“What the heck is a Kraang spaceship doing under my house?” – April O’Neil

The turtles and their friends are doing a little cleaning up around their new home, but when Donatello and Casey try outdoing each other yet again for April’s affection, Michelangelo’s the one that takes a spill … and discovers a trap door. Down in the cellar, they discover their worst nightmare: A Kraang stealth ship. Trying to figure out just what they’re up against, the team enters the ship, and Mikey reactivates its systems, revealing a stasis pod containing April’s mother.

After the woman recovers enough from the shock of mutants and her now-teenage daughter to sit and talk, she relays the story of the Kraang ship. April’s great-grandfather released the aliens, and they immediately began experimenting on his entire family. Eventually the Kraang came back for April, but she escaped while her mom was captured again for experimentation. Now April and her mother are just so happy to be together again, but Mikey has a feeling that something isn’t quite right.

While the two women bond, Mikey decides to go with his gut, and attacks April’s mom. When the others interrogate him, they refuse to believe that anything is wrong. But Michelangelo refuses to back down. He follows April’s mom into the woods, where he stops her from pouring out some mutagen, and learns that she’s working for the Kraang. She captures Mikey, and returns to the house to keep her secret, taking Donatello next. Leonardo almost gets away, but even he can’t stop April’s mom.

The Kraang creature tries to take down Raphael next, but the lone turtle manages to escape and warn the others. But April won’t even believe him, and her mom takes the girl hostage. Raph and Casey free the girl, and the three try to stop April’s mom from taking them, too. But nothing seems to be working, until April uses her psychic powers to blow the creature to pieces. With everyone free, Donnie reveals that the creature was actually an early infiltration unit, and not April’s actual mom, which puts her mind at ease. But the creature did spill mutagen in the woods, and that could spell more trouble for the turtles.

While this episode was a step above the last, it again didn’t really seem to accomplish much. It was great to see an actual incarnation of April’s mom, and the reason why it was the O’Neil family that the Kraang terrorize. Plus, it was nice to have the main conflict brought to the turtles’ door again (even if it was in a very small and ultimately harmless way). But other than minor aspects of the plot and April’s improved development of her psychic powers, this episode still wasn’t anything special.

With now three episodes where the turtles seem to be hiding out in the woods without accomplishing much of anything, it begs the question of what exactly this season will hold. There are Kraang and Karai aspects that have to be resolved from last season, but there seems to be no hurry to get back to any of it. So will either of those main issues be addressed? Or will the first half of the season be more of these type of episodes, followed by something big for the midseason finale, and then maybe getting back into the city for the second half of season three? The problem of too few major plot points may finally be catching up to the writers in season three, though certainly all the fans hope not. The last thing the show needs now is to go stale.

Even though this episode did pick up a little bit from the last (and it looks like something interesting will be happening in the next), this addition still left a lot to be desired. If the turtles are going to spend a fair amount of time longer at the farm, it would be nice to know that they’re doing something that helps retake the city, and not just waiting around and fighting more weekly mutants again. Hopefully that mutagen Mikey spills in the woods helps make things more interesting.

Rating: 7/10