Talk:Y’Gythgba/@comment-995426-20150817064155

Aderynthemoose5000:

I have to disagree&mdash;Turtles in Time was the worst-written episode in the entire season so far. All my TMNT fan friends hated it too. For most of them, this series already jumped the shark last year with the North Hampton arc; I didn't agree, until Turtles in Time aired, and I started realizing how bad the season's writing has been overall.

And I have to clarify that the reason I don't see Raph having a girlfriend is because he seems so much like a woman himself in personality&mdash;a tough tomboy big sister. He's always shown such indifference to women characters, and at times even seems to girltalk with April and catfight with Karai. If he had a girlfriend, it would be remotely possible he could be a "lesbian," except that his indifference to women up to this point has had the effect of making him seem unattracted to them. I mean, he knows how to paint a woman in a camp retro art style on the side of a van, and The Alien Agenda had him constantly making cynical catty remarks at Leo (which made his comment about seeing how Leo could think Karai is hot, seem like more of the same), but this all struck me more as part of an understanding of women rather than an interest in them. And for all his indifference to women, he has an unusual insight on what women want&mdash;or more accurately&mdash;what they want in a man. This was played heavily in the first season, but then came all his emotional tension with the newly mutated Slash in the second season, which was just further fuel for the impression that Raph was actually a very, very gay character. As the icing on the cake, Raph can even vogue dance quite well (as he did in Showdown, Part 2), and voguing has always been strongly associated with urban gay community dance fashion.

So giving him a girlfriend now? It seems out of character. It feels manufactured, like a retool or retcon. It just wouldn't be Raph. He's like a new and different character altogether, rather than the one I got to know over the first two seasons. I miss that Raph. The moody-woman-in-a-man's-body Raph. He was endlessly fascinating. The new Raph, not so much.

I know that TV character details often change as a show develops over years and keeps changing writers, etc. But these changes still have the effect of creating a disconnect between previous character developments and the plot changes that are occurring now. It's not quite as difficult if you binge-watch a TV series as a lot of reruns, because you don't spend as much time thinking about a character who changes so fast in front of your eyes. But it can be jarring when you're watching a show during its very slow and gradual first run, because you have lots of time to think about a character inbetween episodes and get to understand them.