What even is the status quo of this show?

[neatoman]

So we're ten episodes in (technically 5,5 but who really counts it like that) and I'm still not sure what the world of the show is like or it's character relations are. Like, it still drops ideas on us with little to no introduction and the "everyone already knows about TMNT" excuse really doesn't apply here. I'm not going to dwell on the fact that countless mutants popped up right after the mosquito outbreak and have varying levels of interaction with soceity, because that's pretty much the most obvious factor. Instead, let's think about everything else.

I will be pointing to events from previous versions, just to make it clear why the familiartiy excuse doesn't work.

First off, how and when did the Turtles meet April, and how old is she? We don't see April meet the Turtles, the only thing we know is that they "known each other for years". Since human girls and mutant turtles don't tend to hang out very often, it seems like it might be a good idea to establish how they met. So based on previous versions, what could it be? Did Shredder send out henchmen to silence her? No, because nobody knew about the Foot Clan and she's obviously not a journalist. Did Utroms try to kidnap her? No, because they might not even be a factor here given what we know about the mutagen. Did Baxter Stockman try to kill her? Maybe but I don't think April has a coding degree here.
That last one brings up something else, how old is she? She looks like she's 13 but seemingly lives alone and has been around the turtles for "years". Seems like something that needs to be a little more clear.

Then we have Splinter. Appearently, he started out as a human. The only reason I know that is because it's in his bio, the show itself has offered zero evidence to that. Hell, even the bio strangely enough leaves out the name Hamato Yoshi, so we don't even know his real name for sure. I would not be shocked if we got an episode where a bad guy needs Hamato Yoshi for whatever reason, kidnaps Splinter who is then revealed to just be Yoshi's pet rat and therefore useless. Really seems like the kind of thing this show would do to be honest. As for what we do know, there's very little. All we know is that he's lazy, needs to be kept in check by his sons and can't even remember their names. That last one brings up another reason we can't rely on familiarity with the brand, who named the turtles? If Splinter did, why does he keep forgetting? They might be going with the lab animal origin, in which April named them, but I doubt they're doing that.

The origin is another thing you'd think they would have established clearly by now but just isn't. When the Turtles run into the Foot Clan, they have no idea who they are, which makes me question if there even is a connection between them. The mutation of the Turtles is also left up in the air. It's vaguely impled that Baron Draxum created them, but they don't know who he is, nor do they recognise the hidden city. Then there's the elephant in the room about us only having seen humans mutate so far, which could lead a newcomer to assume the Turtles started out as humans. And why would that be incorrect? Very little has conformed to previous versions, for all we know that could be the case.

I don't, by any means, expect this show to have much of a story or fleshed out characters. It clearly isn't aiming for sophistication or drama. But there are still certain things that need to be established, even in a show like this. Sure the show still has 93 episodes left (if not more) to clarify what's going on, but the ideal point to establish the status quo is already past. To me, you really should establish how a rat came to adopt and train mutant turtles, before you have him run around with wacky randomness flu.