Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-26431570-20150914005621/@comment-995426-20160326132626

Well, I really liked the depth, writing and character development the show had in the first two seasons. But I started to really sour on the series during season 3. I couldn't watch the show anymore after that. I'd already been starting to hate most of the new episodes, but the show had become plain unwatchable for me. And it's such a shame, because I really, really loved the first two seasons. The only TMNT worse than what 2K12 has now become, is the 1987 TV series. Even Fast Forward is more watchable.
 * The North Hampton arc didn't have nearly as many of the somber issues of defeat, long hard recovery and the closeness of family that the Mirage and IDW versions had; it felt more like a frat house vacation. Plotwise, with only rare exceptions, it felt like a whole bunch of inconsequential filler.
 * The many different ways they made it so Karai still couldn't come home, started to feel tired, and by the second half of the season it felt like they were grasping for new and different ways for nothing to change.
 * Bebop and Rocksteady. I don't dislike them per se, but they came to cement a trend when it comes to the Shredder's minions&mdash;the more he has, the less character development they get, until they all seem like one-dimensional mooks.
 * The abrupt absence of Raph/Slash plots, after a previous season of so much drama, angst and heavy gaydar tripping. When they meet again, it's like the writers got amnesia, except for one brief moment in Clash of the Mutanimals.
 * The derailment of Raph's personality in general over season 3. He used to be a subtle, catty, sassy prima donna who had a remarkably keen understanding of what women wants in a man, was competitive with April, repeatedly catfought with Karai, and had a relationship with his brothers more like that of a bossy tomboy big sister than like that of a big brother.  Sort of like a female Karai, if Splinter had been the one to raise her.  And he was deep and well-written&mdash;when he got angry, you could totally understand why, and it wasn't just an easy informed anger.  But most of these personality traits evaporated over season 3, turning Raph from one of the deepest characters to one of the shallowest.  And then Dinosaur Seen in Sewers! tried to be a Raph episode in a season devoid of any good Raph episodes, and it only served to make him less sympathetic to the audience, and seem far more like a callous manipulative jerk, whose apology to Zog felt hollow.  At that point, every one of Zog's denouncements of the turtles felt right.
 * Mikey seemed to have the entire sober, serious side of his personality deleted outright. I mean, he was always silly, but he was also very earthy and heart-wise.  His moment in the mind-sucking machine may have been one of his funniest moments, but it was also one of his most character-derailing, making it clear how vapid he had become.
 * The turtles have come to seem more and more incompetent, which only served to make them seem more pathetic and out of their league. And where was Splinter even when he was there?  Much of the time, serving as window dressing rather than the commanding presence and voice of reason he had been in the first two seasons.  His good moments were too rare and too brief.
 * 2K12 Casey was already one of the worst-written versions of Casey Jones, and he never that interesting a character even in season 2. but in practically every scene he continued to be in over season 3 felt like a waste of screen time.
 * The only good thing about The Noxious Avenger was its filler subplot about the turtles being grounded and trying to sneak past Splinter&mdash;and only because it was genuinely funny. But Splinter came off as hammy at times.  "Aprillllllll...!"
 * Clash of the Mutanimals was good only for its brief detail-rich "Just look at his adorable yet tortured gator face." and "Slash are you okay?" scenes. It was lame even for a generic mind control plot.
 * Turtles in Time. One of the worst episodes in the series.  You knew it was going to be bad when Mikey met Renet and they become an epic romance within the first few minutes, with no chemistry, no depth&mdash;it felt like a really bad shallow romantic plot tumor.  After so many tender Mikey episodes with Leatherhead, this felt like character whiplash for him.  Really forced, really...wrong.  It also ensured that Renet would never be anything else in this particular series except Mikey's shallow love interest with no personality.  The Renet template deserved better.
 * Tale of the Yokai felt like it was all just going through the motions of dramatizing a lot of events we already knew without really introducing much of anything new or interesting. And the most jarring part was when Renet showed up again, and it was revealed that her Time Scepter fated all events associated with it to happen.  That also meant Mikey and Renet were cosmically meant to be together in perfect vapidity&mdash;and I wanted to gag, because that's such Twilight territory.
 * The Creeping Doom was one huge idiot plot. Donnie putting the Creep's jar up on a rickety unstable shelf that any idiot could see Mikey was going to knock down, Raph being really stupid in battle with uncharacteristic schmuck bait moments, and probably worst of all, the lifeless, soulless, uncanny valley dialogue written for April and Splinter.
 * The Fourfold Trap had a big problem, and that was that it felt like it was recycling much of The Deadly Venom. It was one of the few good Splinter episodes, but the rest of it was recycling Karai-still-can't-be-free plots while making the turtles seem as incompetent and undependable as ever, while bringing Bradford, Xever, Bebop and Rocksteady all to a new low of one-dimensionality.
 * All that said, Annihilation Earth! wasn't a totally bad episode, but it became clear that these would be the ugliest of all versions of the Triceratons, Mikey would be forever typecast as cheap too-dumb-to-live comic relief, and the show found yet another way to write Splinter out of the plot for another extended period of time.
 * So when season 4 started, I still hoped there could be potential, but instead, Beyond the Known Universe doubled down on the shallow inconsequential idiot plot you couldn't taste seriously. (And yes, when TMNT is done well, it needs to be something you can take seriously, even as an adult viewer.)  The episode was noteworthy in abruptly making Raph too-dumb-to-live, and disappointing me that Dregg didn't just eat Casey and be done with it.
 * The last straw was The Moons of Thalos 3. Raph had already reached his lowest low point of character development up to this point, when nearly everything that made him an interesting and well-written character had been thoroughly neglected.  And now, it suddenly seemed like they were rewriting him as an entirely different character by suddenly showing interest in a woman when the first two seasons had his indifference for women as such a conspicuous hallmark of his personality.  Another hallmark of his personality?  His complicated love for Slash, which more than anything else helped give his character subtlety and depth.  But what made this new episode all the worse was yet another shallow romantic plot tumor where he speed-dates a woman and they decide they are an epic romance.  And why?  To pander to the fanwank for a one-off 1987 TV series character who appeared in just one episode opposite a completely differently-written version of Raphael, and the entire thing wasn't even good when it was new.  So The Moons of Thalos 3 was one big tsunami of horrifyingly wrong.  The fact that they doubled down on this in The War for Dimension X only made it seem exponentially worse.