Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review – Season 3, Episode 1: Within the Woods

When last we left the Turtles, they were in bad shape, essentially forced out of New York and two ninjas down thanks to injuries to Leonardo and the disappearance of Splinter. For the Season 3 premiere, the people in charge of the show manage to revisit a classic storyline from the original Mirage comic book series and combine it with the tension and pacing of a horror movie. Not too shabby. Let’s get into it, with spoilers, naturally, if you haven’t guessed.

Not So Quick Summary: Echoing the first time they were forced out of NYC by the Foot Clan in the black-and-white comic 30 years ago, the Turtles head to the O’Neil family farmhouse with April and Casey Jones. As we learn from April’s voiceover while writing in her journal, Leo is in a bathtub to keep him hydrated while he recuperates, with Raphael standing guard. Mikey goofs around and does chores around the farm, while Donnie and Casey have set up shop together in the barn — Donatello working on a mutagen-based medicine to try to help Leonardo, while Casey tinkers on an old truck. April’s time has been spent training and considering the loss of both her real and surrogate fathers.

Neither a training session or Mikey’s new favorite show, Cragnard the Barbarian (a silly but funny parody of Thundarr the Barbarian) can take their minds off their less than ideal situation, but spirits lift when Leo comes to after nearly three months. He sounds different too: in real life, it’s because Seth Green has replaced Jason Biggs as his voice, but in the show, it’s explained away due to damage he sustained to his vocal chords. Convenient, eh?

Despite Raph’s tough love attempt to get him back in the saddle, Leo needs crutches to get around and doubts he’ll ever be the same again. Donnie’s medicine also doesn’t with him, and he vomits it on the ground. This being TMNT mutagen and all, it immediately seeps into the ground, where it awakens … something.

Later, with the gang gathered around the tube for more Cragnard, the lights and the fire go out. Raph volunteers to chop more wood, but gets ambushed and dragged off by whatever it is that spawned from the medicine. Still in command despite his wounds, Leo sends Donnie and Mikey to search one part of the woods while Casey and April look in another, an arrangement that doesn’t sit well with Donnie for reasons that completely miss Mikey.

Casey attempts to find out why April has been so cold to him out on the farm, but their conversation is disrupted by one of her psychic flashes. Meanwhile, the Turtles have stumbled into the monster, which looks sort of like Swamp Thing crossed with a scarecrow, in a spooky shack right out of any number of scary movies. They also find Leo’s medicine set up in a shrine of sorts, and Raph turned into a plant monster of his own.

Eventually, the monster, which Mikey simply names “The Creep,” gets everyone but April, who gives a fair account of herself and almost makes it back to the farmhouse before getting snagged by vines (the Creep can grow them like tendrils). Back at the shack, everyone watches in horror as the Creep feeds off of Raph’s mutagen, turning him even more plant-like. Leo shows up and fights valiantly despite his injuries, eventually felling the monster with a crutch right between the eyes.

He cuts everyone down, but the Creep isn’t done, smashing his way into the shack through a window. Even cutting off his arm doesn’t stop him (he simply reattaches it), but threatening the bottle of medicine finally does. The Turtles and Casey manage to chain the Creep to a very large tree before turning their attention to trying to save Raph.

Luckily, Donnie is able to drain the mutagen from the Creep and feed it back into Raph, restoring him to something near full health. He learns Leo repaid the favor by watching over him until he was back, and the two of them agree that they need to heal up because they have a city to take back. Obviously, we’re speeding up the Mirage timetable quite a bit here, but that’s just fine. I’m not sure we needed to see half a season of the Turtles out on the farm.

In the final scene, the jar holding the swamp goo that is all that remains of the Creep begins to crack …

Final Thought: Definitely a fun way to start the season, with plenty of tension and a setting that is a big treat for longtime TMNT fans. You’d think that the boys, and Donnie in particular, would be a little more careful with mutagen after what happened to them during the first two seasons (especially with stuff like April’s dad, Spike and Ice Cream Kitty), but I guess we wouldn’t have much of a show if they were.