Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-26431570-20150914005621/@comment-995426-20160327055600

The show missed a great opportunity, though. Raph...was one of the coolest gay characters on television. They never said he was gay, but they didn't have to&mdash;he was strongly relatable to a lot of gay viewers (well, me and my other TMNT fan friends), and was well-written in a non-stereotypical, subtle and believable way. (Okay, mostly non-stereotypical, but sometimes writers still feel the need to rely on "coded gay" cues in G-rated context&mdash;Disney is the reigning king when it comes to coded gay characters in family films. You can take a look at my special "blips" gallery, where I also include moments involving other characters like Mikey or Zeck.)  Gay audiences are used to feeling invisible in all-ages entertainment, but suddenly, here was this character one could relate to and it wasn't some big dirty joke. His story had me hooked&mdash;I wanted to see his unique dynamic with his brothers, April, Karai, Splinter and Slash expanded upon. It was like being glued to a really good book.

And soon after season 3 started? A whole lot of nothing&mdash;it looked like Raph, but it was like the lights weren't on. He couldn't even get angry in a believable way anymore. A Foot Too Big had his last tomboy big sister moment in the entire series. He had become a stranger, and then suddenly out of the blue he was totally mutually in love with some dream woman he'd barely just met. It was no longer character development&mdash;it was character-derailing fanwank porn, appealing to one of the most uncomfortably lowest common denominators in entertainment. It's difficult to continue feeling close to fictional characters that have lost so much depth and continuity. But what made it worse was that a gay viewer suddenly felt invisible again, as if those first two seasons that had been so moving were one big "just kidding." That feels worse than having felt invisible all along.

Nickelodeon showed courage with The Legend of Korra, and it seemed there was still great promise with TMNT in a similar vein. But they could not have been more disappointing.