“Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” has been doing a great job at showcasing smaller stories featuring only a few characters next to their larger stories effecting the entire city.
Donatello gets the focus in “The Purple Jacket.” Donnie heads to help April at school with a tech problem when he runs in to the Purple Dragons Tech Club. They are total jerks. Donnie still impresses with his gadgets, joining the Purple Dragons and gaining a sweet satin jacket.
Unfortunately, the Purple Dragons are as bad as their attitude. While Donnie sleeps, all of his tech is hacked. He has to fight his own technology without using any! He relies on old ninja tactics to take out the purple dragons, even if it came at a very, heavy price.
The next episode starts with a new group of mutants. These metal mutated prarie dogs are ready to go after 4 points around New York City.
We cut to the turtles celebrating Pizza Week. They’re ready to eat a ton of their favorite food before they find their pizza place is gone! All the pizza places are being sucked in to sinkholes!
When they reach the third pizza place, they find the culprits still there! They embark on a long underground chase, only to lose the fight! The prarie dogs get away, on to claim the final pizza place. But the Prarie dogs aren’t what they seem. They might not be targeting the pizza places at all! They might just be looking for a gig.
Each episode was a lot of fun, but didn’t seem to advance the overall story much. I’d be surprised to see the Purple Dragons again. And The Diggs (mutant prarie dogs) aren’t an evil group at all. Putting these episodes opposite each other works, but I was really hoping for more for the overall season. We learned a lot about the villains only a couple short episodes ago. and I want to get back to that as soon as possible. But, on their own, each episode was fun and very energetic.
Now, Let’s talk about the big Easter Egg in the episode.
Who saw this?
This is officially the first recognition in this series of other dimensions. We see the original Mirage TMNT, the 2012 CGI series, the 1984 cartoon, and one in our universe using giant costumes. Other dimensions have long played a role in the TMNT series as an explanation to why so many versions exist. I love that this is tackled early in the series. The 2003 series ended with a mash up TV movie showcasing several versions of the turtles interacting. And the 2012 versions interacted with their past iterations a few times, even fighting the 1984 Kraang and Shredder. It might be a while, but this quick shot connects this TMNT to all other versions. This version of the TMNT especially lends itself to weird, inter-dimensional travel. I was originally going to give this episode a 7, but this shot bumps it up to a 7.5!
What did you think of the episode and, more importantly, that big Easter Egg at the end? Do you know what the black card says under the “Pizza Time?” Let us know in the comments below!
