Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20150613052057/@comment-995426-20150806014533

Been giving this some more thought. First of all, it's no secret I didn't care for this episode, and that Mikey+Leatherhead was one of my favorite things about this entire series. But I've thought about it a lot, and I came to some realizations. Complex analysis ahead.

First of all, in this episode Turtles in Time, Mikey's claim to have never been in love before may actually be unreliable on his part. The most obvious evidence is the fact that he said he would never have a crush on a girl, and then...did exactly that. This makes me think that he actually have been in love in the past, but wasn't completely aware of it, because he didn't know how to identify it (which is how he assumed he never would). Another evidence of this was how he framed it purely in terms of "crush on a girl"; I am not saying that this was a specific gender omission, but instead that he may have been making na&iuml;ve assumptions of what he should expect when he finds love, perhaps not completely realizing that he had been in love before already. People sometimes don't fully realize they're in love until they're deep in love&mdash;compare stories like Jane Austen's "Emma" (or its more recent adaptation, the movie "Clueless").

The thing is, even if his relationship with Leatherhead might not have looked like a romance to unsavvy hetero viewers' eyes, it rang alarm bells for every gay viewer I know who watched it, because it very realistically resembles so many of the innocent, G-rated familiar aspects of gay romance&mdash;it often starts with friendship that keeps getting closer and gradually more emotionally intimate, until you find yourself in situations much like the show's spooning scene. While it is remotely possible that Mikey merely had puppy love, this is decidedly unlikely to the gay eye, given that Leatherhead is sentient, intelligent, articulate and philosophical, and also it's really not uncommon to be attracted to "troubled but cute" people with a desire to ease their pain. Though Mikey named Leatherhead, it is also common for boyfriends to give each other pet names. It all just seemed too damn familiar to gay viewers to seem like just some coincidence.

Then, fast forward, and meet Renet in Turtles in Time. Mikey becomes very quickly infatuated. We expected he'd find a new love&mdash;it had been announced months in advance, and my friends and I already pegged Mikey as bisexual. By now, Mikey is possibly only beginning to realize that whatever feelings he could have for a girl, are not entirely unlike the feelings he had for Leatherhead. But in a way, Renet is also different&mdash;rather than the more naturally-developed love with Leatherhead, Mikey is mainly just shown reacting to Renet's looks and affection alone. He may be conditioned to think this is what love should be, but most anyone who has developed enough strong and fast crushes like this, knows that infatuation is not the same thing as deeper love at all. Infatuation is a chemical reaction, which, when it finally wears off, often leaves people feeling like strangers, especially if they did not manage to forge a deeper connection. Infatuation can turn into a deeper lasting love (like with Donatello), but most of the time it just doesn't. Of course, the distinction between love at first sight and deeper love will be lost on most 7-year-olds.

Of course, Mikey himself is still young, and still na&iuml;ve, and still learning what is what through trial and error. If the show were more realistic, his infatuation with Renet would probably fizzle out unless they actually had enough chemistry and courage to deal with unpleasant times, to deal with each other's quirks and flaws, etc.&mdash;real long-term relationship considerations.

Of course, the sheer one-dimensionality of this episode felt more like something with as much depth and consequence as a 12-minute segment of SpongeBob Squarepants. TMNT 2K12 may have addressed some deeper, subtler stuff in the past, but Season 3 has been a real emotional lightweight compared to the previous seasons. This episode seemed like more evidence that this series is actually decaying by getting shallower and even less consequential, and thus losing the respect of some older viewers who got more out of it in the past but aren't getting so much out of it anymore.

This also means that, while it may be likely Mikey and Renet will be a designated couple from now on, they are also not likely to have any of the complex character development we got from other characters in earlier seasons. April had so much of an existence outside of Donnie or Casey's infatuation with her. Karai similarly became a complex developed character even when Leo and Splinter weren't around. But Renet was forced into a shallow, badly-written mutual love interest within minutes of her introduction, virtually guaranteeing that she'll never be anything more than this&mdash;she may have a very bad case of what I like to call "Krystal Syndrome," after the infamous Star Fox character. It's a shame, because I always liked Mirage Renet, and I think any 2K12 Renet deserved better than for her character development to be sacrificed on the fanservice altar of just another Cipes-Johnson gimmick.

And, all in all, Renet has done nothing to earn Mikey except show up and jiggle. She may be dynamite to viewers who like to watch her from Mikey's eyes or like to watch Mikey from Renet's eyes. But to viewers who aren't particularly moved by either of these things, Mikey and Renet's interactions are actually really, really vapid.

Vapidness is bad enough and may make some viewers' opinion of Renet range from dislike to loathing. But even worse is if you were a viewer who believed all this time you were watching Mikey and Leatherhead fight long and hard to earn each other, like what more realistic couples do. (Sure, Leatherhead has the sci-fi equivalent of now, but for all social purposes, he's really no older than before he aged&mdash;it's not like he had any social life in DimX.  This is beside the point.)  So the three run-and-hug scenes in Battle for New York were a huge emotional band-aid for viewers who badly wanted them to finally find each other again after so many cruel and unfair separations.

Is it any wonder why Mikey+Leatherhead was one of my very favorite things about this entire series? Of course I would be obsessed about it&mdash;it's one of the things that made this series so great! We (interested gay, hag or stag viewers) had really thought this was something we could celebrate and thank Nick for showing us. So, you can really understand how the appearance of such an abrupt and extreme recharacterization in Turtles in Time may have felt like an extreme betrayal to these viewers&mdash;not so much because Mikey found a new love, but because his new love is perhaps the shallowest plot character the show has ever introduced, and actually makes us feel less sympathy for Mikey than we did before. Mikey seemed to show us far better romantic standards with Leatherhead, and we expected a lot better from his next love than this kind of low-hanging fruit the writers ended up settling for. This seemingly new Mikey is someone much harder to care about.