Splinter is Kind of a Jerk (and an idiot)

[Konchadunga]

I've been noticing this for a while. The Nickelodeon Splinter is a fun character, in large part because he's so subversive. Past versions of this character got the occasional snark in, but everything they did seemed motivated by wisdom. Now, we have a younger Splinter with a fun-loving, adventurous, and mischievous personality, and I like that, for the most part.

Yet at times, Splinter seems more like a merciless gadfly than a loving father, and it gets on my nerves. I could bring up the "if-Splinter-is-much-tougher-than-they-are-why-doesn't-he-help-them-fight-their-enemies" point, but that's been common to every incarnation, so I won't. Nonetheless I can't forgive them for the instances where Splinter is willing to risk their, and even his own well-being just to teach the lesson of the day.

Exhibit A; the widely (and very deservedly) despised episode, Turtle Temper: Immediately after the pilot that started with Splinter overprotective of the Turtles and ended with the worry of letting out evidence of the gang's existence, and proving it brought Shredder to New York, a jerky man films them, and Splinter actually obsesses more about teaching Raphael to be nice to him than taking away the evidence quickly. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. Maybe Raph's temper was excessive, but teaching him to hold back absolutely should not have been a priority at the time. Splinter should have told them, get that phone at all costs, but really, they wouldn't even need to exhaust all costs; there are plenty of ways to extract something forcefully from somebody without doing any real harm to him. Faint praise for that horrid episode, but at least it seemed to show that Splinter was wrong, in that his advised method of being nice about the phone completely failed.

The problem is that he never learned that he was wrong, which brings us to Exhibit B: More recently, this same garbage has repeated with Splinter's new lesson of learning to adapt. So New York is in trouble, the Turtles are the only ones that can save the day, and yet our "loving father" decides then is the best time to teach the Turtles not to rely solely on their weapons of choice. Some last-minute training on that before a dangerous mission wouldn't be amiss, but to make the mission itself the training, at a time Splinter could see that the Turtles obviously were not ready, is all kinds of cruel and stupid.

I can forgive a lot in children's cartoons. I get that they're not meant for adults who type logical essays and have matured moral standards. Yet it's for that very reason I absolutely cannot forgive children's cartoons giving children a role-model whose logic and moral standards are just abysmal. This is the sort of mind-rot idiot moral guardians accuse pop-culture of spreading, and 90% of the time, their criticisms are garbage, but the 10% of time they're not; that just is going to give them fuel for their fallacy.

So to anyone at Nick reading, please shape up. It's not a problem that you want to make a more fallible, interesting Splinter, but if that's the case, some time you need to knock him off his high horse and make him regret some of his dumber decisions.