Opinions on April and Karai?

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by HienFan

To be honest I like this April better than that kidnap all the time version in the first toon much as I love the old toon

Except that the Kraang are wanting to kidnap Nick April all the time, ever since the very first episode! The Nick show has selective amnesia with this arc. For example, the time when April runs away from the Turtles in "The Mutation Situation" her character completely forgets the constant threat of the Kraang (by comfortably attending school again in the subsequent episodes), thus diminishing the dramatic intensity of the episode "Karai's Vendetta" in the first season of April having to reside in the sewers for her safety. (If the show at least didn't have that scene of April having to stay in the sewers because it's "so dangerous out there" tone, I wouldn't have made a big deal of it.)

With OT April, it was because she got in trouble due to her job demands, or was used by Shredder and Krang to lure the Turtles into a trap knowing how close she was to them. At least with OT April she wasn't oblivious/forgetful to the threats in her life.

As for Nick Karai, she does have some potential, but the show should have followed up on the "Karai is Splinter's daughter" revelation from "Follow The Leader" in "Target: April O'Neil". With the fighting scene Leo has with Karai, its the first time he's fighting Splinter's daughter rather than Shredder's daughter. It would have been nice to have a line or two in "Target: April O' Neil" to support and follow up that dramatic revelation in "Follow The Leader"... Again... if the Nick show didn't make that revelation so dramatic (or didn't have it at all), I wouldn't have made it a big thing either.

I want to be enthusiastic for the show, but for me, the Nick show is dropping the ball too often here to effectively display believable character growth that I was hoping for (in which Nick displayed the potential for) back in the first season. Pushing aside my own personal preferences of characterization, humor, visual design of the characters, tone of the show, and plot twists, from a storytelling perspective, how can I take the show's drama as seriously as it wants me to believe, when the characters don't follow through on the show's own intense dramatic points?