Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2239501-20160424224018/@comment-995426-20160519115841

See, Raph has suffered a personality change to the detriment of his character development.

His sarcasm and catty remarks? All but gone.

His dialogue with other characters? Began to decline during the last one-third of season 2, and has been painfully sterile since season 3.

His heavily gaydar-tripping emotional attachment to Slash? Played very strongly during season 2 with the apparent promise of more to come, but very conspicuously absent in season 3 except for one brief isolated moment in Clash of the Mutanimals. I'd been waiting the entire first half of season 1 just to see their shared plot continue to develop, and was instead greeted with plot crickets.

His friendly rivalry with April? Hasn't appeared since Within the Woods. His verbal catfighting with Karai hasn't appeared since The Wrath of Tiger Claw, but that's partly understandable with Karai's own storyline also stagnating quite terribly.

His keen feminine intuition and tomboy big sister instinct? Hasn't shown up since A Foot Too Big. He used to have such sage insight about women while simultaneously demonstrating such a noticeable lack of interest in women.

His depth and motivation as a character in general? Dried up and blown away since Buried Secrets, but could be seen to be suffering as far back as Newtralized! where his friendship with Casey felt forced and devoid of compelling friendship chemistry. Casey is a much better foil for Donnie anyway, but that particular love triangle with April has its own stagnation problems.

Now you have to wait several episodes at a time before Raph has one even halfway decent moment, and scanning through the rest of his scenes to find good moments is like watching paint dry. Where he used to be such a catty bitch and we loved him for it, now he's just an unsympathetic douchebag who comes to deserve all the criticism he gets. He used to be one of the most fun and interesting characters, and now he's hardly ever fun or interesting at all. And when they try to make him interesting anymore, it's often really, really cringeworthily character-derailing, like every one of his scenes with Y'Gythgba.