[TV Review] “Mazes and Mutants” – Episode 15, Season 2 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Larping Turtles! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)
Teenage Mutant Larping Turtles! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)

Should you watch this, Wiki this, or wait for the recap? Watch it!

The Turtles find an old game of Mazes and Mutants and decide to enact a real-life version of their tabletop roleplaying game – not realising that it’s all a ploy by a dangerous new mutant to keep them trapped in the game forever!

Leo the Knight! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)
Leo the Knight! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)

“Mazes and Mutants” is, of course, a thinly veiled reference to Dungeons and Dragons, what with the alliteration and location/monster structure of the title. Although there’s no furthering of the series arc, it’s a fun episode to see the Turtles in new costumes acting out RPG characters. There’s even an onscreen explanation of what LARPing is!

I don’t know about you, but watching this episode prompted me to get into D&D again. It’s fun to see the Turtles just being teenagers and doing random silly acts that all teenagers do. It’s a good episode that builds on character, and reuses character models to create funky situations.

Raph the Barbarian! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)
Raph the Barbarian! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)

Highlights

Turtles in their Dungeons and Dragons Mazes and Mutants costumes

It’s a riot! Really, so the picture captions should tell you their character classes, but here it is again for reference – Leo the Knight, Donnie the Wizard, Raph the Barbarian, and Mikey the Elf (archer). You also get Leatherhead in a cameo as the dragon they have to defeat in its lair of gold coins. So many D&D/Hobbit/LOTR references! Good to know that the creators are just as geeky as me, er, us.

Sir Malachi the wizard

Sir Malachi is a little weird at first – don’t we already have a bird mutant in the series (Pete)? But he slowly grows on you when you realise he’s not evil, and you can definitely see him as a future ally of the Turtles. Maybe he’ll return in another Dungeons and Dragons themed episode – with Shredder and company LARPing as evil warlords!

Raphael gets turned into a chicken

Raph is always grumpy, so it’s fun to see him get taken down a peg a little when Sir Malachi gives him a chicken head. Grumpier Raph is funnier, especially since he’s already grumpy when he’s forced to get into his Barbarian schtick. Just as he warms up to being a Barbarian – boom! He offends Sir Malachi and gets cursed with a horrible head.

Donnie the Wizard! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)
Donnie the Wizard! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)

Letdowns

The final battle

The way they win the fight at the end of the episode is rather cheesy – using the power of belief/disbelief, they defeat Sir Malachi’s creations and return to the sewers. It’s a little too touchy-feely for a Turtles episode, since you’d expect them to find some clever solution to save the day.

Mike the Elf! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)
Mikey the Elf! (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles S02E15)

Really, the highlight of this episode is just seeing the Turtles playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s the closest crossover we’ll ever to Game of Thrones or LOTR too! And finally, it’s just a ploy to sell toys. I’m going on Amazon now to get my LARP Turtles. Are you?

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  1. [TV Review] “The Invasion, Part 2″ – Episode 26, Season 2 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | marcus goh

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