Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) #71: Turtles in Time

It's getting tough for longtime Turtle fans such as I. Or, at least, on the cartoon side of things.

Before I say anything else, I need to say that this show started off with great promise, and continued to fulfill the greatness in episodes continuing from then. And, while I do acknowledge that there is a noticeable decrease in quality in Season 2, I still very much enjoyed the show. Season 3, the show's current season, is when things started to get hard to watch. The seasons' first 7 episodes had the Turtles in a familiar location throughout other iterations of the series -- the farmhouse in Northampton. The problem here is that rather than taking time to develop the characters and kick off a couple character arcs (which, besides Leo, the show refuses to do for whatever reason), we resort to more filler, and more Monster of the Week (MOTW) episodes, which we had already seen an abundance of in the previous season, so this style of episode had worn out its welcome by then.

The Creep (a.k.a: Unresolved Mutant Story #47)

Then, after a run of 7 episodes where only one had anything plot-related, and only one other that was actually fun, the show got back on track with its eighth and last episode in Northampton, Vision Quest. And man did that episode kick some serious shell. Immediately after, we get an abundance of episodes that felt like the show was really getting itself back in order. Then, the previous "Turtle Bomb", as I call it, came and went. Four episodes, one that was filler that would've been fun if it had gone anywhere, one where most of my hate from it comes from some lies talking about a Dark Raph arc from the show's producer, one that was just irredeemable crap, and one that was pretty good barring some repetition, which brings us to this week's episode, which is the introduction to longtime fan-favorite, Renet Tilley.

Renet's appearance in the 2003 4Kids series.

Now, to be fair, I never did see much of the 2003 series, and I'm not a big fan of tracking down a bunch of comic books to read them one time and then toss them aside, so I didn't really have much prior knowledge when it came to Renet's arc (which, I have heard, is a fan-favorite arc in the 2003 series), but the idea of this 2012 series is not to be solely fanservice to anyone who was previously introduced to the Turtles, though it does do it a lot, and brings a smile to my face. No, this show was primarily meant to introduce kids of today to the Turtles, which it has done very well so far.

So, naturally, if the show wants to excel at what it wants to do, it could tell me, who's never seen anything about Renet before, what her deal is in her debut episode. But, that's just this episode's main problem. The episode's entire introduction consists of the Turtles running on the rooftops, encountering Renet, Renet fangirling over the "Turtle Warriors of the Past", a thrown-together introduction of Savanti Romero, the episode's villain, and Renet using the time scepter she has to throw Savanti out of this time. Literally.

Stinks that there are no stills of this episode yet. Oh well, this art still kicks so much butt.

So, there you go. That's about as much information you're gonna get in this episode. Sorry, but gotta cram in a bunch of medieval crap that we already exhausted all the jokes we could get out of in Mazes & Mutants, which was already a mediocre episode as is. Yes, not soon after, an accident happens with the time scepter and the Turtles and Renet get sent to medieval times. At this point I was thinking that this was going to play out similarly to the incredible video game of the same name, and send the Turtles through different times. Unfortunately, we're spending the entire episode in the medieval times, and rather than make something clever out of it, the Turtles would rather wait around for this episode to be over. For a good 10 minutes or longer, the plot, unclear as it was anyway, comes to a screeching halt.

Oh yeah, and Mikey has this weird crush on Renet. One of those stupid "love at first sight" things. At least Donnie and Leo actually gave reasons for caring about April and Karai respectively (and in this very episode no less, which was, in my opinion, the highlight), but Mikey would rather take the shallow route, and literally give us no reason for liking her. He doesn't even say she's pretty or good-looking in the slightest. I mean, that'd be shallow, anyway, but it would at LEAST be a reason. Besides, the whole thing seems rather forced. One more reason to not care for Mikey in this series, I guess. I really wanted to like him, but he seemed to just go through a downward spiral in this series. Eh, better than the movie, who was a flat-out creeper from the get-go.

Anyway, Savanti shows up and steals the time scepter from Renet. ...Oh no? I mean, I get that the thing can alter reality itself, but the thing didn't get much buildup. The time spent on having the Turtles fight knights for no reason could have been used to, if not build up Renet or Savanti, at LEAST build up the time scepter's importance, so when Savanti does steal the time scepter, it at least has impact on the audience.

Property of Nickelodeon. If you didn't guess.

The entire rest of the episode consists of the Turtles and Renet chasing down Savanti. This ends with a particularly good action scene with a bunch of gears, ala a clock, but that's just what it is. An action scene. The animation is definitely great in this episode, I mean, Season 3 has shown a drastic improvement of the show's animation over, say, Season 1. But a really good action scene does not excuse lazy writing.

The episode ends with the Turtles and Renet defeating Savanti and getting the time scepter back. But, when Renet tries to port the Turtles home, some crazy time thing happens (again, no buildup, so not really much impact, hence why I don't quite remember what it was), and the Turtles are accidentally sent to modern-day Japan! Okay, this is interesting! They're surrounded by a bunch of ninjas! Oooh, how are they gonna get out of this one?!

Cliffhanger. It ends on a freaking cliffhanger.

Yes, the one time I was actually excited about the events of this episode, and it's not even in the episode itself. What a waste of an episode. I really want this show to pull up from its doldrums, I really do. But the interactions between the Turtles and Renet are simply awkward, and not the good kind, mind you, there isn't much tension between the audience and Savanti (but the show is clearly capable of creating this kind of tension, as seen with Shredder and The Kraang), and... that's about it. Yeah, the episode doesn't have much going on for it. I've never wanted to like a TMNT episode this much, but there's so much of nothing, it almost comes off as a filler episode, and yet, it's apparently supposed to be a large turning point of the central plot. All I can say is, this show better pull itself back together. Now, there's literally no way this next episode can be bad (when has the Turtles going to Japan EVER been bad, even in the 1987 series?), but I guess we'll see. For now, I'm going to go play a much better use of the name of this episode. See you all next time!

Ohhh it was Hell finding a physical copy of this game...

Episode Verdict

+  Leo's line about Karai

+  The action scenes, though!

+  A few good jokes here and there

+  The Japan Cliffhanger!

-  Renet, an interesting concept with an uninteresting execution

-  Awkward crush between Mikey and Renet

-  Awkwardness all around

-  A strange refusal to build up any important plot points

-  Staying in the Medieval setting throughout the episode, rather than using this episode's idea      to its full potential

Overall: 6/10