I've felt for a while that there seemed to be a pretty large imbalance between how often each Turtle gets the spotlight in the 2012 cartoon, so I made a chart to see if there were actually grounds for that. I gave them 1 point if they were the lone spotlighted Turtle and .5 if they shared it with one of their brothers:
Donnie:
Metalhead - 1
Monkey Brains - 1
The Pulverizer - 1
The Pulverizer Returns - 1
Operation: Break Out - .5
Mutagen Man Unleashed - 1
Target: April O'Neil - 1
Metalhead Rewired - 1
The Manhattan Project - .5
The Lonely Mutation of Baxter Stockman - 1
Total: 9
Raph:
Turtle Temper - 1
Never Say Xever - .5
The New Girl in Town - .5
The Alien Agenda - .5
The Cockroach Terminator - 1
Baxter's Gambit - 1
Operation: Break Out - .5
Invasion of the Squirrelanoids - .5
Slash and Destroy - 1
The Good, the Bad, and Casey Jones - 1
Total: 7.5
Leo:
Never Say Xever - .5
Panic in the Sewers - 1
The New Girl in Town - .5
The Alien Agenda - .5
Enemy of My Enemy - 1
Showdown - 1
Follow the Leader - 1
Fungus Humongous - 1
The Manhattan Project - .5
Total: 7
Mikey:
New Friend, Old Enemy - 1
It Came From the Depths - 1
Parasitica - 1
Invasion of the Squrrielanoids - .5
Mikey Gets Shellacne - 1
Total: 4.5
All:
Rise of the Turtles
I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman
The Gauntlet
Mousers Attack
TCRI
The Mutation Situation
Mazes and Mutants
Other:
I, Monster
Karai's Vendetta
The Kraang Conspiracy
Of Rats and Men
Feel free to offer feedback on some you disagree with, but here's my thinking on a few:
Donnie - I was tempted to give him all the credit for O:BO, but it does feel like a look at both Donnie and Raph. I considered giving Donnie the full credit for TMP, too, but I think I'm alone in feeling that way. It at least seemed fair to split it with Leo since he was clearly the Turtle most focused on from that side of the story. ...no one would fight me on TLMoBS, right?
Leo - Showdown was a toughie. I thought about counting it under "all" or splitting it between him and Donnie, but... well... I don't know. I'm still a bit torn. I kinda wanna put it down for both Leo and Donnie.
Raph - I think these are all pretty self explanatory.
Mikey - Oh you poor, poor boy...
All - TCRI and TMS feel like Donnie episodes to me, but I'm thinking I might be alone in that, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and listed them under "all".
Other - I,M and ORaM feel pretty solidly like Splinter episodes. KV and TKC both end up feeling kind of on the Donnie side to me since they feature April, but I felt it wasn't enough to put them there.
It seems my thinking that it felt Donnie-centric wasn't unfounded. I'd like to point out that he has a lot more episodes all to himself - 8 vs Leo and Raph's 5 and Mikey's 4.
But WOW. I was not expecting Mikey to be THAT much behind the other 3! That's... really depressing. His total is HALF of Donnie's. Just... wow.
Think you could try to be a little more balanced, Nick? Hm? At least let Mikey catch up a bit!
