Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20151111163045/@comment-995426-20160229034732

Well, TMNT works best as a compelling drama, with "round" characters, consistent plot that makes sense, stuff like that. For the most part, Splinter's story was written very, very well, and most of his scenes weren't all that frivolous. But he works best as the patriarch of a family of other well-developed, well-written characters. I felt that this really started to decay during season 3, even affecting Splinter at times (he was nothing but soulless window dressing in The Creeping Doom, for instance). His death scene was very dramatic and all, but his sons were already dying in the character department, with Mikey's daftness reduced to a walking punchline, Raph's anger being comically fake instead of realistic and sympathetic, Donnie stuck in the same smart guy/love triangle rut without much progress in his character development, and Leo really having no one to help reinforce new character development of his own. April keeps alternating between window dressing and god mode sue, and Casey is...an abortion, like he always was. And as season 4 began, they all became much, much worse. Characters are stuck with equal parts idiot plot and facile one-dimensional plot, like its entire universe has become much more simple-minded. Does any of that make sense? Not sure if I'm explaining it right.

Season 1 was really good. It made some excellent use of show-don't-tell storytelling, where you could clearly see and understand&mdash;even in some pretty complex ways&mdash;how characters developed. But the show has fallen into the rut of tell-don't-show, where things happen just because they tell you they happen. That might work for a 7 year old, but not a 35 year old raised on Mirage and Palladium instead of Fred Wolf. I like a plot that makes sense and doesn't thoroughly insult the social wisdom of the audience. If you shoehorn plots to fit just because they're nostalgic to someone who liked an old cartoon show and still hasn't quite grown up from it, then it makes a more mature drama-oriented TMNT fan feel left high and dry and abandoned.

Splinter, for the most part, has always been a character that lends himself to a story's good depth&mdash;as a father, as a teacher, as a sage, and as someone who never quite stops being a student of life. (His plot arc in the Mirage version of City at War is an excellent example of the latter.) But if he, too, is reduced to a one-dimensional character like the rest of the characters have become, it would be worse for the story than if he had simply died and never come back. 2K12 has already thoroughly screwed up so much of what it started out with as it is.