#3 MAY 17, 2018 · 7 yr ago
Having recently gone through the entire third season, I was struggling to narrow it down to one week's worth of picks that could be called representative.
The Old Switcheroo was one of very few episodes that I regard as brilliant even through adult eyes. Possibly because it was an influence on a Visionaries fanfic I wrote in which Ectar and Reekon swapped bodies and again nobody knew what had happened right away. (I also took an influence from Where Eagles Dare later on in the story, with Witterquick in the Richard Burton role!) But I digress.
Splinter and Shredder swapping bodies and it not being known to anybody else right away makes for a more interesting body-swap story than Thundercats' own "The Shifter" (although that is still a very good episode too!). After all, the concept is hard to swallow, how do you tell someone that you're not the person whose body you are inhabiting? They'll never believe you! Plus, you're in the hands of your enemies, so if they did believe what had happened, they wouldn't exactly be favourably inclined towards you! Peter Renaday and James Avery indeed had an interesting acting challenge, to try to each talk like the other in this episode, and they pulled it off. Interestingly, there's one moment in another episode, "Turtles At The Earth's Core", where Peter Renaday does one line of Shredder's dialogue (I guess James Avery had gone home for the day and they needed someone to fill it in there and then). OK, the resolution may be a little basic, but considering that the entire swap was an accident, not a deliberate plan, and the technology was on the surface rather than in the Technodrome, then there's only so much you can do with it.
April Fool is one of those episodes that I picked as representative of Shredder & Krang's typical objectives for the season - to find something to power the Technodrome. And yes, that coincidence of them wanting something that the good guys are involved with tends to happen a lot in most shows anyway. I guess it helps to get to the action bits quicker! As for April's new look, I think the turtles were putting all the writers' thoughts into words there - or syllables at least, reacting just the way teenage males always do when their blood supply is diverted to a certain part of their anatomy...
And yes, the issue of mistaken identity is another common theme in these 80s cartoons, I think I picked an episode of Spiral Zone last year that does it from a very different angle, "Brother's Keeper".
Take Me To Your Leader is one of two back-to-back episodes that focused on Leonardo. I originally thought of having two weeks of s3 picks, so that I could have a focus episode for each turtle, but there's nothing at all for Raphael, and the only candidate for Donatello, "The Maltese Hamster", doesn't put an emotional focus on the character in the same way. For Leonardo, it was either this or "Four Musketurtles", and it was a tough choice. The whole "loss of self-belief" thing is a very common thread among 80s cartoons, but usually not with the leader of the group. Thundercats did "Snarf Takes Up The Challenge", Defenders Of The Earth centred theirs around Kshin with "The Sleeper Awakes", Visionaries did "Feryl Steps Out", all of these featuring younger and/or weaker members of the team. For a show to actually do it with the leader is rare. But it did give them the opportunity here to have each of the other three turtles try out being the leader, and all failing for different reasons - Raphael for being too impulsive, Donatello for being too indecisive, and Michelangelo for being too immature completely. Shredder's plot in this episode is a bit far-fetched, draining the sun's energy in a matter of hours? Seriously? That said, I liked the ending when each turtle said what he had learned.
The Gang's All Here is one of the most significant episodes in the show's run. Possibly Shredder's most interesting plan of all of them. Turning the turtles into human beings rather than back to their original ordinary turtle forms was a masterly idea. The execution of the plan, however, yes, with Rocksteady & Bebop, whom the turtles didn't recognise - ??? - could have been done less suspiciously. Foot soldiers done up to look human might have worked better. Donatello did at least sense that something was wrong, and analysed the cookies. Michelangelo being the one to try them anyway made sense, he was always the most fun-loving, and wanting to enjoy himself with humans, so it made sense that he'd be the one willing to take the chance. My question is, why did the cookies take away his muscles? And surely he still knew how to fight like a ninja turtle, so why would being human be such a disadvantage to him? Interesting to see Rocksteady & Bebop's old gang - even if they looked completely different to their appearance in the pilot. Maybe it was a different gang and they were in two (or even more).
