[neatoman]

Oh boy, premature thread... Aw well, might as well:

The show had obvious problems even when it was still on the air. Not problems like letting it air with unfinished animation or easily spotted technical errors to cut corners, basically it's not like the show lacked quality control, but serious problems still. Writing yourself into a corner by making it clear the cure for mutation takes too long to make but still having millions mutate into mindless monsters, only writing yourself out by having a character create the solution by accident and being incapable of recreating, may not be the result of bad corner cutting or anything but it's still a problem.

By the way, that particular problem is what a 14 episode stretch hinges on (the first half of season 3 to be precise), so it's hardly nitpicking to claim that was a bad piece of writing as far as the overarching story was concerned, it's more than a tenth of the entire show and that's just one example. How about Karai becoming "mindless" and then turned evil again with a brain parasite, only for it to be removed and thus bringing her back to what she was right before becoming "mindless"? That stretch of episodes is even longer than one full season, 27 to be precise. What was the point of that? Did the writers get too far ahead on her arc or something?

While I'm on the topic, Karai's arc basically comes across like it was conceived by someone who can't even try to let things take their time and wants changes to happen immediately, which is the charitable interpretation of that. A more negative way of putting it is that it seems like this character's hero/villain status is not determined by a moral compass or broadening perspectives, but instead the main factor seems to be believing who her father is. I that sounds dismissive and there is lip service to there being some better justification, but that doesn't change the fact that Karai gleefully commits felonies, commissions killer robots from evil aliens and knowingly leads people into death traps when she believed Shredder to be her biological father. While the Karai who is aware Splinter is her biological father wants to restore the Foot to it's glorious past and wants to end the Shredder's operations at any cost, because of her long absences between learning the truth and coming back it really does come across like that is the only real development between these two characterisations, if something else happened it was off-screen and unexplained. I don't know how anyone can take it as seriously as intended, the character's behaviour seems to operate on an on-off switch.

I should note that these are just some problems, I could go on but I'm not sure I should put that much detail into one post. I will say though that they are examples of the show's typical writing problems. Other similar problems include Baxter Stockman somehow becoming more loyal after he's unjustly turned into a monster, and the earth blowing up with the "only" salvation being a one-time use of time travel (even though the show had already established time travel by other means). More could be said about these problems but it's best to move on.

More general problems are things like the first few seasons being set in a weird tiny little ghost town they insist is the same as a real world city that had nearly nine million living there at the time, even after people move in it's still seems to just be a few blocks. You typically just get to see a rather limited amount of areas, meaning you are either just meant to think they keep coming back to the same exact places or the audience is just kinda meant to think everything warehouse in the world looks exactly the same. It doesn't do a good job of making me think there is more to this world than a single town block is what I'm saying, the illusion just isn't pulled off.

The show also seemed to be strangely allergic to the idea of any major character being a normal human. When trying to think of characters who are introduced as normal humans, become a major player and remains a human until the end of the show, it's pretty much just Casey, isn't it? It might not seem like a "real" problem and it may be a bit difficult to explain but I'll try. The concept of TMNT and seemingly the show itself hinges on the idea that they exist within a world that is otherwise normal. Mutants, aliens and whatever else does exist but is not the norm, they're supposed to stick out. So when the show basically has no major characters who are just human, at least in the long run, it feels really weird. Now you could argue that most of these characters were based on action figures that needed promotion and wouldn't exist if that wasn't the case, and maybe that's true, but did the mutant characters and the human characters actually need to be the same characters? Like... Is there any actual reason Xever and Bradford couldn't just be human criminals working for Shredder doing human criminal things, while Fishface and Dogpound could just be seperate monsters? I can't really think of a good reason why Xever and Bradford absolutely had to be Fishface and Dogpound when we already know random animals could get mutated instead. The same goes for Baxter, Steranko, Zeck and quite a lot of other characters. I mean it's not like the human character models are used for much afterwards, so from a budget standpoint it seems kinda like a waste, considering how we're otherwise just meant to pretend the same set of docks are multiple ones. In many cases, they also become worse characters when it happens, for some reason Steranko and Zeck just become total idiots once they mutate despite being somewhat smart and competent as humans, I don't see why. It just feels like characters in this show aren't valued as actual characters but are more seen like excuses to make merch.


... Uh, yeah, I might come back. Feels like I have more to say...

I know that was pretty negative and might come across like I just hate the show or something, which I don't. The show does have good qualities but what's wrong with the show is so seriously wrong that it's harder to articulate what's actually decent about the show.

I don't think think the problems are the result of indifference, at least I can say that. There are plenty of children's shows that are bad because the people behind them don't care and think children don't really need quality, this is not that. Passion clearly went into this and the failings seems to be because of something else. It's a decent enough show for children and there is far worse out there, but in the end it's still no more than a decent children's cartoon. I don't think it's fair to attempt elevate it above that, it's not by any means "one of the best TMNT things" either, it's just OK for what it is. I don't quite understand how someone can call this show "great" and then dismiss Rise and Mutant Mayhem as trash, as much as the MM Turtles piss me off by being more pop culture spewers than characters and the "now they're in high school" ending is the lamest direction they could have gone with, the content and tone just isn't that far off from this show. So I don't really see what the problem is other than the main characters being better in this show than in that movie, it basically has the same idea about what the target audience is interesting in seeing and much of the plot comes across like something that could have been cooked up for this show. As for Rise, as hard as I try all I can think of is the possibility that it's just "too far off" compared to this show but that's it.

For better or worse, I can't think of this show as some "great revival of TMNT" or "The ultimate distillation of TMNT" or even "a wonderful passion project". I think of it as "the first of Paramount's series of kiddie versions of TMNT", it's kinda hard not to.