RETURN OF THE SHREDDER

01PLOT

While shopping, Leonardo and Michelangelo stop two robbers at a supermarket, and return to their home in the New York City sewers system before the police arrive. As a thank you, the store manager lets the turtles go without paying as a reward for saving her store and her life. Later, TV reporter April O'Neil arrives and interviews the woman working in the checkout. The woman tells the world that hoodlums tried to rob her, when turtles showed up (although she's generally unsure just _what_ kind of reptiles they were).

In the sewer, Leonardo and Michelangelo are congratulated by their peers for stopping the robbery; however, Michelangelo says that it was nothing, compared to fighting Shredder and his Foot Soldiers, as Donatello adds "or that flipped-out brain creature, Krang".

Meanwhile, in Dimension X, Shredder claims their defeat to the Ninja Turtles was an "accident" and begs Krang to send him back to Earth. Krang, tired of his whining, sends Shredder back to Earth through the Trans-Dimensional Portal. Bebop and Rocksteady try to follow, but Krang closes the portal before they can get through. When Rocksteady asks Krang why he did that, he answers that he "enjoys seeing both people and animals suffer", and refers to Bebop and Rocksteady as both.

At Channel 6, April says that the Turtles are heroes, but her boss Burne Thompson says that they are a menace to society, and his girlfriend Tiffany (who loathes turtles in general) agrees.

Meanwhile Michelangelo discusses how easy it was to stop the robbers in comparison to Shredder's Foot Soldiers. However, Splinter fears that Shredder is about to return.

Meanwhile Shredder passes through the dimensional portal into a park in New York City, where two muggers demand his money. Shredder thinks this will be no problem, as he calls for Bebop, Rocksteady, and the Foot Soldiers and orders to destroy the muggers. When nothing happens he is baffled by this, and Shredder realizes he is alone, so he decides to handle things himself. He jumps into a nearby tree and uses his wrist blades to saw off a branch that falls on the muggers, who immediately give him their money and beat a hasty retreat.

Shredder contacts Krang, who tells Shredder that since he failed to defeat Splinter and the Ninja Turtles with Krang's help, he is on his own until he proves worthy of assistance. This means no Foot Soldiers, no Bebop or Rocksteady, and no access to Krang's technology.

Unable to get any help from Krang, Shredder finds a corrupt local karate school, the "Slash for Cash Gym", and decides to take control of it. Inside the dilapidated dojo, he watches a karate match between two students, who appear to be the best the school has to offer. He quickly discovers that their skills leave quite a bit to be desired. After a series of fouls and or illegal moves and because of their poor balance, the two students eventually, land on top of each other, on the mat.

Their master "Smash", fed up with his students' pathetic performance, declares them all "useless wimps!" The Shredder comments that "the master is responsible for the students", then "declares himself the new master of the dojo and that he will obey his every command "or else." To show he means business, when Smash seems reluctant to let the Shredder take over, he rips one of the punching bags out of the ceiling and slices it to ribbons! Smash and his students wind up on the mat, on all fours, for fear of what would happen to them if they chose not to obey him.

After some training, he establishes Smash's students as the "Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang", a gang who dress up as ninja turtles and start a series of robberies, with the hope that the humans living in the city will believe that the real Turtles are the bad guys. Meanwhile, Shredder relays this plan to Krang that the Turles will try to resurface in an effort to clear their names. Krang yells that such a plan will take forever and demands to be called back when he has real progress to report. Shredder decides to find and free Baxter Stockman from the city's psychiatric hospital (where he was apparently placed following his debut episode, as the cops may not have believed his story about him being tied up by four man-sized mutant turtles). He then orders the scientist to build a ratcatcher for his backup plan.

At Channel 6, Burne orders April to run a video of the "evil Turtles", actually the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang, on the 11 o'clock news. April instead calls the TMNT and tell them to come to Channel 6, and they arrive in the Turtle Blimp. They watch a videotape that shows the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang robbing a jewelry store, and Leonardo realizes that the technique of Smash is the same as only two senseis in the world: Splinter and Shredder, and of course they conclude that Shredder is behind this. Just then, Tiffany enters, and when she sees the Turtles, she screams, driving them away. Burne orders why April is still associating herself with criminals, and she lies about trying to expose them before the couple showed up.

Baxter Stockman then steals an excavator equipped with a drill and re-builds it into a rat catching machine, which he uses to catch Splinter in the sewers. When the Turtles return home to find Splinter missing, they follow the trail left by Baxter Stockman's rat-catching machine. Eventually they end up on the streets, where they encounter the eight members of the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang. The Turtles defeat their less-than-competent foes in a fight, and force Smash to tell them where Shredder is hiding. The answer is already written on a nearby wall: at the karate school Slash for Cash dojo.

At the karate school, Shredder has tied up Splinter and is just about to use his sword to cut down an enormous battering ram and crush Splinter. Just then, Baxter Stockman drives his machine into the dojo and the Turtles defeat it. Shredder cuts loose the ropes supporting the battering ram, which begins to move. Leonardo uses his katana to cut through the ropes Splinter is tied with. Splinter is freed, and the battering ram smashes Baxter Stockman's machine into pieces.

The Shredder and Baxter Stockman escape. April has also followed the trail, and arrives after the fight with a Channel 6 news crew. Krang tells Shredder that Shredder has been beaten once again, and that Shredder will not get "one _shred_ of help from him" until he has proved himself. The police also come, and arrest the "Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang" members. On TV April O'Neil says to the Channel 6 viewers that the Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang were just a hoax. Tiffany believes Burne Thompson is a turtle lover (after Irma brought him his lunch--_mock_ turtle soup) and dumps him. The Turtles head home to the sewers and catch April on the news saying that the TMNT are heroes.

02CAST & APPEARANCES

03OBJECTS, VEHICLES & PLACES

04SCREEN GRABS

9 frames. Screencaps via Turtlepedia (CC BY-SA).

05MEMORABLE QUOTES

Baxter: Greetings from your friendly neighbourhood rat-catcher! Leonardo: Baxter? Raphael: Don't you just hate it when people drop in unannounced? ---

Rocksteady: Oh boy, hamburgers, onion rings! Bebop: And vanilla milkshakes!

Bebop: Earth, make way for Bebop and Rocksteady! Because here we come! Rocksteady: And away we go--OOF! _Rocksteady and Bebop race towards the portal, but Krang has closed it and they bounce back to him. Krang laughs._ Rocksteady: Why'dja do dat? Krang: Because I enjoy seeing both people and animals suffer, and _you_, my friends, are both! _(laughs)_ ---

:In _Central Park..._ Mugger #1: Boy, this is a slow day. We ain't mugged anyone for over ½ an hour! Mugger #2: Relax pal, some poor sucker is bound to show up.

_Shredder arrives through portal from Dimension X_

Mugger #2: See? What'd I tell you? Shredder: Where am I? Mugger #1: I got a better question, like how much money you got in that silly costume of yours? Shredder: Of course...I'm in the Big Apple. _You_ threaten _me_? Mugger #2: Yeah! Shredder: Ha ha ha. You will see why you are wrong to threaten me. Foot soldiers, Bebop, Rocksteady, destroy these fools!

_Nothing happens and the muggers look at Shredder like he is crazy_

Mugger #1: That old trick? Forget it pal, it won't work! Shredder {looking around confused}: Foot soldiers! Did you not hear my command?

Mugger #2: Now just handover your dough! Shredder: Bebop! Rocksteady! Where are you? Oh well, I'll just have to handle this myself.

_Shredder jumps atop tree and uses his gauntlet to break a branch, intimidating muggers_

Shredder: Now what were you saying about money? Mugger #1: We were saying, here... if you don't have any, take ours! Mugger #2: Yeah! And, uh...have a nice day!

The m_uggers empty their pockets and retreat hastly. Shredder contacts Krang._

06TRIVIA

• The animation has been redesigned to have a higher quality, from the design of the characters to the background settings.
• Starting from this episode onwards, Rocksteady no longer wears his helmet and his army pants, he now wears plain pants that he continues to wear for the rest of the series.
• This is the first appearance of Irma (although it's not her first encounter with the Ninja Turtles).
• Baxter Stockman reappears for the first time since "A Thing About Rats", having been committed to a psychiatric hospital. He now has longer hair.
• The psychiatric hospital's appearance can be confused with a lunatic asylum due the room's appearance. But in modern era all asylum have ceased to exist. Critics say that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons unlike other kinds of hospitals, and in this case, psychiatrists have the function of coercing people (into treatment or involuntary commitment) function as judges and jailers, not physicians.[[1]](#cite_note-1).
• Baxter Stockman was indeed committed to this psychiatric hospital just for mentioning a group of big, talking Ninja Turtles, despite the fact that the Turtles were publicly known.
• This episode was adapted to comic book format in _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures_ #1-2 published by Archie Comics.
• The dōjō master is named Smash, but in the Archie's comics adaptation of the episode, he is erroneously named Slash in one panel.
• The "Slash for Cash Gym" is erroneously referred to, in this episode, as the "Slash for Cash Dojo". It's given its proper name in the Archie's comics version.
• Vernon Fenwick's voice actor changes from Pat Fraley to Peter Renaday starting with this episode. This was done to even out the number of roles each actor had to deal with; otherwise, Fraley would have had three regular characters (Krang, Baxter Stockman and Vernon) and Renaday would only have had one (Splinter).
• The weird roommate in Baxter's cell believes he's Napolean Bonaparte. Quite common in cartoons.
• Leonardo and Donatello somehow can tell Shredder trained the crooks merely from the way one guy kicks down a door.
• Perhaps coincidentally on the part of the animators, Smash's flying kick to open the door looks almost identical to the Foot Soldier who kicks open a Cola vending machine during a flashback scene in "Turtle Tracks", lending some credibility to the observation.
• Tiffany is extremely phobic of any kind of turtles, to the point where she'd dump Burne merely for ordering turtle soup. _Mock_ turtle soup, to be exact.
• April breaks a fourth wall of sorts when she assures the Turtles that she was winking at Splinter over a TV screen.
• This episode had many edits in the UK airings in the 1990s. The gang was renamed to The Crooked Turtle Gang and scenes of nunchaku were trimmed.
• Other edits that the UK version of this episode received took place at the Slash for Cash Gym, both the sparring and training scenes. This is interesting as in both scenes, the students were on a mat, with at least one master monitoring them. Also, the students were not practicing full contact style just sparring.
• The Technodrome now resides on a Mars-like planet in Dimension X with pink sky, but at the end of "Shredder & Splintered" it was seen hovering in a fiery dimensional limbo, oddly reminiscent of common depictions of Hell in some media.
• This is the first episode to air on BBC One in the UK. The reason for this being was probably because the BBC deemed Season 1 too violent to be aired. This season and the next are the only seasons that the BBC have ever aired in the show's nine year run.
• First appearance of Shredder's Comlink.
• In this season, the Turtles' belt-buckle initials are white, but are gray in "The Mean Machines", "Enter The Fly", and "The Catwoman from Channel Six". Plus, their weapon sleeves are coloured beige instead of dark brown like in those three episodes and for the whole of the first season.
• When Splinter calls the Turtles, he says each of their names: Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael instead of "Turtles" or "my students" like he usually does.
• On MeTV Toons, the part where Shredder says "And then, the world will tremble before... the Shredder!" is removed for unknown reasons.

07HOME MEDIA

08FAN REVIEW

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