“Does he have a pizza for a face? Then I will call him Pizza Face!” – Michelangelo
April has to bail on Irma again to see the turtles. Irma’s growing very suspicious, but her attention is soon turned to a pizza delivery guy crashing into her. Freaked out, the delivery boy takes off, leaving a pizza at their feet. April is going to take it to the turtles, but something feels off. She opens the box to see what’s got her freaked out, and something attacks. Meanwhile, the turtles are hungry, so Michelangelo makes his own pizza. But, it’s awful, so the others order delivery from a very strange new pizza parlor.
Mikey brings dinner back to the lair, but while he waits for his brothers, their dinner attacks. A talking pizza appears from the box, and Mikey must hold it off. However, his brothers don’t believe him, and storm off. Michelangelo will get answers, though, and heads for Antonio’s. Scoping out the pizza parlor, Mikey sees a horde of people in a zombie-like state, including April. But before he can save her or get his money back, people with pizza covering their whole heads attack and kick his butt.
Barely escaping, Mikey returns to the lair, only to find that his brothers and sensei have eaten the pizza, and are now zombies. Mikey fights off several mutant pizzas, capturing one to learn the whole truth about a pizza chef mutated and able to give life to pizza pies. Mikey infiltrates Pizza Face’s restaurant, but the mutant has the other turtles and Splinter protecting him while he readies his zombies to be eaten. Michelangelo is captured, but then realizes the only way to win is to eat all the pizza, including Pizza Face himself. At the last moment, Pizza Face mounts a counterattack … and Mikey wakes up. The whole adventure was just a bad dream …… or was it?
It’s been a while since one turtle has seen almost the entire episode revolve around him. And while Michelangelo isn’t exactly the character that needs the most development, he is (and perhaps always has been) the most well rounded character. Which means that he can easily anchor a story like this on his own. While the premise was a little silly, and it’ll be nice to get back into the stories that actually pertain to the main plot of the season, it was a nice episode that gave Mikey a chance to flex his muscles as a character.
By allowing that, this episode also highlighted an oft forgotten aspect of Michelangelo – one that no TV incarnation has really ever touched on before. While he is the youngest brother and the least developed, Michelangelo is also said to be the turtle with the most potential, and will probably be the greatest ninja master someday. Obviously, the Mikey that exists here is far from that. But (dream or not), he was able to fight off all three of his zombie brothers single-handedly. They may not have been in top form at that point, but they could still function as ninja, and Mikey was able to beat all three. So perhaps his abilities are something special after all, and this is just the first step in seeing them at their fullest.
This was another fun episode to add to the few that have happened since the big “Wormquake” incident. Clearly this season has been about balancing out those major events in the second half with more fun after a couple of serious episodes, before the big push to the season finale. (A similar situation to last season, when The Pulverizer’s first appearance and the infiltration of TCRI were juxtaposed with the Cockroach Terminator.) Hopefully the remainder of the episodes add a little more of the big story, but a few more fun adventures like this one will certainly be welcomed and appreciated.
Rating: 7.5/10
