Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “In Dreams”

It’s four Beaver Krugers and the Dream Ninjas. Is it better than Nightmare on Elm Street?

Spoilers Below

I know this isn’t saying much about this new Turtles series, but this is turning out to be one bad acid trip of the season. From muck monsters, to robot doppelgangers, to an entire legion of mutant frogs, it’s like the writers got to dipping acid. This week, however, the aid seemed to be flowing like wine, because these visuals were completely out of this world, and right into something I should see in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

“In Dreams” starts right out the block inside a dream from Donnie, who is back in New York. He is being chased by a persistent, shaded entity. The rest of the Turtles follow suit, thinking Donnie just needed the sleep, or something. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. They never went any further with that. When Leo gets knocked out cold, the only thing Raph and Mikey do is draw on Leo’s face. Two turtles, and soon to be all four, are in a coma. The only person who notices anything wrong is April, with her crazy psychic powers.

These dream sequences were the best part of “In Dreams.” I cannot get past how much work the animators did to make these sequences look phenomenal. Donnie in the city looked so stylish, where Mikey’s candy land looked so cute. But the sequence that stole the episode was Raph. It started with the other Turtles as pod people, then went to a metal concert that resembled early Tool claymation. The animation of the snake was phenomenal and crisp, and the fire made the atmosphere. The best part, however, was the song that played through out the segment. It was a simple, yet heavy riff that slayed. I can watch this segment all day.

For whatever reason, the writers thought that the episode needed a deus ex machina, and introduced the Obturaculum Somniurum, or the Dream Plug. This lost me completely, because it made the Turtles seem utterly useless. The creator, Bernie, had nothing to do with anything. This could have been a more concentrated effort, and let this be a Donnie invention gone wrong. This seemed like a rushed ending, because the writers were stuck to find a reason to get out of it.

Now, this problem seemed to not do anything except to stall the season’s story. We’re still stuck in the farmhouse (I think I’ll be saying that for a bit, because there were parts that still haven’t been seen yet from New York Comic Con), and no mention of anything else. I can only imagine that this is to keep the focus on the Turtles, but how long can we really keep the focus on them and an episode by episode list of villains? If you were at the panel, you know what I am talking about. Hell, you can just catch up on my Twitter from a while back.  The thing is, I know they’re coming, and there’s been five full episodes so far of nothing but farmhouse episodes. Maybe next week? Either way, this was a major slip from the last few episodes, that maybe only the die hards will enjoy.