Which Season is the Best?

[Luckyday]

It's hard to compare season 1 to the to the others seasons since the show had a change in writers.

Season 1 was the honey moon phrase. Many of us were guarded and worry on whatever this show would be any good but once we saw how they got the core characters right, we were unanimously in love with the show but if there was any criticism to be had when looking back, I would say that most of episodes were basic in comparison to the current ones.

Season 2 has some good stand episodes but as far I remember there wasn't much a long narrative or direction in story arc. The find all mutagen canister plot line was forgotten after a certain point and even few of other lesser episodes were basic mutant of week. Even The season finale itself felt like a repeat of season 1 finale.

The beginning of Season 3...The less said the better. The worse decision they ever made was not making North Hamptom a place of dealing with the aftermath and build up for the next arc. I could try to understand that they wanted and maybe even thought that the season 2 finale had zero un finish business in New York but it's never over when heroes lost . I think had I not seen the season 2 finale and "In the woods" episode, a huge part of me would have enjoy these episodes in the spirit of Halloween but because these episodes were prefer over doing much need character development, it just left a bad taste in my mouth and told me what kind people were really in charge of TMNT.

Anyhow, I think the show has gotten better and maybe even better then season 1. It's like season 1 was the cute kid phase and 2 was the beginning of its awkward puberty at where it wasn't sure who it was or unsure of what it wanted to be and the beginning of season 3 was the worst of it with zits, bodily functions going haywire, and those goddamn mood swings. Like it was in the midst of its rebellious phase in the most obnoxious way it could possibly be; however, when it got that out of its system, it started to mature a little bit. It still goof off every now and again like a little kid but it had started taking it duties (story continuity) seriously. I am looking forward seeing it grow now but I really hope that the midlife crisis in the future will last only three episodes.

[CyberCubed]

Season 1 had several mutant of the week episodes, Spiderbitez, Cockroack Terminator, the Wasps, Snakeweed...we also had to sit through that first dire Pulverizer episode. *shudders*

Season 1 only seems better because we were introduced to the characters for the first time and the "first meetings" were done between heroes and villains. Watching it now that we know everything that's going to happen, its exactly the same as following seasons.

[Groverman62]

Cybercubed we get it. You dont understand the hype for season 1. You dont have to get angry at people for liking things better

[GoldMutant]

Originally Posted by Warhorse

Instead of complaining about my opinion, just accept it, and put your own effing opinion in on what you think is the best to worst. I hate season 3 as much as platinum dunes movie, and you are just going to have to deal with it! Some of us aren't little yes men lap dogs to everything TMNT, alright!

He already did place his opinion.

I've got nothing against you Warhorse, but you enforcing your opinion on everyone and bashing those is extremely disrespectful. Treating your opinion as fact and bashing others will not get people to listen to you, rather it's going to just anger them and start arguments. That type of attitude is going to get you called out for as you want to provoke people.

[Shark_Blade]

I can't choose!

Fine, Season 3 then. I love the horror episodes!

Season 2 Invasion of Squirrelanoids is top on my list too! So Season 2 comes second. Though being last, First Season still has its charm though.

[MrTMNT2012]

If I had to rate each Season as whole, this would be it:

Season 1 - (8.5/10)
Weak characterisation but amazing character interactions/dynamics, clever sense of humour, intricate writing, perfect pacing, good world-building and good animation.

Season 2 - (6.5/10)
Decent characterisation but weak writing, few stand-out episodes and one AMAZING finale.

Season 3 - (5/10)
Boring. Character regression and mediocre writing but hey, at least the animation improved...

[yellowmario27]

If you asked me this question for any of the other shows I watch, I could easily tell you which season was the best

but for this show i have no idea, i enjoyed every season so far. Each season has it's good and bad episodes

I guess plot wise I like season 1 the best

[neatoman]

I'm not sure there's necessarily a "best" season. But the more you watch the show, the more you'll realise how needlessly slow the story is and the more tiresome the monster of the week episodes become.

But if I had to rank them, I'd say Season 1 would be the best one the problems had not yet piled up. There are still some problems, like how the villains don't really do much until the end and how some things just seem to pop up out of nowhere, like how the Technodrome is literally first mentioned in the same episode it's introduced in. But it's fairly self contained and has enough character development and story to make it feel satisfying overall, if there no more seasons after it I would have been fine with that.

Season 3 has not finished yet but it is my second favourite so far, though that could easily change. Why is it my second favourite? The Kraang are finally defeated and more focus is thus given to the Foot Clan who have basically done very little up until that point. And for more biased reasons, I just like seeing the farmhouse and Hun back in a cartoon, I will agree they probably spent too much time on the farm but it still felt nice to see it again. I don't really care that Hun looks more like Bruce Lee than the old Hun, he still felt correctly written.
But I must clarify, season 3 does still have real problems like everyone is saying.

Season 2 is my least favourite. There's too much focus on the Kraang and filler episodes, virtually nothing important happens until episode 22 and by then the season is almost over. It was also in that season the Foot Ninja were replaced by robots, and I really don't like the idea of the Foot Clan just being a bunch of robots. I don't really like that the new major villain of the season, Tiger Claw, is just Ciro Nieli's Mary Sue. It's also the season when Donnie's crush on April became really annoying. I like that Casey was introduced but he doesn't really turn into a main charcter the finale, until then he's just sort of an ally. The season generally feels like filler between seasons 1 and 2, that's just not right...

[Bauer536]

I usually don't like to judge what the best season is, but from the shows I watched from 24, to The Big Bang Theory, season 2 is usually the best.

I loved season 2 a lot. Aside from the mutant of the week concepts, it was strong. The characters grew, the fights got intense, the animation improved, and the whole Karai/Miwa story became a lot more compelling. Sure we had Don having a crush on April still, but it wasn't as bad as it was in the beginning of Season 3. Tiger Claw is a better mutant character than Fishface. I rated a lot of the episodes 5 stars, such as "Follow the Leader," "Fungus Humongous," "Mazes and Mutants," and "The Invasion." These were really good episodes. Honestly, I re-watched all the episodes, and each of them brought a level of fun that Age of Ultron gave me, but better.

I did love Season 1, but I'll be honest. Here's why I think Season 2 worked: Mikey proves that he's not as dumb as we thought, I don't hate Karai now after she found her true nature, Casey Jones is now part of the cast, Leo doesn't say lame catchphrases anymore, Baxter doesn't feel as bumbling as he was before, Tiger Claw is awesome, and of course, let's not forget the tribute that was Leonardo #1 in "The Invasion." I did like Season 1, but that was only the beginning. Season 2 was a fantastic year for TMNT.

[Luckyday]

Originally Posted by neatoman

Season 2 is my least favourite. There's too much focus on the Kraang and filler episodes, virtually nothing important happens until episode 22 and by then the season is almost over. It was also in that season the Foot Ninja were replaced by robots, and I really don't like the idea of the Foot Clan just being a bunch of robots. I don't really like that the new major villain of the season, Tiger Claw, is just Ciro Nieli's Mary Sue. It's also the season when Donnie's crush on April became really annoying. I like that Casey was introduced but he doesn't really turn into a main charcter the finale, until then he's just sort of an ally. The season generally feels like filler between seasons 1 and 2, that's just not right...

Ahh so I'm not the only one annoyed with the generic character with shiny blinkers who adds nothing to the show.

[neatoman]

Originally Posted by Luckyday

Ahh so I'm not the only one who annoyed with the bland generic character with shiny blinkers who adds nothing to the show.

I'm sure they had the best intentions when creating Tiger Claw... But yeah, he's pretty pointless and I doubt he'll be used in future TMNT projects.

[CyberCubed]

Tiger Claw was supposed to have a back story (and how he got mutated the first time), but they haven't shown it yet. Tiger Claw looks and sounds cool though.

[Ninturtle]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Tiger Claw was supposed to have a back story (and how he got mutated the first time), but they haven't shown it yet. Tiger Claw looks and sounds cool though.

I love the fights Tiger Claw is in ,his voice ,his design, and his fighting style he's just so fun to watch

[Aaronardo]

I'd say it's too early in the game to judge Season 3 (even though we're late in the season).
I'd say Season 2 surpasses Season 1, though Season 1 does have some more witty writing than 2 in many places. Though, the episodes that stood out in Season 2 were more in quantity and definitely stood out more than the ones in Season 1.
I'd say that at the moment, Season 3 is in the middle of 2 and 1, but who knows, they might do something super lame that'll cause me to hate the season. Who knows.

[Refractive Reflections]

The first season was the best of the series (at least from what I tried to continue in watching), particularly the first two-thirds of the first season.

One of the biggest reasons was that we saw the Turtles engage and relate to the characters, especially the villains, in a deeper way (Bradford with Mikey, Fishface with Raph, and Leo with Karai and Fong, Donnie with Timothy); by doing so, it revealed the different facets of the Turtles, and as the series continued, appeared to be a progressive path of character development for the Turtles. Yet as it neared closer to the end of season 1... somehow that all fell apart:

1) The increasing caricature or one-dimensional depiction of the main characters. Mikey's increasing idiocy, the hyperfocus on making Raph a one-dimensional character with anger problems, Donnie's growing stalker like behavior around April, April becoming more like a Mary Sue, the ongoing overemphasis of the Donnie-April-Casey love triangle, etc.

2) The transition of making the villains as interesting characters with a backstory (i.e. Bradford, Fishface), to becoming "mutant villains of the week" (Season 2 and afterward).

3) And the most grating: The plot amnesia with the show, which undermines whatever lessons learned or whatever little growth there was for the characters (i.e. through the characters relating to each other as explained earlier), and now traded for more cliche school morale messages (i.e. "I can do anything if I believe in myself and my training!")


I don't know if it was the pressure from Nick or the production crew to change the format of a serial show to a more procedural-leaning one (with the show's plot amnesia), or to focus on the action figure merchandise (aka "mutant of the week") from Nick, or the departure of Sternin & Ventimilia, is the cause for the very disappointing tone and execution shift, but somewhere near the end Season 1 there's a gradual change in the show's direction.

It wasn't my favorite TMNT series from the start, but at least with the first season there was a lot of potential from what I saw and I was genuinely interested to see where it would go, but it never seemed to want to explore that potential in the show's narrative or maybe it was just oblivious to what good potential it had. By the time I saw the Season 2 finale, all of that potential I once saw, now all seems wasted and a distant memory.

What makes it worse is how this show was seemingly meant to encapsulate the "best" of the TMNT legacy, but it doesn't seem to quite do that. It doesn't have the solid, serial-formatted storywriting that 4Kids has, neither does it have the witty humor of the OT but rather has low-brow immature humor (i.e. Mikey being painfully dumb, farts, belching, the ongoing love triangle). It has quickly forgotten villains and developments (i.e. the Technodrome, the Foot Clan becoming nearly invincible robots, TigerClaw's ruthlessness), which the show hypes beyond the actual magnitude of their impact. Strangely enough, the show seems to be on its own non-distinct (by using numerous other TMNT elements and horror movies) and fairly unimpressive path within the TMNT franchise.

[Metalwolf]

A round of applause for you RR!

Pretty much what you'd said sums up quite a lot of what I've been feeling. I think to add my own bits, for me the downhill transition started at Manhattan Project, since there was a lot in the two-parter that seemed unnaturally goofy and cartoonish. Xever giving Tigerclaw a glass of milk (cartoonish idea of cats liking milk) the cheese phone (rats liking cheese) and Bradford losing easily despite his superior second form didn't seem all that 'cute.'

I really think losing those two writers kind of killed things, since they seemed to know how to balance a lot of the show's elements, and once they left the show either hewed too much towards goofy at times or left a lot of the characters (especially the villains) underdeveloped and weak. I wish they could come back, the show could use their talents again.

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Metalwolf

A round of applause for you RR!

Pretty much what you'd said sums up quite a lot of what I've been feeling. I think to add my own bits, for me the downhill transition started at Manhattan Project, since there was a lot in the two-parter that seemed unnaturally goofy and cartoonish. Xever giving Tigerclaw a glass of milk (cartoonish idea of cats liking milk) the cheese phone (rats liking cheese) and Bradford losing easily despite his superior second form didn't seem all that 'cute.'

I really think losing those two writers kind of killed things, since they seemed to know how to balance a lot of the show's elements, and once they left the show either hewed too much towards goofy at times or left a lot of the characters (especially the villains) underdeveloped and weak. I wish they could come back, the show could use their talents again.

Thanks MetalWolf.

For me, near the end of the 1st season the signs that made things go downhill for me was the gradual emergence of Mikey's stupidity (the beginning of one dimensional character depictions), introducing the Technodrome so soon within the series when it was so iconic of the OT rather than focusing on its own iconic imagery (the beginning overuse of OT elements), and then by the season 2 premiere with the first sign of plot amnesia (April storming away from the Turtles and leaving them, despite the constant Kraang threat when just back at the ending of "Karai's Vendetta", there was an intense emotional scene on how she would have to live in the lair for a long period of time because of the Kraang threat) and "mutant of the week" plots (with the mutagen canisters falling everywhere, which was a bit too obvious of a plot device though for creating any bizarre random mutant).

These signs became more prevalent as the second season progressed until it dawned on me that these "random" occurrences were changing the tone of the show in becoming the norm, and by the season 2 finale, I lost my patience with it and stopped watching.

[Luckyday]

^
I don't have anything to contribute but I just wanted to say yours was a excellent critical review of season 1.

I couldn't put my finger on what it was missing until you mention all those small human moments that show who the characters are.

I also miss who Bradford and Xever were like before they became generic henchmen. I guess it was one of the reasons what I like about the "Enter Mondo Gecko" episode. It reminded me that "Oh that's right! I forgot that Xever had a personality before he became Fishface."

I guess what possible excuse they have in not having those season 1's moments was that it was just meant to establish the characters and not really to set any character arcs.

[lindz247]

Everyone's rooting for season 1. and I agree! life was a better place then

[BabyTurtles]

Season 1 by far.

first part of season 2 was cool too.