The back half of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Season 6 (1992, CBS) has some episodes with fully developed sitcom-esque plots and life lessons for kids, and others that seem cranked out in less than the episode’s 23-minute length. As with any batch of eight “TMNT” episodes, it’s a mixed bag.
Wise man say …
Lead writer David Wise pens half of this batch and, continuing with our hit-and-miss theme, bats .500. “Phantom of the Sewers” (10) is a candidate for the series’ laziest episode, one of those where we are several steps ahead of the Turtles and waiting for them to catch up.
It’s the second “Phantom of the Opera” riff, following Season 4’s “Menace Maestro, Please,” and this one is much worse. The sewer, made over by the Phantom, looks like a nice place to have an adventure in, but that only calls attention to the lack of surprises.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Season 6, episodes 9-16 (1992)
CBS
Episodes: “Nightmare in the Lair” (9), “Phantom of the Sewers” (10), “Donatello Trashes Slash” (11), “Leonardo is Missing” (12), “Snakes Alive!” (13), “Polly Wanna Pizza” (14), “Mr. Nice Guy” (15), “Sleuth on the Loose” (16)
Producer: Fred Wolf
Writers: Dennis O’Flaherty (9), David Wise (10, 11, 12, 13), Jack Mendelsohn (14), Steve Granat and Cydne Clark (15), Matt Uitz (16)
“Donatello Trashes Slash” (11) is likewise one-note, built upon the gag that the dimwit Slash is now super-smart. For what it’s worth, I remembered this episode for three decades thanks to that conceit.
“Leonardo is Missing” (12) is a step up, albeit thanks to a throw-it-at-the-wall approach that finds Bebop and Rocksteady stealing baseball cards, the Turtles and Splinter successfully sharing a spirit vision (with little comment), and the emergence of friendly talking dinosaurs from the Earth’s core. (Did it inspire Peter Laird for Volume 4? Probably not.)
“Snakes Alive!” (13) is the best of this Wise quartet, featuring a good lesson where Leo must confront his fear of snakes in order to conquer it; Splinter doesn’t allow him a shortcut of hypnotism, perhaps recognizing his own mistake from Season 3’s “Cowabunga Shredhead,” when Mikey “craves pizza no more.” When this title flashed on the screen in 1992, I hoped for a Scale Tail appearance; despite that disappointment, it’s a good episode.
… Forgiveness is divine …
Also tapping into fear is the decent “Nightmare on Elm Street” riff “Nightmare in the Lair” (9, Dennis O’Flaherty), which is safe for kids and a bit redundant with all the nightmare visions Creepy Eddie creates. This batch is short on toy-shilling – April’s newscycle is the big one – but we do see Leo as an astronaut and Mike as a hockey player in the dreamscapes. Playmates made Raph as a space cadet and Leo as a hockey player, and I’m ashamed that I remember that without looking it up.
This episode also features one of those too-rare but solid Channel 6 sitcom plots, also seen in the previous episode, “Too Hot to Handle.” April is tasked with watching out for the new employee – the owner’s son – and Vernon tries to undermine her at every step.
While Splinter may have learned something in “Leonardo is Missing,” Donatello still has his personality-changer ray laying around, so Raphael gets turned into “Mr. Nice Guy” (15, Steve Granat and Cydne Clark) much as Leonardo gets turned into a self-centered partier in Season 5’s “Leonardo Cuts Loose.” It’s another of those one-note gags, although I admit Raphael being super nice – even helping bank robbers to escape – is amusing.
Still, multiple notes are better, which is why “Sleuth on the Loose” (16, Matt Uitz) is the second-best of Season 6’s back half after “Snakes Alive!” It marks the return of April’s Aunt Agatha Marbles, a nod to Agatha Christie and Miss Marple first seen in Season 3’s outstanding “Case of the Hot Kimono.”
OK, so here we have Agatha inexplicably being both a TV sleuth and a real one, and Donatello casually inventing “Star Trek’s” transporter – as a reaction to the evil genius having one. And both inexplicably can use existing TVs and security cameras as the beaming device. It’s a fun episode, though.
… But never pay full price for late pizza
While “TMNT” eased off on putting characters’ names in their featured episodes, “Polly Wanna Pizza” (14, Jack Mendelsohn) is a Mikey episode, which again means lighter and fluffier. His love for animals – most famously portrayed by his adoption of Klunk the cat in Mirage – is again on display as he hits it off with Ditto the parrot, who is actually mob boss Mugs Maguffin’s pet.
As with Leo’s lesson in overcoming an irrational fear, kids get a lesson here in not entering condemned buildings. “Polly” is also a good example of an episode the writer is only mildly engaged in; the Turtles announce the countdown to the explosion and comment on its cliched nature as a storytelling device.
While that’s a core trait of “TMNT,” my favorite episodes are the ones that don’t make me think of the cliches, or at least feature enough threads that the cliches and references are the spices rather than the whole point. This batch reaches the top rung with “Sleuth on the Loose” and “Snakes Alive!” but otherwise settles for mediocre to weak.