Season 3, Episode 17 (35 overall): Turtles, Turtles Everywhere
Original Air Date: October 17, 1989
The Plot:
April’s doing a big story on the city’s new recycling center. It’s entirely automated: from the CPU actually running the engineering on the inside to the trucks being sent out on city streets to retrieve trash. Only a matter of time until Krang and Shredder want to re-wire these circuits to take out the Turtles.
The Turtles, to their credit, get inspired by April’s story to finally clean up their sewer lair which has become a complete dump. Says a lot about Splinter’s parenting if he can’t even get his kids to clean their room. Luckily, they’ll listen to a sassy redhead on TV to finally clean up after themselves.
Oh, here we go! Krang creates an override device so the recycling center main CPU will now have the trucks collect all turtles in the city. Not just THE Turtles, but all turtles. We knew this would happen. For someone who hangs out with a fucking literal talking brain, Shredder is a fucking dunce and doesn’t know that he needs to be overly specific when chatting with artificial intelligence. It’s like that scene in BEDAZZLED where Brendan Fraser makes a wish to be a rich, famous sports star, but didn’t get it down to the last detail so Elizabeth Hurley gives him a tiny dick. You have to be specific. No one wants a tiny dick.
Oh, April called the Turtles about the machines picking up all the turtles and also herself since the truck grabs her as well when she’s trying to rescue an endangered sea turtle. That’ll learn you, kids: never be a hero.
Speaking of being a hero, Donatello gets the idea that he can patch into the recycling computer through a payphone which, let’s be real here, is fucking impossible, but hey, my high school years were loaded with cybersex that happened because of a phone line plugged in to America Online so…I’ll allow it. But yeah, the recycling truck spots him and takes the entire phone booth – Donatello included – captive to bring back to the center. The remaining Turtles make their way to the center to rescue their brother, but the main computer is still under Shredder’s order to capture the Turtles.
Luckily the giant sea turtle that was captured with April sees what’s happening and chews through both April and Donatello’s restraints giving them the chance they need to remove Shredder’s computer-controlling device from the recycling centers main computer. It immediately frees the other Turtles and, for good measure, tosses Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady back into their Module so they CAN DRILL ANOTHER FUCKING MASSIVE HOLE IN THE GROUND on their way back to the Technodrome.
I swear to Cena it’s a miracle that this entire city hasn’t caved in just because of the holes opened up by all these Module rides.
Yeah, so everybody’s free (to feel good) and all the other real turtles that were collected are returned to their local bodies of water, pet stores, etc.
The Thoughts:
I think it’s really good to see NYC starting a recycling program in 1989 when, as I think back, it was closer to 1995 where we started getting dedicated recycling pickups to go along with the regular trash pickups. I don’t really see how this was going to help Shredder and Krang take over the city, though. I mean, they’re usually on the hunt for some kind of weapon or element that will give them the power, but here it’s just good enough to capture the Turtles and then…do nothing with them? Keep them imprisoned? Who the fuck knows? It’s not like they ever fucking mention it, they’re just like, “hey, we’ll have this computer capture the Turtles,” and the other is all, “yeah, fuck yeah, sounds great. Then what?” And the first one goes, “Step 3: Profit.”
Done deal.
Look: yes, capturing the Turtles so they are no longer able to thwart your evil plans is actually as good an idea as these buffoons will ever have, but you have to commit to it. You can’t just say it and then expect it to happen. You have to really have these entire idea fleshed out in a realistic and efficient fashion that makes the most of your manpower and resources. Like a Six Sigma class for imprisoning your enemies and you can easily go through the entire DMAIC system to set your plan (I may or may not have taken a few of those classes).
It’s frustrating because you see where this could have been a successful plan, but there’s no follow-through. This happens everyday in companies all over the world where front-line workers have to watch their leadership consistently drop the ball because of subpar planning and here we see the Foot Clan is no different.
Man Man Standings:
Oh, yeah, this episode was not good either. Single and a half main man: 1 1/2 stars.
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