Review: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Sidekick Ahoy!”;”The Hidden City Job”;”Always Be Brownies”;”Mystery Meat”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

First, the turtles help out Jupiter Jim with fighting his “nemesis”, Scorpion, while also helping him make up with his former sidekick, Red Fox.

Next, Leo works to reforge the bond between brothers Senor Hueso and Capitan Piel by helping steal something from Big Mama.

Later, April teams up with Splinter to sell scout cookies, but finds a former member of Baron Draxum’s crew running the competition.

Finally, Draxum adjusts to his life as a cafeteria chef, but one of his food items starts to run amok.

OUR TAKE

Jupiter Jim’s deal of simply being a crazy guy who thinks he’s a superhero is explained quickly and concisely, but with enough laid out that it gives me more reason to check out his previous episode. Same with Hueso and Piel’s previous history, which we get upfront to set the status quo and then see how their characters develop from there. And I can’t say I’ve ever seen a transformation sequence that was between walking flesh and a skeleton to become a whole person, but lord help me if it wasn’t crazy to witness.

The other two episodes, that coincidentally have less involvement from the turtles, I can’t say I was as fond of. Not that April, Splinter, and Lunch Lady Draxum can’t be entertaining on their own, but more that they just didn’t have as entertaining plots for me. I’m not exactly sure how to clarify this, because it’s not like any of the four stories have any notable lack of energy or charm that has probably kept this version of the franchise prominent in fans’ minds, but…something about them just felt off. Maybe it’s that they take place in the regular world and don’t make use of the supernatural stuff as much as the previous two, maybe it’s because the writing skews just a bit more annoying and just plain odd at times, and maybe it could just be the severe lack of the main four in the action, but I noticed a clear dip in enjoyment for those.

Though we’ve now finished a quarter of this season, there doesn’t seem to be any clear plans for when the next episodes will be coming out. That, along with the show’s move to Nicktoons instead of the main Nick channel tell me that the show might just be on its way out sooner than planned. Whether that has to do with the pandemic, the network getting bored with this iteration, or even just the general decline of regular television is anyone’s guess. But Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is definitely proving its chops so I would hope it gets at least a couple more seasons to flesh itself out.