Nicktoons TMNT Episode 31- Mikey gets Shellacne

 By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on Sunday, November 17, 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.

Teenagers usually get in trouble, get grounded and get zits. We've seen the Turtles do all sort of immature teenage antics in this version minus the acne, so let's make an episode about Mikey getting zits and let the hilarity ensue!! Sounds like a random throw-away filler episode right? Actually this episode not only brought back some characters people were asking about, it also ended with a totally unexpected surprise. Let's take a look.

The episode opens with Leo, Don and Raph trying, and failing miserably at making breakfast. They wonder where Mikey is since he's usually the one to make it. Mikey is still in bed and feeling sick today. He then looks into the mirror and sees his face covered in zits and screams. Don studies him and says the zits will continue to spread until he basically becomes a giant zit and will pop. Mikey locks himself in his room, not wanting to come out until whenever these zits go away.

 
Meanwhile, we see Karai sitting on Shredder's throne, being in charge. Chris and Xever walk into the room, and Chris trips since his tail got caught in the automatic door and falls. Xever teases him and Chris regrets having gone from a ninja master to a huge lumbering lummox. Karai demands respect from them and wants someone to help her maintain her robot Foot Soldiers. She needs someone easy to manipulate and intimidate into working for them, which means Baxter Stockman. Chris reminds her of how he tried to kill them in that maze of doom, but Karai sends them to capture him anyway.

 Back to the lair, Mikey tries to hide from his brothers and Raph pokes fun at him. Splinter tells him to stop and consider what humans would think of Raph if they saw him. Splinter then senses that Mikey is hiding something from them. Mikey finally comes clean. He admits he found some 'cool cream' in Don's lab and put some on himself to make him a cooler and better person, since the Turtles disrespect him all the time. Don explains it was failed batch of Retro-Mutagen that said 'cooled cream'. Mikey said it should have been labeled better, and Don flips the bottle around to show all the warning signs.

Now that Don knows what caused Mikey's condition, he can do something about it. He might still pop like a zit, but now they know it will happen in 3 hours. To make the antidote, Don needs a molecular centrifuge, and the only one they know of is in the remains of the TCRI building they blew up.

Meanwhile, Dogpound is running around, tracking Stockman by his scent. He continues to complain about his current condition and wants to be human again. He finally gets a scent and follows it. The Turtles search through the remains of TCRI for the centrifuge. They find Baxter in there, and once discovered he sends Mousers after our heroes. It seems he was planning to create a mutant army of his own, and among the items he was using he does indeed have the centrifuge they need. Dogpound arrives and starts fighting the Turtles. Baxter takes this as a chance to escape, but Mikey gives chase. Dogpound grabs the scientist and punches a wall down causing part of the building to cave in. Mikey pushes the others out of the way, but the bad guys are gone now.

At home, Mikey is feeling worse, and looking worse. Don says he has to stay safe since at this stage, if one of his zits pops, it might cause a chain reaction that will make him explode even sooner. The Turtles try to figure out where Dogpound could have taken Baxter. Mikey suggests Baxter's old lab, but everyone dismisses it and says it doesn't make sense. While the other discuss about possibly checking out the TCRI building again, or the Bradford dojo, Mikey decides he isn't going to wait around until he pops and goes to Baxter's lab himself.

In the lab, Baxter shows Dogpound the giant vat of Mutagen he has at his disposal. Xever arrives and is surprised Bradford found Baxter first. He asks why they don't take him to Karai right away, and Bradford is convinced he can turn the human again. Baxter basically says he can to save his own ass, and Xever says he wants to become human again as well. Dogpound slips a collar on Baxter with small mutagen bottles on it. It's on a timer, so unless he doesn't find a cure fast enough for them, the bottles will explode and cover him in Mutagen.
 

 

Mikey sneaks around and overhears this conversation. He tries to steal the centrifuge with his chain, but Dogpound catches him. Mikey's zits are huge now and very sensitive, so he tries his hardest to fight Dogpound while avoid being touched. Mikey jumps to a platform above the Mutagen vat and Dogpound jumps after him. Dogpound's weight destroys the area they were standing on and Mikey jumps out for a plank to grab onto. Dgpound doesn't make the jump and is holding onto Mikey's leg for dear life. The turtle has no choice but to smack Dogpound off him and make him fall into the huge vat of Mutagen

Dogpound leaps out and is now mutated into a wolf covered in spikes and exposes sharp bones. Mikey calls him Rahzar now. As Rahzar, Bradford finds himself to be a lot faster and more agile and feels like a ninja. master again. Rahzar tosses Mikey against a wall, but our sensitive turtle manages to use his chains to stop himself from crashing against the wall. Just as Rahzar leaps out at him, his attack is blocked by a tossed Sai as now the other Turtles have entered the scene.

 

Mikey tries to grab the centrifuge, but now Fishface is after him. Baxter also calls out for more Mousers as well. As the fight continues, Mikey suddenly gets an idea. He tricks Rahzar into lunging towards one of the control panels in the machinery that run the place. Mikey gets out of the way and Rahzar jams his claws into the control panel and electrocutes himself. Mikey teases that he just got Shell-Shocked. The Turtles take to the high ground and Don hits the sprinklers, making it rain so the Mousers, Baxter, Fishface and Rahzar all get zapped and are all defeated. Mikey laments that they couldn't get the centrifuge they needed, but Raph reveals that he has it, and everyone gets away.

Karai shows up and wakes Baxter up, telling him that he works for her now. At the lair, Don finishes the antidote and pours it all over acne pads, which Mikey proceeds to quickly rub all over himself. The antidote worked fine and he's back to normal. Splinter walks in and commends Mikey on his resourcefulness. Mikey then turns and brags to the others about he how he was right about Baxter being in his old lab, but Don suddenly says he sees a zit on Mikey's nose. Mikey realizes it was a trick to scare him and shut him up, and he angrily lunges out at him.

My Thoughts- 

Wow, once again there's a lot to say about this episode. First off, the big surprise that this was actually an important episode that moved the plot forward rather than just a pointless filler ep. The main plot with Mikey and the zits was interesting, but also pretty gross, I guess due to the detail of CGI animation. The zits got grosser and grosser-looking as the episode progressed as he had them on his tongue, popping out of his shell (as in the shell looked cracked, yikes!) and by the end of the episode he could barely see since they were all around his eyes too. And ugh.. they bounced and quivered with every move he made. Too much detail there guys... way too much sickening detail. As gross as it is, it did add extra urgency in the fight against Dogpound, since at that point, one punch from the dogman would have ended Mikey.

On the subject of Mikey, I have to agree with fellow Technodromer 'BabyTurtles' as once again Mikey gets treated like crap, is ignored by his brothers and has to prove himself. He has already proven himself to be useful to the team in Parasitica and Invasion of the Squirrelanoids. He doesn't have to ALWAYS prove he's important to the team each featured ep he gets. It make it look like he lacks confidence, or it makes his brothers look like jerks who don't consider him cool enough to be at their level and he's always going to be stuck trying to earn the right to be an equal. When he mentioned Baxter's lab, everyone brushed him aside as if the possibility of that was zero because Mikey thought of it. It's like 'shut up son, adults are talking'. Seeing his life on the line, he took matters into his own hands and went for it. I like how he has moments where he gets serious and focused and the jokes stop. But yeah... we hope the next Mikey ep won't have him trying to 'prove himself'' to his brothers. He's already shown to be a valued member of the team. Stoppit and move on.

Then we have the return of the classic villains Dogpound, Fishface and Baxter, which many were wondering when or if they would even be featured in season 2, despite them being in the slightly-revised intro. Here we finally got some character development for Bradford as he hates being a dog and wants to be human again. Chris and Xever got screwed in different ways when they mutated. While Xever needs a breathing device and robot legs to move around, he is still able to fight with his sweet Capoeira style regardless. Bradford can breathe the air just fine, but he went from being a skillful ninja master to being a powerhouse that just swings his arms around. And he actually mentioned that in this episode, basically agreeing with many of the viewers' main complaint about being Dogpound.
 

I did like the part when they wanted Baxter to make them human and Xever mentioned he wanted to 'live as a man, love like a man'. I'm like... dude... did that cartoon show just imply that Xever missed getting laid?

Baxter didn't get mutated in this episode, despite having that Mutagen collar around his neck. I'm surprised that during the fight it didn't time-out, or one of the vials didn't burst when he got electrocuted. With all that happened by the episode's climax, there wasn't really room or time to deal with a mutant Baxter too.

And finally.... whoa dude.. I never saw it coming. I was super-surprised when Bradford fell into the vat of Mutagen. I didn't know what to expect when he jumped out of it. I almost expected him to return to his human form. And wow, he became this show's version of Rahzar. I don't believe we have ever seen a mutant be mutated again into something else. Sure, the Turtles have suffered with some changes due to their mutation not being stable, or other things in the Red Sky eps of the 80's show and live-action movie. But never this. We've never seen a mutant get exposed to Mutagen and be mutated into something else. And hey, he became a mutant wolf named Rahzar. Whoa.

The design is pretty slick, I'm just not sure I like the exposed bones, especially where the leg comes off the hip, his limbs are so skinny, he could break them just by falling down that stairs. Now he's a faster and deadlier threat and we'll see what comes of it. And now we have another version of Rahzar to add to the list.

We of course have Rahzar from TMNT II Secret of the Ooze in which he was a mutated into a wolf, but the Ooze used was tampered with by Professor Perry, so he has the mentality of a baby. Although seriously Shredder, it took the TMNT 15 years to grow to their current states. You don't expect Tokka and Rahzar to be 'quoting MacBeth' after being mutated for a week of so.

Rahzar (and Tokka) actually appeared in an episode of the OT, though they spoke normally and has normal intelligence. I would honestly NOT call them villains since they were recently mutated animals and all they were doing were looking for food. Tokka got captured by a mutant hunter, and even after he got defeated, it was never made clear if Tokka was also released and if Rahzar was waiting for him. Geez guys, way to take way his only buddy ever.

 

 

Turtles Forever had the 2K3 Shredder and Karai inject their Foot Ninja with Mutagen, and one of them turned into a mutant wolf, while another became a mutant Turtle. Similar to most 2K3 mutants (what little there are anyways), Rahzar was just a mindless beast and was mostly shown in the scene when he and Tokka attacked the Battle Shell.

 

 

And now finally we have the 2013 version. Former martial arts master with a chain of dojos throughout the city (even though nobody seemed to care about his sudden disappearance) turned into a dogman and Shredder's lead enforcer for rival gangs and such. Now he's going to be a wolf mutant who is as fast and agile as he used to be. Paige asked a good question.

 Shredder left for Japan and told Karai that she wasn't allowed to mess with the Turtles until he came back. So how will Shredder react upon seeing Baxter with them, as well as Rahzar when he comes back?

The new fact that mutants can be mutated a second time if hit with Mutagen opens up a lot of possibilities now with new and old mutants alike. For example, will Xever also go for being mutated twice?

Overall a fun-filled episode full of the return of Chris and Xever. Mikey (once again) proved himself important to the team. Like I said before, my only real complaint was the uneccesary extreme detail on Mikey's zits. Just no guys, we did not need to see that. Great ep after all, and the episode has way more stuff than 'what's on the tin'. Can't wait to see what happens next.