Originally posted at the DL June 2015
Strange show. There's a reasonable amount of competent writing, reasonable level of continuity, and it's pretty clear watching the show that... whoever is doing most of this are big fans of the original cartoon who are determined to bring as much of its characters, concepts, etc as possible without sacrificing credibility to this show. But... for most of the season's run there's just no emotional resonance to it whatsoever for me. I watched like 19 episodes in and had any meaningful response (that is, something besides "eh", "'salright", or "that wasn't very good") to ONE episodes in that time (The Gauntlet, ie "the turtles fail their objective and then Shredder stomps the lot of them out of nowhere").
The stuff after that point is considerably better. Focus shifts back from "turtles face new enemy (that they probably created)!" to "turtles have to use their talents to survive and keep each other safe", not coincidentally also being the episodes with the largest focus on April and Karai, who are... basically the best characters in this show. Or at least this season. Hell, this was a major contributor to the lack of caring for most of the season, April would go long stretches without even appearing, any time she WAS relevant was purely to Donnie's little-bit-creeper crush (although I will say, this is more about his personality lending itself to obsessive behavior than him being a budding date rapist at least). Once that stopped the show had a much stronger emotional core because, for both logical in-universe reasons and reasonable storytelling reasons, the turtles themselves are not the best adjusted and she brings a balancing personality to the dynamic that Splinter doesn't always (he's got the kung fu dad "I'm strict and a little distant but if you harm my sons YOU WILL FUCKING DIE" thing going).
On the whole it's mostly intellectually interesting to me as someone who did grow up with the '87 cartoon, but it does get pretty decent at the end.
Weakest Episode- Probably Turtle Temper. It's meant to showcase that these Turtles have the emotional maturity of teenagers rather than just... being called teenagers. Which is succeeds at, but in a "these guys suck at being heroes still, sorry folks" way. It's probably the most irritating of a story line the first half of the series repeats with variations about 7 times, mostly. But more than that it feels like the most dissonant between "how badly the turtles fucked this up" (they got a bystander dragged into their fight and mutated) and "how much in the way of consequences or guilt they suffer" ie none. As noted, I struggled to care too much about the first 3/4ths of the series so I may be forgetting one I liked less.
Best Episode- Enemy of My Enemy. Gets consequences and dilemmas very right. Everyone's emotions here feel very natural, and as well everyone feels like they get a legit chance to weigh in and develop because of it. Leo goes against his instincts because it's a strategically sound decision and, due to his relative inexperience, he often errs in favor of them over trusting himself. Just well presented and a major catalyst in the plot to boot.
Rating-
Wait, one last thing.
Space Heroes is fucking great and I should totally pick up Stat Trek: TAS shouldn't I.
Okay.
Rating- 5/10. The strong finish feels like too small a portion of the season to go higher than this.
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