Revisiting 2012
 

So, now that all the show drama has had time to die down, and i t's not tainting the series at all for me... I thought I'd go back and re watch everything from the start, see if it flows any better with out the super long breaks.

Season 1 - clearly the best season. tries to keep things a little more grounded. evens things out between shredder and the krang pretty well. characters set up nicely.

Season 2 - Normally I'd skip 'worthless' episodes like Pizza Face, The Pulverizer, and a few others (Squirlenoids) but this time I sat through 'em. hardest was the Shellacne episode, weirdest was the Fungus episode. Season 2 isn't the best. but it has it's moments. including slash. Things that felt forgotten about the first time around where clearly a bit better planned out when you watch it full through, like Karai finding out her parenting secret.

Season 3 - on it now. This season, honestly, felt like the crews horror movie wet dream. EVERY single episode so far is some kind of horror movie rip off. as someone not a real fan of the genre, it just comes off pointless to mix the two so much. Normally, there are SO many episodes I would have skipped. the stupid epsidoe with April's mother that got totally forgotten about later down the line. The Creeper...the frog episode...etc. but, in interest of fair shakes, watching it all..

A pretty fair analysis. Looking back, I think the show started off pretty strong with seasons 1 and 2 but went downhill on season 3 and the first half of the season 4, before getting better once again.

I also made a watch through thread on the drome, here are all my thoughts of impressions of the 2012 TMNT seasons as I watched them. But don't let other people's comment in the thread influence you, I personally think season 4 is the best since Season 1. Season 5 has many fans but I only liked the series finale which is Mutant Apocalypse, make sure to watch that at the end as it was intended and the crossover before). That finale 3 parter is perhaps the best episode(s) of the 2012 show.

It doesn't get much better, each season has about 5 horror themed episodes or more, it's my main complaint, the writers wasted so many episodes on horror tributes. It's almost as if they wanted to write another type of show and only dealt with the turtles to be able to have their stupid horror tributes.

I'm normally pressed nowadays for my screen time, but now that you posted this, I truly would like to sit down and rewatch it too.

I'm going to see if I can do it..... I remember I got legit bored with the show around the cabin season.

Yeah, I seem to have a fonder memory of the show but I dipped it out around season 2, so maybe that's why.

The Northampton arc is only the first 8 eps of Season 3, I have no idea where this nonsense of "half of Season 3 being horror themed" even comes from, but it should have been shorted to 5 eps in Northampton. The bulk of the space eps were good aside from a few of them (the gremlins ep and a few others)

Fungus Humungus is probably one of the best episodes of the season.

EDIT: Also the irony of Vegita-san complaining about "fillers" when he loves the Fred Wolf cartoon where almost 1/3rd of the eps can be skipped (and I'm saying this as someone who loves the original cartoon)

Yeah but it doesn't really "need" to be spoken of in regard to the FW cartoon like it does with the Nicktoon. By this point most of the FW show's flaws are oft-recognized, even by people who are fans of it. By contrast, the Nicktoon still carries this reputation for being this amazing show when objectively it kinda wasn't. There was a ton of stuff wrong with it that people just "weren't supposed" to mention because people were so thrilled to have a new TMNT show out. Now that it's been over with for a few years I think we'll see a lot more criticism coming out as people revisit it.

It's very common for kids cartoons to have half the season be filler or stand-alone episodes, so kids can jump in at any episode and not be "confused" by what's going on. The 2012 show mixed filler/stand-alone eps with plot eps coming directly after, so it's not like there was entire seasons of nothing happening.

I watched the 2012 series in full 3 times, it has a number of arcs each season. Of course some stuff gets flanderized and some of the mutant of the week eps could be boring or whatever, but the better parts hold up.

I was surprised to see it was you who created this thread VS :D By the time I got here you weren't a fan but I think I remember you saying you liked the early stuff.

I also feel the earlier seasons were stronger, I know for a number of people season 2 was a big drop but I liked it, not the pizzaface ep though :) With the horror stuff I think it was mostly grouped in the Northampton arc, I liked some of that (mostly the first ep) though it's not something I would want to go on too long. With season 4 I preferred the later half as the Space arc started to go on too long for me.
As for 5, I preferred having an on going series to having tales but I didn't dislike it, didn't feel the horror arc needed 4 eps but it's not really a big deal. 5 At least worked with all the airing issues, it would at least air the arcs at a time.

Well... in his defense there is a bit of an expectation that 2012 was carrying a cross-season story and whereas the FW show had maybe a single continuity thread ever that could be encompassed by the term "recognition" - like "where has Shredder been since we sank the Technodrome" or Rat King shows up and it's simply "this guy is back".

I think the nature of the show can command an observation like Vegita-san was making. Filler in 2012 stuck out like a sore thumb whereas filler in FW was "just another episode".

I actually think some of my favorite eps were some of the fillers. As I mentioned, Fungus Humungous is one of the funniest eps of the series and had the best visuals too with the Turtles tripping out due to the fungus spray making them hallucinate. But I do agree some eps like the Pizzaface ep and the Pulverizer eps were pretty bad, and my least favorite ep overall is the Bigfoot ep which was terrible. I loved The Creep ep though, it was a very well done episode.

Season 5 is probably one of the strongest seasons after Seasons 1-2, but Seasons 3 and 4 also have many great episodes. The backhalf of Season 3 is fantastic, and Season 4 had a number of great eps in space and then when they get back to NY almost every ep was important since they were wrapping up most of the character arcs back then.

Oh man it's been so long I forgot about that... that was hysterical.... I think, in hindsight I might have fonder memories of that show than it deserves on the basis that it's one of the few cartoons I ever actually laughed out loud at now and again.

I'm going to have to re-watch it.....

I've been meaning to watch season 5 one of these days. Is that the apocalypse arc?

Apocalypse is the last arc of season 5.

I've not gone back and watched the show from start to finish, just revisited whatever ep I've wanted to watch.

The Nickelodeon Bebop and Rocksteady crossovers were the final episodes to air, but the Mutant Apocalypse episodes take place much later.

But besides Nicks airing the production order didn't change, I don't think anyway. So if someone buys the series to watch then M/A would still be last.

The apocalypse arc is only the last 3 episodes of Season 5. The first 17 episodes all take place in the present.

My God, a Foot Too Big. How many different drugs where they on when they wrote that one?

dunno if that one or attack of the mega shredder, or buried secrets goes down as worst 2012 episode.

they could have found a better way to show what a creep donnie was being to april.

A Foot Too Big is by far the worst episode of the show.

I've said it before, but the 2012 show is my favorite out of the Ninja Turtle cartoons. I think it holds up really well, and it has it's weaker parts, but the strong parts are really strong. My personal favorite season is season 4, especially the back half where it was just really solid all around. Though I do wish the show had just done the Kavaxas arc as a movie and ended there. The apocalypse ending kind of ruins the show, which is why I'm somewhat glad that it's "officially" noncanon. I also think that this show watches better on DVD, as the longer arcs like Northampton, April's dad being mutated, Karai reuniting with the turtles, etc., are not nearly as painful as when you get a month or longer break every four episodes, and you get to see the development play out at a much better pace.

You can choose to view the Apocalypse finale as a "what if" if you want to. For Ciro it's likely intended to be canon, but if not, it doesn't really matter.

The Kavaxas arc and the 80's crossover with Bebop/Rocksteady both work well as series finale arcs.