Review: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Todd Scouts” ; “Goyles, Goyles, Goyles”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

“Todd Scouts”

The Turtles are becoming too reliant on their tech for survival and Splinter wants to send a message so that they up their ninjitsu game. He does this by hiring a beaver named “Todd” who attempts to teach the turtles the way of the woods only to be rebuffed and eventually kidnapped by dentists who want to harvest his teeth for personal gain. The Turtles get him back and also get him a canister of lemonade which helps Todd turn into a raging DBZ-like beast that causes all sorts of mayhem for the dentists thereby scaring them away.

“Goyles, Goyles, Goyles”

Huginn and Muninn regale us with a flashback of how they first met with and started to work for Baron Draxum. That said, the gargoyles have to earn their keep and while doing so we get to see Splinter and the boys before they were mutated.

Our Take

In what appears to be the final episodes of 2019, I do have to admit, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the more surprising series of the year in terms of series that I thought I was going to hate and instead has been forced to grow on me like a hematoma. In any event, this week we got the most obviously anime-influenced episodes of the season with Todd going all Goku on dentists and there being a flashback episode working as a prequel to the series which will hopefully keep us satiated until new episodes show up. By the way, John Cena is a voiceover MVP, which makes me wonder why he didn’t get more work on the WWE Network animated series. I guess if you are going to completely rewrite the history of one of the greatest comics series of all time, you’re gonna need some muscle to pull it off. This show has it in spades behind-the-scenes.