Pop culture might love nothing more than to toss big personalities together and see what happens, but not all teams are created equal. The Avengers might set their biggest box-office records together, but at the end of the day, they’re solo stars temporarily sharing space. By contrast, the central appeal of the Friends is that they’re, well, friends; split one off from the pack, and you end up with Joey.
Paramount+’s Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seems, at first, like it might have misjudged where its heroes fall on that spectrum. Its first six-episode arc (of a twelve-episode season) largely separates the core four, losing much of the winsome rapport that defined 2023’s Mutant Mayhem. But it retains enough of that film’s zip to stand as a worthy follow-up — and eventually circles back toward a deeper understanding of what makes the Turtles tick as a team.
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Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The series carries over much of Mutant Mayhem‘s endearing handcrafted vibe — albeit, understandably, in less elaborate and expensive-looking form. Instead, Tales is rendered in cleaner, simpler lines that dovetail with the show’s half-hearted framing device: These adventures are presented as a comic book scribbled by Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), the katana-wielding leader of the gang. (Does this mean the narrative is therefore not canon within this universe? I have no idea, and frankly, I’m not sure the show itself cares; Tales demonstrates limited interest in Marvel-style cross-pollinated world-building. )
Leo’s story — actually created by showrunners Chris Yost and Alan Wan — apparently picks up right where the movie left off. Having saved New York City, he and his brothers are eager to get back to ordinary teenage activities like high school and house parties. But en route to a big night out, they’re ambushed by Bishop (Alanna Ubach), a mysterious villain who’s decided that “for the survival of humanity, all mutants must be destroyed.” The Turtles are split up in the attack, and each of the first four half-hours follows one as he’s pursued by one of Bishop’s mechazoids, relentless robots capable of upgrading themselves (some might even say mutating themselves) on the fly.
Considering that Mutant Mayhem went so far as to have its young cast record together, it’s initially disappointing that Tales offers so few opportunities to spotlight their lived-in rapport. But the storyline becomes a way for each Turtle to consider who he is apart from the others, and who he is because of them. Angry Raphael (Brady Noon) might wonder if he’s only good for going into “beast mode,” only to realize in a moment of crisis that he actually has learned a thing or two from jokester Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.) about disarming his enemies with humor. Each thinks of the others, but as filtered through his own particular lens: Nerdy Donatello (Micah Abbey) imagines a confrontation in the style of a 1990s video game, while Leo’s daydreams are stylized as even cruder comic-book doodles.
Tales directs a similar playfulness to the world around its young protagonists. Ayo Edebiri’s April O’Neil aside, few of the A-list supporting players from the movie return for the first half of the show. (Splinter, the boys’ rat father, has been reduced to speaking in “vermin” as a way to avoid paying Jackie Chan for a cameo.) But this is still a New York City where Leonardo’s self-pity party might get interrupted by a pair of bickering neighbors complaining about the noise, or where Raphael’s imprisonment might be overseen by an enormous thug (Carlin James) with the comportment of Embarrassment from Inside Out 2.
As a TV-Y7 show, Tales only lets itself go so far down dark territory. The action is propulsive and creative, making hilarious use of props like candy bars and squawking chickens, but it’s also bloodless; it’s mainly robots who get torn limb to limb. And while it might be possible, if you really want to, to read Raphael’s time on a poultry farm as a commentary on animal rights, or Bishop’s us-or-them rhetoric as an echo of fear-mongering bigots, such issues are handled with a light enough touch that Tales functions better as family-friendly escapism than as a sneaky commentary on serious topics.
What the series is sincere about are the joys and frustrations of a family. When the Turtles are finally reunited, the support they show each other feels all the richer because we understand so well what it means to each of them individually. (It’s enough to make one hope all the more that the second season sees more of the whole gang working together.) Bishop might not see much to relate to in the Turtles — “Regular kids are not green,” she snarls to her assistant (Pete Davidson). But young or old, anyone who’s ever felt constrained by their family’s expectations of them, anyone who’s called upon a relative’s wisdom in a moment of crisis, anyone who gets that family means appreciating each other even as you sometimes annoy each other — which is to say, pretty much everyone — will.
