Turtles, when they walked outside in their trenchcoats or other human clothing, they still had green faces, hands and feet.

Only exception is when they wore those bald head masks they had in a few episodes. But they still didn't wear shoes and nobody noticed. :lol:

I also wish the poll had a sometimes/sort of option because jokes were hit or miss for me even as a kid. But my first exposure to TMNT was the 1990 film and it was way funnier so I guess I kinda had higher standards, whoops. :lol: