#Krang usually doesn’t give a shit about the turtles! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

satireknight · 7 years

Text

TMNT S02E02 - The Incredible Shrinking Turtles

They sound like some kind of circus act, don’t they?

So the story opens in Central Park (not named, but obvious), where Leonardo is busy ruining Raphael’s camouflage hat as a demonstration of why they need to be vigilant and train... only to get humiliated when Donatello disarms him while he’s talking.

There’s then a brief segment where Michelangelo plays a prank on them by dressing in a Shredder costume and dropping in on them, which just makes me wonder if the Turtles have the same myopic affliction as everyone else. Like, you can’t see that this person is the guy you’ve lived with all your lives?

Just then a spaceship crash-lands. I’m not kidding, that actually happens: a spaceship crash-lands in Central Park with a jet-engine sound, and nobody sees it except the Turtles. April must be cussing up a storm.

They immediately dive into the nearest pond to rescue the pilot, a withered-looking little alien in a nightgown who always sounds like he’s got really bad asthma.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where Shredder is... he’s hiding in a bush. That is what Krang has reduced the guy to, following the Turtles around in public and lurking in bushes like a perverted creeper.

Fun exchange:

“Quick, boil some water!”

“We’re not delivering a baby, dimbo!”

“I heard it in a movie.”

The alien quickly exposits that they have to find the three fragments of the Eye of Sarnath, which grants incredible power to anyone who has it. Naturally Shredder hears that part and practically salivates over it. So the alien gives Donatello a crystal tracking device that can take him to the fragments. Yay, we have an arc plot! Then he dies.

Krang is still telling Shredder to fuck off until he can do something right.

The Turtles follow the crystal tracker to the dockside, where garbage is being loaded onto a scow.

“We’re going to dive right into that garbage, no questions asked!”

Donatello whines a little about having to do this sort of shit all the time, before getting literally yanked into the garbage headfirst. He finds it in about two seconds flat... only for this to happen.

Maybe if you DIDN’T hold it up over your head like that.

In an interesting reversal of the usual, the Turtles kinda get their butts handed to them by Shredder. I’m not sure why, except that they seem pretty unaware of their surroundings, which maybe ties into the whole training sequence at the beginning of the episode?

And then the fragment gets all glowy.

It’s shiny. That means it must be important.

And if the title didn’t tip you off, the Turtles immediately start shrinking down to the size of not-very-large dolls.

Shredder kind of sucks at chasing them, since they are small, fast and there are four of them going in different directions. Of course, Donatello is carrying around an object larger and heavier than he is, so he tires out pretty quickly. Fortunately a really unsafe garbage truck driver scatters them, and they’re able to escape in the dust cloud.

Of course, they’re still so tiny that an alleycat could easily munch them down, and they have to get back to their normal size. Which is a problem when you have to get past pedestrians. And when Leonardo insists on telling them to cheer up because, hey, it can’t get worse.

Shaddup, Leonardo.

So they’re washed down a grate and somehow manage not to die from either the fall or the water, and make their way home. Splinter is obviously not pleased, because it means he’ll have to take over the action part of the episode, which rarely ends well for him.

So he calls April to drive him around, while she’s in the Orange Juice meeting. Seriously, every person is drinking OJ. You know, April O’Neil was decades ahead of the trend of having your cell phone go off at odd moments, thus annoying every person around you.

Krang is still telling Shredder to fuck off until he has a pile of dead bodies to show for it.

April is chauffeuring Splinter around (I think that’s the only reason he called her) when they get news that someone is shrinking the Empire State building, which in no way impacts the foundation or the plumbing.

And pretty soon Shredder has a whole terrarium of shrunken buildings, which Igor... I mean, Baxter seems FAR too impressed by.

April and Splinter end up in a traffic jam, in which nobody notices that the guy in the passenger seat is a giant rat. Meanwhile, the Turtles are eating a single slice of pizza, which is more than enough for any of them except Michelangelo.

Then the whole place floods. Like, not for any reason; water just starts pouring in. They all climb on a bar of soap, which... does soap float? In my personal experience, it tends to sink right to the bottom and land on my foot.

Then because the universe hates them, a snake shows up.

Fortunately it’s a very stupid snake that just eats anything thrown at it, so Leonardo gets it to fuck off by feeding it lumps of soap.

Krang tells Shredder to fuck off AGAIN, pointing out that he demanded the Turtles and not shrunken-down buildings, which Shredder was absolutely sure would impress him. Baxter has also created a device that will track down turtles... which would probably be more useful if things like pets didn’t exist.

Meanwhile, the soap is almost gone and everyone is trying to strangle Leonardo.

Or maybe that’s just what it looks like. Michelangelo looks like he’s spooning him.

They end up washing out to sea, which in itself doesn’t seem to be a big deal, since they’re able to comfortably hang out and talk underwater. Fun fact: Turtles in fact cannot breathe underwater, they’re just very good at holding their breath.

Then a piranha attacks.

Maybe Splinter should have put them in a terrarium before leaving the house, for their own good.

Then they’re rescued from the fish by Igor.

I think this might qualify as the worst day of their lives thus far. And one of those days involved listening to the Neutrinos.

Shredder uses them to prove to Krang that he does NOT suck, so there, and why won’t you love me back, Krang? Seriously, he seems to need so much validation.

Donatello tries to defend himself with cliched writing, much to the scorn of the others, and Shredder prepares to kill them with a crowbar. Well, he could have just put them in a jar with no airholes, and that would have probably turned out the same.

Just then the Turtle Van busts in the door (good thing Splinter’s funny feelings are completely trustworthy, or that might have gotten awkward) and Splinter springs out to fight Shredder.

In all the commotion, April decides to do something useful by finding the Turtles in their jar, which she... doesn’t open.

Instead she just sort of coos about how tiny and adorable they are. Donatello tells her to get the crystal and aim it at them, on the assumption that it probably works both ways.

Splinter, meanwhile, is not doing so well against Shredder.

“Quick, April, turn on the beam!” AND OPEN THE JAR. For reasons that become immediately obvious when they start growing, but are getting squished against the sides of the jar.

Fortunately when they literally explode out of the jar, because April couldn’t take two seconds to dump them out, Donatello’s staff goes flying and switches off the machine just before it was going to kill Splinter. And boy is he ever aware of that.

He knocks Shredder onto the floor next to the fragment and... wait, the floor? Where did April go? Did she figure, “Well, I’ve done my part” and just leave the building, dumping the dangerous crystal fragment on the floor as she went?

The Turtles are about to pursue him when Splinter stops them.

“It is useless to try.” The episode’s almost over, and you already got shrunk once already.

And... wait, since Shredder got away with the crystal fragment... what about the buildings? Is this episode literally going to end with multiple buildings, including the Empire State building, being permanently shrunken down to the size of action figures?!

Verdict:

So this episode was much more enjoyable than the last one, and not just because it doesn’t focus on some random dolts in costumes. It’s a pretty decent version of the help-we’re-tiny-and-dealing-with-tiny-perils story that a lot of shows do (even ST:DS9, one time), as well as setting up a small story arc that will last for a few more episodes.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the characters had some brain farts that were impossible not to notice, like Michelangelo literally stepping on a snare. Or, you know, April not letting them out of the jar.

But overall, it’s a pretty good episode that maintains some decent suspense, with the Turtles trying really hard not to get squashed, eaten or flushed away. And it gave Splinter something to do, rather than just lurking at home and waiting to see what problems they came home with.

Grade: B-

#tmnt #tmnt 1987 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #satireknight

5 notes · View notes