Nicktoons TMNT Episode 44- Pizza Face

 By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on Sunday, May 18, 2014. 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.

The Turtles are always eating pizza, but now the pizza bites back. The Turtles, or rather, Mikey face yet another re-imagining of a classic 80's character. Though to be fair, this guy was never actually in the classic cartoon, but the action figure is infamous. Let's see ho Mikey does against Pizza Face!

The episode opens with April and Irma walking together and deciding to check out a movie. April's tPhone goes off and says she has to leave for her date with Casey. Irma's not buying it and is sure she's off to see her secret friends. Just then the pizzaboy runs into Irma (on his bike no less... and Irma is uninjured... she's made of strong stuff). The pizzaboy is freaking out saying something is after him and drives off, dropping a pizza box. April says now she has free pizza... for Casey's date. Irma doesn't think it's a good idea but April walks off. She gets a funny feeling from the pizza and tosses it. The pizza starts talking to April, telling her to eat it. When she goes to check on it, it jumps out of the box and attacks her.

The Turtles are watching that Voltronzinger Z anime again as their Megazord thing attacks a 3 headed monster with a double-sided flame sword. Donnie is worried that he can't contact April. Mikey is even more worried that he can't seem to contact any pizzeria in town. Leo says if he's so serious about it then he should just make his own pizza. Mikey goes into the kitchen and makes a pizza.... with super hot sauce... sardines... worms... marshmallows and so forth... and hey Ice Cream Kitty throws some cheese pops into it too.

The pizza smells disgusting and looks even worse and only Mikey is able to eat it. Just then there's an ad for Antonio's Pizzeria on tv, saying it's the only one in town, and everyone in the commercial looks brainwashed. Leo thinks it's weird, but after seeing Mikey's pizza, he decides to order out anyway. Raph sends Mikey to get the pizza and warns him not to eat it.

The pizza guy arrives, acting brainwashed and tells Mikey that 'with Antonio's the first one is free'. As the other Turtles train, Mikey fights the urge to eat the pizza. He then hears the pizza calling out to him, wanting him to eat it. The pizza is alive and flies all over the place, trying to get Mikey to eat it. Mikey breaks out the nunchucks and keeps smacking it away. By the times the others arrive, they just see Mikey rolling around on the floor with the pizza.... Naturally the pizza won't talk in front of the others, so they just walk off disappointed. The pizza tells Mikey that they'll never believe him, so he dies happily. Mikey decides to go to Antonio's and 'get his money back'. Yes, we know he got it for free...

 

Mikey arrives at the pizzeria and sees the usual stock people walking around, acting like zombies... and April is among them. Mikey takes some pics with his tPhone.. but all he gets are pics of his eyeballs. More people come at Mikey, but they have pizza on their faces. He tries to avoid them and he gets smacked around by notVic, (yes they re-used Spider Byte's fatass human model with pizza on his face) and tossed onto a building. Mikey uses a smoke bomb to vanish before he gets captured by the zombie pizza people.

At home Mikey tries to tell the others, but they all just finished eating pizza and are acting like zombies. Even Splinter! More pizza boxes are lying around and all the pizzas start flying around and attacking him. Mikey defeats all of the evil pizza but notices that the other Turtles and Splinter are now gone.

 

Later on, one of the pizzas wakes up and finds itself being strapped to a chair. Mikey shows up with shades on and interrogates him, demanding to know who's in charge of all this. The pizza won't talk, so Mikey threatens to bake it in the furnace. The pizza talk and tells him the flashback that Antonio saw the Mutagen Rain and decides to use it as a new topping.... (dude... wtf?). When he got exposed to it, he mutated into a giant pizza, and all the other pizzas came to life. Mikey asks if his face looks like pizza, and when told it does, he decides to name this new guy Pizza Face. Mikey asks what Pizza Face will do with the zombie people and the pizza tells him he'll wrap them up in a giant calzone and eat them. Mikey will go stop him, and pops the talking pizza in the freezer... where a hungry Ice Cream Kitty awaits...

 

 

Mikey pretends to be a zombie to get past the people and sneaks into the restaurant. The people wrap April in giant calzone and they hang her upside down along with all the other calzone people as Antonio prepares for a big feast. When asked what to do with the 'green ones', Antonio says they must have also have gotten the 'secret ingredient' and spits pizza on their faces, making them his soldiers. Mikey jumps into the scene and calls the guy Pizza Face, and he likes the name. He then sends the Turtles and Splinter after Mikey.

Mikey somehow gets past the Turtles and Splinter, but Pizza Face spits a meatball that pins Mikey up against a wall. Mikey then gets hungry and knows what he has to do. He eats his way out the meatball trap and dives into Pizza Face. Pizza Face swallows him but Mikey eats him from the inside out. After devouring his nemesis, Mikey lets out a power belch. Everyone turns around and walks off, and Pizza Face, nor reduced to just a regular pizza slice explains that they'll all just go back home and forget everything that happened in the morning. The pizza slice then knocks out Mikey.

Mikey wakes up in his bed and the Turtles and April tell him he was just having a weird dream. Mikey goes back to sleep thinking maybe all of this was just a dream. The Pizza Face slice is hiding in a pizza box in the room and says 'dream? I don't think so!'.

My Thoughts-

Another filler episode... but a funny filler episode nonetheless. I still wish Mikey wasn't that huge of an idiot... I'm sure 80's Mikey would never ask for his money back from a pizza he got for free....

But still, a funny episode, especially for the whole interrogation scene, that was just my favorite part, an ending it with an exorcist-style Ice Cream Kitty was just perfect. I know the poor kitty is reduced to freezer cameos... but this was his best one ever.

Not much to say about the episode other than that. We see all the stock people we've been seeing in the other episodes show up, most notably the re-use of Vic's model. And it's weird to know that Antonio, the guy who's face has been on every single pizza box in this series is no Pizza Face. I wonder if they'll bother to redesign the boxes after this.

As for Pizza Face himself, he was just a bunch of goofy Italian pizza chef stereotype cheesy goodness. Love the voice, and the whole Italian song scene as he sang about the eating the people as Calzones. And he actually liked the new name 'because I have a face and it looks like-a pizza!'.

 

Now the classic 80's Pizza Face was actually a crazy pizza chef that baked himself in a Retromutagen oven.... (....dafuq???) and the Turtles pulled him out before he was fully baked... so now he's even more insane... and works for Shredder. He was never on the show, which stood out since he was one of the few of that particular wave that didn't make it (even Ace Duck had a cameo)... but then I guess even the Fred Wolf show wasn't silly enough that they would have Shredder sic a crazy chef on the Turtles. And honestly for someone 'half pizza, half pizza chef', he didn't really look like a mutant... just a slob with a pegleg stuck on a pizza tray... I know nowadays he ranks as one of the weirdest, grossest and just plain wtf-est TMNT action figure of the classic line alongside Muckman and Mutagen Man... I do wonder how well he sold back in the day. It is cool how the show is looking back and using characters from that era that never made it into the actual cartoon or any other media, like comics or videogames.