Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Race With the Demon”

You are not prepared.

When the cast and crew debuted their designs for Speed Demon, I was very impressed. I thought the notion of a car that has come across the mutagen was a great idea, even though I am not sure how it would work. Right after Speed Demon, they showed off designs of Donnie combined with the car, and what you have is something that didn’t make any sense, but looked great. This was enough to pique my interest for the episode, and it came sooner than I thought.

The theme for this part of the season should be, “wait, we didn’t clean up the mutagen?” This is the third instance where the team comes across something that has been mutated,  this time it was the same purple “Challenger” that was at the end of “The Croaking.” The car turned into a speed obsessed dragster, that ended up having a human inside that had no control over the car. The writers found a way to make a mutated car work, using a mutagen fuel that infected the car. It was a little sketchy, but it worked. What really got me, however, was how they got Donnie fused with Speed Demon. Apparently, when a mutated car eats a mutated turtle, the turtle goes through a second mutation.

I think that this was another fragile way to incorporate the designs, but hey, I can think of a lot worse. Now, Donnie with Speed Demon looked awesome. The design stills do not do this justice. When it was animated, Donnie Speed Demon looked so fantastic and different against the normal design and backdrop of the show. He looked cleaner yet grimy, shinier, and gruesome. The spark plugs on his spine, and wiring for his tongue were awesome. You can definitely see the Rat Fink influence, and I feel the design and execution paid perfect tribute to the Ed Roth work.

After almost two and a half seasons, I am so happy to see Casey and Donnie finally get on the same page. Who knew it would take working on a dragster and infusing Kraang technology to make it happen? At this point, I don’t care how it happened, I am just glad it did happen. This jealousy / love triangle thing went on for too long, and was starting to become an unwanted part of the series. Whenever an episode would start, I would hope Casey was nowhere to be found. Casey and Donnie now becoming bros means April may be the odd person out.

I think this goes without the need for reiteration, but I was expecting these great designs to be wasted on a rather boring and tedious episode. While this doesn’t advance the plot much, it was a great diversion, and managed to seemingly grow both Donnie and Casey away from their unnecessary rivalry for April. Hopefully, this is an ongoing thing, because this growth really is an enhancement for the series. I give up trying to predict what happens in the next week, because I can’t get a bead on what’s going to happen next. So, just sit back, and enjoy the rare gem in the Nick lineup.