And the Winner Is: “The Big Brawl” Part Four

“We must continue the Battle Nexus Tournament. It is what my father would have wanted.” — The Ultimate Ninja

Written by: Mike Ryan

Original Air Date: October 2, 2004

Recap Narrator: Drako

Characters and Concepts Introduced: N/A

Gargoyles episodes I could make comparisons to: “City of Stone”

The Beats:

• Donatello and Usagi continue defending the unconscious Daimyo from the besieging assassins. Just as it seems as if the two seem about to be overcome, they are aided by a once-again-conscious Leonardo, whose presence turns the tide of the battle, leading the assassins to retreat.
• In the semi-finals, Michelangelo and Kluh defeat Aya and Gen respectively. They are soon after transferred to a different arena, where the final bout of the Battle Nexus Championship begins.
• Raphael and Traximus discover the location of the captive Splinter and free him.  He warns them of the true danger behind the scenes, and tells them that they must all get to the Daimyo.
• Drako, frustrated that The Ultimate Ninja has yet to fulfill his end of their bargain–providing Drako with the Daimyo’s war staff–decides to take it himself. Before he can do so, he is surprised by his partner, who anticipated the betrayal. The two fight, and The Ultimate Ninja finds himself unable to control the war staff like his father or Drako can. The battle makes its way to the arena, interrupting the match between Michelangelo and Kluh.
• Raphael, Traximus and Splinter, now reunited with Donatello, Leonardo, Usagi and a still ailing, but conscious, Daimyo, join the action at the arena, just as Drako begins losing control of the war staff. The mystical artifact opens a rift in the sky which begins drawing people in. Quick thinking by the turtles and their allies is enough to prevent most (except for the Gyoji) from being sucked into the rift until they get control of the war staff.  Drako and The Ultimate Ninja, still fighting among themselves, are also sucked in before the Daimyo is able to close the rift.
• The danger now past, Michelangelo attempts to retrieve his nunchaku, which is stuck fast in the cracked arena floor. As he does so, he accidentally hits the still-woozy Kluh, knocking him unconscious and making Michelangelo the new Battle Nexus champion.
• After Michelangelo’s award ceremony, the turtles and Splinter say good-bye to their friends before they are transported back to New York and their normal lives.
• Not far from Earth, the Triceraton mother ship looms, having tracked the Transmat teleportation beam from “Triceraton Wars” to the Solar System. Inside the ship, Prime Leader Zanramon gives Commander Mozar the order to begin a full-scale invasion of Earth.

Continuity and Mythology Notes:

• This is the first appearance of Zanramon and Mozar since “Triceraton Wars.“

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There is something really quite satisfying about that ending scene of the episode. Not only does it bring the season full circle, ending where it began, with Triceratons searching for the Fugitoid, it also helps reassure, after a set of twenty-six episodes much more scattered-feeling than the first, that the writers still know where they’re going. Additionally, the reveal that the invasion of Earth is imminent goes a long way towards explaining why “The Big Brawl” is the way it is. A Triceraton invasion, once it happens, will easily be the biggest-scale thing the series has done so far. “The Big Brawl”, with that final scene, stands reveal as the calm before the storm, a fun romp before things get really serious.

Take away that ending, though, and we’re left with a much less effective episode—probably the worst in the arc. Forced to have some sort of climax after three episodes of disconnected events told leisurely, the story is left scrambling to raise the stakes, resulting in an external threat that is, really, some nonsense.  Fortunately, the series has built up enough goodwill that it’s hard to be too incensed about it.

How could it have been improved upon, though? I’m not sure. As mentioned, the reason why much of the arc works is because the low stakes allow the various characters to simply interact. Additionally, neither The Ultimate Ninja or Drako as we’ve seen them present a sufficient individual threat—or even a collective one—to carry a climax episode, once their manipulations are laid bare. What’s more, given that the various characters in question are all martial artists, just pitting the enemy forces against the good guys would likely result in a retread of what we’ve already seen several times with the Shredder. In the end, it’s really hard to bring stakes to a fighting tournament story—it’s why fighting games are not known for their plots.

Could we have then brought more thematic resonance to the arc, at least? That one is easier, given the one thing linking The Ultimate Ninja and the Turtles—their relationships with their fathers. Given what we see, it’s not hard to draw a contrast between the ways Splinter and the Daimyo approach parenthood, and how they incorporate the concepts of shame and pride: in “The Ultimate Ninja”, the Daimyo publicly berates his son in a way we’ve never seen Splinter do. There’s a version of this story in which The Ultimate Ninja is the Harry Osborn to the Daimyo’s Norman Osborn (particularly as seen in the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series): a young man unable to bear the weight of his father’s unreasonable expectations and lack of support who, tempted by Drako, crosses the line into attempted patricide. Then, as his plan backfires and he is hoisted by his own petard, his father is forced to reconsider his own actions and how they helped pave the way to his son’s loss.

Still, even if the story were easy to change—the subtext is already there—I’m not sure telling it well would have been possible. For one, given everything else going on in this arc, I’m not sure there’s space to make The Ultimate Ninja sympathetic, after his debut established him as an asshole for reasons unrelated to his father.  Add to that the attempted homicide, regicide, and patricide, it’s difficult for additional context to serve as anything beyond “cool motive; still murder,” third party manipulation or not. Additionally, taking the relationship between the Ultimate Ninja and the Daimyo and making it a more explicitly problematic one would in turn affect the latter’s existing relationship with Splinter. And while that element may be worth altering, it would require even more fundamental changes, all for something I’m not convinced is desirable.  Not every villain needs to be sympathetic or tragic, and not every story needs to have resonance.  While messy, the story is still enjoyable enough.

“Messy but enjoyable enough” also describes the season as a whole, which much like this arc, feels like a transitional one—the show’s version of the Gargoyles Avalon World Tour—and sometimes, about as frustrating. “City at War,” as I’ve previously noted, feels a lot like “Avalon”—highly important, and introducing some fundamental concepts which will be done justice elsewhere, but ultimately unable to meet the expectations set by the hype. The various stand-alones, meanwhile, feel a lot like world tour standalones—sometimes enjoyable, often frustrating, and not among my favorite episodes. We’re 52 episodes in, and the series is in many ways still finding its feet; it still hasn’t figured out how to make one-offs as effective as the stories that get more time.

(Of course, the big difference between this and Gargoyles is that in Gargoyles, we ended up with a lot of table-setting and not the actual dinner. TMNT, meanwhile, will follow season 2 with what is arguably its best season, with the various elements introduced here—Triceratons, the Federation, Leatherhead, The Battle Nexus, the Justice Force, Karai—all eventually getting used in much better episodes. It makes this ­­­­­­season much easier to bear.)

So that’s the mess. As for the enjoyable part, it consists of the same things that worked with season one. There’s the characters, which remain enjoyable, individually and collectively (even if Casey is harder to take this season than last one, the writers using increasingly relying on him for laughs). There’s the action scenes, which remain among the best Western animation had produced at the time. There’s the Shredder plot, which remains largely effective, even if not to the degree it worked in the first season.  The series, in the end, is still fundamentally sound. It just needs to continue working on itself.

Random Thoughts:

• Between being able to affix themselves onto the arena floor and take hold of Kluh, Mikey’s nunchaku are extremely magical this episode.
• On a similar note, the fact that the only people affected by the vortex are those directly in the arena is never explained, and again, some nonsense.
• While Donatello, Usagi and Leonardo are eventually able to save the Daimyo, the various good guys end up being completely incidental when it comes to actually stopping The Ultimate Ninja and Drako, which is certainly a choice. Not a bad one necessarily, but one of the sort that makes this series stand out from others.
• To clarify a detail above, the reason why I feel this arc is similar to “City of Stone” is because that is also an arc in which the major threat—99% of New York is stone by night!—is largely incidental to everything else.
• As well animated as Usagi’s fighting is, this is one of those instances in which the series limitations regarding violence bug me more than usual. Sure, people not being able to use swords has been an issue since always, but Usagi, unlike Leonardo, isn’t a martial artist. His whole thing is his swords, and so seeing him do kicks just feels off.
• On  a similar note, while the series still can’t consistently say “death”, “kill,” or its variants, this episode does, I feel, the best job so far of overcoming that obstacle. Not that this is terribly hard, but given how often the show has problems with this, it feels good to be pleasantly surprised.