Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-25684889-20150917134410/@comment-995426-20150917151244

Leo the Ninja King wrote: I was just thinking about this. :) 1. New lair. Maybe a buried spaceship like the one they found in Buried Secrets Well, at least not return to their old lair, especially after the Kraang learnt its location and may have told the Foot Clan. Returning to a secret hidden lair is pointless when it is no longer secret or hidden.  It was time for a new lair, but the show completely wasted this opportunity. 2. More Mighty Mutanimals. Like Newtralizer, Mutagen Man, Karai, Mondo Gecko, Sir Malachi, maybe Splinter or Mikey (Turflytle) I'm not sure I'd want more Mutanimals, but I do think the Mutanimals were explored too lightly this season.  We still don't even know where they live, or if (or how) Kurtzman is still involved.  Newtie probably wouldn't be a Mutanimal because he has too much depraved indifference for innocent life.  Timothy is too unstable as a mutant, period.  Jason is almost totally worthless in a fight; with Pete, this is cute, but Jason's plight is tragic because he's a homeless youth who really just needs a good foster home and an opportunity to continue high school. But Martin Milton may be a good candidate for the Mutanimals, since his psychic powers of illusion may come in handy. And somehow I don't see Splinter, Mikey or Karai being Mutanimals in any scenario. XD 3. More Splinter alone in New York. (With a return by Rat King) It might have been interesting to see more Rat King, and have more Splinter plot in general. Not sure if I'd want extended story of Splinter alone in New York, but it may have been interesting to see what happened to him while he was alone in New York. However, I think it might have been better had Splinter come with his family to the farmhouse. The farmhouse in TMNT lore is supposed to be a place of healing from deep physical and mental wounds, but the show treated it more like a frathouse from "The Real Word: North Hampton". There were some nice things about the first one-third of season 3, but it was largely a waste. 4. The Invasion resolved in the season finale (with Shredder mutating) Not sure what you mean by this. 5. Tokka appearing halfway through the season While it would make sense to complete Rahzar's presence by adding Tokka, I increasingly see Dogpound's mutation to Rahzar as a bad plot choice. Bradford became an even less consequential character than he was before, and Rahzar has never really done anything interesting on this show. If there's a Rahzar and Tokka on this show, I'd want them to be interesting, developed characters. What do you guys think? I could suggest some ideas of my own. :)

There were elements in the first two seasons that seemed so good and filled with so much promise, and I'm disappointed they didn't explore them further. Of course, I have a few issues with season 2 as well, but they were generally tolerable. But for me, season 3 has been a steady tsunami of bad writing and bad execution with only a few flash-in-the-pan good moments.
 * Raph as a catty, sassy, ambiguously gay, prima donna tomboy big sister. This was one of the best things about him in season 1, and set him apart from other versions of Raphael in that his anger seemed to come more from "male PMS" than from generic anger management issues.  He had a strong intuition about women even while showing completely indifference to them, and he had some of the best cat fight moments, especially with Karai.  This was the most fun Raphael I'd ever known.  Season 3 hardly gives him any real deeply-rooted anger moments, and instead caricaturizes his hotheadedness for cheap laughs.
 * Raph and Slash. Slash and Destroy was the best episode in the series, with the most interesting version of Slash there has ever been, and Raph's deep attachment to Slash made Raph even more interesting than he already was.  There was so much love, so much angst, so much baggage, and they decided to become partners living and fighting primarily for each other.  Slash was such an interesting, chilling yandere, you saw all of Raph's heartache.  Then you saw the continuation of their love-hate relationship in Newtralized!, and by the end they finally made up, but Slash didn't feel ready to come home, and you saw Raph's heart ache all over again.  In The Invasion, Part 2, Raph revealed his most meaningful cherished possession to his photograph of Spike/Slash.  Season 3 did have a few good Raph/Slash moments, like "Slash are you okay?" in Clash of the Mutanimals, but their relationship has been given even less attention, and they've been written into some awkwardly uncharacteristically bland situations that seem very conspicuously "cold fish" compared to how believably affected they were with other before.  I wanted to believe that, "Oh, Raph just doesn't like to show too much tenderness in front of other people," but his nearly stoic reaction to a genuinely hurt Slash in Dinosaur Seen in Sewers! was a derailment too far for me.  Season 1 and 2 wrote so many plot Raph/Slash cheques that season 3 keeps refusing to cash.
 * More organic, gradually-developed teenage chemistry like in season 1 and 2. There should be real consequence that develops over the course of the series.  There was some promise with Apritello in the first two seasons, but they seem to be turning it into a tired running gag that will never be resolved.  And even worse was Mikey and Renet's heavily-hyped, unsubtly-executed shallow romantic plot tumor that made Turtles in Time one of the worst episodes in the series.  I concur with Raph when he said, "I hope we never see her again."  The thing was, I thought I was prepared for Mikey and Renet to have sparks of chemistry and the beginning of a long period of unresolved sexual tension.  But the way they just clumsily crammed it in was one of the worst ways they could have handled it.  It derailed Mikey's character pretty badly for me, and turned Renet from what could have been a promising character to one who will sadly never be more than a glorified inflatable woman sacrificed on the altar of the Cipes-Johnson love meme.
 * More Sir Malachi. He was actually interesting, and we haven't seen him since his debut in Mazes & Mutants.  Season 3 could have really used a good Sir Malachi episode.
 * More of Tiger Claw's background story. He had an interesting first few episodes, then became just another one of Shredder's ensemble of mooks, and has had no meaningful development in season 3 whatsoever.  Develop your characters better!
 * Let the characters age normally. After more than two seasons, Mikey shouldn't still be 15 years old like he said in The Croaking.  Until then, I assumed the turtles were 17, and April and Casey were high school seniors.
 * More complicated Kraang characters. I would have liked to know so much more about Kraang Subprime's backstory and motivations.  But in the story he went from "best friend Irma" to "comically evil supervillain" with no depth or substance, and he's one of the characters I most wanted to have depth and substance.  Season 2's finale teased us with what was possible, but season 3 has wasted every opportunity to continue developing him.
 * If you're going to throw in gay easter eggs, don't treat it like it's just a joke or sight gag, especially when it's part of character development. Gay people (especially gay kids) hope or better respect and recognition than ever before.  Ignoring them and making them feel invisible is bad enough, but making them feel recognized and then treating it as a meaningless joke is even worse.  The show was really bad about this with Mikey and Leatherhead.  It Came From The Depths and TCRI had some surprsiing easter egg, and the bombshell scene in Into Dimension X! even had my dad convinced that they were a romantic couple, and Battle for New York and Clash of the Mutanimals only reinforced this.  And a scene in Operation: Break Out made it seem like Mikey had a deep, sober understanding of what it means to love, which seemed further touched upon in episodes like Newtralized!.  But when Turtles in Time implied that Mikey had never been in love (even before the shallow romantic plot tumor that followed), it seemed like a clumsy retcon that deeply betrayed gay audiences and made us seriously ponder whether Nickelodeon has any real respect for us at all.
 * Stop putting Playmates in the driver's seat. This was one of the worst problems the 1987 TV series had&mdash;writing most of the plot in such a way that it is most useful as marketing for toy sales.  Thing is, it's not necessarily bad for a show to have some merchandise-driven element (as long as the story, characters, etc. remain good), but Playmates has never done this very well at all, and really should never be allowed anywhere near a screenplay.  This issue wasn't so bad in the first two seasons, and the show started out pleasantly subtle and discreet with its merchandise tie-ins.  I mean, it only got a little worse in season 2 (Bradford's second mutation was written purely because Playmates complained Dogpound toys weren't selling well enough), but season 3 has just been atrociously, disgustingly toyetic.  Story and character should not take a back seat to toy sales, or you'll get a crappy show.