User blog:Gilgameshkun/Watched 2K12 season 2 with a group of other people

Recently, someone I knew invited a bunch of people to watch season 2 with him. He had been watching 2K12 for the first time, and it was all new to him. Being as fond of it as I am, I watched with him. But since it was all new to him, it also felt like I was watching it all for the first time, again, but through someone else's eyes.

I love this series. It captures a part of my imagination usually only reserved for TMNT comics. I love the characters, I love the settings, I love the subtlety, I love the story, I love all the little attention to every detail.

When he finished watching The Invasion, Part 2, I realized I was feeling really, really sad. I knew that, soon after season 3 started, most of what had interested me about the show had completely disappeared, and it might disappear for him too. I was filled with a feeling of gloom, and I'm still dealing with that lately.

This honestly has been one of my favorite TV shows. I knew so many episodes inside and out, like the back of my hand. I rewatched stretches of episodes again and again. The show so quickly became like a really good book I didn't want to put down.

And I really, really miss it, because this hasn't been my show for a long while now. I honestly found some of the episodes later in season 3 (and all episodes I'd watched in season 4) so horrifically bad, that I couldn't rewatch them without a deep sense of alienation and distaste. The characters used to be well written enough that they appeared to have a soul. And now, they're like soulless dolls acting a lifeless script, and it seriously creeps me out as a viewer.

I recently had a discussion with a 2K12 fan I know (one who's still watching the show), about how this show has indeed changed its appeal. If someone is the type of viewer who can sit back, relax and simply stop thinking, they can find a way to enjoy it. But he observed that I'm someone who can't just shut off my brain and enjoy stuff. I need a good story to engage my mind, to connect with characters emotionally, to be able to get into their heads and feel like they could actually be a person. This show used to do that, and the sheer subtle depth of the characters is part of what pulled me in. This person I spoke to recognized that the show's new appeal de-emphasizes character development and depth in favor of a simpler action-comedy story, and could see it would leave someone like me feeling shut out.

I was glad to have that kind of recognition. But instead of making me feel better, it made me feel worse. What happened to this TV series has been nothing short of awful. It breathed life into characters, drew me in as an audience, then sucked the life out of those same characters in front of my eyes while making them continue on like soulless zombies. The result became too unsettling to watch comfortably anymore.

Recently, someone suggested that the characters still have moments of depth now and then. This is true, but these moments are very fleeting, and do nothing to help solidify a character's consistency from appearance to appearance. And while it's very common for TV shows to have multiple writers, good TV shows also often have editors and creative consultants who help guide a common story along, to provide a sense of consistency and continuity. That step now seems missing in this series, or doesn't remain consistent longer than one-third or one-half of a season. It's like the showrunners keep changing their minds in huge ways, and increasingly expect us as an audience to accept flimsy plot developments that make no real sense. This may be good enough for a pop culture audience that doesn't necessarily care for the details and enjoys all kinds of pulp television.

My expectations are higher than that. Decades of reading TMNT comics have made them higher. Two seasons of the 2K12 kept them higher. I do not like my TMNT to be pulpy. And now that one of my favorite TV shows has become pulpy, I feel like a good friend has gone away, and may never come back. And of course that makes me sad.