#ellie rants about tmnt fast forward

[laziarteest]

Ellie Rants About TMNT 2003 (Part 2): Fast Forward and Back to the Sewer

Looking for Part 1? Looking for Part 3? Well now that I’ve already talked about the part of the show that I liked, I guess it’s time to talk about the part that I didn’t. I actually took a two week break between watching Season 5 and Season 6 because I’d read about how people consider there to be a decline in quality. In fact, I considered not even watching the final two seasons at all. Once again, I’ll try to keep things written in a way that makes sense. I’m not really planning anything out, this is all stream of consciousness. I have a lot more to complain about this time, but I’ll still try to avoid major spoilers (if you can considering anything from these seasons a spoiler.......).

So the first 5 seasons are relatively well known, at least among those I’ve spoken to about it, for having a darker tone for a kids’ show. While I can’t speak for how faithful of an adaptation they are, several episodes and story lines are adapted directly from the Mirage Comics. Notably, the 6th season has a lighter tone and a more bright and colorful art style to match. So the turtles went from generally appearing like this:

To looking more like this:

And this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the animation in general didn’t feel cheaper. This is also when the show starts to veer a bit more into feeling like it desperately needs to sell more toys. It hasn’t quite gotten as bad as it will, but it’s starting to get there. So if you happen to like these seasons, I’m glad you can appreciate them while I can’t, but...

Fast Forward: So this season isn’t ALL bad. There are a couple of gems scattered in that could have worked if the stories surrounding them had been handled better. The biggest problem here is that it’s either boring or annoying. I thought the first episode seemed pretty promising. I went in expecting an unwatchable mess, but aside from a few weird choices, the episode is decently solid. They’re transported to their new setting pretty early on in a manner that seems plausible enough considering the shenanigans they’ve gotten up to in the past. The turtles and Splinter find themselves in future New York City and wander around until they’re found by Cody Jones and his robot Serling that take them home and explain what happened. The whole point of this season seems to be that they’re stuck in the year 2105 and just want to find a way home. In practice though, they’re just sort of goofing off most of the time. While previous seasons tended to be fairly serialized to the point where missing an episode could mean an entire story later on would be confusing, Fast Forward is instead episodic to the point where it feels like nothing ever happens. There’s really only two attempts at an over arching plot. Sh’Okanabo (who I had to look up because I could never tell what they were saying) and his plan to take over Earth, and Darius’ plan to... I don’t know, kill Cody so he can keep doing what he was already doing, I guess? Supposedly there was supposed to be a second season of Fast Forward that would have wrapped up any loose plot threads, but that never happened, so instead we’re left with the mess we got. And boy is it a mess. In addition to Cody, Sterling, Sh’Okanabo, and Darius, this season also added Starlee Hambrath, Constable Biggles, Viral, Torbin Zixx, dark turtle clones, Jammerhead, Triple Threat, the Inuwashi Gunjin... Most of these characters don’t do much. Cody isn’t as bad as I had vague memories of from when I was younger. I feel like he wound up being a damsel in distress a little too often for my tastes, but he did actually  improve a bit towards the end. Sterling is another story however. I’m sure they intended him to be endearing with his sarcasm, but I just can’t stand him. He’s no fun and until the last few episodes of the season is really only around to be upset that the turtles are still living with him. Darius had some potential if only his evil ambition made any sense. Starlee could pretty much have been cut entirely and nothing would change. Constable Biggles was just another robot that gets annoyed at the turtles. Jammerhead is just weird?? The Inuwashi Gunjin show up like three times and I remember nothing about any of them. I didn’t even know Triple Threat had a name. Torbin Zixx was interesting in the very few episodes he actually appeared in. If only because you couldn’t trust anything he said and it was a little funny to see how many betrayals he could pull off in one go. Sh’Okanabo and Viral feel both like they had the most thought put into them, but also no thought. Their goal is the Day of Awakening that basically replaces all life on earth with Sh’Okanabo’s alien race and they will live there until the planet is completely sucked dry of resources before moving on to the next planet. This is also where the characters with the most untapped potential came from..... The dark turtles, which were created from tissue samples of the TMNT, are probably the biggest missed opportunity. And I’ll get into that a little more later. Something I really hate about this season is the number of episodes that only seem to happen because Mikey or Raph did something stupid. Which sort of sucks, because as I mentioned in the previous post, Mikey is already my least favorite turtle in the show, and his behavior here was making me borderline dislike him. The two episodes that stood out to me as actually enjoyable were episodes 22 and 23. Episode 22, Head of State, involves the turtles trying to stop a threat that’s trying to kill the reformed Bishop, now President Bishop. The one behind it turns out to be another old villain from their past and they come to an amicable resolution where the villain trying to get revenge actually feels welcome in the current time and has a chance at happiness. In episode 23, DNA is Thicker Than Water, the dark turtles who are living in the TMNT’s old lair and working for Darius are tasked with killing their counterparts. This is by far the strongest episode in the entire season. It was the only one where I was invested the entire time, and even though I saw the twist coming a mile away, I was excited to see how things would be resolved. Until I saw that this was episode 23 of 26 and realized it would, in fact, NOT be resolved. I guess I can always dream that the dark turtles are redeemed off screen. Overall, this season is not worth your time. If I had to pick a few episodes that are passable enough to watch, they’d be episodes 1, 2, 3, 6, 18, 22, 23, and 26. The rest I would consider to be skippable unless you just really want to be bored and irritated. 

After Fast Forward came Back to the Sewer. And with Back to the Sewer came yet another change to the art style.

Which manages to look even cheaper. And maybe it’s just me, but the visible eyes don’t really add anything and somehow make them seem LESS expressive instead of more. At least the intro song is catchy.

Back to the Sewer: I’m not even really sure to start with this one. I suppose, if nothing else, it was mercifully short. At only 13 episodes (14 if you count Mayhem from Mutant Island), this is the second shortest season in the series. If you were hoping for a good first episode or a good finale, I have some bad news. Because you won’t be getting that. I suppose the best this season has to offer is April and Casey finally getting some more development in their relationship, and Mikey got a couple funny moments. The season, confusingly enough, opens with the Fast Forward intro. I assume this is because they’re technically still in the future. Through some between seasons magic, Cody has finally fixed the machine that lets them go home, but uh oh! Looks like a certain villain named Viral is somehow still around and messes things up. So through an unfunny series of events, that involves revisiting some eras the turtles have already visited before, the turtles and Serling (great...) return to the correct time period and oops looks like Viral got into the Internet and now Shredder is back. Again. For some reason. I know that Shredder is basically the most well known villain in the franchise, but we already had Shredder 3 times, can we have someone else now? I guess sort of, since basically the only new baddie is Khan, but he works for Shredder. Khan basically just feels like early Hun copy-pasted onto a different character design. He’s blindly loyal to the Shredder and isn’t really intimidating after the first episode he appears in. Speaking of Hun, he appears too. He’s just running the Purple Dragons this time. Not doing anything special really. You know who appears alongside Hun in one episode though? Baxter Stockman. And this drives me nuts. A year may have passed in the universe of the show, but it’s been confirmed at other points in earlier seasons that this shouldn’t be possible. And this isn’t the last we hear from him being in a place he probably shouldn’t be... And that’s basically  everyone. So I hope you weren’t a fan of Rat King, Dr Chaplin, Karai, or any other villains. Because you won’t see them outside of a small cameo. Aside from having a disappointingly small cast, this is also when they double down on needing to sell toys. The first three episodes introduce new vehicles or costumes so kids have an excuse to beg their parents for the new toys. I suppose the cyber armor is okay looking, but it just sort of looks like Tron cosplay. I’m sure that was probably a major inspiration based on how the vehicles inside cyberspace work. Oh yeah did I mention that the plot of this season is that Splinter is scattered inside cyber space and they have to go inside the Internet to put him back together and also that’s where Shredder is. Because that’s the plot. I appreciate that there was an attempt at character by making Donatello feel guilty for the first few episodes, but it doesn’t really feel genuine. It seems very forced. Donatello isn’t even in two of the episodes this season, the excuse being that he’s just chilling at home looking for pieces of Splinter. So rip to me, since Donatello is my second favorite. The only other turtle to not be in an episode this season is Leonardo. So double rip. Shockingly, there was one episode that I thought almost could have been good. At best it’s mediocre, but it had potential. Episode 4, The Engagement Ring, is about Casey finally deciding he wants to propose to April, so Raphael goes with him to help pick an engagement ring. Through a series of strange events, they wind up getting a ring imbued with evil power that transforms the wearer and can only be removed by the person who placed the ring on the finger in the first place. This leads to April having outbursts before eventually becoming destructive and turning into a monster. Eventually Casey gets the ring off, things go back to normal, and they get a regular ring instead. This felt like the sort of episode that could have appeared in an earlier season as something that starts as an incidental moment that becomes relevant half a season later. If this had been in season 3, for example, I could see them going to the shop for the ring and giving it to April. Then over the course of several episodes, April occasionally seems to be behaving strangely. Then it would culminate in an episode where they have to figure out how to get the ring off of her. Instead it gets squished into 22 minutes and any lasting impact is gone. I could keep rambling on and on about each individual episode, but I think this is getting long enough. Would I recommend watching ANY of Back to the Sewer? Uh. Not really. Check out the intro song? There aren’t any episodes strong enough to say I enjoyed them. I actually started falling asleep at one point. If you just desperately want to see an episode anyway, episodes 4 and 13 are the least bad if you’re interested in April and Casey’s relationship?

So are Fast Forward and Back to the Sewer as bad as I’d heard? Kind of. I can remember when these seasons of the show were first airing. I only ever caught one or two episodes of Fast Forward, and I didn’t even like them at the time. For reference, I was 12 or 13 at the oldest. Even as a child I knew these episodes just weren’t that watchable. If you’re a hardcore TMNT fan with some major nostalgia for these seasons, I could maybe see you enjoying yourself if only to relive those moments from childhood, but I can’t recommend that anyone else sit through these. The continuity and worldbuilding just becomes too inconsistent, the characters are retreading lessons they’ve already learned at least once, and it eventually just devolved into a toy commercial with some decent voice acting. I still have Turtles Forever to sit through, and I can only hope it serves as a better send off.