In September 2012, one year ago, a new TMNT show was out, and with the 2nd Season supposed to start this month, might as well talk about it. The turtles were in 3D, April is a teenager, Splinter is tall, Krang talks weird, and more random things happened. But the question is, was it a good show? Well, I'll get back to you on that, but lets just say it wasn't what I hoped...
Now let me get this out of the way: I am a TMNT fan. Been a fan since the 1987 show, played the 2D and 3D games, watched the live action movies(yes, even the terrible TMNT 3), watched the 2003 show, and now this. When I found out about, I was a bit excited about it and just had to watch it, I mean, it's the freaking turtles!!! So the 1st episode I watched was the 5th episode of the season, and well...it sucked hard!!! It was a load of garbage of questionable morality of the turtles and Baxter Stockman being evil was the most forced thing I've seen since Anakin turned to the Dark Side in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. And when I'm referencing a Star Wars prequel movie, you know something is wrong.
It was so bad that it lead me to think it could be a bad show. Well, I decided to watch the 1st 4, and while all better than the 5th episode, they were nothing special, in fact episode 4 is just another terrible episode that doesn't have much going on, a twist that could had worked if it wasn't spoiled at the beginning, and making a Mikey focused episode was the worst idea ever. Now how can that be, I mean, Mikey is awesome, definitely in the 1987 and 2003 shows, but here he just sucks.
Now Mikey is one of my fav turtles, and the 2012 one decided to make him the dumbest character in existence by making him a punchline of bad jokes. Lacking wit and creativity, his stupidity is forced to make you laugh but without any thought put into them nearly all of his jokes come out as flat, annoying and painful to endure. For comparison sake, for every one good Mikey joke, there's 10 or more bad ones. I am shocked at what happened to him in this show.
After a rough start of 5 not worth a crap episodes besides some moments in the 1st 3, episode 6 has shined some light into the series. Finally, an episode to care about, it's a miracle! It was a Donatello episode and now he's my fav turtle. The way he tries to impress April is just hilarious and entertaining to watch. Then episodes 7 and 8 happened, while watchable, they weren't great, much better than the 1st 5 episodes. And then episode 9 happened, the one with Shredder, and...
Ok, this show is now taking itself seriously. It was episode 9 that really started the uprising of the quality of the episodes, it was just such a great episode. Unfortunately most episodes after 9 didn't match it, and some were not really all that good, like episodes 12, 16 and 19. I was hoping for the show to get better, but it did and didn't at the same time, if you get what I mean. Plots and characters ranged from great to terrible. Leonardo hanging out with Karai is one of the best things in the show. Unfortunately, Mikey babysitting Leatherhead is one of the most painful things in the show. The lack of consistency really bothered me and didn't give me hope that this show will be great, or even really good.
It's not until the 20s were we had episodes that could not only get near episode 9, but match and even exceed it. Of the 20s, episode 22 was the weakest and still better than quite a bit of episodes. Just about every episode in the 20s were worth it, and it lead me to believe that this show will be good, but it still is far way from being great, and that reminds me:
How is this a great show again to those who love it?
Some episodes are terrible.
Mikey is annoying as crap.
Baxter Stockman is butchered as a character when it comes to being evil and such.
Krang makes long and drawn out talk that's like a played out joke after a while.
Villains aren't the greatest(besides a few) and are inferior to what we seen in the 1987 and 2003 show.
The show is inconsistent after episode 9.
Some of the logic in the characters don't make sense, leading to actions that are unwise.
The humor is far from the best, at times it works, a lot of the time it doesn't that well.
Some episodes are written without much thought and lead me to think that action is more important that everything else that makes a show good, as in, you know, everything!!!
The show had a rough start.
It would take forever for me to talk about them individually, but I don't got time to waste, so yeah! Not to mention, a great show has few flaws, not a lot of them that could take so much time to pick on! Please note that I'm not trying to attack your opinion, I'm just curious as to why you find it so great, then again you probably don't care about the flaws, so yeah.:P
Phew, now that's out of the way, here are things I liked about it.
Action
Donatello
April
Karai
Rat King
Shredder
Splinter
Episode 9
Late season episodes
Flashbacks
Twists
Life lessons
Some storylines, characters and humor are actually good
See, I do like this show, despite all the crap I give it, because, well, it's better than most cartoons out there nowadays. It blows away crap like My Gym Partner's a Monkey and The Annoying Orange Show. But in all honesty, it does not compare to a classic 80s/90s cartoon like Batman:TAS, X-MEN, DarkWing Duck, Duck Tales, Ghostbusters, Animaniacs, etc, those all destroy TMNT 2012. But TMNT 2012 is still a good and solid show despite the flaws. So if you're curious about the show, give it a watch, just don't have high expectations and you'll be fine.
I really hope Season 2 is better, because it being worse would be an accomplishment. Here's hoping guys!