Whats up with Mikey?

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Bossa Nova

Except that over half those things you listed are extremely easily chalked up to someone purely playing around. Your first choice "I wanna get a tattoo of my face on my face"-do you genuinely believe Mikey was serious? Or was he perhaps, I don't know, making a joke?

I've yet to see Parasitica so I can't comment on 2, but for 3, he was proud because he basically just proved to Donatello that at times it IS best to react on natural instinct and go with the flow. His ability to react just made him look totally awesome and really did prove Master Splinter's point, why would he be proud?

Number four, again, playing around much? Or do you live around perfectly boring people who never goof off or do anything silly just because they can, like eating something too hot or too cold? Maybe he was super hungry and didn't want to wait (I can't remember specifically which instance you are talking about). It happens. It's funny and I've known plenty who've done it in real life, mostly out of humor and not for lack of brains.

I won't continue but you get my point. Mikey's the jokester. He likes to act amusing. I get the impression he knows exactly what he's saying half the time because it makes him laugh and he likes to make others laugh. There's a difference between acting the class clown and being genuinely stupid.

There's a difference between "pretending to be foolish" and "making a fool of yourself", in all of those instances Mikey legitimately thought his reasoning was good and intelligent. Someone "pretending to be foolish" would have already known how dumb those ideas and behaviors were beforehand. If Mikey was trying to be a "class clown", he would have said "just teasing" afterward, or his tone would have expressed how ridiculous those ideas were, or his brothers would have joined in laughter rather than his other brothers looking at him strangely/bizarrely all the time after making such weird remarks/behaviors.

The reason the audience laughs during the Nick Mikey scenes is because they laugh "at him" (making a fool of himself) not "with him" (being a jokester).