Quote:
Originally Posted by Refractive Reflections
I guess apparently with this increasingly attention-deficit television audience, if she (or any character) isn't kicking someone's butt in a fight, they aren't considered interesting enough. Especially for an action/adventure cartoon.
I don't like when they make April a highly-proficient ninja in a short amount of time either, where her skills come close to the Turtles, for the same reasons you pointed out earlier. It belittles the training and hard work the Turtles have put into training over many years.
The biggest problem is that a lot of these changes feel forced rather than organic just to include April on the team, plus we don't get to know her character by herself without all of the gimmicks of ninja fighting and being a mutant, which makes April's character hollow and dull. We simply don't know who she is behind all those gimmicks compared to say... Nick Karai, who has layers to her character outside of her fighting skills with the conflicted feelings she has between Splinter and Shredder.
I remember in the beginning how the production team told us that having a teenage April was going to add a new dynamic to the Nick series, but the most it's ever done, has only been to establish crushes and the love triangle. In my opinion, it's a fairly weak contribution since there could have been far more material in showing how teenagers could bond, without using the cliche device of teenage romance.
|
This is why they need to have her interact with anyone but Donnie and Casey for an entire episode. I think anything that has her teamed up with either Leo, Mikey or Raph, could be used to bring out more of her character. The one time Leo stopped by her house to ask her questions about relationships, was adorable! We need more of that, and less of the tug a war April rope. Maybe she can be the one to start to help Leo heal mentally, maybe he can take her to the woods and teach her how to meditate, and in turn, we can learn more about her. Maybe she and Mikey go for a run, and come across an injured animal, and while caring for it, brings out some more character development. Maybe April wants to learn how to drive a stick shift, but she don't want either Donnie or Casey to teach her because she knows they'd be fighting the whole time, so she asks Raph to teach her, and in turn, gets some good character development time.