Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) S03E18: “Cowabunga Shredhead”

Season 3, Episode 18 (36 overall): Cowabunga Shredhead

Original Airdate: October 18, 1989

The Plot:

Michelangelo is in trouble because he ate everybody’s pizza…again. The rest of the Turtles are hopping mad because they were fucking hungry and their brother is a real piece of shit. Splinter says that Michelangelo has been warned before so now he has to apply Kung Pow: the ancient art of mind-control to get him to stop craving pizza.

Sidebar: if it was this easy, why didn’t Splinter put all of his boys on this mind-control diet? Sure, they get plenty of exercise, but it’s only a matter of time before all that pizza catches up with them. Can’t be a lean, green fighting machine with all those carbs slowing you down. And I should know. We can smell our own.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) S03E17: “Turtles, Turtles, Everywhere”

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.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E16: “Four Musketurtles”

No time to waste, let’s get right into it!

S03E16 (Ep. 34): Four Musketurtles

Original Air Date: October 16, 1989

The Plot:

There’s a Mardi Gras parade in NYC and April is covering it for Channel 6. It’s being sponsored by a local jewelry store so of course April makes a point of mentioning and showing off a the priceless Star of Brazil diamond that the store is only too happy to call attention to.

Krang and Shredder are watching the broadcast on the big screen in the Technodrome and…OMG…we have backstory! Krang guffaws at the gem and says it is really the lost element of Dimension-X. He then proceeds to indulge us with a little flashback  that features multiple Krangs including one with a bushy Wilford Brimley-style mustache! It was lost long ago, but Krang wants it back immediately! He calls it “Impervium” and says it’s the hardest known substance in the galaxy and that he could create insane weapons with it.

Leonardo has been reading a copy of The Three Musketeers given to him by April, but the other Turtles couldn’t give even the slightest of fucks about it. Not even Donatello and he’s a fucking geek. Leo hits up April on the TurtleCom and asks her to grab some Musketeer costumes for him and his brothers so they can fit in at the parade. While this is going on, Bebop and Rocksteady show up at the jewelry store trying to steal the diamond, but the Turtles show up and during the scuffle the diamond gets bounced around and ends up in a garbage can where it’s found by Irma who pockets it because…obviously.

Leonardo got his wig split during this encounter, however, and now he thinks he’s a genuine Musketeer. This is getting weird and I like it. The Turtles have those costumes April tracked down for them and now they’re forced into wearing them because Splinter says it’s good to humor Leo’s delusions right now. They head back to the surface to track down the diamond, but are soon encountered by Bebop, Rocksteady and Shredder who are obviously doing the same.

So let’s call a time-out here. Take a knee, fam. This is episode 34 now and Shredder has been terrorizing the city for all of them, yet here he is walking around in broad daylight in the middle of town and nobody does a damn thing about it?! Bro, if you see something, SAY SOMETHING! How the fuck you just gonna let this dude walk around like it ain’t no thang?! This is craziness! Literally every fucking day he tries to take over your city and you don’t know who he is?! Does anybody here watch April O’Neil on Channel 6 news?!

God, I’m so fucking livid.

Oh, Shredder notices the gem on Irma, kidnaps her and April and now has possession of the Impervium. There was a whole thing at the parade and it looked like a show so people just stood idly by and cheered. New York fucking sucks.

Krang arrives on the surface strictly because he doesn’t trust Shredder to not backstab him and he was actually right to do so since Shredder was about to use the Impervium to crown himself ruler of Earth. The Turtles hit the scene and Leonardo’s memory suddenly returns just in time to foil the plans of our heels, but seeing them still able to escape BY DRILLING ANOTHER GODDAMN HOLE INTO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH IN A MODULE!

Oh yeah, the gem goes down a sink drain and is lost forever because nobody’s a fucking plumber.

The Thoughts:

Real talk, as silly as this episode probably sounds, I was at least more actively engaged throughout the whole thing. I’m not going to try to convince you that it was great or anything, but it was definitely the most enjoyable episode of the past two weeks. Leo’s temporary amnesia and sudden memory recovery was what it was, but the ridiculousness of everything in here actually was a good thing to make this better than just your average run of the mill TMNT.

Main Man Standings:

OK, after talking it up I’m sure you’re wondering how we’re rating it…

DOUBLE AND A HALF MAIN MAN

** 1/2*

Boom. Literally acceptable mediocrity which is still a big step up from a lot of these episodes! Now I’m even a little excited for tomorrow!

Comments & Concerns:

Email: ShoesOnSports@gmail.com

Twitter: @MaxSexPow

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E15: “Take Me to Your Leader”

Here we go. Another day, another episode.

S03E15 (Ep. 33):  Take Me to Your Leader

Original Air Date: October 13, 1989

The Plot:

Shredder is getting his new plot ready: to steal all the cheese danishes from the surface since it’s so difficult to get good snacks underground, but the Turtles crash the party and temporarily hold him up. I say “temporarily” because they’re waiting for Leonardo to give them direction, but he’s got nothing. Turns out he’s having a dream and he wakes up shook that his judgment is failing and his instincts are shot. After a sparring session with Donatello where he gets his wig split, Leonardo decides he’s not qualified to be a part of this team right now and leaves the Turtles.

Daily Cartoon: Teenange Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E14: “20,000 Leaks Under the City”

What’s up everyone and welcome to another week of classic TMNT recaps! Hope you’re strapped in and ready to have your mind melted because this show promises to be an edge-of-your…eh, who am I kidding?

Look, let’s just keep going and try to find the good in all of this. Maybe make some funny jokes along the way. I like to think I’m pretty funny. Maybe I’ll say something good. See how easy that was? Now let’s watch TV.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E13 “The Ninja Sword of Nowhere”

Welcome to another classic TMNT episode recap! Real quick, I just want to say that I appreciate all the new traffic this website has been getting an encourage you to please also check out and subscribe to my YouTube Channel to get some videos of me eating new foods and playing with old toys.

Cool.

With that said, lets get into business: we’re watching some Turtles and man, is it difficult. Also, I’m watching these on DVD and you have no idea what a pain in the ass navigating a DVD is now that we’re spoiled with on-demand and streaming services.

I actually had to get up and switch out the disc today! Absurd!

But we keep moving forward and deal with the struggles that have been laid upon our shoulders. Let’s watch some TV.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E12: “Attack of Big Macc”

Welcome back to another classic TMNT episode recap. Today marks the 30th episode in the series and, to celebrate, we will…be watching and commenting about the going-ons as normal. Isn’t that fun?!

Yesterday’s episode actually wasn’t too bad and I hope we can keep up that same level of mediocrity as we go through today. I have no idea what the title is in reference to since I sincerely doubt it would be about my favorite hamburgers, but the screen cap on the DVD has a picture of a robot so I cannot wait to have my brain melted by the upcoming drivel!

I can’t believe we ate this shit up with a spoon as kids. Man, we fucking loved it! Man, we were fucking morons! Kids are the worst. Let’s watch some TV.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E11: “April Fool”

What’s up everyone and welcome back to another retro TMNT episode recap! Big stuff going down in Turtle Town…OK, that’s a lie, but, on the bright side, only 164 episodes to go after today! We can do it!

Before we get started, thanks all the traffic on this blog the past couple of days. I don’t know where y’all are finding this, but I appreciate it! Also, if you haven’t already, please check out and subscribe to my YouTube Channel! That would make me a very happy boy.

For now, however, we’re diving back into retro cartoons. They can’t all be bad, right? At some point there’s got to be some episodes that are absolute bangers. I guess we’re about to find out in real-time. Let’s go.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E10: “Turtles At The Earth’s Core”

Welcome back to another brand new TMNT episode recap! Don’t get your hopes up with this becoming a regular thing, but I do have another recap blog here for you today despite yesterday’s snoozefest being a battle to watch.

Real talk, do all these “classic” cartoon series suck? Like, I grew up on this shit, it all holds a very big place in my heart, but man this is terrible. Big blessings to the parents who had to put up with this shit playing nonstop in their houses just to appease kids like me.

Some episodes have to be good, right? We’ll keep hoping for that. Like today! With a title like “Turtles At The Earth’s Core” you just know that gaggles of characters are going to be boiled in hot, liquid magma! Exciting!

If that doesn’t make you want to keep reading, nothing will. But you should still do so anyway just to be sure.

Daily Cartoon: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S03E09: “Enter The Rat King”

It’s been 3 1/2 years since I’ve touched this show.

Why? Because it was entirely frustrating and not very good. So why am I back writing more blogs about it? Well…I’ve had the itch to get back to writing cartoon recaps for a while now plus there have been some really cool Turtles-centric toy releases of late to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original movie’s release that – even though I’m not a TMNT collector – have hit me right in the feels with nostalgia.

So here we are picking up where we left off in January of 2017 (all prior episode recaps can be found with a simple TMNT search on the homepage) and I’m sure I’ll quickly be wondering why I even bothered starting back up with this.

But we’re here and I genuinely want to make the best of it. So let’s go.