TMNT – “The Deadly Venom” Review

“You’re the second.  Now I’m going to poison the turtles.  One.  By.  One,” – Karai

Thanks to plenty of experimenting, Baxter Stockman has changed Karai human again, and perfected the mind control worm.  With his daughter completely under his control, Shredder sends her out to destroy the turtles and their family.  Unaware of the danger approaching, Leonardo and Master Splinter train with katana, but Splinter is still recovering from the battle with the Mighty Mutanimals.  However, he channels his energy and activates a new technique – the Healing Hands – that he teaches to Leo.

Later that night, April has a dream of being eaten by a snake, only to wake up and find real snakes in her bed.  Unconscious, Kirby takes April to the lair.  While Donatello tries to help her, Foot Bots and Karai attack Casey.  He defeats the robots, but Karai uses a few mutant tricks to poison the boy.  However, the S.O.S. he sent got to the turtles, and Raphael and Michelangelo find him collapsed.  They load him into the Party Wagon, but Karai left snakes that bite the two turtles as well.  Karai takes all three captive and calls out the remaining turtles.

While Splinter tries to use his healing mantras to help April, Donnie and Leo go after Karai.  However, Karai poisoned the water in the sewer, causing the other two to hallucinate and collapse.  While Karai hangs up her prizes, Leo uses his new Healing Hands technique to fight the poison and face his sister.  The girl continues to strike, but Leo manages to master the healing power and defeat her.  Karai escapes, but Leo gets everyone else back to the lair to be healed.  Victory is bittersweet, though, because Karai is still trapped by Shredder, and needs to be saved all over again.

It’s good to see Karai back in the mix of things, but something still seems off about her story.  Stockman was able to change her back to human and restore her mind, as well as perfect the mind control worms.  It’s all a little unbelievable, since the last time his lab was seen he was nowhere near either.  It would have been a bit better to see Stockman’s attempts to develop a formula, especially because having the ability to change her back to human (with mutant abilities) could/should have been something he would test on himself first.  So how did he come up with it, when he couldn’t even develop a retro-mutagen?

Karai being under Shredder’s control also raises the question of when she will be freed.  Her constant flip-flopping has been driving story so far, but eventually she has to stay with one side or the other, or the story is just going to get old.  Three seasons have been built on her changing sides, but there are only so many ways that she can go back and forth.  Hopefully she just stays with Shredder for a while, the writers come up with something else to be the main plot for the rest of season three and season four, and then her final salvation can be part of something much later in the series.

While a great reintroduction of Karai into the story, this episode had a feeling very similar to others this season.  There have been a lot of individual episodes that seemed they would be better served happening over the course of an hour, rather than 20 minutes.  If that’s the case, then it’s worth wondering if the show is suffering from having too many ideas that just aren’t working for the format in which they exist.  If not, then something needs to be readjusted, as these episodes just seem to be coming up short in terms of their development over the time allotted.  That’s not to say the episodes are bad, by any means; it just means that they feel like they are leaving the audience out of certain crucial elements, and then cutting things short because the episode had to end.  Of course, there’s also the possibility that the production team is just running out of ideas right now, and need to do something to spice things up.