Would you agree with the assessment that the overarching story is bad?

[neatoman]

I think I have watched this show all the way through at least three times, once when it was airing and binged it at least twice since. And no matter how I slice it, I can't help but to think the the story it's trying to tell over the course of the whole thing just isn't very good, if anything it's outright bad.

The most frequent problem is that so many of the characters journeys don't really come across like a natural progress, so often they seem as if they would be going in a certain direction but the writing just forces them into another just because it would alter the intended status quo. There is that old thread I made about April's dad constantly being abducted, mutated and "killed off" until the writers just kind of pretended he doesn't exist, which I suggest is because if they followed the idea of April being underage and living with her father, the natural consequence is that his influence would likely impact her dynamic with the turtles which they wouldn't be able to commit to. But April's dad is really just one example, many similar things can be said about most major characters in the shows. Baxter is another strangely written character in the show, he's introduced as a disgruntled man who got fired and doesn't really seem that, in particular because he dressed in an ineffective homemade exoskeleton and it was only upgraded by luck. Then the next time he appears, he suddenly has the funds to make countless MOUSERS and acts more like the evil character he was in the comic, maybe not too yarring yet but it certainly raises some questions. Eventually he's abducted by the Foot, flees, is abducted again and is transformed into a fly (for almost no reason I might add). You'd figure this make him hate Shredder and try to undermine him at every turn, but instead this makes him a loyal lapdog and claims he didn't turn himself back when did get cured because he wanted to remain a mutant, even though that is completely contradicted by the mutation episode itself.

I could go on about more individual characters not making much sense, Bebop and Rocksteady being fairly competent and independent characters when they first appeared as humans, only to be turned into mutants unwillingly, becoming loyal to Shredder for almost no reason and having their personalities instantly overridden by something that resembles the FW characters. In particular I hate how Karai is written in the show, but let's move on.

The Kraang's role in the series is also something that frustrated me a lot about the story. It seemed to me that despite being treated as a serious threat in finale episodes, it doesn't really work because the overwhelming majority of plans they try to pull off is goofy nonsense that just wouldn't ever work. There is also the odd thing that despite seemingly being dealt "devastating defeats", it doesn't ever seem to reduce their role in the show to any meaningful capacity, which is partially explained by the time in their dimension being much faster which allows them to rebuild quickly but even after this is revealed it's still treated as if they can suffer major defeats. Not to get into too many details here, but it's really bizarre that they treated the Technodrome that was sunk as a major loss even into the season 3 finale despite having established that the Technodrome was just one of countless.

Like I said, I could go on but this might be sufficient detail for an opening post and It might be too hard to read if I add more here. In short, the story is pretty sloppy, forced and somewhat contradictory, it's really hard for me to say it's in any way good.