TMNT – “A Foot Too Big” Review

“I-It looks like the mythical Sasquatch.  Bigfoot!” – Donatello

Deep in the woods, a lone hunter named The Finger is searching for dangerous prey.  Unfortunately, he becomes the prey, and is attacked by an ape-like creature.  The next day, Donatello makes a beautiful present for April, but she is less than happy to accept it.  To get his mind off the heartbreak, the brothers head out into the woods do some training.  But they are soon interrupted by what appears to be Bigfoot.  The turtles go toe-to-toe with the creature (who has an amazing learning capacity) before Donnie realizes that he’s just scared and hurt.  They take him home to care for his wound, but little do they know The Finger is hot on their trail.

Thankful to his new friends (and especially fond of Donnie), Bigfoot turns out to be a less than hospitable houseguest.  It isn’t long before she gets on everyone’s nerves, including those of her new crush.  Raphael tries to put her to use training Donnie and Michelangelo in forest stealth, but The Finger spooks her, forcing a hasty retreat to the farmhouse.

While the others remain oblivious, Bigfoot wants to impress Donnie.  With April’s help, she gets a makeover, but the object of her desire is less than thrilled.  Unfortunately, he also now understands how April feels about him.  Distraught and hurt, Bigfoot runs off into the woods with Donnie and Mikey close behind.  It’s not long, though, before all three are caught in The Finger’s traps.

It doesn’t take much for the boys to escape from the trap and mount a counteroffensive.  But The Finger proves to have more skill than they thought.  Just when it seems that Donnie has him down for the count, the man makes a comeback, and does some real damage to the turtles.  Donatello gets in the last strike, however, and forces The Finger to pull out his trump card.  But when he learns that Bigfoot is actually a girl, something stirs within them both, and they run off to be together in the forest, forever in love.  Back at the farm, Donnie makes his peace with April about her feelings, and she gives him the surprise of his life with the kiss he’s been waiting for.

While this episode was fun and provided a few laughs, it didn’t really accomplish anything.  The self-awareness needed for Donatello when it came to his “relationship” with April would have been a great touch, and helped move that whole love triangle storyline along in a meaningful and believable way.  So why everything was undone at the end (or seemingly undone) makes absolutely no sense.  Now the whole thing has gone nowhere.  This is the kind of meaningless “growth” that the show has avoided up until now, and hopefully this episode doesn’t undo all that hard work.

Also, with so much still to do in order to retake the city, it would have been excellent to show that that is the team’s main priority.  Instead, there was nothing gained from their training, and Leonardo is still out of commission (and barely participating in anything).  Overall, the story was simply lacking what made the last four or five so great.  It was trying to slow things down, but may have accomplished that a little too well, because it just didn’t make sense.

With any luck, the episodes will turn back to plots that are both relevant to the series, and shown to be developed in some way.  Yes, April kissed Donnie.  But that doesn’t mean she’s into him, or that they will actually get together.  The strength of the show has been to work on subplots like that while also dealing with the bigger problems, like in the “Wormquake” episode.  Those need to come back soon.  There’s too much to do to be wasting time on Bigfoot (although, all of that will be completely meaningless if she comes back to help them in some major way in the coming season, especially with whatever meaning there was in her enhanced learning capacity).

Rating: 6/10