By Mark Rodriguez
Originally written on Saturday, February 2, 2013. Keep in mind, these were our thoughts as they were back in 2012 when the show was new and was written shortly after seeing the episodes after their initial broadcast. At the time we had zero way of knowing what to expect.
There is a lot to say about this episode. We've seen Leo and Raph fight and argue before. Most of the times it's because Raph wants to do his own thing and not take orders from Leo, or is sick of having Leo as the leader. But we have never seen Leo say 'you know what? YOU be the leader!' and then have Raph actually try to lead the team. Oh, and this episode introduces Karai. Oh, and this episode also has Snakeweed coming back. This is gonna be a busy episode so let's get started.
'New Girl in Town' starts with the Turtles chasing Snakeweed down the streets. Snakeweed is kidnapping people and Leo suggests that he is too strong to stop on the ground and they should go to the rooftops for a higher ground advantage. Raph argues that they should just run after him. As Leo and Raph argue, the mutant plant escapes. The two argue and Leo finally storms off and lets Raph be the leader, and Raph insists he can do much better.
On his own and angry, Leo is suddenly attacked by the Foot. He easily takes down a few Foot Ninja, but suddenly a female Foot Ninja appears named Karai. Leo is ready to fight her, but as Karai unsheathes her blade, she releases blinding powder that hits Leo's eyes. Karai strikes him down, but leaves instead of finishing him off.
Meanwhile back at the lair, Raph, Don and Mike try to work on finding Snakeweed's hideout. Leo shows up as Don discovers where the plant monster might be hiding, but Raph doesn't want to share that information with him. Leo doesn't care and lets his brothers do what they want.
The Turtles head off and find Snakeweed's lair and discover giant plant pods full of the kidnapped people. Don says Snakeweed must be trying to make fertilizer out of them. The Turtles cut the victims free and hide from sight as the humans head off to safety. Snakeweed shows up, angry that the Turtles set his captives free and starts to attack them.
Leo is sulking at home watching another episode of 'Space Heroes' in which Captain Ryan falls for a female villain. I just love how these episode always correspond with whatever is happening to the Turtles. Splinter asks where the others are and Leo says he doesn't know. Leo also complains about the burden of being the leader when he's always being questioned, ignored and the others just do what they want. Splinter tells him that being the leader isn't about getting respect or gratitude, it's about doing what needs to be done. It's not the burden, it's the fact that he must carry it. Leo heads off to find his brothers.
As Leo tries to remember where Don said Snakeweed's hideout was, Karai shows up and wants a rematch. As they fight, Leo says Karai might not be as bad as she thinks she is since she didn't kill him when she had the chance. She says the reason she kept Leo is because she find him interesting and is bored of Shredder always ranting about revenge and vendettas all the time.
Karai gets Leo in a choke hold and says Leo is not as good as he thinks he is and might want to cut loose and live his own life. Leo angrily throws her off him and she asks if she hit a nerve. Karai invites him to meet with her at a tower later that night and heads off.
Elsewhere, the fight against Snakeweed is going horribly for the Turtles since they don't really know what to do. Raph keeps telling everyone to keep hitting the plant mutant on the head, but that form of attack isn't working against him. Mikey gets knocked out during the fight leaving Don and Raph alone in the fight. With Mike unconscious and Don being left alone to fend off Snakeweed, Raph panics and doesn't know what to do. Don manages to tangle up Snakeweed's vines, buying him and Raph time to escape with Mikey. As they run, Snakeweed shoots green globs at the turtles, as if they were homing devices. He yells out that he'll be coming for them.
Leo goes to April for advice on this new girl he's interested in. April says he's crazy for trying to go out with her because she's with the Foot Clan. Leo decides to go see her anyway. Elsewhere, Shredder is angry that Karai let Leonardo go. She says he escaped her grasp, but he isn't buying it. Shredder threatens that the next time she sees Leonardo, she better kill him. Karai says she will, and calls her father.
Splinter sees Don and Raph watching over Mikey and ask where Leo is. Raph explains what happened and now understands the heavy burden that Leo carries as the leader. Raph heads off to find Leo.
Karai finds Leo at the tower she mentioned and she shows him the sword of the legendary Miyamoto Musashi. Karai plans to steal it with Leonardo's help, but the Turtle isn't up for it. This sparks another fight between them just as Raphael shows up. Raph demands to know why Leo is 'holding hands with a member of the Foot Clan.' Karai smirks as Leo tries to explain, but suddenly Snakeweed shows up telling them he would find them.
Karai stands aside and watches as Leo and Raph try to fight with Snakeweed. The mutant plant captures the Turtles and are strangling them. Leo begs Karai for help, and she smirks and tosses her blade near him. Leo uses it to cut himself free. Leo and Raph manage to freeze Snakeweed with a tank of liquid nitrogen, and Raph smashes him into ice cubes while yelling out 'BOOYAKASHA!!!' which I assume was in the name of Mikey. Raph apologizes for his arguing and accepts Leo as the leader. Leo accepts and they head home. Meanwhile, the frozen bits of Snakeweed thaw out, showing that he will return someday.
At home, Leo waves pizza in front of Mikey and he soon wakes up. Everyone is happy that things are alright. Raph then talks to Leo alone and asks him what the deal is with Karai. Leo says that she isn't as evil as she seems and is eager to see her again, caressing the sword Karai gave him. Raph reminds him that she's with the Foot Clan and Leo remarks that nobody's perfect.
My Opinions-
Wow... where do I even begin with this episode? I guess let's start with Leo and Raph. They've done this dance before several times. We've seen Leo and Raph argue in the first Turtles movie, they had a small fist fight in the 'Return to New York' storyline of the Mirage comics, and of course we had that big fight in the TMNT 2007 CGI movie. However, we never saw Leo just drop the role of leadership on Raph and run off, nor have ever seen Raph actually lead the team.
In 'Take me to your leader' of the 80's cartoon, Leo left the team since he thought he was failing as a leader, but noone wanted to take over the role. The TMNT movie also had Leo leave the team to train in South America... and even then the Turtles went off to do their own things without any of them taking over as leader. Here we finally saw Raph lead the team and learn the hard way that it's not as easy as it looks. And yes, as annoying as Mikey is, we see how much everybody does care about him when he was knocked out by Snakeweed.
As to Snakeweed... his return was sudden and out of nowhere. Unlike the Metalhead episode where the Turtles started the episode already fighting the Kraang, the Kraang have already been established as steady villains that we would see often. In that case, as well as the Foot, or even Dogpound, it wouldn't be too shocking to see an episode start out with the Turtles fighting them. Just starting the episode with them chasing Snakeweed down the street is as random as starting an episode with Leo and Leatherhead fighting Falco and Spider Bytes. We're missing a bit of the story there.
As for Snakeweed himself, it seems he took the time to learn more about his powers since his first appearance. It's weird seeing him put people into pods to turn them into fertilizer... which insinuates that he lives off of eating people... wow. As for him using those green globs as some sort of homing device to find the Turtles later.... wow... Raph was lucky he decided to head out to find Leonardo, or else Snakeweed would have attacked him in the lair. We haven't learned much about Snakeweed other than his new powers, but he obviously hates the Turtles for turning him into a plant monster to begin with. I do like the fact that he is a powerful monster to fight that easily requires at least 2 of the Turtles to take him down.
I was kinda disappointed that Karai didn't jump in the fight when he appeared. She didn't seem all that surprised that there was a giant talking plant monster, and Snakeweed completely ignored her and focused his rage on Raph and Leo. Yeah, I know he has no real beef with her, but bad guys usually don't give a damn. They show up to attack the heroes and anyone else unlucky enough to happen to be hanging with them at the time. Karai had no reason to get involved either, but I know if he'd attack her she would have been quick to retaliate. Yeah, she did throw her sword at Leo to help him out... but I would have loved to have seen a Karai/Leo/Raph temporary team-up to blur the lines even further and let the fans continue to wonder if who's side she's really on.
Now for the main topic at hand. Karai. I already mentioned how her new appearance knocked me back in my colab video with Dansleforet on Youtube, so I won't mention that so this article doesn't go too off track. I will throw in however, that Paige, as well as many other TMNT fans thought she looked like a monkey in that promo-pic Nick released. Her appearance is as surprising and random as Snakeweed's, despite the episode being titled after her. This episode just randomly tosses her into the scene as yet another member of the Foot out on the lookout for the Turtles. It's never explained where she came from, or if Shredder had her flown in from Japan to help him deal with this. It's just out of the blue. It's almost as if Shredder had a third mutant on his team besides Dogpound and Fishface and was never explained. I mean, where did she come from? Did she fly with Shredder to New York? Has she been lurking around the whole time?
On other matters, once again Karai is thrust into the role of being ranked under the Shredder, this time being his daughter. Many people forget this, but in the comics Karai was the leader of the whole Japanese branch of the Foot (and old enough to have her own teenage daughter no less)... while Shredder only led the New York city branch. Once Shredder was killed by Leonardo, the Foot split into groups and started killing each other for power until Karai flew in from Japan to clean that mess up. That said, Karai had never really interacted with Oroku Saki in the comics. Of course in other media, Shredder is still alive and a recurring villain, so whenever Karai appears it is as his underling. She is an adopted daughter in the 2K3 series, she is the grand daughter in the IDW comics, and even though she led the Foot in the TMNT movie, the back of her action figure packaging hinted that she was also his daughter in hopes of bringing Shredder back for the sequel that was never made. And yes... there are rumors floating everywhere that there's a possibility that Karai is actually Splinter's daughter Miwa that Shredder for whatever reason raised and trained as his own.... but I am not about to open that can of worms.
It's interesting to see how she seems interested in Leonardo, but it's hard to tell how much is real and how much is trickery to let his guard down. I mean, had Leo decided 'the hell with the good guy stuff' and help her steal that sword, would she have honestly enjoyed having fun with him... or would she turn around and stab him in the shell the moment he let his guard down? Although many fans saw Leo and Karai having something going on in the 2K3 series... I never really saw it as anything more than respect or some kind of friendship. I do admit Leo was let down when Karai couldn't let go of her loyalty for the Shredder in that version, but I never saw it as them going out or whatever. This Nicktoons version shows actual interest between the characters... probably due to them both being teenagers. Karai inviting Leo to meet on a tower could count as a date... and Leo telling April about it is just like anybody telling their best friend that they have a crush on someone.
The final issue I wanna mention before I finish this article is the little joke Karai did about Shredder. For a while, fans in the Technodrome forum have wondered what exactly DOES Shredder do all day besides sitting in his EVIL THRONE ROOM and bark orders and threats to his henchmen? We know Shredder in the 80's cartoons hangs out at the Technodrome, putting up with Bebop, Rocksteady and Krang as he watches April's TV news reports all day hoping to come up with next week's evil scheme. The Mirage and 2K3 Shredders were a business men in the eyes of the public. But what does Nick2012 Shredder do all day? Based on Karai's line of Shredder always ranting about revenge this and vendetta that.... I guess he really does do nothing all day but sit in his EVIL THRONE ROOM all day and bark orders at his henchmen.
-Modern Day Edit-
The only thing I'd like to add was that I actually to meet Kelly Hu, the voice of Karai at the 2019 Steelcity Con. That was cool, and she was awesome. We got a picture taken and an she gave me an autograph.
Comments
Post a Comment
Leave your thoughts on this article!