It’s barely the summer solstice, and already, I’ve found myself in the throes of a summer cold this year. Typically, my colds tend to stay in their designated seasons, but this year, I’ve been especially vulnerable to disease lately. As an adult, when we get sick, we still have to do adult things so we get all of the pills, and we grit our teeth, and we do our adulting. As a kid, many of us got to stay home, and eat chicken soup, and watch cartoons. I am, thankfully, still caught in limbo somewhere between a child, and an adult, and so when I get sick, I take care of business on the school front the best I can, and then I come home and watch cartoons. And nothing makes me feel warmer, or fuzzier than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It really takes me back. Conveniently, I got the whole series on DVD several years back so when I’m feeling under the weather, I pop in one of the 22 discs, and I select the “Play All Episodes” option, and then I let mother nature do whatever she’s going to do to me with a childlike grin on my face because at least I’m really entertained.
TMNT may not be the semi-high-brow fodder that I usually examine here, but cut me some slack, I feel like a mack truck in sitting on my chest, and my nose feels like someone took a belt sander to it. Besides, looks can be deceiving, and I really think that this is the case with this show. Sure, we all remember the theme song, and the goofy animation style, and the groan inducing villains, and the fact that each episode was just a half hour commercial for the new merchandise that would inevitably be rolling out that holiday season, but beneath that, there was more. I mean, there had to be. The show ran for 10 seasons and covered a mind blowing 193 episodes! Surely, there was something brewing below the surface that gave this nugget some charm. Let’s take a brief look at what caught my eye recently so that I can go back to convalescing on my couch, shall we?
Okay, for the, like, two people who read this blog who don’t know what TMNT is all about, four turtles and a ninja master get mutated by some ooze. The turtles grow to be roughly human sized, and the ninja master turns into a rat. Then there’s the Foot Clan, run by one Shredder. He’s their primary nemesis when things need to get physical. He also has two dumb goons named Rocksteady and Bebop, who he created. However, the one pulling all of the strings behind the scenes is Krang, a warlord from Dimension X. For the bulk of the show, Krang and Shredder come up with some stupid schemes to take over Earth, and then the turtles have to stop whatever it is that the two are trying to do. It’s a simple, but effective formula. With that out of the way, let’s really look at this show.
First, until recently, I had only watched the show as a kid. Kids are smart, but there are certain nuances of the English language that tend to be misunderstood in a child’s mind. As a result, I missed all of the wonderful puns that are made in this show! And boy are there a boat load! Yes, the turtles spend the bulk of their time cracking wise in a more conventional fashion, but at least once every three episodes, or so, they pull a zinger of a pun, and totally rock my world! You hear this a lot about kid’s shows, actually. Parents will say something to the effect, “Sure, [insert show title here] is fine, but my kids are going to have to stop watching it once they can actually understand the jokes.” Or one of my personal favorites, “There’s no way you’re ever going to convince me that that show was made for children!” To those people who have ever made a statement like the previous two, I say, A) let them learn the ways of the world via a fairly harmless TV show because you’re alternative is the school yard, and those things are notoriously inaccurate, and B) well, duh! More to point B, network TV writers know that their primary audience is children, but what the good ones also understand is that the parents are going to have to endure countless hours of that crap too. So I like to think that many of them write in some of this more adult friendly humor to give stressed out parents a lifeline to hold onto when their kid is watching a favored episode of Spongebob Square Pants for the 10 millionth time. At any rate, the writers on TMNT got it, and they slipped some of that humor that’s designed to go over the kid’s head in as an act of mercy.
Sticking to the pun line a little, I want to bring up the episode names. A lot of shows use naming conventions when it comes to their episode titles. It’s such a big deal that tvtropes.com has a whole page devoted to it. A couple that immediately come to mind are Friends, wherein every episode is a variation on the phrase “The One _______”, and they’d just finish off the phrase however they felt would best describe the episode. Also, Smallville only ever used one word per hour of show to name their episodes. This hopefully alleviates the need for someone to say, “But ‘Absolute Justice’ had two words!” Yeah, but it was two hours long so… Anyway, I won’t say that TMNT had as regimented a naming convention going on, but there are a few episodes where you can see the writers having fun. This mostly took the form of using riffs on pulp sci-fi titles from days gone by. For example, “Attack of the 50 Foot Irma” is clearly a riff on “Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader”. Are there more? You bet there are! Am I going to list them here? Absolutely not! But you can find other examples on the Wikipedia page for the show. Okay, one more. “The Maltese Hamster” is pretty funny!
Believe it or not, there’s roughly a story going on underneath all of the shenanigans. I know this one might be a tough one to swallow, but it’s totally true! Mostly. It is technically true that the bulk of the episodes are just one offs with very little bearing on any larger story, but in the very general scheme of things, there is a little method to the story madness. When the show starts, Krang and his forces have a base called the Technodrome situated far below New York City. Later in the show, the Technodrome, and all of its inhabitants get forced into a portal that strands them all in Dimension X. This severely limits Krang’s options as any actions that he’d take would have to be interdimensionally coordinated. At some point, Krang manages to get the Technodrome back to Earth. In his next defeat though, Krang, Shredder and the goons are separated from the Technodrome as it’s pushed off to Dimension X, and Krang is left stranded on Earth. This gives rise to the more story cohesive seasons wherein the turtles are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of Krang and Shredder in order to prevent them from regaining control of the Technodrome. Is it flimsy? A little, but it is there, and that’s way more than I can say for some kid’s shows of the time.
Finally, I want to take a look into the mysterious grab bag of gags! This is the paragraph where I honorably mention things that don’t warrant their own paragraph, but that still warrant being mentioned. First on that list, fourth wall breaking. I did theater in high school, and we were always told never to break the fourth wall. We were told that it was the mark of bad acting/writing/directing to break the fourth wall, and that it brought your audience out of their illusion. TMNT did all the time! And it worked pretty well. Mostly, it was reserved for Raphael, but it certainly wasn’t limited to him by any means. Next up, the morals of the stories. We went through an awkward era of children’s programming where kid’s shows tried to be parents, and instill us with upstanding moral principles. They may still do that, I don’t know, but TMNT was right on that bandwagon. However, their morals were never overbearing, or overt. They usually ranged from things like, “Be excellent to each other,” to, “You’re cool the way you are.” Fairly harmless stuff, and lessons that are nice to hear from time to time. Last thing I want to look at are the countless dubbing/animation flubs in this show. If you watch an episode from say season 5 or 6, you see some incredible animation during the opening credits. Then you get to the rest of the show, and you wonder where all the budget went sometimes. This sort of thing happens all the time in this show. You’ll be watching and Leonardo will be going to free April with his katanas, but then all of a sudden, he’s Donatello! Or you’ll hear Raphael’s voice coming from Michelangelo's mouth. It’s all very confusing if you’re actually paying attention, but if you’re the drinking type, it could make a fun drinking game!
No comments:
Post a Comment