Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Season 2 Premiere

I was a little surprised last year when a new series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premiered on Nickelodeon. Being the turtle-fan I was when I was a kid, I had mixed feelings about yet another series. The 2003 TMNT was decent enough but just the visuals of the Nick show left me with a lot to be desired. I hated of the CGI version of the Turtles; they looked way too corny for my tastes, and were far to similar to each other. So when the show aired and I discovered that it was actually pretty good, I was more than happy to eat my words.

Now the show is in its second season with the premiere episode showing this very morning. To commemorate the event, I celebrated in the only logical way I could think of: by plopping myself down on the couch with a bowl of Count Chocula and watching cartoons all morning, leading up to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The episode starts off a few weeks after the end of last season. The turtles have beaten the Kraang back into submission and the Shredder has gone into hiding after getting his butt handed to him by Splinter. April has been away from the turtles taking care of her father, who has a touch of PTSD after being kidnapped by a race of aliens that look like brains. It's all a pretty standard opening for a season premiere, quickly recapping the events of the last season.

The story kicks in when a communication device the turtles commandeered from the Kraang shows signs of life. Donatello manages to decode the message and discovers that the Kraang's ship is on the move. But since it's cloaked, they can't follow it. Luckily, Donatello has a radar tracking device made out of a first generation Gameboy that he gives to April. She enlists her father to help her understand the coordinates of the radar.

Pictured: Butt Cannons

I loved the way this episode unfolded. The turtles invade the Kraang ship and come face to face with a genetically-manipulated, cybernetically enhanced gorilla that can be piloted by the Kraang. The gorilla thing is ridiculous, with a butt-cannon and extending electric knife nipples. It's not the kind of creature you'd expect to find on a show on Nickelodeon but this is the humor that keeps me interested. It doesn't just rely on played-out jokes and stupid puns. The writers manage to go a little further with it and make it work in an absurd way.

Hoping that Screwloose eventually shows up

The also manage to set up the entire season nicely. During the battle with the Kraang, hundreds of canisters of mutagen get scattered across the city. Though it's kind of a thin plot to have the turtles scour the city in search of the mutagen, there's no doubt that the season is going to be filled with all kinds of mutants. So far, the show has been introducing a range of new characters, like Dog Pound and Fishface. But after April's father gets mutated into a giant, big-brained bat, Michelangelo dubs him "Wingnut", implying that we may see a surge of classic mutants from the original animated show and Archie comic series. I couldn't be more excited if this turns out to be true, especially if they introduce one of my favorite characters, Mondo Gecko.

Given everything that I've seen so far, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles manages to be a great show. It has a tone all it's own despite borrowing from its predecessors. It takes the childish fun from the original 1987 show while working in complex plots and characters from the 2003 incarnation and everything works magnificently. I still need to catch up on last season, having missed the second half due to life getting in the way but I'm really looking forward to this season and the mutants they have in store.