Nicktoons TMNT Episode 24 Operation Break Out

By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on Saturday 7/20/2013. Keep in mind, these were our thoughts as they were back in 2013 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.

I was finally able to watch this thanks to some friends. I missed the original airing due to us being at the Steel City Con (oooh yeah!!!). First thing I have to say, if you already seen our video on the TMNT season finale trailer is that Paige totally called it. Even so this episode still has several surprises.

 'Operation Break Out' begins with Raph and Don about to spar. Raph says he'll go easy on him, but Don wants to impress April and says maybe he'll be the one going easy on him. At first it looks like Don took Raph down, but Raph gets up and hooks Don's hand with the prongs of his sai and treats him like a puppet. Splinter says it's enough.

Later on, Don is angry that Raph made a fool out of him in front of April. Raph asks if Don still thinks he has a shot with April. Don stutters and Raph says it's adorable... and sad.. and call it sadorable. Raph says if he wants to impress April, he should leave him out of it.

Meanwhile, April is on her computer and gets a weird email that plays some strange sounds. Don says it could be a secret message, and April wonders who could send her one. Later that night, Don decodes the message and finds out it's from April's father telling them that the Kraang are moving him to a new location. Don pinpoints the location the message was referring to and wants to tell the others. He then remembers Raph's words and decides to go off by himself instead.

Leo wakes up and notices that Don is missing. He then wakes everyone else up and asks if they've seen him. Mike asks if his dreams count, since he had a dream of him and Don as rodeo detectives.

The Turtles go to Donnie's lab and Mike finds April's computer. They playback the decoded message from April's father, and April also overhears it. The Turtles decide to head out.

Don finds the place, which turns out to be a car tune-up shop. He sneaks inside and easily defeats one of the Kraang... but others show up and start shooting at him.

As the Turtles leap rooftop to rooftop, Leo wonders why Don would head off by himself. Raph stops and says it's because he told him he doesn't have a shot with April. Leo is surprised and tells him that they know that, but they don't tell him that. Mikey tells Raph that the heart is a delicate thing.

At the car shop, Don dodges the gunfire and flips on top of a car. One of the blasts hits a control panel that drops the car down a hole along with Don.

At the lair, Splinter is training April's mind, even though she'd rather be out there helping the Turtles rescue her father. Splinter says the best way to help is stay in the lair. He tells her to close her eyes and to listen to the silence. When she does so, she hears a strange sound. They go down the sewers to follow the strange sound. Splinter ponders how she can hear a sound that he can not, and notices that he lost sight of her. April wanders deeper into the sewers following the strange sound.

Don sneaks deeper within the underground Kraang base. He tosses a T-Pod to distract one of the Kraang and soon knocks him out. He then uses the robot's head to open the secured door. Inside the control room, he finds the room where April's dad is held captive and opens all the doors. However, one of the doors was holding captive a dangerous monster.

As the lights start going out, the Kraang are concerned that the captured criminal has escaped and is out to find his weapons. The monster attacks them and even EATS ONE OF THEM and finds all his weapons. Now fully armed, the monster lets out a screeching roar.

 

Don finally finds April's father and he's happy he was able to decode the hidden message. As Don rescues April's father, the Kraang are watching this and say everything is going according to their plan. As they head out, they notice that all the doors are also open and they're all empty. Just then the monster appears in front them and starts to shoot him with all of his weapons. The monster tosses a bomb and Don grabs Mr. O'Neil out of the way before it explodes. As they run, Don says it must be some kind of salamander. Mr. O'Neil says it looks more like a newt. Don calls him the Newtralizer and tells him not to tell Mikey since he's sensitive about naming things.

 The others arrive at the tune up shop. Mikey gets in one of the cars and it accidently falls and activates the same hole Donnie fell into before. The Turtles jump in and soon find the door to the control room from before. They try to break it down with one of the broken Kraangdroids.

The Turtles start fighting off more of the Kraang. Meanwhile, Don and Kirby find themselves surrounded by a bunch of Kraang on one side and the Newtralizer on the other. As they start to shoot each other, Don grabs Kirby and accidentally locks both of them inside about prison cell.

April wanders deeper into the sewers and avoids some of the Kraang lurking around. She finds a strange white orb that makes the noises only she can hear. The Kraang are also looking for the orb, but April manages to hide herself with it before they can spot her.

The Turtles run into Newtralizer. Don is still figuring out how to open the prison door, but the other Turtles are blasted right through it. The Turtles regroup and see that Don has rescued Kirby O'Neil, but now they have to deal with the monster. The heroes run and hide inside the control room, and Mike is angry to find out that Don named the monster 'the Newtralizer' without him.

More Kraang come into the room and the fighting continues. Don figures the Newtralizer must be an enemy of theirs if they had him locked up, so he let them in. Newtralizer easily shoots down all the Kraang... but now he wants to take care of the Turtles as well. They run back to the car lift and Don uses Raph's sai to activate the control panel.

As the Turtles head back up to the car shop, Newtralizer hops up the same hole and starts attacking them. Leo tells everyone to split up and for Don to focus on getting Mr. O'Neil to safety. Raph goes to attack him, but the Newtralizer isn't defeated. He starts to chase Kirby and Don tosses a smoke bomb in his face so they can get away.

Mike hops on his head to distract him. As he starts to chase him, Leo and Raph come in to take him down, but he's still too strong for them and he sends them flying. As he gets ready to blast Leo and Raph, Mikey drops a car on him. Leo and Raph are worried, but Mikey gets out of the car safely saying he was ok since he was wearing his seat belt. As the Turtles leave, the Newtralizer is shown to still be alive and pissed.

At the lair, April is still studying the orb she found while Splinter is still curious as to why she can hear its sounds but he can't. The Turtles arrive with her dad. April is overjoyed and thanks them all. Raph says the one she should really thank is Donnie. He then hams it up as to how awesome and bad-ass Don was, but Don shuts him up before he goes any further. April gives Don a big hug and he faints. The others are happy for him and he gives them a thumbs up.

Meanwhile at TCRI, Shredder suddenly shows up and the Kraang tell him that his plan worked out. Shredder says the escaped monster of theirs almost ruined everything, but still, he's sure the Turtles will be taking Kirby O'Neil back to the lair with them and soon he will have his revenge.

 

At the lair, April hugs her father happily. Unknown to her however, is the father having a sinister look on his face.

 

 My Thoughts-

Wow. What an episode. There is a lot to say, but I'll just cover four main points here.

First off, I think Raph was totally douchey to Don in the beginning, especially making a fool out of him in front of April like that. However, Raph was just having fun and didn't realize how embarrassing it was to Don until he pointed it out. For the rest of the episode he felt guilty for Don feeling he had to go off by himself to prove himself. In the end Raph even hammed it up for April, making sure she knew Don was the hero of the day and was bad-ass doing it. It just shows that yeah, Raph might be a jerk and even a bit of a bully, but he does care about his brothers and even he realizes that he can take it too far sometimes and does his best to fix things.

Secondly, Don's crush for April is kinda sadodorable like Raph said. They ALL know he doesn't have a shot with April. They just choose to humor him. And yeah, he did rescue her father, and yeah, she did give him a big hug. But if he thinks she's gonna suddenly start asking him out on a date or something and start holding hands, he's in for a disappointment.

Thirdly, wow, the Newtralizer was quite a threat. He was armed with all kinds of goodies, including shoulder and wrist mounted guns, circular throwing blades and bombs. Even the orange markings on his chest kinda look like a skull. Basically the Punisher as a newt monster. And top it off, he's NOT a mutant, but some sort of alien criminal from Dimension X. One has to wonder what the hell he was doing there to begin with and why the Kraang would bring him to Earth with them if he was such a threat. And the dude ATE ONE OF THE KRAANG. Holy crap. Yeah, he did swallow him whole, he didn't exactly chew as he heard the poor thing suffered in pain... but he was still swallowed whole. In a kids show. On Saturday morning. The show surprises me.

 

I do have to wonder why many people before thought that the Pulverizer was going to be mutated into this guy? And this was before we saw him turn into Mutagen Man, and even then, people thought THAT was gonna be the episode in which he would turn into the Newtralizer. There was no way that the mutation would have somehow turned that goofball into a total bad-ass to be taken seriously. The Newtralizer would have been tripping over his own weapons if that was Timmy. I do have to say, I was never expecting to him to be an alien though. My only disappointment was he wasn't able to talk, and could only growl and roar. I heard he has a voice actor lined up for a future appearance but they better sure as hell explain why he couldn't talk in this episode.

And finally... Paige called it. When was saw that season finale trailer we were confused as to why there was a split second shot of Kirby attacking Michealangelo in the lair. Paige (and I'm sure some of you others out there) determined that maybe the Kraang brainwashed him and let Donnie save him so that he could attack in the lair. Some clever Technodromers already pointed some real quick scenes that showed some kind of homing beacon device on the back of his neck. Also others questioned why Donnie never wondered when or how Kirby was able to send the message in the first place if was locked up in that cell? I guess cause he was too busy trying to keep his promise to April. There's also the matter that Newtralizer also seemed focused on attacking Kirby.... could he be a Kraandroid impostor?

I also liked seeing Shredder finally work together with the Kraang, as in ALL of them, and not just that one guy they captured. I do wonder where his minions are. It woulda been cool to see Dogpound and Fishface with him, although I know Karai would have been against working with them.

Finally I want to end this article with saying that on my trip to the Steelcity Con I was able to run into two fellow Technodromers, mysterycolor and tmntgoldcoin. I just happened to hear them talk about the forum and told them that I go there too, and here we are. That was actually kinda cool.

 

 

Modern Day Update-

It was cool getting to talk to those two. It seems they both left the Technodrome Forums around 2013. Sadly it was a much friendly place back then and weekly episodes of the then new 2012 TMNT series as well as the IDW comics kept the discussion a lot more livelier. 

Sadly the Drome is a shadow of its former self nowadays and pretty much hanging by a thread. With the more current incarnations of the Turtles being nothing to write home about and not enough news about them elsewhere (other than TMNT Shredder's Revenge and the Cowabunga Collection, but those games has come and gone by now), we'll see just how more life the old forum has left.