TMNT Talkback: Episode 5.05: "Beginning of the End" (Spoilers)

[Babylicious]

Episode 5.05: Beginning of the End
Original Air Date: March 15, 2008
Written by Joe Kelly

Previously on TMNT: Increased training grants the acolytes more control over their new abilities, including the power to unleash spirit avatars. The Ninja Tribunal finds the location of the last artifact; after fighting off an army of demon rats (no Rat King, though), they retrieve the Shredder's gauntlet. In the real world, the show itself faced off against The Spectacular Spider-Man and won a narrow victory, but not without cost: the Talkback had it's lowest amound of replies ever.


This week, on TMNT: With all the artifacts now safely back under Ninja Tribunal control, hell is officially ready to break loose. The Shredders' Acolytes attack the Lap of the Gods, and prove to be more powerful than anybody expected.

[HMV]

While this is a good episode on its own terms, anyone who has seen Fast Forward will realize that

[spoiler]the Tribunal ain't dead. I'm not revealing how/when they come back, but Leo obviously finds it normal that they're around in the fake diary flashback, so that takes away some of the potential shock value here[/spoiler]

And despite how solid the previous episodes were, I can't help but feel they were treading water a bit just to build to this point. Certainly as Ian pointed out, "Demons and Dragons" and "More Worlds Than One" are basically the same story. We probably could've afforded to lose an episodes worth of content somewhere and still achieve the same outcome. It doesn't help that after 6 episodes, the human acolytes are still superficially developed.


But anyway the story moves back to NY now, and the stakes only rise from this point on. Stay tuned.

[grinning goblin]

it was a fake diary


but this was the second saddest episode

[Mitchill]

True, but FF still spoils the fact that the Tribunal aren't dead. Still, even if I never saw FF I wouldn't believe the Tribunal were dead anyway.

Now as for the humans, wow, they got away with showing Faraji (that's the right name, correct?), get impaled. It was definitely a more violent blow than how all the other humans got taken out, surprised they did it when they could have just had a wall fall on him or something like the other guys.

Overall I liked this episode, I didn't even see the twist coming that the Mystic Foot were pretending to be the Tribunal members. That caught me off guard and I'm glad we had no hints toward that either.

Its a shame that this is such a short season, I imagine the Shredder doesn't get all that much screentime either with only a handful of episodes left. Ah well, I guess this is the time where you just accept what you're given and don't get greedy.

[Justin-tiffany]

Okay am I the only one that was unimpressed by the deaths? There was something really... missing there...it was like they had no impact!

They spend 5 episodes NOT developing the acolytes and off them all in anticlimatic ways... once they started to bite it I kinda expected ALL of them to get killed off.

[pkpundit]

[spoiler]Thats because they are not dead.[/spoiler]

[noob_2_net]

Well yeah I figured as much...but they could have at least tried to make it convincing >

[Toni-Ann]

I had a feeling the acolaytes would "die" in this one. After all, they did show the 7th episode just before the movie came out last year, and Donatello, working on the Turtle Taxi (which was discussed last week's episode), said "Adam would have loved to have seen this."


I really liked how they actually showed quite a bit of violent action in this one. it's been a long time since we've seen something this serious in an episode (FF was toned down a bit too much for my taste). The dialogue of the episode was kinda iffy, though. But all and all, a great episode.

[KISHOR LAL]

Don't let the episode count fool you. Once the Shredder comes back, he comes back. In fact

[spoiler]his resurrection scene is kinda creepy in a reverse "Insane in the Membrane" way[/spoiler]

[Edged Killings]

I seriously could not follow this episode for crap. When did the four evil dudes swap forms with Splinter-tachi? I know I saw last week's episodes and all was normal. As for the Tribunal and 4 human dudes, I expect them to be back at the end of the season since 4Kids is against killing. However, I must say, I'm a little disappointed in these episodes as they just seem so bland. The impact of the story feels lost due to the long wait they made us go through for this series. However, WHY are they giving us a filler episode in such a short season?