Season 3: Main Issues

[TurtleTitan97]

Hey, I'll take TMNT Season 3 over Olicity Season 3 all day, every day!

[Meliwen]

My two biggest issues with season 3 were Karai and the balance between the turtles screentime.

Karai's plot was interesting, but after the show kept putting her into instances were she's no longer her own character and cannot act of her own accord, it started to drag and get frustrating.

I like what the season did with Leo. I like how they gave him an arc; Leo's had some great episodes/moments this season. The only problem is that they didn't allow the other turtles to keep up. Mikey, and moreso Donnie and even moreso Raph felt like the show ignored them in favour of Leo. It's nothing against Leo, I think he was well done for the most part, but the lack of balance just annoyed me and made it frustrating to watch the other turtles.

[Ninturtle]

The only issues I had were the Northhampton arc being just filler and Raph getting a lack of episodes . This season was about as good as season 2 except for the first few episodes.

[Luckyday]

Season 3 wasn't bad per say, it just had really some questionable writing decisions. Bad episodes individually are when they have such poor direction in trying to tell what happen or comes across as unintentionally offensive and to me that was "A Foot to Big" because those last two minutes really put such a bad taste in my mouth that almost make me quit the show altogether.

If you can watch Northampton in a bubble without knowing what happen by taking some key scenes out from the Creep episode and just gave a throw away line on how Leo broke his leg, like he became injured during a training session, this episodes would be consider pretty awesome and a breath of fresh air but it happen at a time when they really should have focus on dealing with the aftermath. What should been a good maybe solid three episodes of character arc wasinstead of a five minute montage of exposition from April.

I don't want to keep ranting "Why Northampton doesn't fit between season 2 and 3" so I turn my attention to the better part of season 3.

In light of the episodes when they return to New York, it got better mostly because I was just so happy to get out of that damn forest. The atmosphere of "Return of New York" arc so what I sort of envision for North Hampton. Highlights of it was whenever Shredder or Karai were involved. Kraang were growing tiresome and at that point they just like a dragon for them to slay and to save the day.

After that were some fillerish episodes. Most of them were to introduce new characters that we would see later. The one that stand out to me as the best was "The Noxious Avenger". Aaronardo said that episode was meh but I love that episode because holy **** stuff was actually happening in the background or at least not off screen like everything else!
Bebop and Rocksteady were talking, actually having very foreshawdowy conversation of "We should take over the Foot" and that better been a goddamn foreshadow because I actually like those characters and I want more interesting stuff happen to them rather for them to just fight turtles on the weekly basis until the end of ****ing time. If the show plot progression and character arc wasn't so zig aged or just ignored all together then I wouldn't think much about this episode.

My enjoyment of this show is heavily dependent on what new information did I learn about the characters, how will this effect the show, and how will the characters will change after being effect by the recent event in this very episode? So far with its track record of the mind serum arc it was handle above average. B+. There was such a great payoff to all of it in "The Fourfold Trap" and even though what Donnie work on in the end didn't matter, there was a sense of conclusion.

Now with yet another devastating event, will this show do the right thing with its characters and let this stick with them in future episodes, because you can't just write them as oblivious to what had just happen? IT'S WOULD BE TERRIBLE WRITING!

[CyberCubed]

Season 3 was mostly the same exactly quality as the first two seasons. Northampton could have been condensed by about 3 episodes though.

I think one problem though is the writers don't exactly move on from status quo. Karai is lost/brainwashed/missing about a million times and it never ends. The Kraang always come back no matter how many invasions we go through. I don't get why they don't move on from that.

In the same manner, Shredder and his mutants don't really do anything other than hunt the Turtles anymore. Would love to see Shredder do something else for a change.

[MrTMNT2012]

Main issue? The writing.

There's a clear compensation from interesting character dilemmas/dynamics and dialogue being developed to resorting to good old 80's references as a shield to fool the older audience into thinking the show speaks to them as well.

There's like no banter between the Turtles or rather; very mediocrely written exchanges between the characters.

The one grin I had in a long time was Donatello's sarcastic remark in the Season Finale when Leo asked why the invisibility booster didn't work on the Triceratons "Oh, let me just text them and find ou- I DON'T KNOW!" - more of that please! Those were the kind of lines that harkened back to Season 1's ingenious characterisation through simple exchanges.

Everything else from the animation to the actual narrative has only gotten better though.

[Mew]

Originally Posted by MrTMNT2012

Main issue? The writing.

There's a clear compensation from interesting character dilemmas/dynamics and dialogue being developed to resorting to good old 80's references as a shield to fool the older audience into thinking the show speaks to them as well.

There's like no banter between the Turtles or rather; very mediocrely written exchanges between the characters.

The one grin I had in a long time was Donatello's sarcastic remark in the Season Finale when Leo asked why the invisibility booster didn't work on the Triceratons "Oh, let me just text them and find ou- I DON'T KNOW!" - more of that please! Those were the kind of lines that harkened back to Season 1's ingenious characterisation through simple exchanges.

Everything else from the animation to the actual narrative has only gotten better though.

I think the finale was amazing.

[kolaida]

Originally Posted by Meliwen

My two biggest issues with season 3 were Karai and the balance between the turtles screentime.

Karai's plot was interesting, but after the show kept putting her into instances were she's no longer her own character and cannot act of her own accord, it started to drag and get frustrating.

I like what the season did with Leo. I like how they gave him an arc; Leo's had some great episodes/moments this season. The only problem is that they didn't allow the other turtles to keep up. Mikey, and moreso Donnie and even moreso Raph felt like the show ignored them in favour of Leo. It's nothing against Leo, I think he was well done for the most part, but the lack of balance just annoyed me and made it frustrating to watch the other turtles.

100% agreed. Loved, loved Leo's arcs and they were well done, but still wish they'd balance it out a little more.

Karai was also frustrating as I really loved her character before but now she is just a perpetual and enigmatic damsel in distress. I really hope she just goes rogue so she can be her own person again, allying with either group seems to shortchange her now.

[Luckyday]

Originally Posted by kolaida

100% agreed. Loved, loved Leo's arcs and they were well done, but still wish they'd balance it out a little more.

Karai was also frustrating as I really loved her character before but now she is just a perpetual and enigmatic damsel in distress. I really hope she just goes rogue so she can be her own person again, allying with either group seems to shortchange her now.

As someone who also a Karai fan (Hi by the way) I would love to pieces if the writers did their version of Zuko Alone with her as the focus and her realizing that revenge won't end with Shredder but will continue to live on in a circle of violence. Kind of like themes with "City at War" but none of that story structure.
The plot with her would be her leaving the Hamato family to find soldiers to build an unstoppable army despite Splinter protest at the idea.

"This our fight, Miwa. If we make other people involved, it would become their war."

[2K3]

I agree that there were alot of issues with this Season; the main ones were that there was too much filler and certain arcs just went nowhere!

The Northampton Arc should have been shortened down to at-least 4/5 episodes. The only episodes I actually liked were Within the Woods, Buried Secrets, Eyes of the Chimera and Vision Quest (which should have been a 2-parter). Everything else seemed either dull or just wasted potential (I'm looking at you, Punk Frogs)

I have no problem with the Return to New York arc; the introduction of Bebop and Rocksteady, Karai's mental state deteriorating, the formation of the Mighty Mutanimals (good line-up by the way) and the defeat of the Kraang! ALL PERFECT (though it would have been cool to see Kraang Prime)

Here's where things start going wonky for me. I feel like the aftermath of the Kraang Invasion wasn't fully explored. Though to be fair Casey Jones VS The Underworld did come rather close. The episode not only introduced Hun and expanded the Criminal Underworld, but I loved the opening few minutes when Casey was explaining how bad New York was at that point.

However after that episode, all we had were introductions to fan-favs like Mondo Gecko and Muckman (that could've been introduced later on); the rather stupid Karai-Mind Worm arc, and fillers that went from average to just awful.

The Renet story turned out to be actually one of my favourite stories in the Season, as Tales of the Yokai had the right combination of history and tragedy (however, like "Vision Quest", I wish it was a 2 parter)

Now I rather liked the final 3 episodes; as it introduced us to the Triceratons. However there are 2 nick-picks I have:
1. I'm not really happy about Nick's version of Agent Bishop. Don't get me wrong I'm glad they acknowledged the Utroms, but why make Bishop one! Why not introduce Mortu instead (an Utrom ally from the 2K3 series).
2. The Ending; like others on this page, I'm not happy with the upbeat ending; YOUR HOME-WORLD'S BEEN DESTROYED! Just have the glum faces of the Turtles, one of them asks the Fugitoid who he is and he says "I'm Professor Honeycutt" then cut to black!


To summarize; this Season has been one non-stop roller-coaster of stops and starts. I hope Season 4 picks back up with the Turtles in Space arc. Looking forward to Mona Lisa, Lord Dregg and Armaggon; and I'm hoping (considering their status in Turtle-Lore) they get some pretty epic stories and character development!

[old_hob88]

I know this has been tread upon, but in condensed form, season 3 had way too many filler episodes, and a lot of the big moments were cut short. They could have cut out some of the filler episodes to expand the vision quest/RTNY, instead of just running with so many episodes that ultimately amount to nothing (A Foot to Big, that one with the mutant car, etc. etc.)

They could have cut out some of the filler to give more character development and allow the high points of the season to not feel so rushed.

[aliena]

I think for me it was the idea that they showed us so many cool things that were coming up in season three and then they were all pretty much duds.(Dark Raph being the biggest one for me)

Way too much filler and not near enough emotional moments that connected the characters. No one talks about important things! Everything that is interesting and dramatic is brushed aside with a line or off screen. That sort of thing ruins it for me.

Before the last five episodes, the only things I took away from season three were the Mutanimals coming together and Bebop and Rocksteady's mutation and partnership forming. The only thing I took away from the Hampton episodes was Leo's healing, although I did really like In Dreams.