Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1255374-20150425050906/@comment-24058209-20150503182159

Gilgameshkun wrote: In all honesty, season three is increasingly boring to me. The subplots of teenage angst and coming-of-age (particularly the romantic subplots) were one of the things that made the series interesting, and now they get the rare blips at best. I mean, Donnie may not actively make a fool of himself over April as much anymore, but now the show barely addresses that at all. Casey's character seems increasingly wasted, as if the show is trying to make excuses to keep him around at all. The first and second seasons were not so obviously cynically toyetic, but this third season is blatantly so. What I liked about this show was that it was TMNT with sitcom and romantic comedy elements and a stronger sense of continuity from one episode to the next. Now these latest episodes seem so...disjointed from anything, as if the show is gradually sliding into 1987itis. Even the Shredder and his stock plot of mind control have gotten much duller. And come to think of it, Bradford and Xever seem more and more to have vanished from existence/relevance ("Chuck Cunningham Syndrome"), and Bebop and Rocksteady are not really an improvement. I wonder if these are signs the show has already jumped the shark. That's how I've been feeling about it too my friend... I said it a while back, what with the excessive monster of the week episodes we got at the beginning of the season... This season has been very weak in terms of good writing, there has only been a limited few episodes which, for me, have kept the same hardiness as season 1 and 2 episodes (the really good ones). It feels like they don't have a clear cut picture of what they want to do with this season anymore and it feels like they're stalling now... stalling for what, I don't know... but even the whole Kraang plot was briskly dealt with, and it feels like they just didn't have any good ideas to occupy the space its left open. This latest Shredder storyline feels like it doesn't carry any real weight, we know the turtles will save Karai, I mean, this latest episode has shown us the brain control scheme will not work... I was honestly hoping for a better build up, and perhaps even Shredder controlling all of new york's inhabitants and mutating them into an army of mutants... however, this would be such a big event, and its pretty clear his intentions are merely to win Karai over to his side. The KRaang plot, being resolved the way it was, I was honestly hoping it would end with the turtles being trapped in dimension X for a while, you know, something along the lines of them making the ultimate sacrifice to stop the Kraang, leaving them trapped (albeit temporarily) and then maybe we could have explored more of the mysteries behind the mutagen, maybe see more of Dimension X... but nope, it was all wrapped up fairly quickly and as of yet, there's no indication that the Kraang will come back. Though its pretty obvious the KRaang are still out there, operating in the background... I guess that was my big problem with it, they wrapped up what was being set up as  HUGE ordeal (all of new york has been mutated and transported to Dimension X) but then it was resolved, but resolved in a way that didn't quite feel fully resolved, because they didn't defeat the KRaang, they only saved the people and through deus ex machina shifted all the Kraang back into their dimension, but is that really the end of it... Then they threw us into this Shredder mind control arc, which like I said, doesn't really feel like it holds any weight... Honestly, I was hoping this latest episode would be the beginning of perhaps the turtles stuggling to get Slash, Rockwell and Raphael back, keep it going for a couple of episodes... but alas, that too was simply dealt with... Guess all in all, its a kid's show... I just wish it didn't feel like lately, with this latest season, that it was solely looking to be a kid's show... before, seasons 1 and 2, they felt like an older audience could get some good storytelling out of it... it was accessible and not too childish... but, this latest episode did feel like a good one to me, but that being said, a lot of this season has felt very childish, more so than the previous seasons. All in all... I recomend the IDW 2011 teenage mutant ninja turtles comic series, it delivers on intense stories and mature content. Long winded rant over.