TMNT S02E09 - Splinter No More
Not gonna kid you, this is one of the best TMNT 87 episodes, bar none. Possibly THE best.
It starts with Michelangelo rushing through the sewers, while his bros anxiously await his return. It’s because of pizza, of course.
While the others dig in, Splinter comes in looking kind of downcast, and Michelangelo reveals that since Splinter doesn’t like pizza, he bought him a sushi tray instead.
This is a nice, subtle little moment for Michelangelo. Usually he’s just depicted as crazed about pizza, especially when it’s right there, but here he actually postpones eating it in order to try to make Splinter happy, which he went out of his way to do.
Also, I love the subtle tension they put in Splinter’s face and ears here.
Splinter thanks him but says he’s not hungry, and leaves. Donatello sensitively blames it on the fact that sushi is raw fish, before Michelangelo informs us that Splinter has been very depressed lately. Leonardo speculates that Splinter misses being human, and they start chatting about the idea of turning him back.
Of course, Donatello has an idea for how to do it: turn the remains of the mutagen into a spray antidote. Splinter literally gets teary-eyed when they tell him.
“To walk the streets, to feel the sunlight… how often have I dreamed of this.”
Also, Michelangelo is a sympathetic crier.
Splinter is a little torn about what to do, since being a rat mutant gives him the abilities that a rat has, which come in handy sometimes. But Leonardo posits that a human could investigate Shredder more easily than they could, disguises or no. Splinter agrees.
So Donatello makes the spray, and successfully transforms Splinter back into the human Hamato Yoshi.
He heads up to the surface for a walk, but as soon as he’s gone, the Turtles begin to show that they were much more anxious than they let on. Raphael, who urged him on wholeheartedly to “go for it!”, reveals unhappily that he doesn’t think Yoshi will return because he’s human now, and Michelangelo agrees. Leonardo initially says “He’ll be back,” but he doesn’t sound confident, and when the subject of Yoshi leaving them comes up, all he can say is “It’s his choice.”
This actually does a really good job of highlighting the emotional connections between these characters, because the Turtles were literally urging Yoshi to do something that they thought would break their hearts, just because it would be best for him.
The Turtles are moping when April calls to say that Rocksteady and Bebop are at the library… a strange place for them to visit. They pounce on this distraction.
It turns out Shredder is researching in an old book, for something he calls the “key to other realms.”
I’m going to assume it’s “Locke and Key” fanfiction. No, it’s actually a magic spell that will open portals to any dimension he wishes, so he can call through an army himself. Of course, he’ll keep Krang-senpai informed about all of this, and Krang never asks, “Why the hell do you need a spell when I have a dimensional portal?”
Meanwhile, Yoshi/Splinter is walking the streets, which he enjoys until some guy is an asshole to him, and a taxi driver is an asshole to him, and you see the pattern. People are assholes.
The Turtles arrive and immediately encounter Shredder, who rudely throws an explosive shuriken that blasts them unconscious, so Bebop and Rocksteady can kill them.
Fortunately Leonardo wakes up in the nick of time and manages to delay the two, which gives him and the other Turtles the chance to recover.
Rocksteady and Bebop flee, but Shredder dropped a page before he left, which Donatello finds. He figures out what Shredder’s planning to do at a particular subway station at midnight, which was once used by cultists in the 1920s.
Things start getting dramatic for Yoshi when he encounters some robbers in the park… who are wearing cheap luchador masks, for some reason.
But one of the thieves says, “What’s happening to him?” just as Yoshi starts feeling odd. It’s enough to scare the thieves away, and a quick glance in the water tells him that he’s started transforming back into a rat. In fact, he’s pretty far along, since he already has a full-length tail.
Fun fact: Krang actually rolls his eyes when Shredder says he’s found the key to other realms. And like I said, he doesn’t question why Shredder is doing this, possibly because he expects it to backfire. In fact, he seems to think it’s very likely, since he warns Shredder that botching the spell could lead to a dimension much worse than X. Like the Kardashians.
Yoshi declares that “I can delay no longer” before getting back to the sewers. Uh, why? It seems like a better strategy to climb a tree or hide in a bush until dark. But he dashes out into the street to get to a manhole cover, only to be blocked when a car stops over it.
And that leaves him in full view of the street, with dozens of people seeing and freaking out at the sight of the giant rat-man. It’s torches and pitchforks time!
Also, where did his shoes go?
The Turtles, meanwhile, have gotten over their distraction and are feeling depressed again about the loss of their master. There’s also a nice moment where Raphael worries about how Yoshi/Splinter is coping with the world up above, and concludes, “If he doesn’t come back, it’s because he doesn’t want to.” It’s another nice, subtle little moment.
They call April to get a videotape of an old special Channel 6 did on abandoned subway tunnels. They must have been really bored that day.
The episode so far has been pretty low on humor for an 87 episode; it’s had some bad puns and the odd metafictional joke, but overall it’s been pretty serious. There is a funny bit here, though, when Donatello puts Michelangelo in charge of telling April what’s going on, and all he can do is say, “Uh, well, it’s kind of like… well, y’see… well, if we don’t find this certain subway terminal, the world’s going to end at midnight. But no biggie.”
Meanwhile, Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop are heading to the temple, when Shredder is reminded that the Turtles live down there. So he calls Krang… who was showering.
I have so many questions that I know will never be answered. Like, why does he need to wash his robot body? Why is it wearing a shower cap when it has no hair? Why the towel if it has no genitals?
Shredder is calling to demand a Neuro Scrambler, which he apparently invented and then just put on the shelf with no plans to actually use it. It seems odd, because the Neuro Scrambler seems like it would be very useful; it apparently causes people to see each other as enemies, and he’s going to rework it so that it only works on mutants.
Meanwhile, Splinter heads down into a subway station, and the cops pursue him for the crime of… resembling a large rodent. I don’t think that’s an arrestable offense.
The Turtles are following Shredder when suddenly they start all having painful headaches.
Donatello loses his equilibrium and crashes into Raphael, and the two start insulting each other. When Leonardo tries to reestablish order, Michelangelo gets pissed off and shoves him, and Leonardo responds by drawing his swords.
Meanwhile, the only place Splinter could find to hide was right next to the tracks in a subway, so he’s facing being squished by an oncoming train.
And when he crawls out of the tunnel, he’s completely back to being a rat. “So, once again Yoshi is gone, and only Splinter remains. So be it.” Again, nice moment.
Then the cops come back and chase him. Again, I’m not sure WHY, because being a giant rat isn’t really a crime. Just look at the president.
Meanwhile, the Turtles are fighting each other in ways that you don’t usually see in this series, because they seem pretty intense and serious about hurting each other. Obviously none of them actually DOES hurt the others, but the music and animation handle this whole scene very, very seriously and without any slapstick. It was clearly made to convey that this is supposed to be disturbing and abnormal and violent, with a minimum of talking.
April can’t understand what’s going on, so she eventually asks what Splinter would think if he saw this. That manages to get into Leonardo’s head long enough for him to shake off some of the Neuro Scrambler’s control, and he urges the others to do the same.
April finds the Neuro Scrambler, and the Turtles destroy it. Obstacle cleared.
Shredder, meanwhile, has found a temple that looks absolutely nothing like a train station. For one thing, the tracks are covered with a dais, and there is no place for people to hang out away from the trains.
Splinter, meanwhile, has eluded the cops and smells some incense. That is enough to make him investigate.
The Turtles burst into the temple and are about to attack Shredder when suddenly Rocksteady and Bebop shoot them.
It’s midnight, so it’s time for Shredder to say the incantation. What he doesn’t know is that Splinter is sneaking up behind him, and yells “Stop!” just as he’s about to finish. So a portal is opened to Dimension Stop… and presumably it’s called that because it’s what everyone screams when they see what lives there. It’s also called Dimension HolyShit and Dimension PleaseGodNo.
Let’s just say that it’s a good thing Shredder is a large Japanese man rather than a Japanese girl. I’ve seen enough anime to know how these things would turn out.
Yep, it turns out those cultists were worshiping an elder…. well, not an elder god, but maybe one of an elder god’s intestinal parasites.
It also regenerates instantly, which means that the Turtles aren’t really able to hurt it. And it comes all the way through the portal, which means they’re stuck with it. The Turtles trick it into destroying the pillars that are holding up the ceiling, causing a massive cave-in that kills it. Presumably.
Back in the lair, the Turtles consume pizza and listen to Splinter’s tale of spending an afternoon topside.
And though the animation has been only fairly good in this episode, I think they did a good job with the Turtles’ faces in this scene. They aren’t quite settled on one expression or another, just as their emotions don’t seem entirely happy or sad.
I friggin’ love this episode. I just wish that this series had had more episodes like it, because it was a lot darker and more introspective than pretty much every other episode in the series, with a lot of good character insights and hints about how much Splinter and the Turtles care for each other.
To do so, it also has a relatively muted sense of humor - there are still jokes about pizza, Rocksteady and Bebop being dumb, and the aforementioned gag about Michelangelo summing up the apocalypse. Far more memorable is the scene where the Turtles are turning on each other with deadly intent, which goes almost silent except for the music and sound of weapons clashing. It’s wildly effective.
Also, I love the Lovecraftian blob monster at the end. It isn’t there for long, but it’s a pretty effective foe. Shredder and his mutants were actually pretty effective here as well, which led to the Turtles actually being knocked unconscious and almost dying twice, and being brain-scrambled as well.
And here we get to the lasting character development of the episode: Splinter’s change of heart regarding being a rat. In a previous episode he suggested that it was his karma to live as a rat, implying that it was a fate forced on him rather than something he would choose. But here, he says that he doesn’t regret that he changed back into a rat, and that he prefers to be a mutant animal after seeing how people treat each other. He also states that he doesn’t regret it because it allowed him to save the Turtles and the world from Shredder.
This is actually something that carries over into future episodes as far as Splinter’s development goes, with him being more and more accepting of his mutation, to the point of saying that Hamato Yoshi no longer exists. It actually goes to the point where, when the Turtles later get ahold of another retromutagen ray, they simply destroy it. No offer to Splinter to turn him human again, because they knew he didn’t want it anymore.
And at the other end of the spectrum, we see the demonstration of how the Turtles love Splinter: even though it hurts them, they still wholeheartedly encourage him to be human again with no hint of how they’re really feeling.
Seriously, this is an episodic show, but they did manage to weave in some clever character development, alongside some subtle writing and a very nice plot.
