Daily Cartoon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S.2,E.10: “New York’s Shiniest”

Welcome to another exciting episode of TMNT. We’re coming down the homestretch of Season 2 and what a season it’s been! We’ve still got a few episodes remaining and I’ve got questions I want answered so let’s see what we get today.

S.2,E.10: “New York’s Shiniest”. Original Air Date: 12/3/1988

Plot:

Shredder’s got a new plan! The NYPD is understaffed and investing in robot cops. They’ve obviously never seen THE TERMINATOR. Shredder will infiltrate the NYPD, reprogram the robot cops to obey him and SURPRISE…he will use them to destroy the Turtles. I don’t think Krang really believes this will work, but he seems tired and doesn’t want to fight with Shredder so he tells him to go for it.

Meanwhile Irma and April are having some girl time and…wait…what’s this? Is April…my god, she’s actually wearing a dress! 

I know, not the best picture, but at least we know she owns something else after all.

So these two yutes go to April’s apartment where she’s being robbed. The burglars take everything and she calls the Turtles for help. They roll through and try to track down the van she described. When they find it, they also find the robbers trying to sell all April’s stuff on the street. A very slight rumble breaks out where they basically scare off the robbers and reclaim April’s belongings before returning them to her.

Irma convinces April to capitalize on her anger from being robbed to do a big story for Channel 6. Personally, I don’t know what kind of scoop “mediocre reporter leaves door unlocked, loses couch” is, but people watch anything. She calls her connect at the police station who gives her the iggy about the robot cops coming soon. April runs down to secret location her police informant tells her about and she meets Rex-1, robotic officer. He helps her escape from the real cops who want to arrest her for trespassing and then follows her to give her the remote control to him because he claims to exist to solely protect her. We can make jokes about the police only protecting white people all day, but let’s call a spade a spade: girl got a fat ass. I’d protect her too.

So April takes Rex-1 homes and has the Turtles kidnap Vernon Fenwick so she can give a live report on the Rex-1 robots the NYPD are planning to use. The whole town is watching and April’s got the scoop. Her stock’s gonna be on the rise for sure. Shredder, meanwhile, is going to hack the system and create a clone army of Rex-1s to destroy the Turtles.

Somehow, Shredder has a robot factory again and is able to create another goddamn army of robots in the time it took for the Turtle to drop off Vern at home. Where he gets the funding for all this shit, I’ll never know. Let alone the raw materials. The steel, the circuitry. This is all very complex and Shredder is able to produce an army in less than an hour.

The evil robots confront the Turtles on their way home from dropping off Vern, but they refuse to surrender and go jumping in the river instead. Shredder – who is watching on closed-circuit TV – is hyped AF that the Turtles exist no longer. But he’s a tard because they’re fucking Turtles and they survive in water. Like, really. C’mon now, Shredder. Head in the game, bro. That’s a rookie mistake.

Splinter, April and Rex-1 head to the streets but are stopped by the Shredder-Bots. They drop a gargoyle on Rex to take him out and are about to set their sights on April and Splinter when the Turtles make the save and take out the handful of evil bots.

They take Rex-1 back to the sewers where Donatello begins some robot surgery. He’s able to resurrect Rex, but has to use Michelangelo’s VHS movie collection as parts. Splinter devises a plan to lure Shredder’s robots to the carnival where the Rex is able to get the evil-bots to explode by trying to keep up with him while he exercises to Donatello’s aerobic workout tape.

Shredder’s obviously annoyed because he was sure this was the home run of plots. The Turtles go celebrate, probably the same way they always do…with a pizza and bad jokes. Irma pops in on April to show off her new gentleman caller, Rex-1 who states his objective as “To serve and protect…and take Irma to the movies.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Uhg.

Final Thoughts:

Weak AF. I can see Rex-1 becoming kind of cool if he becomes a recurring character, but I definitely don’t think that happens. This episode sucked. And, as bad as the endings have been with the convenience of getting everything in a neat bow-tie, this one was especially bad with the evil robots exercising too much and then exploding while Shredder shook his fist.

This is only episode 15 of 190-something overall so please don’t start getting corny as fuck on me already. I’ll never make it anywhere close to finishing if that happens. Hopefully, this is just an exception and not the rule and we can get back to something decent tomorrow.

❤ Joe

Contact on Twitter: @CarJoeMez or @MaximusSexPower

Email: CarJoeMez@gmail.com

Daily Cartoon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S.2,E.8: “Invasion of the Punk Frogs”

Welcome to the Sunday edition of TMNT! We’re coming off what’s been my favorite episode thus far in the series and I’m fired up to get going today.

Quick programming note: check out the new episode of the podcast where we discuss SpaceJam, Legends of The Hidden Temple and The Simpsons 600 marathon on FXX. It may be my favorite episode we’ve done thus far. Find it on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and Google Play. Also, subscribe and review and all that fun stuff! All those things help us get the word out, so if you can do such a thing, it’d greatly appreciated by Gomez and I.

When we last left off, Baxter Stockman had been turned into a mutant fly and may have been vaporized by a machine of his making. Shredder also was able to convince Krang to send him Bebop and Rocksteady from Dimension X so he finally has a bit of a crew assembled. Let’s see if this helps him against the Turtles.

S.2, E.8: “Invasion of the Punk Frogs”. Original Air Date: 11/19/1988

Plot:

Shredder’s new plan is to get Krang to send him a canister of the Mutagen so he can make more mutant to use to fight against the Turtles. Krang thinks this is a great idea, but there’s currently an ion storm in Dimension X that may interfere with the portal. Shredder says they have to try it.

Well, the ion storm does indeed fuck with the delivery and the canister ends up in a swamp in Florida. Shredder is tight AF and gets dressed in his best Don Johnson-like threads to head to Florida to recover the Mutagen.

Shredder gets to Florida with the quickness and finds the canister, but is dismayed when it’s completely empty. He does, however, find a group of four frogs who’ve been transformed by the Mutagen and convinces them that he’s a swell guy and brings them back to NY so he can use them against the Turtles.

Bebop and Rocksteady are causing a little havoc around NYC to keep the Turtles busy, but they get called home by Shredder since he basically went to Florida and back in what feels like 10 minutes. When they get to the lair, he introduces them to their new co-workers: Attila the Frog, Genghis Frog, Rasputin the Mad Frog and, finally, Napoleon Bonafrog. This is exactly what it’ll be like when I have kids. Baby Skeletor, Baby Mike Piazza, Baby Honky Tonk Man, etc. Solid names.

Bebop is worried that the frogs will get their ass kicked because the Turtles are trained ninjas, but Shredder puts his fears to rest when he says he’s already trained them. So now he’s gone to Florida and back AND trained the frogs in martial arts in no time whatsoever. OK. He has the frogs rob a bank to test them and the news reports that it was the Turtles that did it so now the city is on high alert to rid themselves of the Turtles.

Shredder FaceTimes Krang because he needs more Mutagen, but Krang says the last batch was the last of it. He gives Shredder the recipe, though, and Shredder sends the frogs to steal all the ingredients. The Turtles get the iggy that the Frogs are breaking into the lab and head that way to stop them. They face-off, but the Frogs are able to use a distraction and get out of Dodge before any real battle can take place. They’re really teasing the heat to build the drama here.

It’s worth noting that the Frogs are having ethical battles within themselves over all this stealing. They know it’s wrong, but Shredder’s been so nice to them, they just accept that he knows best and go along with it.

There’s one more chemical needed for the Mutagen and the Turtles have April track it down for them. The Turtles catch up to the delivery truck and – sure as shit – the Frogs are there to stop it and get the chemical. Just as they’re about to rumble, the NYC Anti-Turtle Task Force comes rolling through in a fucking tank and uses an ice cannon to freeze the frogs before turning it on Turtles. Raphael is able to knock the ice cannon off track which gives the Turtles the chance to hightail it out of there, but not before taking the frozen Frogs with them.

On Splinter’s direction, the Turtles are told to show trust to the Frogs and they melt them free of their icy confines. After a brief moment of tension, Splinter is able to act as peacemaker and the Frogs realize that Shredder has been lying to them the entire time. The two groups of mutants then hatch a plan to foil Shredder for good.

The Frogs returns to Shredder and tell him that, although they weren’t able to get the chemical, the overheard the Turtles saying that they’d hide it inside a prison where Shredder wouldn’t be able to find it. Shredder loves good intel so he immediately sets out to retrieve it.

Shredders busts into what he thinks is the storage room in the prison only to find out he’s been double-crossed! But, at that very moment, the NYC Anti-Turtle Task Force shows up and throws the sting into chaos. Shredder uses a crystal ball to disguise Bebop, Rocksteady and himself as Task Force cops and they escape leaving the Turtles to deal with the real cops.

The eight mutants head back to the sewers where the Turtles give the Frogs a map on how to get home to the swamps of Florida. They’re very thankful because they miss swamp life. Michelangelo offers them a pizza to tide them over on their trip, but the Frogs HATE pizza. The Turtles can’t believe that anybody would hate pizza and the Frogs turn to head home.

Final Thoughts:

Fun episode here. The Frogs were a weird touch, but I kind of remember Genghis Frog being a thing. Does he come back at some point? I feel like he does. I don’t know. Maybe I’m making that up.

The Frogs had these weird southern accents that – as someone who lives in Florida – I dunno, they weren’t very good. Although, I also don’t hang around the swamp areas so maybe they’re accurate in those parts.

I was always under the assumption that Shredder had created the Mutagen and here, he needs the recipe from Krang to be able to cook up some more. It makes me wonder why Krang was so dependent on Shredder to build his body. I guess he just needed a pair of hands to put it together, but Shredder had always been portrayed as a regular old Mr. Science in addition to a martial arts master so this kind of threw me of. Didn’t take me out of the episode or anything, but there we are.

So, it seems that – at least for now – we’re off the multi-episode story arcs for a bit. Since the Eye of Sarnath was destroyed, Shredder’s plans haven’t carried over much. In this episode, Baxter Stockman didn’t even make an appearance after his huge role in the prior episode. Kinda crazy.

Either way, still a fine episode and looking to see where we go next.

❤ Joe

Any comments and concerns can be e-mailed to CarJoeMez@gmail.com or through Twitter @CarJoeMez or @MaximusSexPower

Thanks for reading, folks.

Daily Cartoon! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: S.2,E.5: “Curse of the Evil Eye”

Welcome back to another episode of TMNT. The shit is hitting the perpetual fan when it comes to the Eye of Sarnath. We still don’t know all the power it holds when assembled, but it’s gotta be serious AF since the dead alien said so.

So let’s not waste any more time, on to the next episode…

S.2,E.5: “Curse of the Evil Eye”. Original Air Date: 10/29/1988

Plot:

Donatello builds another new device to help them track down the third and final crystal piece that makes up the Eye of Sarnath, but despite this hot new tech, Shredder and Baxter again beat them to it and now has all the fragments. They got it out of the river which is great because we get Shredder dressed as Paddington Bear. He puts them together and then attaches the completed Eye of Sarnath to his helmet so he can increase his brain power…and utilize the powers of the alien device through mind control, obvi.

Meanwhile, Baxter Stockman is hungry AF after a job well done and picks up some Chinese. I don’t blame him. I’ve been dying for good Chinese food since moving out of NYC. I have places around here that are OK, but it just doesn’t compare. Although, when I visited my Mom over the weekend, we went to a place by her and it was pretty good actually. Don’t take good Chinese food for granted, folks.

The Turtles are still hunting for the Eye and spot Baxter leaving the Chinese place, but he sees them and uses his special eyeglasses to expose them out of their disguises. The Turtles still track the signal back to Shredder’s hideout, but he uses the power of the Eye to bring the red dragon on the side of Baxter’s Chinese food box to life. Leonardo and Michelangelo jump on the dragon to try to stop it from causing anymore of the unneccessry deaths we’ve become accustomed to just as April, Verne and Blodgett (the news van driver) are out looking for a story.

Blodgett is terrified and drives off while April and Verne were trying to get a closer look. Donatello and Raphael battle with Shredder and during the melee, Donatello knocks off Shredder’s helmet causing Shredder’s mind control over the Eye to disappear. Blodgett ends up picking up Shredder’s lost helmet after driving the van into the river and getting fired for being a moron.

Shredder is flipping out over losing the helmet, but Baxter is hot on the trail because he picked up Donatello’s new tracking device and is getting the signal. Blodgett, meanwhile, is realizing the mind control of the helmet and creates a huge comic book collection. Baxter is quick to discover him and steals the helmet with relative ease because Blodgett is completely inept.

Baxter’s not exactly being humble and uses the power of the Eye to build himself a Taj Mahal to live in right next to the fucking East River. Real conspicuous, asshole. The Turtles are obviously wondering where this fucking Taj Mahal came from and end up in a new fight against some kind of glue monster that Baxter thinks up.

Shredder does the hot run-in and is fucking pissedddddddddd that Baxter is using the helmet for himself and didn’t just give unlimited power over to him. Shredder breaks through the glue man and steals his helmet back before trapping the Turtles in a shrinking bubble and taking off on a flying carpet to destroy the Interstate Bridge.

April and Splinter hit the room after receiving an SOS on the Turtle Com and free the Turtles. Blodgett tells the Turtles that the Eye has no effect on gold and April calls her friend who’s conveniently the head of a museum and gets him to lend the Turtles gold shields so they can fight Shredder. It’s good to have friends in the right places.

Shredder is sure he’s got this in the bag, but he’s also holding the Sarnath-tracker which was built to destroy the Eye once it comes in contact. Shredder throws the helmet and device in the river and they explode. Thus ends the saga of the Eye of Sarnath.

Final Thoughts:

This arc kind of goes out with a whimper. I think they could have done a lot more with the effects of Shredder having control of the Eye for some time and the tension it would cause between him and Krang as well as what it means for the Turtles, NYC and the world!

The finish felt like a cop-out. The Turtles didn’t really defeat Shredder. He just carried around the tracking device for whatever reason and didn’t realize that this asshole, Donatello, rigged it to blow the thing up.

Besides that, we get some good tension between Baxter and Shredder with Baxter feeling he’s intellectually superior and thereby truly the one deserving of the power. But it’s weird because Shredder’s not exactly a dumb jock. He’s like part Mr. Science too and built Krang’s body with his bare hands. Maybe Baxter is just THAT smart.

I really love the visual of Shredder in his rain gear. It is stupendous.

Obviously, this isn’t the end of Shredder, but I’d assume he’s going to have to humble himself in front of Krang now. That should be interesting.

All in all, still enjoying the show, but yeah, a little disappointed with how this tale ended.

Favorite Quote:

While Baxter has the Turtles at his mercy, he brags about how he was able to defeat them and Shredder was not…until Shredder hits the room and says,

“I’ll bear that in mind Baxter, when I’ve delivered your eulogy, you traitorous vermin!”

I love when the heels use that kind of disparaging language.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you again for tomorrow’s episode!

❤ Joe

Joe Gets His Amazon Prime Day Deliveries!

Well, I’ve waited long enough! Finally all those life-changing purchases showed up in my mailbox. Let’s peruse:

Degree Deodorant – 6 Pack

Take a guess at who will have the driest pits in Florida for the next few months!

Space Ghost Funko Pop Figure

Funkos kill me because it’s hard not to go nuts and buy everything, but I’m pretty good about just keeping it to the characters I’m really into. This was a must have for my collection. 

M.A.S.K. – The Complete Series

This is something I’ve been meaning to buy for a while as I was never into this show as a kid, but got interested in because of Twitter and a possible crossover movie with GI Joe. I would bet that you hear a lot more about M.A.S.K. and I very soon. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – The Complete Classic Series Collection 

As mentioned in Episode 2, I wasn’t the biggest TMNT fan, but I was definitely a fan and this collection comes in this sweet Turtle Van case that will look great displayed on my…I dunno…some piece of furniture once I figure out a spot for it. Will be fun to get back into this and listen to the velvety voice of Uncle Phil as Shredder talking about dining on turtle soup. 

So this was my Amazon Prime Day haul. Hopefully, your’s was as bountiful.